In his short stories Górkiy is great; but like his two contemporaries, Korolénko and Tchéhoff, whenever he has tried to write a longer novel, with a full development of characters, he has not succeeded. Taken as a whole, _Fomá Gordéeff_, notwithstanding several beautiful and deeply impressive scenes, is weaker than most of Górkiy’s short stories; and while the first portion of _The Three_--the idyllic life of the three young people, and the tragical issues foreshadowed in it--makes us expect to find in this novel one of the finest productions in Russian literature--its end is disappointing. The French translator of _The Three_ has even preferred to terminate it abruptly, at the point where Iliyá stands on the grave of the man whom he has killed, rather than to give Górkiy’s end of the novel. Why Górkiy should fail in this direction is, of course, too delicate and too difficult a question to answer. One cause, however, may be suggested. Górkiy, like Tolstóy, is too honest an artist to “invent” an end which the real lives of his heroes do not suggest to him, although that end might have been very picturesque; and the class of men whom he so admirably depicts is not possessed of that consistency and that “oneness” which are necessary to render a work of art perfect and to give it that final accord without which it is never complete. Take, for instance, Orlóff in _The Orlóffs_. “My soul burns within me,” he says. “I want space, to give full swing to my strength. I feel within me an indomitable force! If the cholera, let us say, could become a man, a giant--were it Iliyá Múromets himself--I would meet it! ‘Let it be a struggle to the death,’ I would say; ‘you are a force, and I, Gríshka Orlóff, am a force, too: let us see which is the better!’”