“I don’t know,” answered Bourmin. “I even don’t know the name of the village where I was married. I can’t remember by what station I went. At that time I attached so little importance to my wicked lark, that, after leaving the church, I slept soundly and awakened only next morning, having reached by that time the third station. My servant, who was then with me, died in the campaign, so that I haven’t the slightest hope of finding her upon whom I played such a horrible joke, and who now is so terribly avenged.” “My God! My God!” said Maria Gavrilovna, grasping his hand. “So, then, it was you! And you do not recognize me?” Bourmin became pale ... and threw himself at her feet .... FOOTNOTES: [1] In _La Nouvelle Heloise_, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. GOGOL, THE FIRST RUSSIAN REALIST Professor William Lyon Phelps has noted that the year 1809 gave many great men to literature, among them Darwin, Tennyson, Poe, Lincoln, Gladstone, Holmes, and Gogol. Thus in a period of expanding ideas the Russian genius was born, March 19 (March 31), of a small land-owner’s family, at the town of Sorotchintzi, government of Poltava, in the land of the Cossacks--in Little Russia, or the Ukraine, as it is variously called. When the lad of twelve was sent to school at Niéjine, a town near Kiev, he found that the pupils prided themselves upon having their own college journal. In this he soon published an early novel, “The Brothers Tviérdislavitchy,” and later a tragedy, “The Robbers.” He also contributed certain satires and ballads--all equally sophomoric. Certainly in these beginnings there were no deep marks of genius. To record that Gogol was a poor student is to bring to mind amusingly the number of great littérateurs who were either dismissed from college or showed no genius for application. I have often wondered how, in the face of such alluring evidence, professors of literature succeed in convincing ambitious young quill-drivers that their better course would be conscientious devotion to the curriculum. At all events, Gogol really derived more benefit from the training he secured while writing for the school theatre than from his mathematical and linguistic studies. Upon leaving college, in 1828, the young enthusiast--romantic, dreaming of great deeds for his country, and taking himself much too seriously--went to the inevitable St. Petersburg, thinking that he could easily secure employment there. But he was disillusionized, for his talent excited no interest whatever. So, taking some hardly-saved money which his mother had sent him for another purpose, he embarked for foreign parts--some say for America. But his heart failed him, and he got no farther than Lübeck, where he left the boat, and, after three days’ wandering about the city, returned to St. Petersburg and secured employment as a copying clerk in the Ministry of Domain. Let us not forget this experience as we read “The Cloak.”