There are three dramas of Tchéhoff--_Ivánoff_, _Uncle Ványa_ (_Uncle John_), and _The Cherry-Tree Garden_, which fully illustrate how his faith in a better future grew in him as he advanced in age. Ivánoff, the hero of the first drama, is the personification of that failure of the “intellectual” of which I just spoke. Once upon a time he had had his high ideals and he still speaks of them, and this is why Sásha, a girl, full of the better inspirations--one of those fine intellectual types in the representation of which Tchéhoff appears as a true heir of Turguéneff--falls in love with him. But Ivánoff knows himself that he is played out; that the girl loves in him what he is no more; that the sacred fire is with him a mere reminiscence of the better years, irretrievably past; and while the drama attains its culminating point, just when his marriage with Sásha is going to be celebrated, Ivánoff shoots himself. Pessimism is triumphant. _Uncle Ványa_ ends also in the most depressing way; but there is some faint hope in it. The drama reveals an even still more complete breakdown of the educated “intellectual,” and especially of the main representative of that class--the professor, the little god of the family, for whom all others have been sacrificing themselves, but who all his life has only written beautiful words about the sacred problems of art, while all his life he remained the most perfect egotist. But the end of this drama is different. The girl, Sónya, who is the counterpart of Sásha, and has been one of those who sacrificed themselves for the professor, remains more or less in the background of the drama, until, at its very end she comes forward in a halo of endless love. She is neglected by the man whom she loves. This man--an enthusiast--prefers, however, a beautiful woman (the second wife of the professor) to Sónya, who is only one of those workers who bring life into the darkness of Russian village life, by helping the dark mass to pull through the hardships of their lives. The drama ends in a heart-rending musical accord of devotion and self-sacrifice on behalf of Sónya and her uncle. “It cannot be helped”--Sónya says--“we must live! Uncle John, we shall live. We shall live through a long succession of days, and of long nights; we shall patiently bear the sufferings which fate will send upon us; we shall work for the others--now, and later on, in old age, knowing no rest; and when our hour shall have come, we shall die without murmur, and there, beyond the grave * * * we shall rest!” There is, after all, a redeeming feature in that despair. There remains the faith of Sónya in her capacity to work, her readiness to face the work, even without personal happiness.