In 1824, when he had rendered himself quite impossible at Odessa (perhaps also from fear that he might escape to Greece, to join Byron), he was ordered to return to Central Russia and to reside at his small estate, Mikhaílovskoye, in the province of Pskov, where he wrote his best things. On December 14, 1825, when the insurrection broke out at St. Petersburg, Púshkin was at Mikhaílovskoye; otherwise, like so many of his Decembrist friends, he would most certainly have ended his life in Siberia. He succeeded in burning all his papers before they could be seized by the secret police. Shortly after that he was allowed to return to St. Petersburg: Nicholas I. undertaking to be himself the censor of his verses, and later on making Púshkin a chamberlain of his Court. Poor Púshkin had thus to live the futile life of a small functionary of the Winter Palace, and this life he certainly hated. The Court nobility and bureaucracy could never pardon him that he, who did not belong to their circle, was considered such a great man in Russia, and Púshkin’s life was full of little stings to his self-respect, coming from these classes. He had also the misfortune to marry a lady who was very beautiful but did not in the least appreciate his genius. In 1837 he had to fight on her account a duel, in which he was killed, at the age of thirty-five. One of his earliest productions, written almost immediately after he left school, was _Ruslán and Ludmíla_, a fairy tale, which he put into beautiful verse. The dominating element of this poem is that wonderland where “a green oak stands on the sea-beach, and a learned cat goes round the oak,--to which it is attached by a golden chain,--singing songs when it goes to the left, and telling tales when it goes to the right.” It is the wedding day of Ludmíla, the heroine; the long bridal feast comes at last to an end, and she retires with her husband; when all of a sudden comes darkness, thunder resounds, and in the storm Ludmíla disappears. She has been carried away by the terrible sorcerer from the Black Sea--a folk-lore allusion, of course, to the frequent raids of the nomads of Southern Russia. Now, the unhappy husband, as also three other young men, who were formerly suitors of Ludmíla, saddle their horses and go in search of the vanished bride. From their experiences the tale is made up, and it is full of both touching passages and very humorous episodes. After many adventures, Ruslán recovers his Ludmíla, and everything ends to the general satisfaction, as folk-tales always do.[10]