lded and the father allows him to go and say
good-bye to his little friend, who has meanwhile died of privation.
The day after the little girl's funeral the whole band disappears
without leaving a trace behind them. "Later on," says Korolenko,
"when we were about to leave our home, it was on the grave of our
poor little friend that my sister and I, both of us full of life,
faith, and hope, interchanged our vows of universal compassion...."

Another short story, called "The Murmuring Forest," which was
published in the same year, made as much of a success as "Bad
Company."

* * * * *

But it is in "The Blind Musician" that Korolenko attains perfection.
This masterly psychological study does not present a very
complicated plot. From the very start the reader is captivated by a
powerful poetic quality, free from all artifice, fresh, spontaneous,
and breathing forth such moral purity, such tender pity, that one
literally feels regenerated.

Here is a brief outline of this exquisite story. One very dark
night, a child of rich parents is born in the southwest of Russia.
Peter--the child--is blind. His whole life is to be but a groping in
the shadows toward the light. The mother adores the poor child and
suffers more than he. But she has not enough moral strength to bring
him up, and give him the necessary comfort and energy. His father,
a countryman, thinks only of his business. Happily, there is on the
mother's side an uncle called Maxim, one of the famous "thousand" of
Garibaldi, who has a noble and generous disposition. It is he who
brings up the child, with a tenderness just touched by severity.
Peter's young mind is constantly enriched with new pictures. Thanks
to the extreme acuteness of his hearing, he catches the very
slightest sounds of nature. When barely five years of age the boy
shows his love for music; he spends hours, motionless, listening to
the playing of one of the servants who has made for himself a kind
of flute. Soon Peter begins to study music, and especially the
violin. His rapid progress astonishes his teachers. However, in
spite of his love for music and the comfort that it gives him, the
blind boy suffers from his infirmity. To distract his mind from his
own suffering, his uncle takes him one day to a place where there
are some blind beggars. Peter listens to their plaintive melody:
"Alms, alms for a poor blind man ... for the love of Christ"; and as
if he had hea