that it cannot be put down into speech or words, although Shakespeare and the very great poets translate the spirit of it into music, and the great musicians catch the echo of it in their song.  Then a fortnight later, when the woods were carpeted and thick with lilies of the valley, Petrushka and Tatiana walked in the woods and picked the last white violets, and later again they sought the alleys of the landlord’s property, where the lilac bushes were a mass of blossom and fragrance, and there they listened to the nightingale, the bird of spring.  Then came the summer, the fragrance of the beanfields, and the ripening of corn and the wonderful long twilights, and July, when the corn, ripe and tall and stiff, changed the plains into a vast rippling ocean of gold.

After the harvest, at the very beginning of autumn, they were to be married.  There had been a slight difficulty about money.  Tatiana’s father had insisted that Petrushka should produce a certain not very large sum; but the difficulty had been overcome and the money had been found.  There were no more obstacles, everything was smooth and settled.  Petrushka no longer thought of travels in foreign lands; he had forgotten the old dreams which “Monte Cristo” had once kindled in him.

It was in the middle of August that the carpenter received instructions from the landowner to make some wooden steps and a small raft and to fix them up on the banks of the river for the convenience of bathers.  It did not take the carpenter and Petrushka long to make these things, and one afternoon Petrushka drove down to the river to fix them in their place.  The river was broad, the banks were wooded with willow trees, and the undergrowth was thick, for the woods reached to the river bank, which was flat, but which ended sheer above the water over a slope of mud and roots, so that a bather needed steps or a raft or a springboard, so as to dive or to enter and leave the water with comfort.

Petrushka put the steps in their place—­which was where the wood ended—­and made fast the floating raft to them.  Not far from the bank the ground was marshy and the spot was suspected by some people of being haunted by malaria.  It was a still, sultry day.  The river was like oil, the sky clouded but not entirely overclouded, and among the high banks of grey cloud there were patches of blue.

When Petrushka had finished the job, he sat on the wooden steps, and rolling some tobacco into a primitive cigarette, contemplated the grey, oily water and the willow trees.  It was too late in the year, he thought, to make a bathing place.  He dipped his hand in the water:  it was cold, but not too cold.  Yet in a fortnight’s time it would not be pleasant to bathe.  However, people had their whims, and he mused on the scheme of the universe which ordained that certain people should have whims, and that others should humour those whims whether they liked it or not.  Many people—­many of his fellow-workers—­talked of the day when the universal levelling would take place and when all men could be equal.  Petrushka did not much believe in the advent of that day; he was not quite sure whether he ardently desired it; in any case, he was very happy as he was.