' No, I am convinced that she will straightway with noble frankness give him ray letters and '
' And keepsakes?' said Piotr Ivanitcb.
' Yes, and the tokens of our affection, and will say: Here this was he who first touched the chords of my heart; about whose name they first vibrated.'
His uncle's brows began to contract and his eyes opened wide. Alexandr stopped.
' Why did you cease to touch her chords then ? Well my dear boy, your Sophia certainly is a fool, if she commits any folly of that kind ; I suppose she has a mother, or somebody who can prevent her? God knows what she will make her husband suspect; I daresay, the marriage will even be broken off, and why ? because you gathered some yellow flowers together. . . . No, things are not done like that. Well, since you can write in Russian, we will go tomorrow to the office of the department; I have already spoken of you to an old fellow-clerk of mine, now the chief of the department; he told me there was a vacancy; we must not lose time. What is that you are pulling out of that pile of papers ? '
' My university notes. Allow me to read you a few pages from the lectures of Ivan Semenitch about the Art of Greece.'
He was already beginning to turn over the pages in haste.
' Oh, please, spare me !' said Piotr Ivanitch frowning. ' But what is that ? '
' My dissertations. I should like to show them to my chief; especially one scheme here which I elaborated.'
' Ah ! one of those schemes which have been carried out a thousand years ago, or which is impossible and useless to carry out at all; you will never write anything worth having in that way, and you will waste time.
'What? after having heard so many lectures.'
' They are of use to you for a time, but now you must see, read, learn and do what you are told.'
' How will the chief understand my qualifications ? '
' He will understand them soon enough; he is first rate at understanding. And what kind of post would you like to occupy ? '
' I don't know, uncle, what kind of '
' There are posts of minister,' remarked Piotr Ivanitch, 'and deputy-ministers, directors, vice-directors, chiefs of departments, branch-chiefs, their assistants, officials of several orders.'
Alexandr thought a minute. He was abashed and did not know which to choose.
S
A COMMON STORY 55
' Well, to begin with the post of a branch-chief would do very well,' he said.
' Yes, very well!' repeated Piotr Ivanitch.
'I could see something of the work, uncle, and then in two months or so I might even be a chief of a department.'
His uncle pricked up his ears.
' Of course, of course!' he said : ' then in three months a director; then in a year a minister; don't you think so ? '
Alexandr blushed and was silent.
' The chief of the department told you, I suppose, what was the post vacant ? ' he asked after a pause.
' No,' answered his uncle:—' he did not say, but we had better leave it to him; we should find it difficult, you see, to choose, but he will know what to appoint you to. Don't talk to him of the difficulty you feel in choosing a post, and of your schemes not a word. I would not advise you to talk of material tokens to the pretty girls here; they won't know how to take you ! This is too elevated for them; even I hardly fathomed it, and they will make faces at you.'
While his uncle was speaking Alexandr was balancing a packet in his hand.
' What have you there ? '
Alexandr had been impatiently expecting this question.
' This—I have long wanted to show you .... poems; you once showed an interest '
' I don't remember it at all; I think I did not show any interest.'
' You see, uncle, I regard official life as a dry occupation, in which the soul has no part, but the soul thirsts for self-expression, it thirsts to share with others the overflow of emotions and thoughts which fill it'
' Well, what of it ? ' asked his uncle impatiently. ' I feel an impulse to creative work.' 1 'Which means, you would like some other occupation besides official duties—for instance some translation? Well, it's very praiseworthy; what is it to be, literary work?'
' Yes, uncle, I wanted to ask you, if you had a chance of getting anything inserted '
'Are you convinced that you have talent? without it
<
56 A COMMON STORY
of course you can do hackwork in literature but what is the use of it ? If you have talent, it is a different matter; you can work; you will do much that is worth doing and besides it is capital—it is worth more than your hundred serfs/'
' Do you measure this too in money ? Fame! fame! that is the poet's true reward.'
'There is no such thing as fame nowadays. There
is notoriety, but of fame you hear nothing at all, or perhaps
it has taken to appearing in another fp nn; the bette r a
man writes the more money he gets, jllbwever in these
I days* a decent author lives decently, he is not frozen and
starved to death in a garret, though people don't run after
him in the street and point at him with their fingers, as
though he were a clown; they have, learnt that 'a poet is
. not a god but a man; that he looks, walks, thinks, and
j does silly things just like other people; why do you look
J like that ? '
' Like other people—rwhat will you say next, uncle ? how can v any one say such things ? A poet is marked off by a special stamp; there are mysterious tokens of the existence in him of higher powers.'
' Yes, just as in some others—in the mathematician and the watchmaker or even the manufacturer, like myself. Newton, Gutenberg, Watt, were also endowed with higher powers, like Shakespeare, Dante and the rest. If I could manage by some special process to work our Petersburg pay till china could be made of it better than Saxony or Sevres, do you consider that this would not show the possession of higher powers ? '
' You are mixing up art with manufactures, uncle/' ' God forbid! Art is one thing, manufacture is another, but there may be creative genius in one just as much as in the other, and similarly there may not. If there is not, the manufacturer is simply called a manufacturer, and not a creative genius, and the poet too without genius is not a poet, but a rhymer .... Haven't you been told about this at the university? Pray what did you learn l^there ? '
—The uncle began to be vexed with himself for having been led into such an exposition of what he considered commonplace truisms.
' It's like a ' sincere outburst of feeling/ ' he reflected. 'Show me what have you there?' he demanded; ' verses ? '
His uncle took the papers and began to read the first page.
' Whence the cloud of pain and sorrow Swooping sometimes suddenly On the heart with life at conflict/ 1
He began to smoke a cigar and continued :—
' Filling it with passion high.
' Why in time of storm and tempest Doth some gloomy dream of ill, With unfathomable sadness Strike the inmost spirit chill.
' Of the distant skies the silence Fills us now with dread and fright-
j»
' 'Dread' and ' fright* one and the same thing.'
' I gaze upwards ; the moon soundless,'
