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The Double and The Gambler
fell…” Krylov, one of the most beloved Russian poets, is a master of the poetic fable in the manner of La Fontaine.
  • See note 1 above.
  • Balshazzar’s feast, described in Chapter 5 of the Old Testament book of Daniel, became the prototype of any sumptuous feast. The house of Clicquot (Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin) in Reims, founded in 1772, produces one of the finest champagnes. Eliseevs’ and Miliutin’s were actual shops on Nevsky Prospect (Eliseevs’ is still flourishing). The “fatted calf ” is found in Luke 15:23, the parable of the prodigal son: “And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry.” For the table of ranks, see note 1 above.
  • Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837) is the greatest of Russian poets.
  • Demosthenes (384–322 b.c.) was an Athenian political leader, whose powerful oratory awakened the Greek national spirit in the conflict with Macedonia.
  • See note 1 above.
  • Anton Antonovich Setochkin will reappear in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864), where he is the anonymous hero’s superior in the civil service.
  • Joseph, comte de Villèle (1773–1854), French statesman, was leader of the ultra-royalists under the Restoration (1814–30) and president of the Council of Ministers from 1821 to 1828. The laws passed under his leadership made him extremely unpopular.
  • The Story of the English Milord George and Frederike Louise, Margravine of Brandenburg, with the Appended Story of the Former Turkish Vizier Marzimiris, by Matvei Komarov, was first published in 1782; its ninth edition came out in 1839.
  • Goliadka is an endearing diminutive of goliada (probably cognate with goliy, “naked”), meaning a poor man, a beggar.
  • After the disastrous flood of 1824, the citizens of Petersburg were warned of the danger of flooding by the firing of a cannon from the Peter and Paul fortress.
  • See note 7 above. The line “And the coffer had no trick to it” is from the fable “The Coffer.”
  • Field Marshal Alexander V. Suvorov (1729–1800), supreme commander of Russian forces under Catherine the Great, fought successfully against the Turks, put down the Polish uprising in 1794, and fought against the French revolutionary army in Italy until his defeat by Marshal Masséna in 1799. He was known for several eccentricities, one of which was crowing like a rooster.
  • Karl Pavlovich Briullov (1799–1852), leader of the Russian Romantic school of painters, finished his most famous painting, The Last Day of Pompeii, in Italy in 1833; in 1834 it was brought to Russia and exhibited at the Academy of Fine Arts in Petersburg, where it met with great public admiration and critical acclaim.
  • A line from the eighteenth-century Russian poet A. P. Sumarokov (1717–77) in the prologue “New Laurels,” written for a ballet performed on the occasion of Catherine the Great’s birthday in 1759.
  • The Northern Bee was a reactionary newspaper edited by Faddey Bulgarin (1789–1859) and Nikolai Grech (1787–1867). Bulgarin was also a bad novelist and a police spy who specialized in denouncing literary figures, Pushkin among them.
  • The pen name of O. I. Senkovsky (1800–58), critic and writer, publisher of the collection “Library for Reading.”
  • Grigory (“Grishka”) Otrepyev, known as “the False Dmitri,” was a defrocked monk who claimed the Russian throne by pretending to be the lawful heir, the prince Dmitri, who had been murdered in childhood. He reigned for less than a year.
  • The words about the serpent are a distorted quotation from the opening monologue of the little tragedy Mozart and Salieri, by Alexander Pushkin: “Who will say the proud Salieri was ever…/A crushed serpent, still alive, / Impotently biting the sand and dust…”
  • In Petersburg, owing to its northern latitude, the sun sets in mid-afternoon during the winter.
  • The Adventures of Faublas, a novel by the French writer and Girondist Louvet de Couvrai (1760–97), was translated into Russian in 1792–6.
  • A reference to Pushkin’s comic poem Count Nulin, in which the heroine is said to have been “brought up / Not in the customs of our forefathers, / But in a noble girls’ boarding school / By some émigrée Falbala.”
  • The name Basavriuk (Dostoevsky added the second “s”) belongs to the satanic villain in Gogol’s first published story, “St. John’s Eve.”
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), one of the most influential writers of the French Enlightenment, favored natural settings and emotions.
  • The Gambler
    Chapter I
    Chapter II
    Chapter III
    Chapter IV
    Chapter V
    Chapter VI
    Chapter VII
    Chapter VIII
    Chapter IX
    Chapter X
    Chapter XI
    Chapter XII
    Chapter XIII
    Chapter XIV
    Chapter XV
    Chapter XVI
    Chapter XVII
    Notes

    The Gambler

    A Novel

    (From a Young Man’s Notes)

    Chapter I

    I’VE FINALLY COME BACK from my two-week absence. Our people have already been in Roulettenburg for three days. I thought they would be waiting for me God knows how eagerly, but I was mistaken. The general had an extremely independent look, spoke to me condescendingly, and sent me to his sister. It was clear they had got hold of money somewhere. It even seemed to me that the general was a little ashamed to look at me.

    Marya Filippovna was extremely busy and scarcely spoke with me; she took the money, however, counted it, and listened to my whole report. Mezentsov, the little Frenchman, and some Englishman or other were expected for dinner; as usual, when there’s money, then at once it’s a formal dinner; Moscow-style.

    Polina Alexandrovna, seeing me, asked what had taken me so long, and went off somewhere without waiting for an answer. Of course, she did it on purpose. We must have a talk, however. A lot has accumulated.

    I’ve been assigned a small room on the fourth floor of the hotel. It’s known here that I belong to the general’s suite. Byall appearances, they’ve managed to make themselves known. The general is regarded by everyone here as a very rich Russian grandee. Before dinner he managed, among other errands, to give me two thousand-franc notes to have changed. I changed them in the hotel office.

    Now they’ll look at us as millionaires for at least a whole week. I was about to take Misha and Nadya for a walk, but on the stairs I was summoned to the general; he had seen fit to inquire where I was going to take them. The man is decidedly unable to look me straight in the eye; he would very much like to, but I respond each time with such an intent—that is, irreverent—gaze, that he seems disconcerted.

    In a highly pompous speech, piling one phrase on another and finally becoming totally confused, he gave me to understand that I should stroll with the children somewhere in the park, a good distance from the vauxhall.1

    He finally became quite angry and added abruptly: “Or else you might just take them to the vauxhall, to the roulette tables. Excuse me,” he added, “but I know you’re still rather light-minded and perhaps capable of gambling. In any case, though I am not your mentor, and have no wish to take that role upon myself, I do at any rate have the right to wish that you not, so to speak, compromise me…”

    “But I don’t even have any money,” I said calmly. “To lose it, you have to have it.”

    “You shall have it at once,” the general replied, blushing slightly. He rummaged in his desk, consulted a ledger, and it turned out that he owed me about a hundred and twenty roubles.
    “How are we going to reckon it up?” he began. “It has to be converted into thalers. Here, take a hundred thalers, a round figure—the rest, of course, won’t get lost.”

    I silently took the money.

    “Please don’t be offended by my words, you’re so touchy…If I made that observation, it was, so to speak, to warn you, and, of course, I have a certain right to do so…”

    Coming back home with the children before dinner, I met a whole cavalcade. Our people had gone to have a look at some ruins. Two excellent carriages, magnificent horses! Mlle Blanche in the same carriage with Marya Filippovna and Polina; the little Frenchman, the Englishman, and the general on horseback. Passersby stopped and looked; an effect was produced; only it won’t come to any good for the general. I calculated that with the four thousand francs I had brought, plus whatever they had evidently managed to get hold of here, they now had seven or eight thousand francs. That is too little for Mlle Blanche.

    Mlle Blanche is also staying in our hotel, along with her mother; our little Frenchman is here somewhere as well. The servants call him “M. le comte,” Mlle Blanche’s mother is called “Mme la comtesse”; well, maybe they really are comte and comtesse.*2

    I just knew that M. le comte would not recognize me when we gathered for dinner. The general, of course, did not even think of introducing us or of presenting me to him; and M. le comte himself has visited Russia and knows what small fry an outchitel *3 —as they call it—is there. He knows me very well, however. But, I must confess, I appeared at dinner uninvited; it seems the general forgot to give orders, otherwise he would surely have sent me to eat at the table d’hôte.†4 I appeared on my own, so that the general looked at me with displeasure. Kindly Marya Filippovna showed me to a place at once; but my having met Mr. Astley helped me, and willy-nilly I wound up making part of their company.

    I first met this strange Englishman in Prussia, on a train where we sat opposite each other, when I was catching up with our people; then I ran into him on entering France, and finally in Switzerland; twice in the course of these two weeks—and now I suddenly met him in Roulettenburg. Never in my life have I met a shyer man; he’s shy to the point of stupidity, and, of course, he knows it himself, because he’s not at all stupid. However, he’s

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    fell…” Krylov, one of the most beloved Russian poets, is a master of the poetic fable in the manner of La Fontaine. See note 1 above. Balshazzar’s feast, described in