("Dim") he views
with apprehension the actions of the so-called
"intellectuals," who would make themselves responsible for the
shaping of future Russia. Charlatans among the leaders of the
new thought, and society dilettantism, both came under his
merciless lash. In his opinion the men and ideas in the two
camps are no more than smoke--dirty, evil-smelling smoke. The
entire atmosphere is gloomy, and throughout is only relieved
by the character of Irina, the most exquisite piece of
feminine psychology in the whole range of Turgenev's novels.

_I.--A Broken Idyll_

Early in the fifties there was living in Moscow, in very straitened
circumstances, almost in poverty, the numerous family of the Princes
Osinin. These were real princes--not Tartar-Georgians, but pure-blooded
descendants of Rurik. Time, however, had dealt hardly with them. They
had fallen under the ban of the Empire, and retained nothing but their
name and the pride of their nobility.

The family of Osinins consisted of a husband and wife and five children.
It was living near the dog's place, in a one-storied little wooden house
with a striped portico looking on to the street, green lions on the
gates, and all the other pretensions of nobility, though it could hardly
make both ends meet, was constantly in debt at the green-grocer's, and
often sitting without firewood or candles in the winter. Though their
pride kept them aloof from the society of their neighbours, their
straitened circumstances compelled them to receive certain people to
whom they were under obligations. Among the number of these was Grigory
Mihalovitch Litvinov, a young student of Moscow, the son of a retired
official of plebeian extraction, who had once lent the Osinins three
hundred roubles. Litvinov called frequently at the house, and fell
desperately in love with the eldest daughter, Irina.

Irina was only seventeen, and as beautiful as the dawn. Her thick fair
hair was mingled with darker tresses; the languid curves of her lovely
neck, and her smile--half indifferent, half weary--betrayed the nervous
temperament of a delicate girl; but in the lines of those fine, faintly
smiling lips there was something wilful and passionate, something
dangerous to herself and others. Her dark grey eyes, with shining lashes
and bold sweep of eyebrow, had a strange look in them; they seemed
looking out intently and thoughtfully--looking out from some un