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I remember a fine Sunday morning. Through the windows of the Count’s church the diaphanous blue sky could be seen and the whole of the church, from its painted cupola to its floor, was flooded by soft sunrays in which little clouds of incense played about gaily… The songs of swallows and starlings were borne in through the open doors and windows… One sparrow, evidently a very bold little fellow, flew in at the door, and having circled, chirping, several times round and round above our heads, flew out again through one of the windows… In the church itself there was also singing… They sang sweetly, with feeling, and with the enthusiasm for which our Little Russian singers are so celebrated when they feel themselves the heroes of the moment, and that all eyes are bent upon them… The melodies were all gay and playful, like the soft, bright sunspots that played upon the walls and the clothes of the congregation… In the unschooled but soft and fresh notes of the tenor my ear seemed to catch, despite the gay wedding melodies, deep, melancholy chords. It appeared as if this tenor was sorry to see that next to young, pretty and poetical Olenka there stood Urbenin, heavy, bearlike, and getting on in years… And it was not only the tenor who was sorry to see this ill-assorted pair… On many of the faces that lay within my field of vision, notwithstanding all their efforts to appear gay and unconcerned, even an idiot could have read an expression of compassion.

Arrayed in a new dress suit, I stood behind Olenka, holding the crown over her head. I was pale and felt unwell… I had a racking headache, the result of the previous night’s carouse and a pleasure party on the lake, and the whole time I was looking to see if the hand that held the crown did not tremble… My soul felt the disagreeable presentiment of dread that is felt in a forest on a rainy autumn night. I was vexed, disgusted, sorry… Cats seemed to be scratching at my heart, somewhat resembling qualms of conscience… There in the depths, at the very bottom of my heart, a little devil was seated who obstinately, persistently whispered to me that if Olenka’s marriage with clumsy Urbenin was a sin, I was the cause of that sin… Where did such thoughts come from? How could I have saved this little fool from the unknown risks of her indubitable mistake?…

‘Who knows?’ whispered the little devil. ‘Who should know better than you?’

In my time I have known many ill-assorted marriages. I have often stood before Pukirev’s picture. I have read countless novels based on disagreements between husband and wife; besides, I have known the physical differences that inevitably punish ill-assorted marriages, but never once in my whole life had I experienced that terrible spiritual condition from which I was unable to escape all the time I was standing behind Olenka, executing the functions of best man.

‘If my soul is agitated only by commiseration, how is it that I never felt that compassion before when I assisted at other weddings?…’

‘There is no commiseration here,’ the little devil whispered, ‘but jealousy…’

One can only be jealous of those one loves, but do I love the girl in red? If I loved all the girls I met in the course of my life, my heart wouldn’t be able to stand it; besides, it would be too much of a good thing…

My friend Count Karnéev was standing right at the back near the door behind the churchwarden’s counter, selling wax tapers. He was well groomed, with well smoothed hair, and exhaled a narcotic, suffocating odour of scents. That day he looked such a darling that when I greeted him in the morning I could not refrain from saying:

‘Alexey, today you are looking like the perfect quadrille dancer!’

He greeted everybody who entered or left with the sweetest of smiles, and I heard the ponderous compliments with which he rewarded each lady who bought a candle from him. He, the spoilt child of Fortune, who never had copper coins, did not know how to handle them, and was constantly dropping on the floor five and three-kopeck pieces. Near him, leaning against the counter, Kalinin stood majestically with a Stanislav decoration on a ribbon round his neck. His countenance shone and beamed. He was pleased that his idea of ‘at homes’ had fallen on good soil, and was already beginning to bear fruit. In the depths of his soul he was showering on Urbenin a thousand thanks; his marriage was an absurdity, but it was a good opportunity to get the first ‘at home’ arranged.

Vain Olenka must have rejoiced… From the nuptial lectern to the doors of the high altar stretched out two rows of the most representative ladies of our district flower garden. The guests were decked out as smartly as they would have been if the Count himself was being married: more elegant toilettes could not have been desired The assembly consisted almost exclusively of aristocrats… Not a single priest’s wife, not a single tradesman’s wife… There were even among them ladies to whom Olenka would formerly never have considered herself entitled to bow… And Olenka’s bridegroom - a bailiff, a privileged retainer; but there was no threat to her vanity in this. He was a nobleman and the possessor of a mortgaged estate in the neighbouring district… His father had been marshal of the district and he himself had for more than nine years been a magistrate in his own native district… What more could have been desired by the ambitious daughter of a self-made nobleman? Even the fact that her best man was known throughout the province as a bon vivant and a Don Juan could tickle her pride… All the women were looking at him… He was as resplendent as forty thousand best men thrown into one, and what was not the least important, he had not refused to be her best man, she, a simple little girl, when, as everybody knew, he had even refused aristocrats when they had asked him to be their best man…

But vain Olenka did not rejoice… She was as pale as the linen she had lately brought home from the Tenevo market. The hand in which she held the candle shook slightly and her chin trembled from time to time. In her eyes there was a certain dullness, as if something had suddenly astonished or frightened her… There was not a sign of that gaiety which had shone in her eyes even the day before when she was running about the garden talking with enthusiasm of the sort of wallpaper she would have in her drawing-room, and saying on what day she would receive guests, and so on. Her face was now too serious, more serious than the solemn occasion demanded…

Urbenin was in a new dress-suit. He was respectably dressed, but his hair was arranged as the orthodox Russians wore their hair in the year ‘twelve. As usual, he was red in the face, and serious. His eyes prayed and the signs of the cross he made after every ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ were not made in a mechanical manner.

Urbenin’s children by his first marriage - the schoolboy Grisha and the little fair-haired girl Sasha - were standing just behind me. They gazed at the back of their father’s red head and his protruding ears, and their faces seemed to represent notes of interrogation. They could not understand why Aunt Olia had given herself to their father, and why he was taking her into his house. Sasha was only surprised, but the fourteen-year-old Grisha frowned and looked scowlingly at him. He would certainly have replied in the negative if his father had asked his permission to marry…

The marriage service was performed with special solemnity. Three priests and two deacons officiated. The service lasted long, so long, indeed, that my arm was quite tired of holding the crown, and the ladies who love to see a wedding ceased looking at the bridal pair. The chief priest read the prayers, with pauses, without leaving out a single one. The choir sang something very long and complicated; the cantor took advantage of the occasion to display the compass of his voice, reading the Gospels with extra slowness. But at last the chief priest took the crown out of my hands… the young couple kissed each other… The guests got excited, the straight lines were broken, congratulations, kisses and exclamations were heard. Urbenin, beaming and smiling, took his young wife on his arm, and we all went out into the air.

If anybody who was in the church with me finds this description incomplete and not quite accurate, let him set down these oversights to the headache from which I was suffering and the above-mentioned spiritual depression which prevented me from observing and noting… Certainly, if I had known at the time that I would have to write a novel, I would not have looked at the floor as I did on that day, and I would not have paid attention to my headache!

Fate sometimes allows itself bitter and malignant jokes! The couple had scarcely had time to leave the church when they were met by an unexpected and unwished for surprise. When the wedding procession, bright with many tints and colours in the sunlight, was proceeding from the church to the Count’s house, Olenka suddenly made a backward step, stopped, and gave her husband’s elbow such a violent pull that he staggered.

‘He’s been let out!’ she said aloud, looking at me with terror.

Poor little thing! Her insane father, the forester Skvortsov, was running down the avenue to meet the procession. Waving his hands and stumbling along with rolling, insane eyes, he presented a most unattractive picture. However, all this would possibly have looked less out of place if he had not been in his print dressing-gown and downtrodden slippers, the raggedness of which ill accorded with the elegant wedding finery of his daughter. His face looked sleepy, his dishevelled hair was blown about by the wind, his nightshirt was unbuttoned.

‘Olenka!’ he mumbled when he had come up to them. ‘Why have you left me?’

Olenka blushed scarlet and looked askance at the smiling ladies. The poor little thing was consumed by shame.

‘Mit’ka did not lock the door!’ the forester continued, turning to us. it would not be difficult for robbers to get in! The samovar was stolen out of the kitchen last summer, and now she wants us to be robbed again.’

‘I don’t know who can have let him out!’ Urbenin whispered to me. ‘I ordered him to be locked up… Sergey Petrovich, golubchek, have pity on us; get us out of this awkward position somehow! Anyhow!’

‘I know who stole your samovar,’ I said to the forester. ‘Come along, I’ll show you where it is.’

Taking Skvortsov round the waist, I led him towards the church. I took him into the churchyard and talked to him until, by my calculation, I thought the wedding procession ought to be in the house, then I left him without having told him where his stolen samovar was to be found.

Although this meeting with the madman was quite unexpected and extraordinary, it was soon forgotten… A further surprise that Fate had prepared for the newly-married pair was still more unusual.