t, and several others, a very good idea
may be formed by the general reader of M. Turgenieffs merits. For
my own part, I wish cordially to thank the French and the German
translators of the _Dvoryanskoe Gnyezdo_ for the assistance their
versions rendered me while I was preparing the present translation of
that story. The German version, by M. Paul Fuchs,[A] is wonderfully
literal. The French version, by Count Sollogub and M.A. de Calonne,
which originally appeared in the _Revue Contemporaine_, without being
quite so close, is also very good indeed.[B]

[Footnote A: Das adelige Nest. Von I.S. Turgenieff. Aus dem Russicher
ubersetzt von Paul Fuchs. Leipzig, 1862.]

[Footnote B: Une Nichee de Gentilshommes. Paris, 1862]

I, too, have kept as closely as I possibly could to the original.
Indeed, the first draft of the translation was absolutely literal,
regardless of style or even idiom. While in that state, it was revised
by the Russian friend who assisted me in my translation of Krilofs
Fables--M. Alexander Onegine--and to his painstaking kindness I am
greatly indebted for the hope I venture to entertain that I have not
"traduced" the author I have undertaken to translate. It may be as
well to state that in the few passages in which my version differs
designedly from the ordinary text of the original, I have followed the
alterations which M. Turgenieff made with his own hand in the copy
of the story on which I worked, and the title of the story has been
altered to its present form with his consent.

I may as well observe also, that while I have inserted notes where
I thought their presence unavoidable, I have abstained as much as
possible from diverting the reader's attention from the story by
obtrusive asterisks, referring to what might seem impertinent
observations at the bottom of the page. The Russian forms of name I
have religiously preserved, even to the extent of using such a form as
Ivanich, as well as Ivanovich, when it is employed by the author.

INNER TEMPLE, June 1, 1869.

LIZA.

I.

A beautiful spring day was drawing to a close. High aloft in the clear
sky floated small rosy clouds, which seemed never to drift past, but
to be slowly absorbed into the blue depths beyond.

At an open window, in a handsome mansion situated in one of the
outlying streets of O., the chief town of the government of that
name--it was in the year 1842--there were sitting two ladies, the one
about fifty years