Go Your Own Least Cost Path Spatial Technology And Archaeological Interpretation Proceedings Of The Gis Session At Eaa 2009 Riva Del Garda P Verhagen

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Go Your Own Least Cost Path
Spatial technology and archaeological
interpretation
Proceedings of the GIS session at EAA 2009, Riva del Garda
Edited by
P. Verhagen
A. G. Posluschny
A. Danielisová
BAR International Series 2284
2011
BAR
S2284
2011
VERHAGEN,
POSLUSCHNY
&.
DANIELISOVÁ
(Eds)
GO
YOUR
OWN
LEAST
COST
PATH
B
A
R

Go Your Own Least Cost Path
Spatial technology and archaeological
interpretation
Proceedings of the GIS session at EAA 2009, Riva del Garda
Edited by
P. Verhagen
A. G. Posluschny
A. Danielisová
BAR International Series 2284
2011

BAR
P U B L I S H I N G
ISBN 9781407308616 paperback
ISBN 9781407338439 e-format
DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407308616
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Content
P. Verhagen, A. G. Posluschny, A. Danielisová: Preface
J. H. Altschul, R. Ciolek-Torrello, M. Heilen, W. Hayden, J. A. Homburg, G. Wait, I. Thiaw:
Incorporating GIS Methodological Approaches in Heritage Management Projects
W. Bondesson, A. Biwall, E. Essen, A. Thornberg Knutsson, P. Skyllberg:
GIS and the Evaluation of Natural and Cultural Sites during the Planning Process.
The Eskilstuna Project
A. Mazurkevich, E. Dolbunova:
Reconstruction of the Early and Middle Neolithic Settlement Systems in the Upper Dvina
Region (NW Russia)
A. Danielisová, P. Pokorný:
Pollen and Archaeology in GIS. Theoretical Considerations and Modified Approach Testing
H. A. Orengo,d C. Miró i Alaix:
Following Roman Waterways from a Computer Screen. GIS-based Approaches to the
Analysis of Barcino’s Aqueducts
P. Květina, M. Končelová:
Sherds on the Map. Intra-site GIS of the Neolithic Site of Bylany (Czech Republic)
R.d Thér, J. Prostředník:
Pyrotechnology or Fires. Spatial Analysis of Overfired Pottery from the Late Bronze Age Settle-
ment in Turnov – Maškovy zahrady (NE Bohemia)
1
5
17
25
33
47
55
67

- 1 -
P. Verhagen, A. G. Posluschny, A. Danielisová (eds.)
Proceedings EAA 2009: Go Your Own Least Cost Path, Riva del Garda
Preface
In September 2009, the European Association of Archaeologists held its 15th
Annual Meeting in Riva del Garda, Italy. At
this conference, we organized a session with the title ‘Go your own least cost path – Spatial technology and archaeological
interpretation’. The original session proposal reads as follows:
Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have gradually become an indispensible tool for archaeologists. A number of
powerful software tools, some developed by archaeologists themselves, are now used for spatial research questions like
settlement history, territorial analyses, land use development, landscape perception and many more. The main focus so
far in various GIS sessions at archaeological conferences has been on the methods and theories of GIS, on technical is-
sues, and the development and use of new techniques and algorithms. Furthermore, many published GIS-applications do
not move very far beyond the descriptive stage.
The aim of this session is to take a look at what results GIS delivers for archaeological interpretation and how the use of
spatial technologies influences research design. We therefore encourage participants to present papers that focus on the
role and perception of GIS in their research. Case studies are welcomed that show examples of GIS-based landscape or
intra-site research. Questions that could be addressed are:
-
- What is the added value of GIS to archaeological interpretation, and what are the limitations?
-
- Can GIS be used successfully as a central research framework that allows researchers to combine their data in one
environment and achieve a better interaction and dialogue between disciplines?
-
- How do we find the right methods and tools to deal with our data?
-
- How do we deal with the debate between the scientistic and interpretative schools of archaeology?
-
- How do we deal with the GIS based interpretations within our own scientific environments (academic debate, our
countries etc.)
-
- Do the GIS based interpretations change the embedded perceptions of the past?
In total we received 18 paper proposals, of which 11 were eventually presented at the conference in a lively and well at-
tended session; 7 more papers were presented as posters. From the start, it was our intention to publish as many of the pa-
pers and posters as possible in a proceedings volume. In this volume you will find the 7 papers that were eventually writ-
ten on the basis of the original presentations. The other authors declined to contribute, mostly because of time constraints,
or because they felt the research presented was not ready for publication yet. While we respect the personal motivations
for this, we also suspect that this may be a consequence of the current research climate in Europe, where scientific status
is becoming more and more dependent on the number of publications in A-rated journals. Conference proceedings, even
when they are peer-reviewed, are the most obvious victims of this development. We are therefore especially thankful to
the authors who did take the effort to write a paper for this volume.
While obviously not covering the whole range of subjects that were addressed during the session, we feel that the papers
collected in this volume still give an adequate overview of the kind of questions that archaeologists use GIS for nowadays.
It is not our intention to produce a state-of-the-art of current developments in archaeological GIS here, since two reviews
have recently appeared that do just that (Wagtendonk et al. 2009; McCoy and Ladefoged 2009). However, within the con-
text of this volume we want to draw the reader’s attention to a few important aspects of current GIS use in archaeology.
The first of these is the breadth of archaeological GIS applications nowadays. We have now finally arrived at the stage
where GIS is no longer just used at the (micro-)regional level, but also at the intra-site level. We also witness an increasing
level of data integration in archaeological GIS applications.
It is also clear that spatial modelling is becoming more and more accepted as a way of setting up archaeological hypoth-
eses and testing them. The whole debate on GIS within the context of processual versus post-processual archaeology and
the criticism on environmental determinism (e.g. Gaffney and van Leusen 1995; Wheatley 2004) is becoming outdated,
now that spatial models more and more try to include aspects of human decision making and agency explicitly, instead of
just relying on descriptive data of the natural environment and archaeological site records. In our view, this is an impor-
tant step forward compared to the way GIS was used until the early 2000s, and cannot be attributed to the technological
advancement of the software – which in fact has only been marginal over the past 10 years. It is a clear sign of the matur-
ing of our discipline when it comes to applying GIS, and it constitutes a compliment to the many practitioners who have
experimented with spatial modelling over the past 20 years.
However, we have to be aware that successful application of GIS-techniques still depends on skilled practitioners. We
have long left the age where archaeologists would be found completely helpless in the presence of GIS without the aid
of a computer ‘nerd’. Current software is much more user-friendly (and cheaper); however, the effective use of GIS still
requires the execution of time-consuming operations ranging from digitizing and database management to programming,
that need the appropriate professional skills to be executed effectively and efficiently. In that sense, GIS is no longer
different to other specializations found in archaeology, and eventually we may see the emergence of a sub-discipline of

- 2 -

Preface
‘spatial archaeology’, whose practitioners will work in teams with other specialists. Since geographical data are so central
to almost all archaeological research, it can be expected that these ‘spatial archaeologists’ will play a pivotal role in many
research projects.
The papers in this volume have been organized in a loose thematic order, moving from heritage management to regional
studies to intra-site research. The themes addressed in each paper are actually quite different, and forms another proof of
the breadth of GIS applications today.
In chapter 1, Jeffrey Altschul and colleagues report on a predictive modelling project in Senegal. They have chosen a
new direction in predictive modelling working in a region with little reliable archaeological evidence. This absence of
evidence made them think along very different lines than is usual in predictive modelling, and to investigate the potential
of ethnographical theory and agent-based models to infer cultural behaviours that might have led to the differential depo-
sition of archaeological remains.
In chapter 2, Wivianne Bondesson and colleagues present a report on a typical cultural heritage management applica-
tion in Sweden, where planners and policy makers depend on multi-disciplinary data to evaluate the cultural values in a
region, and to define management goals for these values. GIS is indispensable for this as a means to visualize the value
of the cultural landscape, and to start a dialogue not only between practitioners of different scientific disciplines, but also
between scientist, planners, politicians and the general public.
In chapter 3, Andrey Mazurkevich and Ekaterina Dolbunova describe the use of GIS in a regional study of the Early and
Middle Neolithic settlement system in NW Russia. Despite the fact that their GIS analyses only use standard tools avail-
able in ArcGIS, their study shows that even with relatively simple techniques a number of new conclusions can be drawn
about the development of Early and Middle Neolithic settlement in the area.
In chapter 4, Alžběta Danielisová and Petr Pokorný describe their attempts to combine palaeo-ecological and archaeologi-
cal data in GIS to reconstruct the past cultural landscape around the Vladař hillfort in the Czech Republic. The problems
associated with spatializing the punctual pollen records into land use maps for different time slices are considerable, but
their paper opens up a whole new range of possibilities for past landscape reconstruction.
In chapter 5, Hèctor Orengo and Carme Miró report how they combined least cost route modelling and the analysis of
historical cartographic sources to establish if the aqueducts of Barcelona, known from medieval sources, are of Roman
origin.
In chapter 6, Petr Květina and Markéta Končelová describe how GIS is used to analyse the formation processes of pit fills
in the Bylany site in the Czech Republic. While GIS modelling is not central to the argument of natural versus intentional
fill, 3-dimensional representations and statistical analysis of artifact concentrations in the pits are essential to support the
argument that these pit fillings were mainly the result of intentional human activity.
And lastly, in chapter 7 Richard Thér and Jan Prostředník use intra-site spatial analysis to support their hypothesis that
the large amount of Late Bronze Age overfired pottery found in Eastern Bohemia is related to settlement fires rather then
to firing technology.
It is hoped that the papers in this volume may serve as inspiration to archaeologists seeking to apply spatial analysis in
their research. By focusing on the archaeological implications, rather than the technical and methodological issues in-
volved, we think that it will be easier for non-GIS-experts to understand the potential and limitations of spatial analysis.
Hopefully, it will encourage them to consider the technology not just as a means to describe and visualize geographical
data, but also as a useful tool to address interpretive archaeological questions and develop new hypotheses.
The editors
Philip Verhagen – Axel G. Posluschny – Alžběta Danielisová

- 3 -
P. Verhagen, A. G. Posluschny, A. Danielisová (eds.)
Proceedings EAA 2009: Go Your Own Least Cost Path, Riva del Garda
References Cited
Gaffney, V. – van Leusen, P. M. 1995: Postscript—GIS, environmental determinism and archaeology: a parallel text. In:
Lock, G. – Stančič, Z. (eds.): Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems: A European Perspective, London,
367–382.
McCoy, M.D. – Ladefoged, T.N. 2009: New Developments in the Use of Spatial Technology in Archaeology. Journal of
Archaeological Research 17, 26 –295.
Wagtendonk, A. – Verhagen, P. – Soetens, S. – Jeneson, K. – de Kleijn, M. 2009: Past in Place: The Role of Geo-ICT in
Present-day Archaeology. In: Scholten, H. J. – van de Velde, R. – van Manen, N. (eds.), Geospatial Technology and the
Role of Location in Science, Dordrecht (GeoJournal Library 96), 59–86.
Wheatley, D. 2004: Making Space for an Archaeology of Place. Internet Archaeology 15, http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/
issue15/wheatley_index.html.

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clear oil, and the soul of the sinner is coal-tar. We must work and
sorrow and pity," he went on. "And if a man does not work and
sorrow he will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Woe, woe to the
well fed, woe to the strong, woe to the rich, woe to the usurers!
They will not see the kingdom of heaven. Grubs eat grass, rust eats
iron...."
"And lies devour the soul," said my sister, laughing.
I read the letter once more. At that moment the soldier came into
the kitchen who had brought in twice a week, without saying from
whom, tea, French bread, and pigeons, all smelling of scent. I had
no work and used to sit at home for days together, and probably the
person who sent us the bread knew that we were in want.
I heard my sister talking to the soldier and laughing merrily. Then
she lay down and ate some bread and said to me:
"When you wanted to get away from the office and become a
house-painter, Aniuta Blagovo and I knew from the very beginning
that you were right, but we were afraid to say so. Tell me what
power is it that keeps us from saying what we feel? There's Aniuta
Blagovo. She loves you, adores you, and she knows that you are
right. She loves me, too, like a sister, and she knows that I am right,
and in her heart she envies me, but some power prevents her
coming to see us. She avoids us. She is afraid."
My sister folded her hands across her bosom and said rapturously:
"If you only knew how she loves you! She confessed it to me and
to no one else, very hesitatingly, in the dark. She used to take me
out into the garden, into the dark, and begin to tell me in a whisper
how dear you were to her. You will see that she will never marry
because she loves you. Are you sorry for her?"
"Yes."
"It was she sent the bread. She is funny. Why should she hide
herself? I used to be silly and stupid, but I left all that and I am not

afraid of any one, and I think and say aloud what I like—and I am
happy. When I lived at home I had no notion of happiness, and now
I would not change places with a queen."
Doctor Blagovo came. He had got his diploma and was now living
in the town, at his father's, taking a rest. After which he said he
would go back to Petersburg. He wanted to devote himself to
vaccination against typhus, and, I believe, cholera; he wanted to go
abroad to increase his knowledge and then to become a University
professor. He had already left the army and wore serge clothes, with
well-cut coats, wide trousers, and expensive ties. My sister was
enraptured with his pins and studs and his red-silk handkerchief,
which, out of swagger, he wore in his outside breast-pocket. Once,
when we had nothing to do, she and I fell to counting up his suits
and came to the conclusion that he must have at least ten. It was
clear that he still loved my sister, but never once, even in joke, did
he talk of taking her to Petersburg or abroad with him, and I could
not imagine what would happen to her if she lived, or what was to
become of her child. But she was happy in her dreams and would
not think seriously of the future. She said he could go wherever he
liked and even cast her aside, if only he were happy himself, and
what had been was enough for her.
Usually when he came to see us he would sound her very
carefully, and ask her to drink some milk with some medicine in it.
He did so now. He sounded her and made her drink a glass of milk,
and the room began to smell of creosote.
"That's a good girl," he said, taking the glass from her. "You must
not talk much, and you have been chattering like a magpie lately.
Please, be quiet."
She began to laugh and he came into Radish's room, where I was
sitting, and tapped me affectionately on the shoulder.
"Well, old man, how are you?" he asked, bending over the patient.

"Sir," said Radish, only just moving his lips. "Sir, I make so bold....
We are all in the hands of God, and we must all die.... Let me tell
you the truth, sir.... You will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
And suddenly I lost consciousness and was caught up into a
dream: it was winter, at night, and I was standing in the yard of the
slaughter-house with Prokofyi by my side, smelling of pepper-
brandy; I pulled myself together and rubbed my eyes and then I
seemed to be going to the governor's for an explanation. Nothing of
the kind ever happened to me, before or after, and I can only
explain these strange dreams like memories, by ascribing them to
overstrain of the nerves. I lived again through the scene in the
slaughter-house and the conversation with the governor, and at the
same time I was conscious of its unreality.
When I came to myself I saw that I was not at home, but
standing with the doctor by a lamp in the street.
"It is sad, sad," he was saying with tears running down his
cheeks. "She is happy and always laughing and full of hope. But,
poor darling, her condition is hopeless. Old Radish hates me and
keeps trying to make me understand that I have wronged her. In his
way he is right, but I have my point of view, too, and I do not repent
of what has happened. It is necessary to love. We must all love.
That's true, isn't it? Without love there would be no life, and a man
who avoids and fears love is not free."
We gradually passed to other subjects. He began to speak of
science and his dissertation which had been very well received in
Petersburg. He spoke enthusiastically and thought no more of my
sister, or of his going, or of myself. Life was carrying him away. She
has America and a ring with an inscription, I thought, and he has his
medical degree and his scientific career, and my sister and I are left
with the past.
When we parted I stood beneath the lamp and read my letter
again. And I remembered vividly how she came to me at the mill

that spring morning and lay down and covered herself with my fur
coat—pretending to be just a peasant woman. And another time—
also in the early morning—when we pulled the bow-net out of the
water, and the willows on the bank showered great drops of water
on us and we laughed....
All was dark in our house in Great Gentry Street. I climbed the
fence, and, as I used to do in old days, I went into the kitchen by
the back door to get a little lamp. There was nobody in the kitchen.
On the stove the samovar was singing merrily, all ready for my
father. "Who pours out my father's tea now?" I thought. I took the
lamp and went on to the shed and made a bed of old newspapers
and lay down. The nails in the wall looked ominous as before and
their shadows flickered. It was cold. I thought I saw my sister
coming in with my supper, but I remembered at once that she was ill
at Radish's, and it seemed strange to me that I should have climbed
the fence and be lying in the cold shed. My mind was blurred and
filled with fantastic imaginations.
A bell rang; sounds familiar from childhood; first the wire rustled
along the wall, and then there was a short, melancholy tinkle in the
kitchen. It was my father returning from the club. I got up and went
into the kitchen. Akhsinya, the cook, clapped her hands when she
saw me and began to cry:
"Oh, my dear," she said in a whisper. "Oh, my dear! My God!"
And in her agitation she began to pluck at her apron. On the
window-sill were two large bottles of berries soaking in vodka. I
poured out a cup and gulped it down, for I was very thirsty.
Akhsinya had just scrubbed the table and the chairs, and the kitchen
had the good smell which kitchens always have when the cook is
clean and tidy. This smell and the trilling of the cricket used to entice
us into the kitchen when we were children, and there we used to be
told fairy-tales, and we played at kings and queens....

"And where is Cleopatra?" asked Akhsinya hurriedly, breathlessly.
"And where is your hat, sir? And they say your wife has gone to
Petersburg."
She had been with us in my mother's time and used to bathe
Cleopatra and me in a tub, and we were still children to her, and it
was her duty to correct us. In a quarter of an hour or so she laid
bare all her thoughts, which she had been storing up in her quiet
kitchen all the time I had been away. She said the doctor ought to
be made to marry Cleopatra—we would only have to frighten him a
bit and make him send in a nicely written application, and then the
archbishop would dissolve his first marriage, and it would be a good
thing to sell Dubechnia without saying anything to my wife, and to
bank the money in my own name; and if my sister and I went on
our knees to our father and asked him nicely, then perhaps he would
forgive us; and we ought to pray to the Holy Mother to intercede for
us....
"Now, sir, go and talk to him," she said, when we heard my
father's cough. "Go, speak to him, and beg his pardon. He won't bite
your head off."
I went in. My father was sitting at his desk working on the plan of
a bungalow with Gothic windows and a stumpy tower like the
lookout of a fire-station—an immensely stiff and inartistic design. As
I entered the study I stood so that I could not help seeing the plan.
I did not know why I had come to my father, but I remember that
when I saw his thin face, red neck, and his shadow on the wall, I
wanted to throw my arms round him and, as Akhsinya had bid me,
to beg his pardon humbly; but the sight of the bungalow with the
Gothic windows and the stumpy tower stopped me.
"Good evening," I said.
He glanced at me and at once cast his eyes down on his plan.
"What do you want?" he asked after a while.

"I came to tell you that my sister is very ill. She is dying," I said
dully.
"Well?" My father sighed, took off his spectacles and laid them on
the table. "As you have sown, so you must reap. I want you to
remember how you came to me two years ago, and on this very
spot I asked you to give up your delusions, and I reminded you of
your honour, your duty, your obligations to your ancestors, whose
traditions must be kept sacred. Did you listen to me? You spurned
my advice and clung to your wicked opinions; furthermore, you
dragged your sister into your abominable delusions and brought
about her downfall and her shame. Now you are both suffering for
it. As you have sown, so you must reap."
He paced up and down the study as he spoke. Probably he
thought that I had come to him to admit that I was wrong, and
probably he was waiting for me to ask his help for my sister and
myself. I was cold, but I shook as though I were in a fever, and I
spoke with difficulty in a hoarse voice.
"And I must ask you to remember," I said, "that on this very spot I
implored you to try to understand me, to reflect, and to think what
we were living for and to what end, and your answer was to talk
about my ancestors and my grandfather who wrote verses. Now you
are told that your only daughter is in a hopeless condition and you
talk of ancestors and traditions!... And you can maintain such
frivolity when death is near and you have only five or ten years left
to live!"
"Why did you come here?" asked my father sternly, evidently
affronted at my reproaching him with frivolity.
"I don't know. I love you. I am more sorry than I can say that we
are so far apart. That is why I came. I still love you, but my sister
has finally broken with you. She does not forgive you and will never
forgive you. Your very name fills her with hatred of her past life."
"And who is to blame?" cried my father. "You, you scoundrel!"

"Yes. Say that I am to blame," I said. "I admit that I am to blame
for many things, but why is your life, which you have tried to force
on us, so tedious and frigid, and ungracious, why are there no
people in any of the houses you have built during the last thirty
years from whom I could learn how to live and how to avoid such
suffering? These houses of yours are infernal dungeons in which
mothers and daughters are persecuted, children are tortured.... My
poor mother! My unhappy sister! One needs to drug oneself with
vodka, cards, scandal; cringe, play the hypocrite, and go on year
after year designing rotten houses, not to see the horror that lurks in
them. Our town has been in existence for hundreds of years, and
during the whole of that time it has not given the country one useful
man—not one! You have strangled in embryo everything that was
alive and joyous! A town of shopkeepers, publicans, clerks, and
hypocrites, an aimless, futile town, and not a soul would be the
worse if it were suddenly razed to the ground."
"I don't want to hear you, you scoundrel," said my father, taking a
ruler from his desk. "You are drunk! You dare come into your father's
presence in such a state! I tell you for the last time, and you can tell
this to your strumpet of a sister, that you will get nothing from me. I
have torn my disobedient children out of my heart, and if they suffer
through their disobedience and obstinacy I have no pity for them.
You may go back where you came from! God has been pleased to
punish me through you. I will humbly bear my punishment and, like
Job, I find consolation in suffering and unceasing toil. You shall not
cross my threshold until you have mended your ways. I am a just
man, and everything I say is practical good sense, and if you had
any regard for yourself, you would remember what I have said, and
what I am saying now."
I threw up my hands and went out; I do not remember what
happened that night or next day.
They say that I went staggering through the street without a hat,
singing aloud, with crowds of little boys shouting after me:

"Little Profit! Little Profit!"
XX
If I wanted to order a ring, I would have it inscribed: "Nothing
passes." I believe that nothing passes without leaving some trace,
and that every little step has some meaning for the present and the
future life.
What I lived through was not in vain. My great misfortunes, my
patience, moved the hearts of the people of the town and they no
longer call me "Little Profit," they no longer laugh at me and throw
water over me as I walk through the market. They got used to my
being a working man and see nothing strange in my carrying paint-
pots and glazing windows; on the contrary, they give me orders, and
I am considered a good workman and the best contractor, after
Radish, who, though he recovered and still paints the cupolas of the
church without scaffolding, is not strong enough to manage the
men, and I have taken his place and go about the town touting for
orders, and take on and sack the men, and lend money at exorbitant
interest. And now that I am a contractor I can understand how it is
possible to spend several days hunting through the town for slaters
to carry out a trifling order. People are polite to me, and address me
respectfully and give me tea in the houses where I work, and send
the servant to ask me if I would like dinner. Children and girls often
come and watch me with curious, sad eyes.
Once I was working in the governor's garden, painting the
summer-house marble. The governor came into the summer-house,
and having nothing better to do, began to talk to me, and I
reminded him how he had once sent for me to caution me. For a
moment he stared at my face, opened his mouth like a round O,
waved his hands, and said:
"I don't remember."
I am growing old, taciturn, crotchety, strict; I seldom laugh, and
people say I am growing like Radish, and, like him, I bore the men

with my aimless moralising.
Maria Victorovna, my late wife, lives abroad, and her father is
making a railway somewhere in the Eastern provinces and buying
land there. Doctor Blagovo is also abroad. Dubechnia has passed to
Mrs. Cheprakov, who bought it from the engineer after haggling him
into a twenty-per-cent reduction in the price. Moissey walks about in
a bowler hat; he often drives into town in a trap and stops outside
the bank. People say he has already bought an estate on a
mortgage, and is always inquiring at the bank about Dubechnia,
which he also intends to buy. Poor Ivan Cheprakov used to hang
about the town, doing nothing and drinking. I tried to give him a job
in our business, and for a time he worked with us painting roofs and
glazing, and he rather took to it, and, like a regular house-painter,
he stole the oil, and asked for tips, and got drunk. But it soon bored
him. He got tired of it and went back to Dubechnia, and some time
later I was told by the peasants that he had been inciting them to
kill Moissey one night and rob Mrs. Cheprakov.
My father has got very old and bent, and just takes a little walk in
the evening near his house.
When we had the cholera, Prokofyi cured the shopkeepers with
pepper-brandy and tar and took money for it, and as I read in the
newspaper, he was flogged for libelling the doctors as he sat in his
shop. His boy Nicolka died of cholera. Karpovna is still alive, and still
loves and fears her Prokofyi. Whenever she sees me she sadly
shakes her head and says with a sigh:
"Poor thing. You are lost!"
On week-days I am busy from early morning till late at night. And
on Sundays and holidays I take my little niece (my sister expected a
boy, but a girl was born) and go with her to the cemetery, where I
stand or sit and look at the grave of my dear one, and tell the child
that her mother is lying there.

Sometimes I find Aniuta Blagovo by the grave. We greet each
other and stand silently, or we talk of Cleopatra, and the child, and
the sadness of this life. Then we leave the cemetery and walk in
silence and she lags behind—on purpose, to avoid staying with me.
The little girl, joyful, happy, with her eyes half-closed against the
brilliant sunlight, laughs and holds out her little hands to her, and we
stop and together we fondle the darling child.
And when we reach the town, Aniuta Blagovo, blushing and
agitated, says good-bye, and walks on alone, serious and
circumspect.... And, to look at her, none of the passers-by could
imagine that she had just been walking by my side and even
fondling the child.

The Bet and Other Stories
THE BET
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from
corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave
in the autumn fifteen years ago. There were many clever people at
the party and much interesting conversation. They talked among
other things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a
few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital
punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment,
unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought
that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-
imprisonment.
"I don't agree with you," said the host. "I myself have experienced
neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may
judge a priori, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral
and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly, life-
imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner,
one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of
you incessantly, for years?"
"They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests,
"because their purpose is the same, to take away life. The State is
not God. It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back,
if it should so desire."

Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-
five. On being asked his opinion, he said:
"Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral;
but if I were offered the choice between them, I would certainly
choose the second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at
all."
There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then
younger and more nervous suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist
on the table, and turning to the young lawyer, cried out:
"It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell even
for five years."
"If that's serious," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay not five
but fifteen."
"Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two
millions."
"Agreed. You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer.
So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that
time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was
beside himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer
jokingly:
"Come to your senses, young man, before it's too late. Two
millions are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the
best years of your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick
it out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that
voluntary is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea
that you have the right to free yourself at any moment will poison
the whole of your life in the cell. I pity you."
And now the banker pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this
and asked himself:

"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses
fifteen years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it
convince people that capital punishment is worse or better than
imprisonment for life. No, No! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it
was the caprice of a well-fed man; on the lawyer's, pure greed of
gold."
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It
was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under
the strictest observation, in a garden-wing of the banker's house. It
was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right
to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices,
and to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a
musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and
smoke tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only
in silence, with the outside world through a little window specially
constructed for this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music,
wine, he could receive in any quantity by sending a note through the
window. The agreement provided for all the minutest details, which
made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to
remain exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November 14th
1870 to twelve o'clock of November 14th 1885. The least attempt on
his part to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes
before the time freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the
two millions.
During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was
possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the
sound of the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote,
"excites desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner;
besides, nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and
tobacco spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer
was sent books of a light character; novels with a complicated love
interest, stories of crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.

In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer
asked only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and
the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that
during the whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying
on his bed. He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he
did not read. Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He
would write for a long time and tear it all up in the morning. More
than once he was heard to weep.
In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously
to study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects
so hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for
him. In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were
bought at his request. It was while that passion lasted that the
banker received the following letter from the prisoner: "My dear
gaoler, I am writing these lines in six languages. Show them to
experts. Let them read them. If they do not find one single mistake,
I beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the
noise I shall know that my efforts have not been in vain. The
geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages; but
in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly
happiness now that I can understand them!" The prisoner's desire
was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by the banker's
order.
Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite
volumes, should have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy
to understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then
replaced by the history of religions and theology.
During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself
to the natural sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare.
Notes used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the
same time a book on chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel,

and some treatise on philosophy or theology. He read as though he
were swimming in the sea among the broken pieces of wreckage,
and in his desire to save his life was eagerly grasping one piece after
another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all over
with me. I am ruined for ever...."
Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now
he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts.
Gambling on the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the
recklessness of which he could not rid himself even in old age, had
gradually brought his business to decay; and the fearless, self-
confident, proud man of business had become an ordinary banker,
trembling at every rise and fall in the market.
"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair.... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the
Exchange, and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the
same words from him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the
happiness of my life. Let me help you.' No, it's too much! The only
escape from bankruptcy and disgrace—is that the man should die."
The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In Ike
house everyone was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen
trees whining outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he
took out of his safe the key of the door which had not been opened
for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.
The garden was dark and cold. It was raining. A keen damp wind
hovered howling over all the garden and gave the trees no rest.
Though he strained his eyes, the banker could see neither the

ground, nor the white statues, nor the garden-wing, nor the trees.
Approaching the place where the garden wing stood, he called the
watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had
taken shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere
in the kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the door and entered
the hall of the gardenwing, then poked his way into a narrow
passage and struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed,
with no bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in
the corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room
were unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation,
peeped into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. The prisoner
himself sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his
hands were visible. On the table, the two chairs, the carpet by the
table open books were strewn.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen
years confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker
tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner gave no
movement in reply. Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from
the door and put the key into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse
groan and the door creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a
cry of surprise and the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it
was as quiet behind the door as it had been before. He made up his
mind to enter. Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human
being. It was a skeleton, with tight-drawn skin, with a woman's long
curly hair, and a shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of
an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and
narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head was so

lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon. His hair was already
silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at the senile emaciation
of the face would have believed that he was only forty years old. On
the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which
something was written in a tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the
most careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But,
first, let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom
and the right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and
see the sun I think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my
own clear conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you
that I despise freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the
blessings of the world.
"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw
neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant
wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved
women.... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the
magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I
climbed the summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from thence
how the sun rose in the morning, and in the evening overflowed the
sky, the ocean and the mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw
from thence how above me lightnings glimmered cleaving the
clouds; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard
syrens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan; I touched the
wings of beautiful devils who came flying to me to speak of God....
In your books I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked
miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new religions,
conquered whole countries....

"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought
created in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I
know that I am more clever than you all.
"And I despise your books, despise all wordly blessings and
wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive like a
mirage. Though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death
wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice underground; and
your posterity, your history, and the immortality of your men of
genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down together with the
terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take lie for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions there
should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit,
frogs and lizards, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of a
sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven
for earth. I do not want to understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you
live, I waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of
paradise, and which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my
right to them, I shall come out from here five minutes before the
stipulated term, and thus shall violate the agreement."
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed
the head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of
the wing. Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses
on the Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now.
Coming home, he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept
him long from sleep....
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and
told him that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing
through the window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and
disappeared. Together with his servants the banker went instantly to
the wing and established the escape of his prisoner. To avoid

unnecessary rumours he took the paper with the renunciation from
the table and, on his return, locked it in his safe.
A TEDIOUS STORY
(FROM AN OLD MAN'S JOURNAL)
I
There lives in Russia an emeritus professor, Nicolai Stiepanovich ...
privy councillor and knight. He has so many Russian and foreign
Orders that when he puts them on the students call him "the holy
picture." His acquaintance is most distinguished. Not a single famous
scholar lived or died during the last twenty-five or thirty years but he
was intimately acquainted with him. Now he has no one to be
friendly with, but speaking of the past the long list of his eminent
friends would end with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and the poet
Nekrasov, who bestowed upon him their warmest and most sincere
friendship. He is a member of all the Russian and of three foreign
universities, et cetera, et cetera. All this, and a great deal besides,
forms what is known as my name.
This name of mine is very popular. It is known to every literate
person in Russia; abroad it is mentioned from professorial chairs
with the epithets "eminent and esteemed." It is reckoned among
those fortunate names which to mention in vain or to abuse in public
or in the Press is considered a mark of bad breeding. Indeed, it
should be so; because with my name is inseparably associated the
idea of a famous, richly gifted, and indubitably useful person. I am a
steady worker, with the endurance of a camel, which is important. I
am also endowed with talent, which is still more important. In
passing, I would add that I am a well-educated, modest, and honest
fellow. I have never poked my nose into letters or politics, never
sought popularity in disputes with the ignorant, and made no
speeches either at dinners or at my colleagues' funerals. Altogether

there is not a single spot on my learned name, and it has nothing to
complain of. It is fortunate.
The bearer of this name, that is myself, is a man of sixty-two, with
a bald head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant
and prepossessing, as I, myself am dull and ugly. My head and
hands tremble from weakness; my neck, like that of one of
Turgeniev's heroines, resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my
chest is hollow and my back narrow. When I speak or read my
mouth twists, and when I smile my whole face is covered with
senile, deathly wrinkles. There is nothing imposing in my pitiable
face, save that when I suffer from the tic, I have a singular
expression which compels anyone who looks at me to think: "This
man will die soon, for sure."
I can still read pretty well; I can still hold the attention of my
audience for two hours. My passionate manner, the literary form of
my exposition and my humour make the defects of my voice almost
unnoticeable, though it is dry, harsh, and hard like a hypocrite's. But
I write badly. The part of my brain which governs the ability to write
refused office. My memory has weakened, and my thoughts are too
inconsequent; and when I expound them on paper, I always have a
feeling that I have lost the sense of their organic connection. The
construction is monotonous, and the sentence feeble and timid. I
often do not write what I want to, and when I write the end I cannot
remember the beginning. I often forget common words, and in
writing a letter I always have to waste much energy in order to avoid
superfluous sentences and unnecessary incidental statements; both
bear clear witness of the decay of my intellectual activity. And it is
remarkable that, the simpler the letter, the more tormenting is my
effort. When writing a scientific article I fed much freer and much
more intelligent than in writing a letter of welcome or a report. One
thing more: it is easier for me to write German or English than
Russian.
As regards my present life, I must first of all note insomnia, from
which I have begun to suffer lately. If I were asked: "What is now

the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?" I would answer:
"Insomnia." From habit, I still undress at midnight precisely and get
into bed. I soon fall asleep but wake just after one with the feeling
that I have not slept at all. I must get out of bed and light the lamp.
For an hour or two I walk about the room from corner to corner and
inspect the long familiar pictures. When I am weary of walking I sit
down to the table. I sit motionless thinking of nothing, feeling no
desires; if a book lies before me I draw it mechanically towards me
and read without interest. Thus lately in one night I read
mechanically a whole novel with a strange title, "Of What the
Swallow Sang." Or in order to occupy my attention I make myself
count to a thousand, or I imagine the face of some one of my
friends, and begin to remember in what year and under what
circumstances he joined the faculty. I love to listen to sounds. Now,
two rooms away from me my daughter Liza will say something
quickly, in her sleep; then my wife will walk through the drawing-
room with a candle and infallibly drop the box of matches. Then the
shrinking wood of the cupboard squeaks or the burner of the lamp
tinkles suddenly, and all these sounds somehow agitate me.
Not to sleep of nights confesses one abnormal; and therefore I
wait impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right
not to sleep. Many oppressive hours pass before the cock crows. He
is my harbinger of good. As soon as he has crowed I know that in an
hour's time the porter downstairs will awake and for some reason or
other go up the stairs, coughing angrily; and later beyond the
windows the air begins to pale gradually and voices echo in the
street.
The day begins with the coming of my wife. She comes in to me in
a petticoat, with her hair undone, but already washed and smelling
of eau de Cologne, and looking as though she came in by accident,
saying the same thing every time: "Pardon, I came in for a moment.
You haven't slept again?" Then she puts the lamp out, sits by the
table and begins to talk. I am not a prophet but I know beforehand
what the subject of conversation will be, every morning the same.

Usually, after breathless inquiries after my health, she suddenly
remembers our son, the officer, who is serving in Warsaw. On the
twentieth of each month we send him fifty roubles. This is our chief
subject of conversation.
"Of course it is hard on us," my wife sighs. "But until he is finally
settled we are obliged to help him. The boy is among strangers; the
pay is small. But if you like, next month we'll send him forty roubles
instead of fifty. What do you think?"
Daily experience might have convinced my wife that expenses do
not grow less by talking of them. But my wife does not acknowledge
experience and speaks about our officer punctually every day, about
bread, thank Heaven, being cheaper and sugar a half-penny dearer
—and all this in a tone as though it were news to me.
I listen and agree mechanically. Probably because I have not slept
during the night strange idle thoughts take hold of me. I look at my
wife and wonder like a child. In perplexity I ask myself: This old,
stout, clumsy woman, with sordid cares and anxiety about bread and
butter written in the dull expression of her face, her eyes tired with
eternal thoughts of debts and poverty, who can talk only of expenses
and smile only when things are cheap—was this once the slim Varya
whom I loved passionately for her fine clear mind, her pure soul, her
beauty, and as Othello loved Desdemona, for her "compassion" of
my science? Is she really the same, my wife Varya, who bore me a
son?
I gaze intently into the fat, clumsy old woman's face. I seek in her
my Varya; but from the past nothing remains but her fear for my
health and her way of calling my salary "our" salary and my hat
"our" hat. It pains me to look at her, and to console her, if only a
little, I let her talk as she pleases, and I am silent even when she
judges people unjustly, or scolds me because I do not practise and
do not publish text-books.

Our conversation always ends in the same way. My wife suddenly
remembers that I have not yet had tea, and gives a start:
"Why am I sitting down?" she says, getting up. "The samovar has
been on the table a long while, and I sit chatting. How forgetful I
am? Good gracious!"
She hurries away, but stops at the door to say:
"We owe Yegor five months' wages. Do you realise it? It's a bad
thing to let the servants' wages run on. I've said so often. It's much
easier to pay ten roubles every month than fifty for five!"
Outside the door she stops again:
"I pity our poor Liza more than anybody. The girl studies at the
Conservatoire. She's always in good society, and the Lord only
knows how she's dressed. That fur-coat of hers! It's a sin to show
yourself in the street in it. If she had a different father, it would do,
but everyone knows he is a famous professor, a privy councillor."
So, having reproached me for my name and title, she goes away
at last. Thus begins my day. It does not improve.
When I have drunk my tea, Liza comes in, in a fur-coat and hat,
with her music, ready to go to the Conservatoire. She is twenty-two.
She looks younger. She is pretty, rather like my wife when she was
young. She kisses me tenderly on my forehead and my hand.
"Good morning, Papa. Quite well?"
As a child she adored ice-cream, and I often had to take her to a
confectioner's. Ice-cream was her standard of beauty. If she wanted
to praise me, she used to say: "Papa, you are ice-creamy." One
finger she called the pistachio, the other the cream, the third the
raspberry finger and so on. And when she came to say good
morning, I used to lift her on to my knees and kiss her fingers, and
say:

"The cream one, the pistachio one, the lemon one."
And now from force of habit I kiss Liza's fingers and murmur:
"Pistachio one, cream one, lemon one." But it does not sound the
same. I am cold like the ice-cream and I feel ashamed. When my
daughter comes in and touches my forehead with her lips I shudder
as though a bee had stung my forehead, I smile constrainedly and
turn away my face. Since my insomnia began a question has been
driving like a nail into my brain. My daughter continually sees how
terribly I, an old man, blush because I owe the servant his wages;
she sees how often the worry of small debts forces me to leave my
work and to pace the room from corner to corner for hours,
thinking; but why hasn't she, even once, come to me without telling
her mother and whispered: "Father, here's my watch, bracelets,
earrings, dresses.... Pawn them all.... You need money"? Why,
seeing how I and her mother try to hide our poverty, out of false
pride—why does she not deny herself the luxury of music lessons? I
would not accept the watch, the bracelets, or her sacrifices—God
forbid!—I do not want that.
Which reminds me of my son, the Warsaw officer. He is a clever,
honest, and sober fellow. But that doesn't mean very much. If I had
an old father, and I knew that there were moments when he was
ashamed of his poverty, I think I would give up my commission to
someone else and hire myself out as a navvy. These thoughts of the
children poison me. What good are they? Only a mean and irritable
person Can take refuge in thinking evil of ordinary people because
they are not heroes. But enough of that.
At a quarter to ten I have to go and lecture to my dear boys. I
dress myself and walk the road I have known these thirty years. For
me it has a history of its own. Here is a big grey building with a
chemist's shop beneath. A tiny house once stood there, and it was a
beer-shop. In this beer-shop I thought out my thesis, and wrote my
first love-letter to Varya. I wrote it in pencil on a scrap of paper that
began "Historia Morbi." Here is a grocer's shop. It used to belong to

a little Jew who sold me cigarettes on credit, and later on to a fat
woman who loved students "because every one of them had a
mother." Now a red-headed merchant sits there, a very nonchalant
man, who drinks tea from a copper tea-pot. And here are the
gloomy gates of the University that have not been repaired for
years; a weary porter in a sheepskin coat, a broom, heaps of snow
... Such gates cannot produce a good impression on a boy who
comes fresh from the provinces and imagines that the temple of
science is really a temple. Certainly, in the history of Russian
pessimism, the age of university buildings, the dreariness of the
corridors, the smoke-stains on the walls, the meagre light, the
dismal appearance of the stairs, the clothes-pegs and the benches,
hold one of the foremost places in the series of predisposing causes.
Here is our garden. It does not seem to have grown any better or
any worse since I was a student. I do not like it. It would be much
more sensible if tall pine-trees and fine oaks grew there instead of
consumptive lime-trees, yellow acacias and thin clipped lilac. The
student's mood is created mainly by every one of the surroundings
in which he studies; therefore he must see everywhere before him
only what is great and strong and exquisite. Heaven preserve him
from starveling trees, broken windows, and drab walls and doors
covered with tom oilcloth.
As I approach my main staircase the door is open wide. I am met
by my old friend, of the same age and name as I, Nicolas the porter.
He grunts as he lets me in:
"It's frosty, Your Excellency."
Or if my coat is wet:
"It's raining a bit, Your Excellency."
Then he runs in front of me and opens all the doors on my way. In
the study he carefully takes off my coat and at the same time
manages to tell me some university news. Because of the close
acquaintance that exists between all the University porters and

keepers, he knows all that happens in the four faculties, in the
registry, in the chancellor's cabinet, and the library. He knows
everything. When, for instance, the resignation of the rector or dean
is under discussion, I hear him talking to the junior porters, naming
candidates and explaining offhand that so and so will not be
approved by the Minister, so and so will himself refuse the honour;
then he plunges into fantastic details of some mysterious papers
received in the registry, of a secret conversation which appears to
have taken place between the Minister and the curator, and so on.
These details apart, he is almost always right. The impressions he
forms of each candidate are original, but also true. If you want to
know who read his thesis, joined the staff, resigned or died in a
particular year, then you must seek the assistance of this veteran's
colossal memory. He will not only name you the year, month, and
day, but give you the accompanying details of this or any other
event. Such memory is the privilege of love.
He is the guardian of the university traditions. From the porters
before him he inherited many legends of the life of the university. He
added to this wealth much of his own and if you like he will tell you
many stories, long or short. He can tell you of extraordinary savants
who knew everything, of remarkable scholars who did not sleep for
weeks on end, of numberless martyrs to science; good triumphs
over evil with him. The weak always conquer the strong, the wise
man the fool, the modest the proud, the young the old. There is no
need to take all these legends and stories for sterling; but filter
them, and you will find what you want in your filter, a noble tradition
and the names of true heroes acknowledged by all.
In our society all the information about the learned world consists
entirely of anecdotes of the extraordinary absent-mindedness of old
professors, and of a handful of jokes, which are ascribed to Guber or
to myself or to Baboukhin. But this is too little for an educated
society. If it loved science, savants and students as Nicolas loves
them, it would long ago have had a literature of whole epics, stories,
and biographies. But unfortunately this is yet to be.

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