LIFE: See above, Biograpical Introductions to Poems in Prose and
First Love; E. M. Arnold, Tourgueneff and his French Circle,
translated from the work of E. Halperine-Kaminsky, 1898; J. A. T.
Lloyd, Two Russian Reformers: Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, 1910.



VIRGIN SOIL


"To turn over virgin soil it is necessary to use a deep plough
going well into the earth, not a surface plough gliding lightly
over the top."--From a Farmer's Notebook.

I

AT one o'clock in the afternoon of a spring day in the year 1868,
a young man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was
toiling up the back staircase of a five-storied house on Officers
Street in St. Petersburg. Noisily shuffling his down-trodden
goloshes and slowly swinging his heavy, clumsy figure, the man at
last reached the very top flight and stopped before a half-open
door hanging off its hinges. He did not ring the bell, but gave
a loud sigh and walked straight into a small, dark passage.

"Is Nejdanov at home?" he called out in a deep, loud voice.

"No, he's not. I'm here. Come in," an equally coarse woman's
voice responded from the adjoining room.