Nikolai

“ It's nothing for those that can pay to get rid of their shame!"
Nikolai crushed with all his might an old decapitated cock's head, which lay in the gutter, with the heel of his boot, until it was as flat as a penny.
When the terror of bogies and the devil in the coal-cellar had lost its power, one of Mrs. Holman's most powerful means of keeping Nikolai in order was a threat of sending him to the parish school—an institution which stood before her imagination as a publicly authorised house of correction for youth, and a daily training-ground in the fulfilment of one's duty. ”

“ Say that mother will be washing at the Antonisens' the whole of the end of the week, and they'll quite understand it. But be sure you find them, Nikolai, so that they won't blame me."
Nikolai was not insensible to her amiability, nor yet to her liveliness and prettiness; but it had just the opposite effect. While she stood pulling his jacket, he heard the voices on the high-road all the time.
"That's it, that's it! You want to get quite free now, Silla. Well, just let them drag you out among them! But that a respectable girl will let herself be drawn into such goings on!" ”

“ He distributes overcoats in the shape of warm, sunny walls, brings life and movement with him, and then there need no longer be any uncertainty about a midday-meal.
Nikolai had had work on the quay the whole morning, and was now standing, in the midday rest, baking himself against the sunny wall, and yawning.
He stopped in the middle of a yawn. That slight figure in the faded cotton dress, that was running with her body bent forwards, and a handkerchief over the little, dark head, to keep off the sun—it was no other than Silla! ”

“ I really wonder, Nikolai, that you didn't find a respectable girl for yourself who would walk with her back like a poker, and her arms under her shawl, and who only lets herself slide by accident as it were, when she comes to a slide—daren't even look out of the corner of her eye at a hand-sledge, because she's so well-behaved! ”

“ All nature was angry.
I had made a cross in the air as Nikolai and we others parted in the dark. Only his shadow was running away, in order to escape the guard. I prayed to God that He might spare him and that Alexander, Nikolai, and I would meet again.
Now we were to face a new hazard. As we approached the demarcation line several soldiers approached us, asking where we were going. The two former prisoners of war spoke German and presented to the guards their papers. They were in order. Turning to me, the Croatian said that I was his wife. The Serbian, too, showed his papers. ”

“ Nikolai stood with his cap in his hand, looking down at the floor. He had a habit of drawing the skin of his forehead up and down when he was meditating. In the broad, young face with the large features, the grey eyes into which there sometimes came a peculiar look, and the cock's comb, of a tinge between zinc and copper, the police inspector's penetrating and—after many year's practice—not easily deceived eye saw the marks of one who would probably in the future often give occupation to the police. ”

“ The thought filled her with despair again, and wild pictures arose in her mind—Veyergang falling and lying stretched upon the snow, and then Nikolai's arms with the handcuffs on them stretching up out of the factory waterfall. ”

“ So I had met her at Tore Peak?
Sometimes I went with Nikolai to the forest for timber, and made myself slightly useful. He is as strong as an ox, and has endurance almost to the point of insensibility--a cut, black eye--nothing. And now it becomes evident that his brain works well, too. He should have had a horse, yes, but he cannot keep a horse till he can provide more fodder. But he cannot buy more pasture land till he has more money. ”

“ So drink, Nikolai; it's as strong as a rock. It isn't Christmas more than once a year, as they say in the country. I believe you're afraid. For your money? Oh, no; never you fear! If your mother, Barbara, has promised anything, she'll keep it; so you may be easy. So nice as Ludvig was to me the last time he was in here—it was only the afternoon of Little Christmas Eve. [4] Barbara needn't be at a loss for a few pence when I say my son wants them. Oh, dear no! Now, Nikolai, don't look like that. ”

“ But I'll take care that you get thrashed until you beg my pardon: a fellow who doesn't even know who his father is, and his mother only wishes he had never been born!"
The last words were hardly out of his mouth when Nikolai sprang upon him with both fists like a pair of sledge-hammers, and for a few blissful seconds hammered out every trace of difference in birth and position. Now he should feel "both his father and his mother!"
It was one of the board school's memorable and famous days, when the wine was tapped from Ludvig Veyergang's nose in the snow ”

“ As he had come into the world, he would be a human being, even if he were to have his head cut off for it afterwards.
The shop up there should not be fattened with another penny out of the tin box. If his mother ever came to want for food, she would always find a place in his room; but that she should put a stop to his ever getting a room of his own—no, thank you!
He was like another man when he had at last made this clear to himself. Yes, his name was Nikolai, and he was foreman at Mrs. Ellingsen's. ”

“ They might talk as much as they liked for all that Nikolai cared; he did his work, and never heard that Hægberg had anything to complain of. He was prepared for a disappointment now.
There was one thing, though, that he would do before he gave in—go straight to Hægberg and speak out, and then the master could give his testimony as to which he wanted, if Mrs. Ellingsen asked him.
The final answer from Mrs. Ellingsen was delayed week after week: at last it was two months.
What could the old woman mean? The whole smithy wondered—she must have a foreman by the autumn. ”

“ And how good the sayings are that come out of the depths of Russia, where there are neither Germans nor Finns nor any foreigners, but only the native, living, nimble Russian intelligence, which never fumbles for a word nor broods over a phrase like a sitting hen, but sticks it on like a passport to be carried all one's life, and there is no need to add a description of your nose or your lips: with one stroke you are drawn from head to foot! ”

“ Thus speaking, the artist suddenly shuddered, and turned pale. A convulsively distorted face gazed at him, peeping forth from the surrounding canvas; two terrible eyes were fixed straight upon him; on the mouth was written a menacing command of silence. Alarmed, he tried to scream and summon Nikita, who already was snoring in the ante-room; but he suddenly paused and laughed. The sensation of fear died away in a moment; it was the portrait he had bought, and which he had quite forgotten. The light of the moon illuminating the chamber had fallen upon it, and lent it a strange likeness to life. ”

“ Instead of galloping over the countryside on frisky cobs, Nikolasha and Aleksasha were engaged in dreaming of Moscow, with its confectioners' shops and the theatres of which a cadet, newly arrived on a visit from the capital, had just been telling them; while their father had his mind full of how best to stuff his guests with yet more food, and Platon was given up to yawning. Only in Chichikov was a spice of animation visible. "Yes," he reflected, "some day I, too, will become lord of such a country place." ”

“ Where is the man who can utter that all-powerful word 'Forward,' in the language of our Russian soul, who knowing all the strength and quality and all the depth of our nature can, with one wonder-working gesture, spur the Russian on to the higher life? ”

“ The moon had risen and had begun to light up the darkness; and at last everything was bathed in light—the lake and the huts; the light of the fires was paler; the smoke from the chimneys could be seen silvery in the moonlight. Alexasha and Nikolasha flew by them, racing after each other on spirited horses; they raised as much dust as a flock of sheep.
'Oh, I really will have an estate of my own one day!' thought Tchitchikov. ”

“ Kukubenko turned his eyes about, and said, "I thank God that it has been my lot to die before your eyes, comrades. May those who come after us live better than we have lived; and may our Russian land, beloved of Christ, flourish forever!" ”

“ But centuries after centuries pass by; half a million sluggards and idlers lie plunged in unwaking slumber, and rarely is the man born in Russia that can utter that all-powerful word.
Something happened, however, that almost roused Tyentyetnikov from his apathy, and almost brought about a transformation in his character. ”

“ Do they not presage that one day, when again you shall have room for their exploits, there will spring to life the heroes of old? How the power of your immensity enfolds me, and reverberates through all my being with a wild, strange spell, and flashes in my eyes with an almost supernatural radiance! Yes, a strange, brilliant, unearthly vista indeed do you disclose, O Russia, country of mine!
"Stop, stop, you fool!" shouted Chichikov to Selifan; and even as he spoke a troika, bound on Government business, came chattering by, and disappeared in a cloud of dust. ”

“ Yet now, at this solemn and critical juncture, when the country is calling aloud for saviours, and it is the duty of every citizen to contribute and to sacrifice his all, I feel that I cannot but issue an appeal to every man in whom a Russian heart and a spark of what we understand by the word 'nobility' exist. ”

“ They hear the familiar song over their heads—at once in unison they strain their iron chests and scarcely touching the earth with their hoofs are transformed almost into straight lines flying through the air—and the troika rushes on, full of divine inspiration. ... Russia, whither flyest thou? Answer! She gives no answer. The ringing of the bells melts into music; the air, torn to shreds, whirs and rushes like the wind, everything there is on earth is flying by, and the other states and nations, with looks askance, make way for her and draw aside. ”

“ There are plenty of people among us, intelligent, cultured, good-natured, but people who are always agreeable, always good-tempered, people with whom one might live all one's life without quarrelling, I don't know whether many such people could be found in Russia! This is the first and only man I have seen.' So Tyentyetnikov characterised his visitor. ”

“ The room was furnished in accordance with the fashion of that period,—concerning which vivid hints still linger in the songs and epic lyrics, that are no longer sung in the Ukraina, by bearded old blind men, to the gentle thrumming of the bandura, in the presence of the people thronging about them,—in the taste of that warlike and troublous time, when skirmishes and battles began to occur in the Ukraina over the Union. ”

“ You see, my father is stupid and obstinate, like a block of wood the old duffer! I shall tell him straight out : " Do as you please, but I can't live away from Petersburg." Why should I be condemned to rot away among rustics ? That's not my ideal—my soul craves for civilisation! ”

“ Vassily Platonov always maintained that one could do without servants at all: any one, he said, could hand things, and it was not necessary to have a separate class of people to do it; and that a Russian is only nice and alert and handsome and unconstrained and works well so long as he wears a shirt and a jerkin, but that as soon as he gets into a German coat he becomes ungainly and ugly and lazy and dawdling. ”

“ I know what your duty is, and what your Faith. Your father, your comrades, your fatherland call you,—and we are your enemies."
"And what are my father, my comrades, my fatherland to me?" said Andríi, shaking his head with a quick movement, and straightening up his young figure like a poplar beside the river. "Be that as it may, I have no one, no one, no one!" he repeated with the same voice and movement of the hand wherewith the buoyant, irrepressible kazák expresses his determination to do some unheard-of deed, impossible to any other man. "Who has said that my fatherland is the Ukraina? ”

“ Is it not true that there are none now like Titian? There is not that strength of colour, that--that-- What a pity that I cannot express myself in Russian." The lady was fond of paintings, and had gone through all the galleries in Italy with her eye-glass. "But Monsieur Nohl--ah, how well he paints! what remarkable work! I think his faces have been more expression than Titian's. You do not know Monsieur Nohl?"
"Who is Nohl?" inquired the artist.
"Monsieur Nohl. Ah, what talent! He painted her portrait when she was only twelve years old. You must certainly come to see us. ”

“ He had said all that he did to stir the ambition and work upon the imagination of the young man. He did not succeed in doing so however. Tyentyetnikov stuck to his decision. He had begun to be bored with official work and Petersburg. The country began to seem to him a haven of freedom, fostering thought and meditation and the one career of useful activity. ”

“ Would you believe it, Paul Ivanovitch, but this year I have been unable to sow any wheat! Am I not a fine husbandman? There was no seed for the purpose, nor yet anything with which to prepare the ground. No, I am not like Constantine Thedorovitch, who, I hear, is a perfect Napoleon in his particular line. Again and again the thought occurs to me, 'Why has so much intellect been put into that head, and only a drop or two into my own dull pate?' Take care of that puddle, gentlemen. I have told my peasants to lay down planks for the spring, but they have not done so. ”