The Project Gutenberg EBook of Love and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov

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Title: Love and Other Stories

Author: Anton Chekhov

Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13414]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV

VOLUME 13

LOVE AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS

LOVE
LIGHTS
A STORY WITHOUT AN END
MARI D'ELLE
A LIVING CHATTEL
THE DOCTOR
TOO EARLY!
THE COSSACK
ABORIGINES
AN INQUIRY
MARTYRS
THE LION AND THE SUN
A DAUGHTER OF ALBION
CHORISTERS
NERVES
A WORK OF ART
A JOKE
A COUNTRY COTTAGE
A BLUNDER
FAT AND THIN
THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK
A PINK STOCKING
AT A SUMMER VILLA

LOVE

"THREE o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking in
at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't
sleep, I am so happy!

"My whole being from head to heels is bursting with a strange,
incomprehensible feeling. I can't analyse it just now--I haven't
the time, I'm too lazy, and there--hang analysis! Why, is a man
likely to interpret his sensations when he is flying head foremost
from a belfry, or has just learned that he has won two hundred
thousand? Is he in a state to do it?"

This was more or less how I began my love-letter to Sasha, a girl
of nineteen with whom I had fallen in love. I began it five times,
and as often tore up the sheets, scratched out whole pages, and
copied it all over again. I spent as long over the letter as if it
had been a novel I had to write to order. And it was not because I
tried to make it longer, more elaborate, and more fervent, but
because I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing,
when one sits in the stillness of one's study and communes with
one's own day-dreams while the spring night looks in at one's window.
Between the lines I saw a beloved image, and it seemed to me that
there were, sitting at the same table writing with me, spirits as
naively happy, as foolish, and as blissfully smiling as I. I wrote
continually, looking at my hand, which still ached deliciously where
hers had lat