as engaged
to a young lady whom he afterwards married, and retired, in the spring
of this year, to the village of Boldino, in the province of Nijegorod,
in order to make preparations for his new existence as a married man,
and in this spot he remained, in consequence of the cholera breaking out
in Moscow, until the winter. In spite of the engrossing nature of these
occupations, he seems never to have been more industriously employed
than during this autumn. "I must tell you," he writes, "(but between you
and me!) that I have been working at Boldino as I have not done for a
long time. Listen then! I brought with me hither the two last cantos of
'Oniegin,' ready for the press, a tale in octaves, (the _Little House in
the Kolomora_,) number of dramatic scenes--'The Stingy Knight,' 'Mozart
and Salieri,' 'The Feast in the Time of the Plague,' and 'Don Juan.'
Besides this, I have written about thirty small pieces of poetry. I have
not done yet; I have written in prose (this is a great secret) five
tales," (Ivan Bielkin's Stories.) The year 1831 began afflictingly for
Pushkin. On the 14th of January Baron Delvig died. All Pushkin's letters
in which he makes any allusion to this loss, breathe a sentiment of the
most deep and permanent sorrow. The following is extracted from a letter
to a friend, dated the 31st of this month:--"I knew him (Delvig) at the
Lyceum. I watched the first unnoted unfolding of his poetic mind--the
early development of a talent which we then gave not its just value. We
read together Deljavin and Jukovskii; we talked of all _that swelleth
the spirit, that melteth the heart_. His life was rich and full--rich,
not in romantic adventures, but in the most noble feelings, the most
brilliant and the purest intellect, and the fairest hopes."

But the grief caused by this great and irreparable loss--a grief which
threw its dark cold shadow over the whole of Pushkin's subsequent
existence--was not unrelieved by feelings of a brighter tone: the void
caused by friendship was filled up with love. In February of this year
he was married, at Moscow, to the lady to whom (as we have mentioned
above) he had been some time engaged. Mlle. Gontchareff was of an
ancient Russian family, and a person of singular beauty. "I am married,"
(writes the poet to one of his friends, in a letter dated February 24.)
"I have now but one desire in the world, and that is, that nothing in my
present life be changed. This existence is so new t