, and is the apostle of the new ideal. He throws himself
heart and soul into the dangerous struggle he has undertaken against
ignorance and oppression. The Little Russian, Andrey, is all
feeling and thought, and the peasant Rybine is inflamed by action.
Sashenka is a young girl who sacrifices herself entirely to the
Idea, and the coal-man Ignatius is driven by an obscure force to
help in a cause which he does not understand. Finest of them all is
Pelaguaya Vlassov, the principal character of the book, and Pavel's
mother.

Old and grey, Pelaguaya has passed her whole life in misery. She has
never known anything but how to suffer in silence and endure without
complaint; she has never dreamed that life could be different. One
day her father had said to her:

"It's useless to make faces! There is a fool who wants to marry
you,--take him. All girls marry, all women have children; children
are, for all parents, a sorrow. And are you, yes or no, a human
being?"

She then marries the workingman Michael Vlassov, who gets drunk
every day, beats her cruelly and kicks her, and even on his
death-bed, says: "Go to the devil.... Bitch! I'll die better alone."

He dies, and his son Pavel begins to bring forbidden books into the
house. Friends come and talk; a small group is formed. Pelaguaya
listens to what is said, but understands nothing. Gradually,
however, there begins to filter into her old breast, like a stream
of joy, an understanding of something big, of something in which she
can take part. She discovers that she too is a free creature, and,
obscurely, there is formed in her mind the notion that every human
being has a right to live. Then she speaks: "The earth is tired of
carrying so much injustice and sadness, it trembles softly at the
hope of seeing the new sun which is rising in the bosom of mankind."
So the obscure and miserable woman gradually rises to the dignity of
"The Mother of the Prophet." And when Pavel accepts, like the
martyrdom of the cross, his banishment to Siberia, with a joyous
heart she sacrifices her son to the Idea.

Her soul opens wide to the new truth that is lighting it. With the
most touching abnegation, she tries to carry on the work of the
absent one. But the police are watching. One day, when she is about
to take the train to a neighboring town to spread the "good word"
there, she is recognized and apprehended. Seeing that she is lost,
the Mother, whose personality at this moment grows abso