In 1826 he returned to the capital, having been restored to favor, and resumed his gay life, which on the whole, had a deleterious influence on his talents. In 1831 he married a very beautiful and extravagant woman, after which he was constantly in financial distress, his own social ambitions and lavish expenditure being equally well developed with the same tastes in his wife. His inclination to write poetry was destroyed. He took to historical research, wrote a "History of Pugatcheff's Rebellion," and a celebrated tale, "The Captain's Daughter" (the scene of the latter being laid in the same epoch), and other stories. In these, almost simultaneously with Gogol, he laid the foundations for the vivid, modern school of the Russian novel. He was killed in a duel with Baron George Hekkeren-Dantes, who had been persecuting his wife with unwelcome attentions, in January, 1837. Baron Hekkeren-Dantes died only a year or two ago. As a school-boy he had instinctively turned into a new path, that of national Russian literature. For this national service, and because he was the first to realize the poetic ideal, his countrymen adored him. To the highest external elegance and the most exquisite beauty, he fitly wedded inward force and wealth of thought, in the most incomparable manner. His finest effort, "Evgeny Onyegin" (1822-1829), exhibits the poet in the process of development, from the Byronic stage to the vigorous independence of a purely national writer. The hero, Evgeny Onyegin, begins as a society young man of the period; that is to say, he was inevitably a Byronic character. His father's death calls him from the dissipations of the capital to the quiet life of a country estate. He regards his neighbors as his inferiors, both in culture and social standing, and for a long time will have nothing to do with them. At last, rather accidentally, he strikes up a friendship with Lensky, a congenial spirit, a young poet, who has had the advantage of foreign education, the son of one of the neighbors. Olga Larin, the young daughter of another neighbor, has long been betrothed to Lensky, and the latter naturally introduces Onyegin to her family. Olga's elder sister, Tatyana, promptly falls in love with Onyegin, and in a letter, which is always quoted as one of the finest passages in Russian literature, and the most perfect portrait of the noble Russian woman's soul, she declares her love for him. Onyegin politely snubs her, lecturing her in a fatherly way, and no one is informed of the occurrence, except Tatyana's old nurse, who, though stupid, is absolutely devoted to her, and does not betray the knowledge which she has, involuntarily, acquired. Not long afterwards, Tatyana's name-day festival is celebrated by a dinner, at which Onyegin is present, being urged thereto by Lensky. He goes, chiefly, that no comment may arise from any abrupt change of his ordinary friendly manners. The family, ignorant of what has happened