word, but an unspeakable, infinite happiness flooded his whole
being. Below, under the balcony, they were playing the serenade,
and the black monk whispered to him that he was a genius, and that
he was dying only because his frail human body had lost its balance
and could no longer serve as the mortal garb of genius.

When Varvara Nikolaevna woke up and came out from behind the screen,
Kovrin was dead, and a blissful smile was set upon his face.


VOLODYA

AT five o'clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain,
shy, sickly-looking lad of seventeen, was sitting in the arbour of
the Shumihins' country villa, feeling dreary. His despondent thought
flowed in three directions. In the first place, he had next day,
Monday, an examination in mathematics; he knew that if he did not
get through the written examination on the morrow, he would be
expelled, for he had already been two years in the sixth form and
had two and three-quarter marks for algebra in his annual report.
In the second place, his presence at the villa of the Shumihins, a
wealthy family with aristocratic pretensions, was a continual source
of mortification to his _amour-propre_. It seemed to him that Madame
Shumihin looked upon him and his maman as poor relations and
dependents, that they laughed at his _maman_ and did not respect
her. He had on one occasion accidently overheard Madame Shumihin,
in the verandah, telling her cousin Anna Fyodorovna that his _maman_
still tried to look young and got herself up, that she never paid
her losses at cards, and had a partiality for other people's shoes
and tobacco. Every day Volodya besought his _maman_ not to go to