Excerpt
A STUDY
I
We all settled down in a circle and our good friend AlexandrVassilyevitch Ridel (his surname was German but he was Russian to themarrow of his bones) began as follows:
I am going to tell you a story, friends, of something that happened tome in the 'thirties ... forty years ago as you see. I will bebrief--and don't you interrupt me.
I was living at the time in Petersburg and had only just left theUniversity. My brother was a lieutenant in the horse-guard artillery.His battery was stationed at Krasnoe Selo--it was summer time. Mybrother lodged not at Krasnoe Selo itself but in one of theneighbouring villages; I stayed with him more than once and made theacquaintance of all his comrades. He was living in a fairly decentcottage, together with another officer of his battery, whose name wasIlya Stepanitch Tyeglev. I became particularly friendly with him.
Marlinsky is out of date now--no one reads him--and even his name isjeered at; but in the 'thirties his fame was above everyone's--and inthe opinion of the young people of the day Pushkin could not holdcandle to him. He not only enjoyed the reputation of being theforemost Russian writer; but--something much more difficult and morerarely met with--he did to some extent leave his mark on hisgeneration. One came across heroes à la Marlinsky everywhere,especially in the provinces and especially among infantry andartillery men; they talked and corresponded in his language; behavedwith gloomy reserve in society--"with tempest in the soul and flame inthe blood" like Lieutenant Byelosov in the "Frigate Hope."Women's hearts were "devoured" by them. The adjective applied to themin those days was "fatal." The type, as we all know, survived for manyyears, to the days of Petchorin. [Footnote: The leading character inLermontov's A Hero of Our Time.--Translator's Note.] Allsorts of elements were mingled in that type. Byronism, romanticism,reminiscences of the French Revolution, of the Dekabrists--and theworship of Napoleon; faith in destiny, in one's star, in strength ofwill; pose and fine phrases--and a miserable sense of the emptiness oflife; uneasy pangs of petty vanity--and genuine strength and daring;generous impulses--and defective education, ignorance; aristocraticairs--and delight in trivial foppery.... But enough of these generalreflections. I promised to tell you the story.
II
Lieutenant Tyeglev belonged precisely to the class of those "fatal"individuals, though he did not possess the exterior commonlyassociated with them; he was not, for instance, in the least likeLermontov's "fatalist." He was a man of medium height, fairly solidand round-shouldered, with fair, almost white eyebrows and eyelashes;he had a round, fresh, rosy-cheeked face, a turn-up nose, a lowforehead with the hair growing thick over the temples, and full,well-shaped, always immobile lips: he never laughed, never even smiled.Only when he was tired and out of heart he showed his square teeth,white as sugar....