The poet had a very beautiful wife, whom he married at Moscow in 1831. He was very much in love with her, and proportionately jealous, especially of the attentions paid to her by an _attaché_ of the Dutch Legation, a certain Monsieur Dantès-Heckeren. Puschkin, who suspected his wife of being too much inclined to listen to this gentleman’s blandishments, was infuriated. Coming home one evening, he found the Dutchman as usual sitting at tea with his wife; as it was the fashion to pay visits after dinner, there was nothing to take umbrage at in that. Puschkin made no remark, but presently he turned out the lamp, throwing the room into darkness, and going to the fireplace, smeared some soot on his mouth, kissed his wife and went out of the room to get a fresh light. When he came back he found, as he expected, not only his wife’s lips but the Dutchman’s black with soot. Denial and excuses were out of the question, and Puschkin kicked the man out of the house. The next day they fought, and the poet received a mortal wound. He only lived three days and died in torture; he was but thirty-eight years old. The man who killed him married his widow. So much for the inexorable justice of the ordeal by battle. Puschkin was the glory of Russian poetry. His was a chequered career, for he lived in a chronic state of being banished for treason and forgiven; he was the chartered libertine of politics, and a very signal example of the generosity of the Emperor Nicholas. Over and over again his violent principles, or no principles, brought him into disgrace; over and over again the Tsar forgave. The Tsar, meeting him one foggy day in the street, recognized him, and bade him, since he was a poet, to improvise something. With consummate audacity, pointing to a street lamp, he at once spouted this quatrain: In the place of that lamp Which shines in the gloomy weather, I’d hang the head of the Tsar And shout out Freedom![45] In spite of his many escapades he died in high favour with the generous Tsar, who made him _Gentilhomme de la Chambre_ and gave him twenty thousand roubles towards publishing his last poem. And yet there were people who spoke of Nicholas as a cruel, unforgiving tyrant! I think that if I were a Russian, I should be at least as proud of the memory of the Emperor Nicholas as of that of the poet Puschkin. He was indeed a great “gentleman.”