On the Eve

it was, all trace of Elena had disappeared beyond recovery forever; and no one knows whether she is still living, whether she is hidden away somewhere, or whether the petty drama of life is over⁠—the little ferment of her existence is at an end; and she has found death in her turn. It happens at times that a man wakes up and asks himself with involuntary horror, “Can I be already thirty⁠ ⁠… forty⁠ ⁠… fifty? How is it life has passed so soon? How is it death has moved up so close?” Death is like a fisher who catches fish in his net and leaves them for a while in the water; the fish is still swimming but the net is round him, and the fisher will draw him up⁠—when he thinks fit.

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What became of the other characters of our story?

Anna Vassilyevna is still living; she has aged very much since the blow that has fallen on her; is less complaining, but far more wretched. Nikolai Artemyevitch, too, has grown older and greyer, and has parted from Augustina Christianovna.⁠ ⁠… He has taken now to abusing everything foreign. His housekeeper, a handsome woman of thirty, a Russian, wears silk dresses and gold rings and bracelets. Kurnatovsky, like every man of ardent temperament and dark complexion, a devoted admirer of pretty blondes, married Zoya; she is in complete subjection to him and has even given up thinking in German. Bersenyev is in Heidelberg; he has been sent abroad at the expense of government; he has visited Berlin and Paris and is not wasting his time; he has become a thoroughly efficient professor. The attention of the learned public has been caught by his two articles: “On Some Peculiarities of Ancient Law as Regards Judicial Sentences,” and “On the Significance of Cities in Civilisation.” It is only a pity that both articles are written in rather a heavy style, disfigured by foreign words. Shubin is in Rome; he is completely given up to his art and is reckoned one of the most remarkable and promising of young sculptors. Severe tourists consider that he has not sufficiently studied the antique, that he has “no style,” and reckon him one of the French school; he has had a great many orders from the English and Americans. Of late, there has been much talk about a Bacchante of his; the Russian Count Boboshkin, the well-known millionaire, thought of buying it for one thousand scudi, but decided in preference to give three thousand to another sculptor, French pur sang, for a group entitled, A Youthful Shepherdess Dying for Love in the Bosom of the Genius of Spring. Shubin writes from time to time to Uvar Ivanovitch, who alone has remained quite unaltered in all respects. “Do you remember,” he wrote to him lately, “what you said to me that night, when poor Elena’s marriage was made known, when I was sitting on your bed talking to you? Do you remember I asked you, ‘Will there ever be men among us?’ and you answered ‘There will be.’ O primeval force! And now from here in ‘my poetic distance,’ I will ask you again: ‘What do you say, Uvar Ivanovitch, will there be?’ ”

Uvar Ivanovitch flourished his fingers and fixed his enigmatical stare into the far distance.

Colophon

On the Eve
was published in 1860 by
Ivan Turgenev.
It was translated from Russian in 1895 by
Constance Garnett.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Devin O’Bannon,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2004 by
Eric Eldred and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Lovers in the Country, Sentiments of the Young Age,
a painting completed in 1844 by
Gustave Courbet.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 20, 2026, 3:50 a.m.
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