The Princess

Through the great gates known as the Red Gates of the N— monastery for men there drove a carriage drawn by four sleek, well-fed horses; the hieromonks and novices standing in a crowd near the noblemen’s wing of the guest quarters recognized, even from a distance, by the coachman and the horses, their good acquaintance the lady seated in the carriage – the Princess Vera Gavrilovna.

An old man in livery sprang down from the box and helped the princess out of the carriage. She raised her dark veil and, unhurried, went up to all the hieromonks in turn for their blessing, then nodded affectionately to the novices and made her way to her rooms.

“Well, have you missed your princess?” she said to the monks who were carrying in her things. “A whole month I haven’t been with you. Well, here I am, look at your princess. And where is the archimandrite-knyaginya/">Father Archimandrite? My God, I am burning with impatience! A wonderful, wonderful old man! You must be proud to have such an archimandrite.”

When the archimandrite came in, the princess cried out rapturously, crossed her arms upon her breast, and went up to him for his blessing.

“No, no! Let me kiss your hand!” she said, seizing it and kissing it greedily three times. “How glad I am, holy father, to see you at last! You have quite forgotten your princess, I am sure, while I have lived every minute in thought in your dear monastery. How good it is here! In this life for God, far from the vain world, there is a special charm, holy father, which I feel with my whole soul, but which I cannot put into words!”

The princess’s cheeks had reddened and tears had started to her eyes. She talked without ceasing, ardently, while the archimandrite, an old man of about seventy, grave, plain-featured, and shy, kept silent, only now and then answering abruptly and in a military manner:

“Just so, Your Excellency... I hear... I understand...”

“Have you come to stay with us long?” he asked.

“Tonight I shall stay the night with you, and tomorrow I shall go to Claudia Nikolaevna – it is so long since we have seen each other – and the day after tomorrow I shall come back to you again and stay three or four days. I want to rest my soul here with you, holy father...”

The princess loved to visit the N— monastery. For the last two years she had taken a fancy to the place and came here almost every summer month, staying two or three days at a time, and sometimes as much as a week. The timid novices, the quiet, the low ceilings, the smell of cypress, the modest fare, the cheap curtains at the windows – all this touched her, softened her, and disposed her to contemplation and good thoughts. It was enough for her to spend half an hour in her rooms for it to begin to seem to her that she too was timid and modest, that she too smelled of cypress; the past receded somewhere into the distance, lost its value, and the princess began to think that, despite her twenty-nine years, she was very much like the old archimandrite and, like him, was born not for wealth, not for earthly grandeur and love, but for a quiet life, hidden from the world, dim and twilit as these rooms...

It sometimes happens that into the dark cell of a faster sunk in prayer a ray of light will unexpectedly steal, or a little bird will settle at the cell window and begin its song; the stern faster cannot help smiling, and in his breast, from beneath the heavy grief of his sins, as though from beneath a stone, a quiet, sinless joy suddenly comes flowing like a stream. It seemed to the princess that she brought with her from outside just such a consolation as the ray of light or the little bird. Her affable, cheerful smile, her gentle gaze, her voice, her jokes, all of her, in short – small, well made, dressed in a simple black gown – was meant, by its very appearance, to stir a feeling of tenderness and joy in simple, stern people. Everyone, looking at her, was meant to think: “God has sent us an angel”... And feeling that everyone involuntarily thought this, she smiled still more affably and tried to resemble the little bird.

Having had tea and rested, she went out for a walk. The sun had already set. From the monastery flower garden there wafted to the princess the fragrant moisture of freshly watered mignonette; from the church came the soft singing of men’s voices, which from a distance seemed very pleasant and sad. Vespers was in progress. In the dark windows, where the little lamps before the icons glimmered meekly, in the shadows, in the figure of the old monk sitting on the porch by an icon with a collection box, there was written so much untroubled peace that the princess for some reason felt like weeping...

But beyond the gates, on the avenue between the wall and the birches, where the benches stand, it was already quite evening. The air was darkening fast, fast... The princess walked along the avenue, sat down on a bench, and fell to thinking.

She was thinking how good it would be to settle here for the rest of her life in this monastery, where life is as quiet and untroubled as a summer evening; how good it would be to forget entirely the ungrateful, dissolute prince, her own enormous fortune, the creditors who worried her every day, her misfortunes, her maid Dasha, who this morning had had such an insolent look on her face. How good it would be to sit here on this bench her whole life through and watch, through the trunks of the birches, how down below the hill the evening mist wanders in shreds, how far, far off over the forest the rooks fly home to roost in a black cloud like a veil, how two novices – one on a piebald horse, the other on foot – drive the horses out to pasture for the night and, rejoicing in their freedom, frolic like small children; their young voices ring out clearly in the still air, and one can make out every word. It is good to sit and listen to the silence: now the wind blows and stirs the tops of the birches, now a frog rustles in last year’s fallen leaves, now beyond the wall the belfry clock strikes the quarter hour... To sit motionless, to listen and think, think, think...

An old woman with a bundle went past. The princess thought how good it would be to stop this old woman and say something kind to her, something heartfelt, to help her... But the old woman never once looked round, and turned the corner.

A little while later a tall man with a grey beard and a straw hat appeared on the avenue. Drawing level with the princess, he took off his hat and bowed, and by his large bald patch and his sharp, hooked nose the princess recognized Dr. Mikhail Ivanovich, who some five years before had been in her service at Dubovki. She remembered someone had told her that the previous year this doctor’s wife had died, and she felt a wish to sympathize with him, to console him.

“Doctor, you probably don’t recognize me?” she asked, smiling affably.

“No, Princess, I recognize you,” said the doctor, taking off his hat once more.

“Well, thank you, or I would have thought that you too had forgotten your princess. People remember only their enemies, and forget their friends. And have you come to pray?”

“I spend every Saturday night here, it is my duty. I treat the sick here.”

“Well, how are you getting on?” asked the princess, sighing. “I heard your wife had died! What a misfortune!”

“Yes, Princess, it is a great misfortune for me.”

“What is to be done! We must bear misfortunes with resignation. Without the will of Providence not a single hair falls from a man’s head.”

“Yes, Princess.”

To the princess’s affable, gentle smile and her sighs the doctor answered coldly and dryly: “Yes, Princess.” And the expression on his face was cold and dry.

“What else can I say to him?” thought the princess.

“How long it is since we’ve seen each other, though!” she said. “Five years! What a lot of water has flowed into the sea in that time, how many changes have taken place – it is frightening even to think of it! You know I’ve married... from a countess I’ve become a princess. And I’ve already managed to part from my husband.”

“Yes, I heard.”

“God has sent me many trials! You have probably also heard that I am almost ruined. For my unfortunate husband’s debts they have sold my Dubovki, and Kiryakovo, and Sofyino. I have left only Baranovo and Mikhaltsevo. It is frightening to look back: so many changes, so many different misfortunes, so many mistakes!”

“Yes, Princess, many mistakes.”

The princess grew a little embarrassed. She knew her mistakes; they were all so intimate that only she herself could think and speak of them. She could not restrain herself and asked:

“Which mistakes do you have in mind?”

“You mentioned them yourself, so you know...” answered the doctor, and smiled crookedly. “What is there to say about them!”

“No, tell me, Doctor. I shall be very grateful to you! And please, don’t stand on ceremony with me. I love to hear the truth.”

“I am not your judge, Princess.”

“Not my judge? What a tone you say that in – it means you know something. Tell me!”

“If you wish it, then here it is. Only, unfortunately, I don’t know how to speak, and I am not always understood.”

The doctor thought a moment and began:

“There are many mistakes, but the chief one, in my opinion, is the general spirit that... that reigned in all your estates. You see, I don’t know how to express myself. I mean, the chief thing is dislike, an aversion to people, which could be felt positively in everything. On this aversion your whole system of life was built. An aversion to the human voice, to faces, to the backs of people’s necks, to footsteps... in a word, to everything that makes up a human being. At every door and on every staircase stand well-fed, coarse, lazy footmen in livery, so as not to let indecently dressed people into the house; in the anteroom stand chairs with high backs, so that during balls and receptions the lackeys won’t soil the wallpaper with the backs of their heads; in every room there are shaggy carpets, so that human footsteps cannot be heard; every person entering is invariably warned to speak more softly and less, and not to say anything that might have a bad effect on the imagination and the nerves. And in your study one is not offered a hand and not asked to sit down, just as you did not offer me your hand a moment ago and did not invite me to sit...”

“Here, if you like!” said the princess, holding out her hand and smiling. “Really, to get angry over such a trifle...”

“Am I angry, then?” laughed the doctor, but at once flushed, took off his hat, and, waving it about, began to speak heatedly: “To speak frankly, I have long been waiting for an occasion to tell you everything, everything... That is, I want to say that you look at all people the way Napoleon did, as meat for cannon. But Napoleon at least had some idea, while you have nothing but aversion!”

“I have an aversion to people!” the princess smiled, shrugging her shoulders in astonishment. “I have!”

“Yes, you! You want facts? Here! At Mikhaltsevo three of your former cooks live on charity, who went blind in your kitchens from the heat of the stoves. Everything that was healthy, strong, and handsome on the tens of thousands of your acres was taken by you and your hangers-on into footmen, lackeys, coachmen. All this two-legged livestock was raised up in lackeydom, grew fat, grew coarse, lost the image and likeness of a man, in a word... Young physicians, agronomists, teachers, educated workers of all kinds, my God, are torn away from their work, from honest labor, and forced, for a crust of bread, to take part in all sorts of puppet comedies, at which any decent person would be ashamed! Some young man does not serve out even three years before he becomes a hypocrite, a toady, an informer... Is that good? Your Polish stewards, those base spies, all these Kazimirs and Kaetans, scour tens of thousands of acres from morning to night and, to please you, try to strip three hides off one ox. Allow me, I am speaking without any system, but never mind! The common people are not considered human beings by you. And even those princes, counts, and bishops who came to visit you, you regarded only as decoration, and not as living people. But the main thing... the main thing that outrages me most of all is to have more than a million in wealth and do nothing, nothing, for people!”

The princess sat astonished, frightened, offended, not knowing what to say or how to conduct herself. Never before had anyone spoken to her in such a tone. The doctor’s unpleasant, angry voice and his awkward, stammering speech produced a sharp, pounding noise in her ears and head, and then it began to seem to her that the gesticulating doctor was beating her about the head with his hat.

“That is not true!” she said quietly, in a pleading voice. “I have done much good for people, you know that yourself!”

“Come, enough of that!” cried the doctor. “Do you really still go on considering your charitable activity something serious and useful, and not a puppet comedy? Why, it was a comedy from beginning to end, it was a game of love for one’s neighbor, the most open game, which even children and foolish peasant women understood! Take, for instance, that – what do you call it? – almshouse for homeless old women, in which you made me into something like a chief physician, while you yourself were the honorary patroness. Oh, Lord our God, what a charming institution! They built a house with parquet floors and a weathervane on the roof, gathered up a dozen old women from the villages, and made them sleep under flannel blankets, on sheets of Holland linen, and eat sugar-candy.”

The doctor gave a spiteful snort into his hat and went on quickly and stammering:

“It was a game! The lower attendants of the almshouse hide the blankets and sheets under lock and key, so the old women shouldn’t soil them – let them sleep, the devil take the old fusspots, on the floor! An old woman dares not sit on the bed, nor put on a bed jacket, nor walk on the smooth parquet. Everything was kept for show and hidden away from the old women, as from thieves, while the old women fed and clothed themselves on the sly, for Christ’s sake, and prayed day and night to God to be let out sooner from under arrest and from the edifying sermons of the well-fed scoundrels to whom you entrusted the oversight of the old women. And what did the higher officials do? It’s simply delightful! Every so often, say twice a week, in the evening, thirty-five thousand couriers come galloping to announce that tomorrow the princess – that is, you – will be visiting the almshouse. That means that tomorrow the sick must be dropped, everyone must dress and drive out for the parade. Very well, I arrive. The old women, all in clean new clothes, are already lined up and waiting. Walking about among them is a retired garrison rat of a superintendent with his sweet, sneaking little smile. The old women yawn and exchange glances, but are afraid to grumble. We wait. The junior steward comes galloping up. Half an hour after him the senior steward, then the chief manager of the estate office, then someone else, and someone else again... they come galloping without end! All with mysterious, solemn faces. We wait, wait, shift from foot to foot, glance at our watches – all this in deathly silence, because we all hate one another and are at daggers drawn. An hour passes, another, and at last, far off, the carriage comes into view and... and...”

The doctor burst into a high, thin laugh and brought out in a squeaky little voice:

“You step out of the carriage, and the old witches, at the command of the garrison rat, begin to sing: ‘How glorious is our Lord in Zion, tongue cannot express it...’ Not bad, eh?”

The doctor burst into a deep, booming laugh and waved his hand, as if to show that laughter would not let him get out another word. He laughed heavily, harshly, with his teeth clenched tight, as ill-natured people laugh, and by his voice, his face, and his bright, somewhat insolent eyes one could tell that he deeply despised both the princess and the almshouse and the old women. In all that he had told, so clumsily and crudely, there was nothing funny or amusing, yet he laughed with pleasure and even with a kind of gladness.

“And the school?” he went on, breathing heavily from laughter. “Do you remember how you wished to teach the peasant children yourself? You must have taught them very well, for soon all the boys ran away, so that afterward they had to be whipped and paid money to make them come to you. And do you remember how you wished to feed the nursing infants yourself with a bottle, the infants of mothers who work in the fields? You went about the village weeping that there were no infants at your service – all the mothers took them along to the fields. Then the village elder ordered the mothers to take turns leaving their infants for your amusement. A remarkable business! Everyone fled from your benefactions like mice from a cat! And why was that? Very simple! Not because our people are ignorant and ungrateful, as you always explained it, but because in all your undertakings, excuse the expression, there was not a farthing’s worth of love or mercy in them! There was only the one desire to amuse yourself with living dolls, and nothing else... Whoever does not know how to tell people apart from lapdogs ought not to occupy himself with charity. I assure you, there is a great difference between people and lapdogs!”

The princess’s heart was pounding terribly; there was a drumming in her ears, and it still seemed to her that the doctor was hammering at her head with his hat. The doctor spoke quickly, heatedly, and without grace, stammering and with excessive gesticulation; all she could understand was that a coarse, ill-bred, angry, ungrateful man was speaking to her, but what he wanted of her and what he was talking about – that she did not understand.

“Go away!” she said in a tearful voice, raising her hands to shield her head from the doctor’s hat. “Go away!”

“And how do you treat your own servants!” the doctor went on, growing more indignant still. “You don’t consider them human beings and treat them like the lowest of swindlers. For instance, allow me to ask you, why did you dismiss me? I served your father ten years, then you, honestly, knowing neither holidays nor leave, earned the love of everyone for a hundred versts around, and then suddenly, one fine day, I am informed that I am no longer in service! For what? To this day I don’t understand! I, a doctor of medicine, a nobleman, a graduate of Moscow University, the father of a family – so small and worthless a creature that I could be driven out on my ear without any explanation! Why stand on ceremony with me? I heard afterward that my wife, without my knowledge, went to you in secret two or three times to plead for me, and you never once received her. They say she wept in the anteroom. And I shall never forgive her that, dead as she is! Never!”

The doctor fell silent and clenched his teeth, straining to think of something else very unpleasant, something vindictive, to say. He remembered something, and his frowning, cold face suddenly lit up.

“Take, for instance, your relations with this monastery here!” he began again with relish. “You never spared anyone, and the holier the place, the greater the chance that it will get a taste of your mercy and angelic meekness. Why do you come here? What business have you with the monks here, allow me to ask? What is Hecuba to you, or you to Hecuba? Once again a diversion, a game, a mockery of the human person and nothing more. For you don’t believe in the monks’ God at all – you have your own god in your heart, one you arrived at by your own wits at spiritualist séances; on the church rites you look with condescension, you don’t go to mass or to vespers, you sleep till noon... then why do you come here at all?.. You go into someone else’s monastery with your own god and imagine that the monastery counts this a supreme honor to itself! Not likely! Ask, by the way, what your visits cost the monks. You were pleased to arrive here today in the evening, but the day before yesterday a horseman was already sent from the estate office to warn them you were coming. The whole of yesterday they were preparing your rooms and waiting. Today the advance guard arrived – an insolent lady’s maid, who keeps running back and forth across the courtyard, rustling about, pestering everyone with questions, giving orders... I can’t stand it! All day today the monks were on the alert: for if you are not met with proper ceremony – disaster! You’ll complain to the bishop! ‘The monks do not love me, Your Grace. I don’t know how I have offended them. True, I am a great sinner, but I am so unhappy!’ The monastery has already had a scolding on your account once. The archimandrite, a busy, learned man, hasn’t a free minute, and yet you are forever summoning him to your rooms. No respect at all for his age or his rank. If only you gave a great deal, it wouldn’t be so offensive, but as it is, in all this time the monks haven’t had a hundred roubles out of you!”

When the princess was troubled, misunderstood, offended, and did not know what to say or do, she would usually begin to cry. And now, in the end, she covered her face and wept in a thin, childish little voice. The doctor suddenly fell silent and looked at her. His face darkened and grew stern.

“Forgive me, Princess,” he said hoarsely. “I gave way to an evil feeling and forgot myself. It was not right.”

And, coughing in embarrassment, forgetting to put on his hat, he walked quickly away from the princess.

Stars were already glimmering in the sky. The moon must have been rising on the other side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, transparent, and tender. Along the white monastery wall bats flitted noiselessly to and fro.

The clock slowly struck three-quarters of some hour, the ninth, it must have been. The princess rose and walked quietly toward the gates. She felt herself an injured woman and wept, and it seemed to her that the trees, and the stars, and the bats all pitied her; and that the clock had struck so melodiously only in order to sympathize with her. She wept and thought how good it would be to withdraw into a monastery for the rest of her life: on quiet summer evenings she would walk alone along the avenues, injured, insulted, misunderstood by people, and only God and the starry sky would see the tears of the sufferer. In the church, vespers was still going on. The princess stopped and listened to the singing; how beautifully that singing sounded in the still, dark air! How sweet it was, to that singing, to weep and to suffer!

Coming to her rooms, she looked in the mirror at her tear-stained face and powdered it, then sat down to supper. The monks knew that she loved pickled sterlet, small mushrooms, malaga wine, and plain honey cakes that smell of cypress in the mouth, and every time she came they served her all of this. Eating the mushrooms and washing them down with malaga, the princess dreamed of how she would finally be ruined and abandoned, how all her stewards, bailiffs, clerks, and maids, for whom she had done so much, would betray her and begin to speak rudely to her, as everyone in the world would, would attack her, slander her, laugh at her; she would renounce her princely title, her luxury, and society, would withdraw into a monastery, and never utter one word of reproach to anyone; she would pray for her enemies, and then everyone would suddenly understand her, would come to her to beg forgiveness, but it would already be too late...

And after supper she sank to her knees in the corner before the icon and read two chapters of the Gospel. Then the maid made her bed, and she lay down to sleep. Stretching under the white coverlet, she sighed sweetly and deeply, as one sighs after weeping, closed her eyes, and began to fall asleep...

In the morning she woke and glanced at her little watch: it was half past nine. On the carpet by the bed there stretched a narrow, bright band of light from a ray that came in at the window and dimly lit the room. Behind the black curtain at the window flies were buzzing.

“It’s early!” thought the princess, and closed her eyes.

Stretching and luxuriating in bed, she recalled yesterday’s meeting with the doctor and all the thoughts with which she had fallen asleep the night before; she remembered that she was unhappy. Then there came to her mind her husband, living in Petersburg, her stewards, doctors, neighbors, acquaintances among officials... A long line of familiar male faces passed through her imagination. She smiled and thought that if only these men could penetrate into her soul and understand her, they would all be at her feet...

At a quarter past eleven she called her maid.

“Let’s dress, Dasha,” she said languidly. “But first go and tell them to harness the horses. I must go to Claudia Nikolaevna.”

Coming out of her rooms to get into the carriage, she screwed up her eyes against the bright daylight and laughed with pleasure: the day was wonderfully fine! Glancing with narrowed eyes at the monks who had gathered by the porch to see her off, she nodded to them affably and said:

“Farewell, my friends! Until the day after tomorrow.”

She was pleasantly surprised to find that the doctor too was standing by the porch among the monks. His face was pale and stern.

“Princess,” he said, taking off his hat and smiling guiltily, “I have been waiting here for you a long time. Forgive me, for God’s sake... An unworthy, vindictive feeling carried me away yesterday, and I said a great many... foolish things to you. In a word, I ask your forgiveness.”

The princess smiled affably and held out her hand to his lips. He kissed it and flushed.

Trying to resemble the little bird, the princess fluttered into the carriage and nodded her head in all directions. Her soul was gay, clear, and warm, and she herself felt that her smile was extraordinarily tender and soft. As the carriage rolled toward the gates, and then along the dusty road past cottages and gardens, past long trains of carters’ carts and pilgrims walking in strings toward the monastery, she still went on narrowing her eyes and smiling softly. She thought that there is no higher pleasure than to bring warmth, light, and joy with one everywhere, to forgive offenses and smile affably at one’s enemies. The peasants they met bowed to her, the carriage rustled softly along, clouds of dust rose from under the wheels and were carried off by the wind over the golden rye, and it seemed to the princess that her body was swaying not on the cushions of the carriage but on clouds, and that she herself was like a light, transparent little cloud...

“How happy I am!” she whispered, closing her eyes. “How happy I am!”