Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

you have made. Profit by your experience. What has hurt you more than all is your quarrel with your father; this quarrel is the outcome of your position. Take another, and the quarrel will either cease, or at least it will not be so painfully apparent. All your tribulations have arisen from the irregularity of your position. You have yielded to the gaieties of youth; this was natural, and therefore it was certainly good. It was good while it was appropriate to your age. But that time has passed; you, with the powers of manhood, have yielded to the friskiness of youth, and it was bad. You have now reached the time when you must become a man, a citizen, and serve the state, and work for its welfare. Your father proposes to you to marry. His advice is wise. You have outlived one period of life⁠—your youth⁠—and have reached another. All your tribulations are the indications of a period of transition. Recognize that the period of youth is passed, and having boldly renounced all that belonged to it, and that is not appropriate to manhood, start on your new way. Marry, give up the amusements of youth, occupy yourself with trade, with social affairs, with arts and sciences, and you will find peace and joy as well as reconciliation with your father. The main thing that has disturbed you has been the unnaturalness of your position. Now you have reached manhood, and you must enter into matrimony, and be a man.

“And therefore my chief advice is: Fulfil your father’s wishes, and marry. If you are attracted by that solitude which you expected to find among the Christians, if you are inclined toward philosophy and not to the activities of life, you can with profit devote yourself to this only after you have had experience of life in its actuality. But you will know this only as an independent citizen and head of a family. If then you feel drawn to a solitude, yield to it; then it will be a genuine inclination, and not a whim of discontent, as it is now. Then go.”

These last words, more than anything else, persuaded Julius. He thanked the stranger, and returned home.

His mother received him joyfully. The father, also, on learning his intention to submit to his will and marry the girl whom he had chosen for him, was reconciled to him.

IV

In three months Julius’ wedding with the beautiful Eulampia was celebrated, and the young man, having changed his manner of life, began to live with his wife in their own house and to conduct a part of the business which his father entrusted to him.

Once upon a time he went on business to a not very distant city, and there, as he was sitting in a merchant’s shop, he saw Pamphilius passing by with a girl whom he did not know. Both were walking, laden with heavy bunches of grapes, which they were selling. Julius, when he recognized his friend, went out to him and asked him to go into the shop and have a talk with him. The young girl, seeing Pamphilius’ desire to go with his friend, and his reluctance to leave her alone, hastened to say that she did not need him, and that she would sit down with the grapes and wait for customers. Pamphilius thanked her, and went with Julius into the shop.

Julius asked his acquaintance, the merchant, permission to go with his friend into his private room, and, having received this permission, he went with Pamphilius into the apartment in the rear of the shop.

The friends inquired of each about the circumstances of their lives. Pamphilius’ life had not changed since they had last seen each other: he had continued to live in the Christian community, he was not married, and he assured his friend that his life each year, day, and hour had been growing happier and happier.

Julius told his friend all that had happened to him, and how he had started to join the Christians, when his meeting with the stranger had opened his eyes to the mistakes of the Christians, and to his great obligation to marry, and how he had followed his advice and married.

“Well, tell me, are you happy now?” asked Pamphilius. “Have you found in marriage what the stranger promised you?”

“Happy?” repeated Julius. “What is being happy? If you mean by that word full satisfaction of my desires, then of course I am not happy. I am conducting my trade with success, men are beginning to respect me, and in both of these respects I find some satisfaction. Although I see many men who are richer and more regarded than I, yet I foresee the possibility of equaling them and even of excelling them. This side of my life is full; but my marriage, I will say frankly, does not satisfy me. I will say more: I am conscious that this same marriage, which ought to have given me joy, has not done so, and that the joy I experienced at first has kept growing less and less, and has at last vanished, and in its place, where joy had been, out of marriage arose sorrow. My wife is beautiful, intellectual, well educated, and good. At first I was perfectly happy. But now⁠—this you can’t know, having no wife⁠—there have arisen causes of discord between us, at one time because she seeks my caresses when I am indifferent toward her, at another time the case is reversed. Moreover, for love, novelty is necessary. A woman less fascinating than my wife fascinates me more at first, but afterward becomes still less fascinating than my wife. I have already experienced this. No, I have not found satisfaction in matrimony. Yes, my friend,” said Julius, in conclusion, “the philosophers are right; life does not give what the soul desires. This I have experienced in my marriage. But the fact that life does not give that happiness which the