82
NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN
Poor Liza
83
When she arrived home, Liza told her mother what had
happened to her. "You did well by not taking the ruble.
Perhaps this was some sort of bad man. . . ."—"Oh, no,
Mother! I don't think so. He had such a good face and his
voice . . ."—"Nonetheless, Liza, it is better to live by your
own labors and to take nothing as a gift. You have yet to
learn, my dear, how evil people can harm a poor girl! My
heart is always in my throat when you go into the city; I
always place a candle before the icon and pray to God to
protect you from all evil and harm." Tears came to Liza's
eyes; she kissed her mother.
The next day Liza gathered the very best lilies of the valley
and again went with them to the city. Her eyes were searching
quietly for something. Many people wanted to buy flowers
from her; but she answered that they were not for sale, and
she kept looking first to one side and then to the other.
Evening came on; she had to return home, and the flowers
were cast into the Moscow River. "No one shall have you!"
said Liza, feeling a certain sadness in her heart. The following
evening she was sitting near the window, spinning and singing
sad songs in a quiet voice, when suddenly she sprang up and
cried, "Oh! . . ." The young stranger was standing under the
window.
"What's the matter?" asked her frightened mother, who was
sitting beside her. "Nothing, Mother dear," answered Liza in
a timid voice, "I just caught sight of him."—"Of whom?"—
"That gentleman who bought flowers from me." The old
woman looked out the window. The young man bowed to her
so respectfully, with such a pleasant appearance, that she was
unable to think anything but good of him. "How do you do,
my good woman!" he said. "I am Very tired. Would you have
any fresh milk?" The obliging Liza, not waiting for an answer
from her mother—perhaps because she knew it already—ran
to the cellar, brought back a clean earthenware pot covered
with a clean wooden plate, snatched up a glass, washed it
and dried it with a white towel, poured and handed the glass
through the window, but she herself kept looking to the
ground. The stranger drank—and nectar from the hands of
Hebe could not have seemed to him more delicious! Anyone
can guess that afterward he thanked Liza, and thanked her
not so much with words as with his glance. Meanwhile the
good-hearted old woman had managed to tell him of her grief
and her comfort—of the death of her husband and of the fine
qualities of her daughter, of her love for work, tenderness,
and so forth and so on. He listened to her attentively, but his
eyes were—is it necessary to say where? And Liza, timid Liza,
glanced at the young man from time to time; but lightning
does not flash and disappear in a cloud so quickly as her blue
eyes, having met his glance, turned to the ground. "I would
like your daughter to sell her work to no one but me," he
said to her mother. "Thus she will not have reason to go into
the city often, and you will not have to part with her. I myself
can stop by from time to time." At this point, a joy that she
tried in vain to hide sparkled in Liza's eyes; her cheeks flamed
up like the sunset on a clear summer evening; she stared at
her left sleeve and plucked at it with her right hand. The old
woman eagerly accepted this offer, suspecting no evil inten-
tions in It, and assured the stranger that the cloth that Liza
wove and the stockings she knitted were exceptionally fine,
and wore better than any others. It grew dark, and the young
man now wanted to leave. "But how shall we address you,
good and kind sir?" the old woman asked. "My name is Erast,"
he answered. "Erast," Liza said softly, "Erast!" She repeated
this name five or six times, as if trying to learn it by heart.
Erast said goodbye to them until the next time, and left. Liza
followed him with her eyes, while her mother sat lost in
thought, and then, taking her daughter by the hand, she said:
"Oh, Liza! How good and kind he is! If only your betrothed
would be like him!" Liza's heart skipped a beat. "Mother, dear
mother! How could that ever be? He is, a landowner, and
among peasants ..." Liza did not finish her sentence.
It is time the reader should know that this young man,
this Erast, was a rather wealthy nobleman with a decent mind
and a good heart, good by nature, but weak and frivolous.
He led a dissipated life, thought only of his own pleasure,
sought it in Worldly amusements, but often could not find i:
he was bored and would complain of his fate. At their first
meeting Liza's beauty made an impression on his heart. He
read novels arid idylls; he had a rather lively imagination, and
often transported himself in thought back to those times
(real or unreal), when, if one is to believe the poets, everyone
wandered carefree through the meadows, bathed in clear
springs, kissed like turtledoves, rested under the roses and
the myrtle, and spent all their days in happy idleness. He felt