the fields, which puts its imprint on everything, kill it
as it has killed the others? Alas! the child is not viable, and the
mother dies in child-birth. They are buried, and "the fields and the
surrounding country forever keep their powerful and mysterious
melancholy."

"The Fluctuation" is one of the most curious and beautiful of all of
Tzensky's stories. Anton Antonovich, a rich and enterprising
merchant, of a very violent and unruly character, lives like a wolf
in his domains, alone with his family, without seeing any of his
neighbors. The peasants detest him. As his partners and helpers, he
always engages nonentities, without power of initiative, who blindly
follow his orders. Intellectual and energetic men cannot get along
with him. Men, beasts, and nature in its entirety, are considered by
this man as having been especially created for his service. The one
end of his life is wealth and power. The only beings he loves are
his wife and his three sons; but even they have to bow down to his
will.

One day, he buys some straw and insures it against fire. Sometime
later, it burns. They accuse him of having been the incendiary.
Ridiculous accusation! He is a millionaire and the straw barely cost
a few hundred rubles. The old man makes fun of the whole affair; he
insults the judge, his own lawyer, and even the jury. He feels the
impending misfortune, but his inborn violence carries him away from
prudence. He is condemned to hard labor and he succumbs to a
sickness that he has been feeling coming on for a long time. He had
made a pillager's nest for himself, and he died like a pillager,
abandoned even by those who were dear to him.

In Tzensky's short stories, "I Shall Soon Die," "Diphtheria,"
"Tedium," and "The Masks," there is something mysterious, fatal, and
terrible that constantly surrounds his people. As to his longer
works, "The Swamp in the Forest," and "Lieutenant Babayev," they
plunge the reader into the mad chaos of the often abnormal emotions
felt by the characters. These characters imagine the divine side of
human nature; they consider it as having existed before in the
essence of things, but the reality does not harmonize with their
dream. The authentication of this discord torments Tzensky's heroes
and their souls protest passionately, but in vain, against these
outrages.

Sergyev-Tzensky's style, graphic and pure, often strange, has found
imitators among the younger writers. Thus, Mouyzhel, who desc