Queen of Spades: read. Pushkin "The Queen of Spades" - read online Work on the story

The story "The Queen of Spades" by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin was written in 1833. In 1834 the work was first published in the second issue of the Library for Reading. You can read the summary of The Queen of Spades chapter by chapter to prepare for a lesson in literature or to familiarize yourself with the work directly on our website.

The Queen of Spades by Pushkin was written in the tradition of realism. The idea and plot of the work were suggested to the writer by the young Prince Golitsyn, who somehow managed to win back by betting, on the advice of his grandmother N.P. Golitsina, during the game on three cards. Golitsina at one time, Saint-Germain himself suggested these cards.

main characters

Hermann- a military engineer, the son of a Russified German, who inherited a small capital, was "secret and ambitious."

Lizaveta Ivanovna- a young lady, a poor pupil of the countess ***.

Countess ***- an eighty-year-old woman, Tomsky's grandmother, who knows "the secret of three winning cards”, in the story is the personification of fate.

Other characters

Paul Tomsky- the grandson of the old countess ***, a friend of Hermann.

Chekalinsky- a man of sixty years, a famous Moscow player.

Narumov- a horse guard, a friend of Tomsky and Herman.

Chapter 1

"Once they played cards with the horse guard Narumov". While making small talk after the game, the men are surprised by one of those present - Hermann, who watched the game of others all evening, but did not play himself. The man replied that his game was very busy, but he was not able to "sacrifice the necessary in the hope of acquiring the superfluous."

One of the guests, Tomsky, noticed that Hermann is German, and therefore prudent and his attitude to the game is easily explained. What really surprised Paul was why his grandmother Anna Fedotovna did not play.

Sixty years ago, while in Paris, she lost a very large sum at court to the Duke of Orleans. The husband categorically refused to pay the debt of Anna Fedotovna, so she decided to turn to the rich Saint-Germain. The “old eccentric”, instead of lending money, revealed to the woman the secret of three cards that certainly helped to win if you bet on them in a row. On the same evening, the woman fully recouped, but after this incident, the countess did not reveal the secret to anyone. The guests reacted with disbelief to this story.

Chapter 2

Countess ***, Tomsky's grandmother, "was wayward, like a woman spoiled by the world, stingy and immersed in cold selfishness, like all old people who have fallen out of love in their age and are alien to the present." Constantly the victim of the reproaches and whims of the old woman was her pupil, the young lady Lizaveta - "an unfortunate creature." The girl accompanied the old woman everywhere, at the balls she “sat in the corner, like an ugly and necessary decoration of the ballroom”, “she played the most miserable role in the world. Everyone knew her and no one noticed", so the young lady patiently waited for her "deliverer".

A few days after the evening, a young engineer appeared at Narumov's window near Lizaveta, whom the girl noticed sitting at the window at the embroidery frame. “Since that time, not a day has passed that a young man, at a certain hour, did not appear under the windows of their house.” A week later, Lizaveta smiled at him for the first time.

This secret admirer was Hermann. Tomsky's story about the cards "had a strong effect on his imagination", so Hermann decided that he must definitely find out the secret of the countess. One day, while walking around St. Petersburg, a man accidentally comes to her house. After that, Hermann had a dream about how "he put card after card, bent corners decisively, won incessantly, and raked in gold, and put banknotes in his pocket." In the morning, the man again comes to the countess's house and sees Lizaveta in the window - "this minute decided his fate."

Chapter 3

Lizaveta receives a letter from a secret admirer in which he confesses his love for her. The young lady writes an answer and returns Hermann's message, throwing him a letter into the street through the window. But this did not stop Hermann - he began to send letters to the girl every day, asking for a date. Finally, Lizaveta relented, throwing him a message through the window, in which she explained how to quietly come to her room at night, while the countess was at the ball.

Having entered the countess's house at night, Hermann hid in the study leading to the countess's room. When the old woman was left alone, the man went out to her. Asking the countess not to scream, he explained that he had come to learn the secret of the three cards. Seeing that the old woman did not want to share a secret with him, the man took out a pistol (as it turns out later, unloaded). Frightened by the sight of the weapon, the Countess dies.

Chapter 4

Lizaveta, sitting at that time in her room waiting for Hermann, recalls the words of Tomsky, with which he described his friend (Hermann) with “the profile of Napoleon and the soul of Mephistopheles” at the ball: “this man has at least three evil deeds in his soul.”

Here Herman himself comes to her and tells that he was with the countess and is guilty of her death. The girl understands that the man was actually looking for a meeting with her for the sake of enrichment, and she, in fact, is the killer's assistant. Lizaveta is struck by the outward resemblance of a man to Napoleon. In the morning, the man secretly leaves the house.

Chapter 5

Three days later, Hermann went to the monastery, where the countess was buried. When he approached the coffin and looked at the deceased, it seemed to him that "the dead woman looked at him mockingly, screwing up one eye." Stepping back, Hermann fainted.

At night, the man woke up at a quarter to three and heard someone first knock on his window, and then entered the room. It was a woman in a white dress - the late countess. She said that she came to him not of her own free will, but to fulfill his request. The countess revealed the secret of three cards - “threes, sevens and an ace”, however, she made a reservation that the man would win only on the condition that he would not bet “more than one card per day”, after that he would not play all his life and would marry Lizaveta.

Chapter 6

These three cards did not leave Hermann's head. Just at that time, the famous player Chekalinsky arrived in St. Petersburg. Hermann decides to play with Chekalinsky and for the first time, betting 47 thousand on the top three, he wins. Having received the prize, he immediately went home.

The next day, Hermann bet all his money on a seven. Having won 94 thousand, the man “with composure and left at the same moment.” On the third day, Chekalinsky dealt the Queen of Spades and the Ace. Hermann, exclaiming that his ace had beaten the queen, suddenly took a closer look and saw that he had actually drawn the queen: “At that moment it seemed to him that the queen of spades narrowed her eyes and grinned. Unusual resemblance struck him ... - The old woman! he screamed in horror.

Conclusion

After the incident, Hermann went crazy and ended up in the Obukhov hospital. Lizaveta married the son of the countess' former steward.

Conclusion

In the story "The Queen of Spades" Pushkin for the first time in Russian literature touched upon the theme of a crime, an atrocity against a person. The author showed that evil always breeds evil, leading to alienation from society and gradually killing the person in the criminal.

A brief retelling of The Queen of Spades allows you to quickly get acquainted with the content of the story, as well as refresh the main events in your memory, however, for a better understanding of the work, we recommend reading the story in full.

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Retelling rating

Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 4194.

"," A secluded "house" on Vasilyevsky" and the famous passage "Guests gathered at the dacha ...". The story has been filmed several times.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Queen of Spades - Alexander Pushkin (audiobook)

✪ Pyotr Tchaikovsky. The Queen of Spades, opera in three acts - Mariinsky Theater (2015)

✪ The Queen of Spades. Alexander Pushkin

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Plot

The plot of the story beats the theme of unpredictable fate, fortune, fate, beloved by Pushkin (as well as other romantics). The young German military engineer Hermann leads a modest life and accumulates a fortune, he does not even pick up cards and is limited only to watching the game. His friend Tomsky tells the story of how his grandmother, the countess, while in Paris, lost a large sum in cards. She tried to borrow from the Count of Saint-Germain, but instead of money, he revealed to her the secret of the three winning cards. The countess, thanks to the secret, fully recouped.

Hermann, having seduced her pupil, Lisa, enters the countess's bedroom, pleas and threats trying to find out the cherished secret. Seeing Hermann armed with a pistol (which, as it turned out later, turned out to be unloaded), the countess dies of a heart attack. At the funeral, Hermann imagines that the late countess opens her eyes and casts a glance at him. In the evening, her ghost appears to Hermann and says that three cards (“three, seven, ace”) will bring him a win, but he should not bet more than one card per day. The second condition is that he must marry Liza. Hermann subsequently did not fulfill the last condition. Three cards become an obsession for Hermann:

... Seeing a young girl, he said: "How slim she is! .. A real red three." They asked him: what time is it, he answered: - five minutes to seven. - Every pot-bellied man reminded him of an ace. Three, seven, ace - pursued him in a dream, taking on all possible forms: the three bloomed in front of him in the form of a magnificent grandiflora, the seven seemed to be a Gothic gate, the ace a huge spider. All his thoughts merged into one - to take advantage of the secret, which cost him dearly ...

The famous gambler millionaire Chekalinsky arrives in St. Petersburg. Hermann puts all his capital (47 thousand rubles) on three, wins and doubles it. The next day, he bets all his money (94 thousand rubles) on the seven, wins and doubles his capital again. On the third day, Hermann bets money (188 thousand rubles) on an ace. An ace comes up. Hermann thinks he has won, but Chekalinsky says that Lady Hermann has lost. In some incredible way, Hermann "turned around" - he put money instead of an ace on a lady. Hermann sees on the map a grinning and winking Queen of Spades, who reminds him of a countess. Ruined Hermann ends up in a hospital for the mentally ill, where he does not react to anything and every minute “mutters unusually soon: - Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, lady! .. "

Work on the story

The plot of The Queen of Spades was prompted to Pushkin by the young Prince Golitsyn, who, having lost, regained what he had lost by betting, on the advice of his grandmother, on three cards once prompted to her by Saint-Germain. This grandmother is the “mustachioed princess” N. P. Golitsyna, well-known in Moscow society, nee Chernysheva, mother of the Moscow governor D. V. Golitsyn.

In handwritten drafts, the hero is named Herman; perhaps the second "n" was added by the publishers under the influence of the German spelling.
The phrase "his name is Hermann" includes the construction "call + creation. case”, which in the Russian language of that time was used only with a name; in other works Pushkin also follows this rule.
Küchelbecker, who was fluent in German, in his diary calls the hero of the story Herman, that is, the presence of a double "n" did not play a decisive role for him.

As noted by the philologist, Professor Anatoly Andreev, the surname Hermann contains "Germanic semantics Herr Mann("Mr. Man")".

The same parallel is played by the Russian playwright Nikolay Kolyada in his play DREISIEBENAS(THREEKASEMERCATUS) .

Opinions and ratings

Vladislav Khodasevich brought The Queen of Spades closer to other Pushkin's works about "the contact of the human personality with dark forces":

Before talking with the Countess, Hermann himself went towards the black power. When the countess died, he thought that his plan was crumbling, that everything was over and life would henceforth go on as before, with the same capital and untouched interest. But then the roles shifted: from the attacker he turned into the object of attack. The dead old woman appeared to him. “I came to you against my will,” she said in a firm voice, “but I was ordered to fulfill your request,” etc. cards and one, last, most important - incorrect, or at the last, decisive moment, pushed his hand and made him lose everything. Be that as it may, they raised it almost to the maximum height - and pushed it down. And in the end - the fate of Hermann is literally the same as the fate of Pavel and Eugene: he goes crazy.

D. Mirsky singled out The Queen of Spades from Pushkin’s works as “the best and most characteristic work for him in prose”:

It is impossible to summarize it: it is a masterpiece of conciseness. Like Belkin's Tales, this is a work of pure art, entertaining only as a whole. In terms of the power of imagination, it surpasses everything that Pushkin wrote in prose: in terms of tension, it is like a compressed spring. In its violent romanticism, it is close to the "Hymn to the Plague" and to the poem "God forbid I go crazy." But the fantastic romantic plot is poured into an irreproachable classical form, so economical and compressed in its noble nakedness that even Prosper Mérimée, the most sophisticatedly economical of French writers, did not dare to translate it exactly and attached all sorts of embellishments and explanations to his French translation, thinking probably builds up meat on a dry skeleton.

Screen adaptations

The Queen of Spades (film, 1910) - silent film
The Queen of Spades (film, 1916) - silent film
The Queen of Spades (film, 1922) - Hungarian film
The Queen of Spades (film, 1937) - French film
The Queen of Spades (film, 1960) - adaptation of the opera
The Queen of Spades (film, 1982) - a film by Igor Maslennikov
The Queen of Spades (film, 1987) - film-play by Pyotr Fomenko
These ... three true cards ..., 1988 - a film by Alexander Orlov
Queen of Spades (film, 2016) - a film by Pavel Lungin

Anecdote from Firs

The story "The Queen of Spades" is one of the most famous works of Pushkin. It gives great pleasure to the reader, and at the same time it causes many controversies among specialists: how to interpret this work? What is the ratio of reality and fantasy, everyday life and mysticism? This boundary is very difficult to draw.

On the other hand, the thing was written in 1833, when Pushkin, as he says to himself, is "under the old age of his youth." The poetic side of his work recedes somewhat, and prose, journalism, and partly dramaturgy come to the fore. Pushkin is no longer a boy, but a mature husband with his own range of interests, with his ability to create in a completely different area.

However, the idea for the Queen of Spades dates back to 1828. Anna Andreevna Akhmatova defined this year as the most riotous in Pushkin's biography, when he communicates with ladies of various virtues, when there are drinking parties, friendly walks. In general, when he does not feel any constraint in his life. One service is already behind, the other is still ahead ... 28th year.

The card game is also present this year. And it's even clear why. After all, Pushkin organically did not tolerate the smooth flow of life. He needed some extraordinary circumstances, he had to look for risk, adventure. He did not sit still during the years of wandering. For example, being in the village, he rushed to the city. In the city I wanted to go to the countryside. And this is just the peak of Pushkin's wild life.

Among his friends of this period was Sergei Grigoryevich Golitsyn, nicknamed Firs. It is the soul of many companies. It's a Breter. This is a person who spends his life at balls, in communication with a variety of people. It is from him that Pushkin hears the very anecdote that will later form the basis of The Queen of Spades - an anecdote about his eldest relative, his grandmother, who knows the secret of three cards that win in a row in the Pharaoh card game. And, in fact, the story itself begins with a story about this feature of the old woman. When the heroes of the story play cards with the horse guard Narumov, then one of the players - Tomsky - says that the grandmother was in Paris, lost there, found the secret of three cards from Saint-Germain. And with the help of this secret, she not only won back, but even won against the ruler of France - the regent.

All this is very well known. But here the image of Countess Anna Fedotovna arises, which, in fact, is an analogy for the real Princess Natalia Petrovna Golitsyna. This lady herself is extremely interesting. She was a lady-in-waiting, and then a courtier, lady of state at the court of five Russian emperors. And in this capacity, she was a real, and not fictional, landmark of Pushkin's Petersburg. She is over 80 years old, she will die in the same 1837 as Pushkin, only later.

Inheritance burdened with debt

And, perhaps, one of the main motives of the "Queen of Spades" is the motive of inheritance. In the story itself, this motif appears literally on the first pages. “How,” says the owner of the house, Narumov, to Tomsky: “You have a grandmother who knows the secret of three cards in a row, and you still haven’t adopted her cabalism from her. From what?" “To hell with it,” Tomsky replies: “My father had three sons. Yes, and he was a big gambler. She did not reveal this secret to any of us.

And then there is the story of a certain Chaplitsky, a man with a Polish surname, to whom Anna Fedotovna revealed this secret. She took pity on the lost young man and told how you can really win. But the win did not bring Chaplitsky any happiness. Pretty soon he dies in poverty.

Despite this, Tomsky's story initiates the actions of Hermann, a Russified German who wants to get rich. And so, he finds one of the ways to this enrichment this evening, where he simply follows the card game. If the old countess revealed the secret not to a relative, but to an outsider, and apparently to a Pole, then why shouldn't he, Hermann, follow the same path?

And now he dreams of getting into the location of the old countess, getting this secret and getting rich. The plot is known, but it is clear that it is very burdensome. This is what many readers of The Queen of Spades do not understand. Firstly, already at Tomsky, Narumov asks: “Why doesn’t grandmother ponte?” Although, it would seem, why pontirovat eighty old woman? And yet she does not use her own secret. Why?

We will answer this question later, but for now let's say it straight - the burden of this mystery is immediately revealed. Well, first of all, when the old countess later appears to Hermann in the form of a ghost and tells him the secret of three cards, she sets certain conditions that a player who wants to win must comply with: put no more than one card a day, do not play again in life and to marry her pupil Lizaveta Ivanovna, whom Hermann would allegedly look after later. Thus, she immediately reveals why she does not play. Because, apparently, she made such a promise. That is, a very real, not at all mystical situation arises - Hermann will have to enter into an inheritance burdened with debt. It is this duty that the ghost of the countess formulates.

And the reaction of Hermann is very characteristic. What does he do after the ghost leaves? He first of all writes down all the conditions that he must fulfill. Well, of course, a sequence of three cards. Naturally, no more playing in life. Marry the unloved Lizaveta Ivanovna. This is all that is aggravated by debt. Roughly speaking, this is the sale of the soul to the devil for a card win. And, in fact, in the very initial conversation between Hermann and the Countess, he himself hints at this knowledge: if the secret is aggravated by the sale of the soul, then I am ready for it, he says. And this condition is the sale of the soul.

At the same time, Hermann speaks very characteristically contemptuously about the relatives of the countess. They are ordinary people, they do not trade in the salvation of the soul, and therefore they do not even insist very much, Tomsky and his relatives do not really insist that the countess tell them the secret of the three cards.

Hermann and Napoleon

And then the mystical analogies begin. What is real and what is fictional and fantastic? Apparently, the real everyday layer is no less influential than fiction. But there is also a third layer - world history. That's when it was about "Eugene Onegin", we said that the plot of the novel is played out as a reduced analogy of world history. Apparently, the same thing happens in The Queen of Spades. Twice throughout the story Hermann is compared to Napoleon. And, in fact, why?

We can talk about a certain common bourgeoisness of both people. But all this will be outside the limits of Pushkin's world. Although, “we all look at Napoleons” - this is from “Eugene Onegin”. In addition, the similarity of Onegin with Hermann is also not obvious to everyone, although Pushkin calls Napoleon "heir and murderer of rebellious liberty", that is, he is a product of the French Revolution, which kills the same revolution.

So Onegin, firstly, the heir of all his relatives, and secondly, the murderer of his brother. All people are brothers, he kills Lensky, who is Olga's fiancé, that is, they are, as it were, relatives in the near future, if both marry. In short, kinship is revealed not only on sociological grounds, but also on personal grounds.

To the same side we are talking and further. Why? Because when the discovery of the secret of the three cards is due to the marriage to the pupil of the old countess, then this also correlates the hero with Napoleon. Because Napoleon, who by 1807 had reached the Russian borders, of course, opened his mouth to the Russian inheritance in the same way as Hermann to the legacy of the old countess, which, in addition to material values, also contained this secret. And it turns out they both fail. Neither Napoleon acquires Russia nor Hermann acquires these three cards as winning cards.

But what is curious. After all, when, after a meeting with Alexander in Tilsit and Erfurt, Napoleon thinks about how he should deal with Russia, after all, on the advice of Talleyrand, he makes an offer to the Russian princess, the emperor’s sister Ekaterina Pavlovna, believing that if he marries her, then their son has direct rights to the Russian throne. That is, he wants to conquer Russia peacefully.

This is precisely where Hermann begins. He tells the countess how he respects her, how he is going to thank her. He will pray to God for her, and all his descendants will also ask God for the countess. And then when she rejects it, he grabs the gun. That is the same path of Napoleon. That is why, perhaps, Pushkin compares his hero with Napoleon. But, truth, purely superficially, in profile.

Moreover, if we look at how events develop, we will find a direct connection between Napoleon's campaign in Russia and Hermann's behavior at the card table. After all, Napoleon begins with victories. He comes to Moscow. Hermann also wins the first two cards. On the third map, Hermann experiences complete collapse in the same way that Napoleon did when he left Moscow. In this sense, the fate of the heroes is completely analogous. And this is important to understand and see. We again, just as in Onegin, see world history played out on ordinary people. Mysticism plays a role here, but this is a separate big topic.

Conversation with V. Odoevsky

At one time, the prominent Pushkinist Grigory Gukovsky was not inclined to see science fiction in The Queen of Spades. In his opinion, everything beyond that we meet there does not occur in real circumstances, but in the drunken and then sick imagination of the protagonist, Hermann. Meanwhile, a similar or close to this point of view is found in the works of Pushkin himself, it is based on the opinion of the author himself.

At the end of 1833, which just marked the "Queen of Spades", Count Sollogub was present at the exchange of remarks between Pushkin and the writer of fantastic stories Vladimir Odoevsky. Odoevsky had just published a book of fantastic works, and when he met Pushkin, he really wanted to know the great poet's opinion about his work. Count Sollogub, who was present at the time, wrote down this: “Odoevsky wanted to know Pushkin's opinion about his book and how he thinks about it. But Pushkin got off with commonplaces - "read, nothing, good." Seeing that nothing could be achieved from him, Odoevsky added only: "It is extremely difficult to write fantastic tales." Then he bowed and passed. Then Pushkin said: “Yes, if it is so difficult, why does he write them! Fantastic tales are only good when they are easy to write.

Pushkin, if Sollogub correctly conveys his words, here, of course, he is a little disingenuous. His own fiction does not at all look like such light sketches, quickly put on paper. Nothing of the kind, this is the fruit of a very serious, long work, a lot of drafts, a lot of options, a lot of thoughts, and most importantly - the depth of philosophical insight into life, thoughts, people's attitudes, characters. So no, The Queen of Spades is not an easy essay tossed on paper.

Ghost of Napoleon

Serious readers, unlike the profane, just understand well what the "Queen of Spades" is with its deviations from the real circumstances of life. These are not idle game motives at all. From this point of view, a significant signal is sent to us by Pushkin's poem "An immovable guard stood on the royal threshold ...". It was written while still in southern exile, sometime between 1823 and 1824. Before the "Queen of Spades", as we understand it, another ten years.

Meanwhile, the plot moves and the main plot moves of both works completely coincide. Genetic affinity is revealed already by the fact that in the poem “The Immovable Guard ...” the late Napoleon, the ghost of Napoleon, appears to the still living sovereign Alexander I, and how a dialogue should arise between these two persons. The same thing happens in The Queen of Spades, when the ghost of the deceased old woman appears to Hermann and puts her conditions before Hermann, puts his demands.

In The Queen of Spades, this juxtaposition of the hero with Napoleon continues. Only Hermann outwardly resembles Napoleon, and the ghost of Napoleon is, as it were, even more similar, even more real. And now the conversation between the engineer and the dead old woman is, as it were, a continuation of this poem by Pushkin, written ten years ago.

Ghost Napoleon pays a visit to Alexander and is ready to present him with his demands, his conditions. Unfortunately, we do not know what these requirements are, what these conditions are, unlike the "Queen of Spades". We do not know because the poem is not finished. And if you like, you can even in this sense consider The Queen of Spades as a continuation and denouement of the unfinished poem of 1823-1824. This will be discussed further.

"The Tale of the Three Cards" perhaps makes it possible to understand what is the meaning of the claims of Napoleon and Hermann to the Russians and Russia. This is a question about the Russian heritage, understood by Western consciousness. And from this point of view, one can even consider the “Queen of Spades” a model reduced in similarity European history Napoleonic, and maybe even not only Napoleonic time. This circumstance, this philosophy of recent and ancient times, comes through very clearly in The Queen of Spades.

Granddaughter of Peter I

What is more curious in the history of the card inheritance is the pedigree of Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna, the prototype of the Queen of Spades, the prototype of Anna Fedotovna. The fact that she is really a prototype is absolutely certain, because Pushkin himself writes about this, in his famous entry that they read The Queen of Spades at court, they don’t get angry at court, although they undoubtedly recognized the old princess Golitsyna in the image of a countess .

She has a really bizarre pedigree. The Russian nobility was conditionally divided into two groups. These are people who have acquired their noble title from other countries - from Germans, from Tatars. And people from non-noble estates: from the bourgeoisie, the merchants, the clergy. It cannot be said that the “entry” nobles were, as it were, a higher rank. They did not enjoy any privileges. But nevertheless, some arrogance was present here.

So Pushkin himself emphasized all the time that he was a descendant of an Arab sultan by his mother, and by his father a man from Europe, Radsha. So, Anna Fedotovna, or rather her prototype - Princess Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna, has a very bizarre pedigree. It begins with Peter the Great.

Peter the Great had a batman - Andrei Ivanovich Ushakov, who later served high ranks. And so Peter married him to his mistress Evdokia Rzhevskaya. And, meanwhile, having given her in marriage, he did not cease to consider her his property. This Evdokia rewarded him, on the one hand, with a venereal disease, and, on the other hand, with a son. It was this son who became the father of our Golitsyna, our Countess. At the same time, the fact that Natalya Petrovna was, though not native, but the granddaughter of Peter, was not hidden. At the Petrine court and later, on the contrary, it was a matter of pride. From the side of another grandfather, the origin was also extremely interesting. This is Andrey Ivanovich Ushakov - the head of the Secret Chancellery, a master of shoulder cases, at one time a very famous and very terrible figure.

And hence in the mind of Natalya Petrovna there was an extremely interesting genealogical oddity. On the one hand, she is, as it were, an illegitimate granddaughter, but, on the other hand, she is Peter the Great himself. Therefore, she looked down on all these Holsteiners, Wolfinbüttels, all these little German princes, who, from her point of view, are simply mediocre. And she kept herself very much as a blood relative of the first Russian emperor. For example, she did not get up when members of the royal house came to visit her, making an exception only for the emperor or empress. That's who she is.

That, by the way, is why Tomsky cannot lead to the old Countess Hermann. He is thin-born, from the Germans. And that is why it is not difficult for him to bring Narumov, a horse guard, a Russian nobleman, into this house and introduce him. Here is a situation that is completely open here. And Hermann chooses this strange roundabout way of getting to know the countess because he does not have direct access to these chambers. He doesn't know enough for that.

And Natalya Petrovna is a great lady, she had nothing in her biography. The point is not only in Paris or, there, in the initiation of the Golitsyn family. For example, it is known that at court balls under Catherine II, she danced with the heir Tsarevich Pavel Petrovich - the future Emperor Paul. Imagine a situation in which, according to Pushkin, our most romantic Emperor Paul I is dancing with the Queen of Spades. This is a historical situation, if you cross the border between a work of art and historical reality. And so it was.

So in this sense, The Queen of Spades, without ceasing to be a fantastic work, nevertheless tells us about such depths of Russian history, about such interesting details of Petersburg court life, which the reader simply does not suspect when picking up Pushkin's work.

This gradation of the nobility between those who received their title in Russia and those who acquired it abroad, even before entering Russia, has been maintained for centuries. For example, when Ivan the Terrible was talking with the Englishman Fletcher, he warned him: "Don't trust our Russians, they are rogues." To which Fletcher responded: “Your Majesty, how can you say that? You are Russian!” “No,” Grozny said, “I am not Russian. My lineage goes back to the Roman Emperor Augustus."

Here is the same story several centuries later. Here is the difference. And Hermann, who also feels a certain rejection of St. Petersburg society, because he is a Russified German, and this is not God knows what a high rank. Here everything is doubled, everything is unclear.

household sketches

Here, one of the lines along which Pushkin comes to The Queen of Spades is, of course, Firs-Golitsyn - a mischievous, darling of fate. And the second line is pretty ordinary. Yes, maybe she is not the second, maybe she is the tenth, but nevertheless ... Pushkin had a friend Philipp Philippovich Vigel, from the older generation, who in a very early youth, almost in childhood, spent one summer season at the Golitsyn estate not far from from Kyiv, the village of Cossack, or Cossack according to other sources. And there he came across a family very close to Natalya Petrovna Golitsyna, who, as they say, lived all her life with the consciousness that all things are done out of personal affection, and not according to state laws.

That is, he questions the morality of Natalya Petrovna to some extent, and says that all this was taken out of Paris, from the Faubourg Saint-Germain. And now it is not known - the Count of Saint-Germain has something to do with this Saint-Germain suburb, or not? But, in any case, this is a purely everyday observation about the character of Natalya Petrovna.

The other side of the matter is this. In the Golitsyns' house, on this Cossack estate, two invisible people live. This manager is a retired officer, but perhaps more importantly, he is the illegitimate son of the owner, Prince Golitsyn. And there is still a host, a young lady from the seedy nobles, who is needed in order to entertain the lady. And these two people are getting married under Vigel. That is, the lady passes off her hanger-on as a manager. What we meet in the "Queen of Spades". Who does Lisa marry at the end of the story? For the son of the manager of the old countess, already deceased by that time. This is the manager who underpays Lisa for her meager salary, which she complains about.

That is, it turns out that the everyday side of the "Queen of Spades" is presented very densely, very well. And it is precisely this absence of a boundary between mysticism and reality that is one of the main features of Pushkin's story.

The Magic of Numbers

"The Queen of Spades" is written at the intersection of many, sometimes completely dissimilar motifs. The extreme points of the traditions on which Pushkin's thing, Pushkin's "story of three cards" are built, are infinitely distant from each other. On the one hand, this is Pushkin's obvious interest in the scientific, if you like, mathematical side - the probability of cards falling out when playing "pharaoh".

At the other pole of Pushkin's interest is a superstitious, if not fabulous, belief in the magic of numbers. Three years after The Queen of Spades, Pushkin published in his famous journal Sovremennik a rather strange article for that time under the generally understandable title "On Hope". This is nothing more than a popular exposition of the mathematical theory of probability.

The article was written by the well-known publicist and scientist Prince Peter Kozlovsky. A popular exposition of the mathematical theory of probability is intended for everyone, it is more than a popular text, understandable, I think, even to secular ladies. And among other things, it is addressed to lovers card game. The article partly warns players against the more than shaky hope of accidentally dropping a given card.

It discusses, of course, not only the card game. An absolutely wonderful episode of this article is also connected with the "Queen of Spades" no longer through cards, but in general through probability, through the hope for some kind of successful loss of a number, card, sign, etc. For example, Kozlovsky discusses a political player - Napoleon.

After the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in 1813, the victorious allies offered the emperor Napoleon peace and the preservation of the imperial crown, provided that France returned to the pre-war borders. In general, a calm, reasonable proposal that does not affect the honor of both parties. And so Napoleon, purely intuitively and completely incorrectly estimated the probability of his victory and refused. Which, in fact, plunged him subsequently into complete collapse.

By publishing Kozlovsky's article, Pushkin, as it were, once again filled with deep meaningful meaning the external portrait resemblance of his hero Hermann to the French emperor. This is the image of Napoleon the player. Then Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy would continue the same image in his novel War and Peace, where before the battle he discusses the state of affairs as a situation on chessboard. Those. Napoleon here acts as the same player as Hermann in The Queen of Spades, who hopes for a lucky chance, without accepting reasonable grounds for his decision.

Numerology Pushkin

Another motif of The Queen of Spades is the magic of numbers. Three, seven, ace in the mind of Hermann have a very important personification. He sees a three as a young girl, a seven as a clock, and an ace in his mind is a pot-bellied man. Those. it seems to transfer the symbolism into real life, thinking that this is what will lead him to win, to victory. Thus, Hermann is looking for real correspondences between mysterious numerology and everyday life.

In this sense, just the number 3 has an accentuated position in the mind and work of Pushkin. Well, for example, he has a poem "Three keys have made their way into the worldly steppe ...". That's three keys. They will drink youth, inspiration and oblivion. Those. the philosophical meaning of the number 3 appears here with complete clarity.

Another poem tells about the merchant's daughter Natasha, who "disappeared for three days and three nights." These three days and three nights are also filled with some such mystical content. We will never know what happened in those three days and three nights when the girl disappeared.

Pushkin's heroine Cleopatra has three lovers, who also give the concept of three approaches to reality - from pragmatics to pure lyrics of the third, young lover. Again, the magic number 3 either brings us back to the Queen of Spades, or precedes it, but nevertheless, by itself, it is quite clearly read here.

Pushkin's well-known hero Petrusha Grinev is also subject to the same magic. When Pugachev captures the Belogorsk fortress, he executes the officers, and Pyotr Grinev is just the third to be dragged to the gallows, and his fate is not at all the same as that of the other two executed before him, i.e. again, the number 3 accentuates some magic of another, much more complex and philosophical meaning.

I don’t know if it’s necessary to remind “The Tale of Tsar Saltan”, which begins with three strands that are spun under the window, and these are three destinies and three life paths, which also explain a lot both in Pushkin’s fate and in the fate of his heroes.

In The Golden Cockerel, three trips are made according to the cries of a bird with three completely different endings. So it's all just in the same field in which the "Queen of Spades" exists, its characters and the author of the story.

Literature

Berkovsky N.Ya. About the "Queen of Spades" (notes from the archive). Pub. M.N. Virolainen. // "Russian Literature", 1987, No. 1.
Bocharov S.G. "The Queen of Spades" // Bocharov S.G. Poetics of Pushkin. Essays. M., 1974. 3. Vinogradov V.V. Queen of Spades style. // Provisional of the Pushkin Commission of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. T. 2. L., 1936.
Vinogradov V.V. Queen of Spades style. // Provisional of the Pushkin Commission of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. T. 2. L., 1936.
Virolainen M.N. Irony in Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades". // Questions of theory and history of literature. Problems of Pushkin studies. L., 1975.
Holstein V. "Secrets of the "Queen of Spades". // Notes of the Russian Academic Group in the USA. 1999 - 2000. V.30.
Dobin E.S. Ace and Queen (A. Pushkin. "Queen of Spades".). // Dobin E.S. Plot and reality. L., 1974.
Ilyin-Tomich A.A. "The Queen of Spades means ..." // Sat. "Centuries will not erase ...". Russian classics and their readers. M., 1989.
Listov V.S. The motif of claiming an inheritance in Pushkin's story "The Queen of Spades". // Bulletin of the Nizhny Novgorod University. N.I. Lobachevsky. Nizhny Novgorod, UNN, 2014, No. 2, part 2.
Listov V.S. To the interpretation of the image of Lizaveta Ivanovna from The Queen of Spades.// Boldin Readings, Saransk, 2001.
Lotman Yu.M. "The Queen of Spades" and the Theme of the Card Game in Russian Literature at the Beginning of the 19th Century. // Lotman Yu.M. Pushkin: biography of the writer. Articles and notes 1960 - 1990 /…/. St. Petersburg, 1995.
Mikhailova N.I. The Queen of Spades and Anna Karenina (Poetics of Movement). // Boldino Readings, B. Boldino, 2009.
Sidyakov L.S. "Queen of Spades" and "Black Woman" N.I. Grecha: from the history of the early perception of Pushkin's story. // Boldin Readings. Gorky, 1985.
Sokolov O.V. The origins of the mystical motives of Tchaikovsky's opera "The Queen of Spades" in Pushkin's story. //Boldino readings. Nizhny Novgorod, 2009.
Tamarchenko N.D. On the poetics of The Queen of Spades. // Questions of theory and history of literature. Problems of Pushkin studies. L., 1975.
Yakubovich. D.P. The literary background of the "Queen of Spades" // "Literary Contemporary", 1937, No. 1.

Tale

Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades means secret malevolence.

The latest divination book

I

And on rainy days
They were going
Often;
Bent - God forgive them! -
From fifty
One hundred
And they won
And unsubscribed
Chalk.
So, on rainy days,
They were engaged
Deed.

Once they played cards with the horse guard Narumov. The long winter night passed unnoticed; sat down to supper at five o'clock in the morning. Those who were the winners ate with great relish; the others, distractedly, sat in front of their empty instruments. But the champagne appeared, the conversation quickened, and everyone took part in it.

- What did you do, Surin? the owner asked.

Lost, as usual. I must admit that I am unhappy: I play mirandole, I never get excited, nothing can confuse me, but I keep losing!

"And you've never been tempted?" never put on rue?.. Your firmness is amazing for me.

- And what is Hermann! - said one of the guests, pointing to a young engineer, - from his birth he did not take cards in his hands, from his birth he did not bend a single password, but he sits with us until five o'clock and looks at our game!

“The game occupies me greatly,” Hermann said, “but I am not in a position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of gaining the superfluous.

“Hermann is a German: he is prudent, that’s all!” Tomsky remarked. - And if anyone is incomprehensible to me, it's my grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna.

- How? what? the guests shouted.

“I can’t comprehend,” continued Tomsky, “how my grandmother doesn’t ponte!”

“Well, why is it surprising,” said Narumov, “that an eighty-year old woman does not ponte?”

"So you don't know anything about her?"

- Not! right, nothing!

- Oh, so listen:

You need to know that my grandmother, sixty years ago, went to Paris and was there in big fashion. The people ran after her to see la Vénus moscovite; Richelieu dragged after her, and grandmother assures that he nearly shot himself because of her cruelty.

At that time, ladies played pharaoh. Once at court, she lost something very much on the word of the Duke of Orleans. Arriving home, the grandmother, peeling off the flies from her face and untying the fizhma, announced to her grandfather about her loss and ordered him to pay.

The late grandfather, as far as I remember, was the family of my grandmother's butler. He was afraid of her like fire; however, hearing about such a terrible loss, he lost his temper, brought the bills, proved to her that in half a year they had spent half a million, that they had neither a village near Moscow nor a Saratov village near Paris, and completely refused to pay. Grandmother gave him a slap in the face and went to bed alone, as a token of her disfavor.

The next day, she ordered her husband to be called, hoping that domestic punishment had an effect on him, but found him unshakable. For the first time in her life she went with him to arguments and explanations; I thought to reassure him, condescendingly arguing that there are many debts and that there is a difference between a prince and a coachman. - Where! grandfather rebelled. No, and only! Grandma didn't know what to do.

She was briefly acquainted with a very remarkable person. You have heard of the Comte Saint-Germain, of whom so many wonderful stories are told. You know that he pretended to be the Wandering Jew, the inventor of the life elixir and the philosopher's stone, and so on. They laughed at him as a charlatan, and Casanova in her Notes says that he was a spy; however, Saint-Germain, in spite of his mystery, had a very respectable appearance and was a very amiable person in society. Grandmother still loves him without memory and gets angry if they talk about him with disrespect. Grandmother knew that Saint Germain could have a lot of money. She decided to run to him. I wrote him a note and asked him to come to her immediately.

The old eccentric appeared at once and found him in terrible grief. She described to him in the darkest colors her husband's barbarity, and finally said that she placed all her hope in his friendship and courtesy.

Saint Germain considered.

“I can serve you with this amount,” he said, “but I know that you will not be calm until you pay me off, and I would not want to introduce you to new troubles. There is another remedy: you can recoup." “But, dear Count,” Grandmother answered, “I tell you that we have no money at all.” - "Money is not needed here," Saint-Germain objected: "if you please listen to me." Then he revealed to her a secret, for which any of us would give dearly ...

Young players doubled the focus. Tomsky lit his pipe, took a puff, and went on.

That same evening, my grandmother appeared at Versailles, au jeu de la Reine. Duke of Orleans Metal; grandmother slightly apologized for not bringing her debt, wove a little story to justify it and began to play against him. She chose three cards, put them one after the other: all three won her a sonic, and her grandmother won back completely.

- Chance! one of the guests said.

- Story! Hermann noted.

“Maybe powder cards?” - picked up the third.

"I don't think so," replied Tomsky importantly.

- How! - said Narumov, - do you have a grandmother who guesses three cards in a row, and you still have not adopted her cabalism from her?

- Yes, damn it! - Tomsky answered, - she had four sons, including my father: all four are desperate players, and she did not reveal her secret to anyone; although it would not be bad for them and even for me. But this is what my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, told me, and of what he assured me with honor. The late Chaplitsky, the same one who died in poverty, having squandered millions, once in his youth lost - Zorich remembers - about three hundred thousand. He was in despair. Grandmother, who was always strict with the pranks of young people, somehow took pity on Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, so that he put them one after another, and took from him his word of honor never to play again. Chaplitsky appeared to his winner: they sat down to play. Chaplitsky bet fifty thousand on the first card and won the sonic; bent passwords, passwords-ne, - recouped and still won ...

But it's time for bed: it's already a quarter to six.

In fact, it was already dawn: the young people finished their glasses and parted.

II

- Il parait que monsieur est decidément pour les suivantes.

- Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches.

small talk

The old countess *** was sitting in her dressing-room in front of a mirror. Three girls surrounded her. One held a jar of rouge, another a box of hairpins, a third a tall cap with fiery ribbons. The Countess had not the slightest pretense of beauty, long faded, but retained all the habits of her youth, strictly followed the fashions of the seventies, and dressed as long, as diligently, as she had sixty years ago. At the window sat a young lady, her pupil, at the embroidery frame.

“Allow me to introduce one of my friends and bring him to your place on Friday for the ball.

“Bring him straight to the ball for me, and then introduce him to me.” Were you yesterday at ***?

- How! it was very fun; danced until five o'clock. How good was Yeletskaya!

- And, my dear! What's good about her? Was her grandmother, Princess Darya Petrovna, like that? .. By the way: I’m tea, she’s already very old, Princess Darya Petrovna?

- How old are you? replied Tomsky absentmindedly, “she died seven years ago.

The young lady raised her head and made a sign to the young man. He remembered that the death of her peers had been concealed from the old countess, and he bit his lip. But the countess heard the news, new to her, with great indifference.

- Died! she said, “but I didn’t know!” Together we were granted maids of honor, and when we introduced ourselves, the empress ...

And the countess for the hundredth time told her grandson her anecdote.

“Well, Paul,” she said later, “now help me up.” Lizanka, where is my snuffbox?

And the countess with her girls went behind the screens to finish her toilette. Tomsky stayed with the young lady.

Who do you want to introduce? Lizaveta Ivanovna asked quietly.

- Narumova. You know him?

- Not! Is he military or civilian?

- Military.

- Engineer?

- Not! cavalryman. Why do you think he is an engineer?

The young lady laughed and did not answer a word.

– Paul! the countess shouted from behind the screens, “send me some new novel, but please, not from the current ones.

– How is it, grandmaman?

- That is, such a novel, where the hero would not crush either his father or mother, and where there would be no drowned bodies. I'm terribly afraid of drowned people!

There are no such novels today. Don't you want Russians?

– Are there any Russian novels?.. Come, father, please come!

- Excuse me, grand'maman: I'm in a hurry ... Excuse me, Lizaveta Ivanovna! Why did you think that Narumov was an engineer?

And Tomsky came out of the lavatory.

Lizaveta Ivanovna was left alone: she left her work and began to look out the window. Soon, on one side of the street, a young officer appeared from behind a coal house. A blush covered her cheeks: she set to work again and bent her head over the canvas itself. At that moment the countess entered, fully dressed.

“Order, Lizanka,” she said, “to lay down the carriage, and we’ll go for a walk.”

Lizanka got up from the hoop and began to clean up her work.

- What are you, my mother! deaf, right? cried the countess. “Tell them to lay down the carriage as soon as possible.

- Now! the young lady answered quietly and ran into the hall.

The servant entered and gave the countess books from Prince Pavel Alexandrovich.

- Good! Thank you, said the Countess. - Lizanka, Lizanka! where are you running to?

- Dress.

- You can do it, mother. Sit here. Open up the first volume; read aloud...

The young lady took the book and read a few lines.

- Louder! said the Countess. - What's wrong with you, my mother? was she sleeping with her voice, or what? .. Wait a minute: move the bench for me, closer ... well!

Lizaveta Ivanovna read two more pages. The Countess yawned.

“Drop that book,” she said, “what nonsense! Send this to Prince Pavel and tell him to thank him... But what about the carriage?

"The carriage is ready," said Lizaveta Ivanovna, glancing out into the street.

Why aren't you dressed? - said the countess, - you always have to wait for you! This, mother, is unbearable.

Lisa ran to her room. In less than two minutes, the countess began to call with all her urine. Three girls ran in one door, and the valet in another.

- What is it you do not call? the Countess told them. - Tell Lizaveta Ivanovna that I am waiting for her.

Lizaveta Ivanovna came in wearing a bonnet and a hat.

Finally, my mother! said the Countess. - What outfits! Why is this? .. whom to seduce? .. And what is the weather like? It looks like the wind.

“No, no, your excellency! very quiet! answered the valet.

– You always speak at random! Open the porthole. So it is: the wind! and chilly! Postpone the carriage! Lizanka, we won't go: there was nothing to dress up.

"And here's my life!" thought Lizaveta Ivanovna.

In fact, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a miserable creature. Someone else's bread is bitter, says Dante, and the steps of someone else's porch are heavy, and who knows the bitterness of dependence, if not the poor pupil of a noble old woman? Countess ***, of course, did not have an evil soul; but she was wayward, like a woman spoiled by the world, stingy and immersed in cold selfishness, like all old people who have fallen out of love in their age and are alien to the present. She participated in all the vanities of the big world, dragged herself to balls, where she sat in a corner, flushed and dressed in the old fashion, like an ugly and necessary decoration of a ballroom; visiting guests approached her with low bows, as if according to the established rite, and then no one took care of her. She hosted the whole city, observing strict etiquette and not recognizing anyone by sight. Numerous of her servants, having grown fat and gray in her anteroom and maiden's, did what they wanted, vying with each other robbing the dying old woman. Lizaveta Ivanovna was a domestic martyr. She spilled tea and was reprimanded for spending too much sugar; she read novels aloud and was to blame for all the mistakes of the author; she accompanied the countess on her walks and was in charge of the weather and the pavement. She was given a salary that was never paid; meanwhile, they demanded of her that she be dressed like everyone else, that is, like very few. She played the most miserable role in the world. Everyone knew her, and no one noticed; at balls she only danced when there was a lack of vis-à-vis, and the ladies took her by the arm whenever they had to go to the dressing room to fix something in their attire. She was self-loving, she vividly felt her situation and looked around herself, impatiently waiting for a deliverer; but the young people, prudent in their windy vanity, did not honor her with attention, although Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times nicer than the impudent and cold brides around whom they hung around. How many times, quietly leaving the boring and magnificent living room, she went off to cry in her poor room, where there were screens pasted over with wallpaper, a chest of drawers, a mirror and a painted bed, and where a tallow candle burned darkly in a copper shandal!

Once - it happened two days after the evening described at the beginning of this story, and a week before the scene on which we stopped - once Lizaveta Ivanovna, sitting under the window at the embroidery frame, accidentally looked into the street and saw a young engineer standing motionless and fixed his eyes on her window. She lowered her head and went back to work; five minutes later she looked again - the young officer was standing in the same place. Not having the habit of flirting with passing officers, she stopped looking at the street and sewed for about two hours without raising her head. Served for dinner. She got up, began to put away her embroidery frame, and, looking inadvertently into the street, saw the officer again. It seemed rather strange to her. After dinner, she went to the window with a feeling of some unease, but the officer was no longer there - and she forgot about him ...

Two days later, going out with the countess to get into the carriage, she saw him again. He stood at the very entrance, covering his face with a beaver collar: his black eyes sparkled from under his hat. Lizaveta Ivanovna was frightened, without knowing why, and got into the carriage with an inexplicable trembling.

Returning home, she ran to the window - the officer stood in the same place, fixing his eyes on her: she moved away, tormented by curiosity and excited by a feeling completely new to her.

Since that time, not a day has passed that the young man, at a certain hour, did not appear under the windows of their house. An unconditional relationship was established between him and her. Sitting in her place at work, she felt his approach - she raised her head, looked at him longer and longer every day. The young man seemed to be grateful to her for this: she saw with the sharp eyes of youth how a quick blush covered his pale cheeks whenever their eyes met. A week later, she smiled at him ...

When Tomsky asked permission to introduce his friend to the countess, the poor girl's heart began to beat. But having learned that Narumov was not an engineer, but a horse guard, she regretted that she had expressed her secret to the windy Tomsky with an indiscreet question.

Hermann was the son of a Russified German who left him a small capital. Being firmly convinced of the need to strengthen his independence, Hermann did not even touch the interest, he lived on his salary, did not allow himself the slightest whim. However, he was secretive and ambitious, and his comrades rarely had the opportunity to laugh at his excessive frugality. He had strong passions and a fiery imagination, but firmness saved him from the ordinary delusions of youth. So, for example, being a player at heart, he never took cards in his hands, because he calculated that his condition did not allow him (as he said) sacrificing what is necessary in the hope of gaining what is superfluous, - and meanwhile spent whole nights sitting at card tables and followed with feverish trepidation the various turns of the game.

The anecdote about the three cards had a strong effect on his imagination and the whole night did not leave his head. “What if,” he thought the next day in the evening, wandering around Petersburg, “what if the old countess reveals her secret to me! - or assign me these three correct cards! Why not try your luck? .. To introduce herself to her, to win her favor, perhaps, to become her lover - but all this takes time - and she is eighty-seven years old - she can die in a week, - in two days! .. Yes, and the most anecdote? .. Can you believe him? .. No! calculation, moderation and diligence: these are my three true cards, this is what will triple, sevenfold my capital and bring me peace and independence!

Reasoning in this way, he found himself in one of the main streets of Petersburg, in front of a house of ancient architecture. The street was lined with carriages, the carriages rolled one after another to the lighted entrance. The slender leg of a young beauty, the rattling jackboot, the striped stocking and diplomatic shoe were constantly stretched out of the carriages. Fur coats and raincoats flashed past the stately porter. Hermann stopped.

- Whose is this house? he asked the corner guard.

“Countess ***,” answered the watchman.

Hermann trembled. The amazing anecdote again presented itself to his imagination. He began to walk around the house, thinking about his mistress and about her wonderful ability. Late he returned to his humble corner; For a long time he could not fall asleep, and when sleep took possession of him, he dreamed of cards, a green table, piles of banknotes and heaps of chervonets. He placed card after card, bent the corners resolutely, won incessantly, and raked in the gold, and put banknotes in his pocket. Waking up late, he sighed about the loss of his fantastic wealth, went again to wander around the city and again found himself in front of the house of the countess ***. An unknown force seemed to be drawing him to him. He stopped and looked at the windows. In one he saw a black-haired head, probably bent over a book or work. The head rose. Hermann saw a fresh face and black eyes. This moment sealed his fate.

III

Vous m'écrivez, mon ange, des lettres de quatre pages plus vite que je ne puis les lire.

Only Lizaveta Ivanovna had time to take off her hood and hat, when the countess sent for her and ordered the carriage to be brought up again. They went to sit down. At the very moment when two footmen lifted the old woman and pushed her through the doors, Lizaveta Ivanovna saw her engineer at the very wheel; he grabbed her hand; she could not recover from fright, the young man disappeared: the letter remained in her hand. She hid it behind her glove and did not hear or see anything all the way. The Countess was in the habit of constantly asking questions in the carriage: who met us? What is the name of this bridge? - What does it say on the sign? Lizaveta Ivanovna this time answered at random and out of place, and irritated the countess.

“What happened to you, my mother! Has tetanus found on you, or what? You either don't hear me, or don't understand?.. Thank God, I don't burr and I haven't lost my mind yet!

Lizaveta Ivanovna did not listen to her. Returning home, she ran to her room, took out a letter from behind her glove: it was not sealed. Lizaveta Ivanovna read it. The letter contained a declaration of love: it was gentle, respectful and taken word for word from a German novel. But Lizaveta Ivanovna did not know how to speak German and was very pleased with it.

However, the letter she received worried her extremely. For the first time she entered into a secret, intimate relationship with a young man. His audacity horrified her. She reproached herself for her careless behavior and did not know what to do: should she stop sitting at the window and inattentively cool the desire for further persecution in the young officer? Should I send him a letter? – whether to answer coldly and decisively? She had no one to consult with, she had neither a friend nor a mentor. Lizaveta Ivanovna decided to answer.

She sat down at the writing table, took a pen, paper - and thought. Several times she began her letter, and tore it up: now the expressions seemed to her too condescending, now too cruel. At last she managed to write a few lines with which she was satisfied. “I am sure,” she wrote, “that you have honest intentions and that you did not mean to offend me with a rash act; but our acquaintance should not have begun in this way. I return your letter to you and hope that I will no longer have reasons to complain about undeserved disrespect.

The next day, seeing Hermann walking, Lizaveta Ivanovna got up from her embroidery frame, went out into the hall, opened the window and threw the letter into the street, hoping for the agility of the young officer. Hermann ran up, picked it up and entered the candy store. Breaking the seal, he found his letter and Lizaveta Ivanovna's reply. He expected this and returned home, very busy with his intrigue.

Three days after that, a young, quick-eyed mamzel brought a note from a fashionable shop to Lizaveta Ivanovna. Lizaveta Ivanovna opened it uneasily, foreseeing money demands, and suddenly recognized Hermann's hand.

“You, my dear, are mistaken,” she said, “this note is not for me.

- No, just for you! - the brave girl answered, not hiding a sly smile. - Please read!

Lizaveta Ivanovna ran through the note. Hermann demanded a meeting.

- Can't be! - said Lizaveta Ivanovna, frightened both by the haste of the demands and by the method he used. - This is not written for me! And tore the letter into small pieces.

- If the letter is not for you, why did you tear it up? - said Mamzel, - I would return it to the one who sent it.

- Please, darling! said Lizaveta Ivanovna, flushing at her remark, “do not bring any notes to me in advance. And tell the one who sent you that he should be ashamed...

But Hermann did not give up. Lizaveta Ivanovna received letters from him every day, now in one way or another. They were no longer translated from German. Hermann wrote them, inspired by passion, and spoke in a language characteristic of him: they expressed both the inflexibility of his desires and the disorder of his unbridled imagination. Lizaveta Ivanovna no longer thought of sending them away: she reveled in them; began to answer them, - and her notes hour by hour became longer and more tender. Finally, she threw the following letter through the window:

“Today is a ball at the *** envoy. The Countess will be there. We will stay until two o'clock. Here's your chance to see me alone. As soon as the countess leaves, her people will probably disperse, the porter will remain in the hallway, but he usually goes to his closet. Come at half past eleven. Step right onto the stairs. If you find someone in the hall, then you will ask if the countess is at home. They will tell you no, and there is nothing to do. You will have to turn back. But you probably won't meet anyone. The girls are sitting at home, all in the same room. From the front, go left, go all the way to the countess's bedroom. In the bedroom, behind the screens, you will see two small doors: on the right to the study, where the countess never enters; to the left into the corridor, and right there a narrow winding staircase: it leads to my room.

Hermann trembled like a tiger, waiting for the appointed time. At ten o'clock in the evening he was already standing in front of the countess's house. The weather was terrible: the wind howled, wet snow fell in flakes; the lanterns glowed dimly; the streets were empty. From time to time Vanka dragged along on his skinny horse, looking out for a belated rider. - Hermann stood in one frock coat, feeling neither wind nor snow. At last the carriage was brought to the countess. Hermann saw how the lackeys carried under their arms a hunched old woman wrapped in a sable fur coat, and how her pupil flashed after her, in a cold cloak, with her head trimmed with fresh flowers. The doors slammed shut. The carriage rolled heavily on the loose snow. The porter locked the doors. The windows are dark. Hermann began to walk around the empty house: he went up to the lamp, looked at his watch - it was twenty past eleven. He remained under the lantern, fixing his eyes on the hour hand and waiting for the rest of the minutes. Precisely at half-past eleven, Hermann stepped onto the Countess's porch and went up into the brightly lit entrance hall. There was no porter. Hermann ran up the stairs, opened the front door, and saw a servant sleeping under a lamp, in old, soiled armchairs. With a light and firm step, Hermann walked past him. The hall and drawing room were dark. The lamp dimly illuminated them from the hallway. Hermann entered the bedroom. In front of the kivot, filled with ancient images, a golden lamp glowed. Faded damask armchairs and sofas with feather cushions, with gilding gone, stood in sad symmetry near the walls, upholstered in Chinese wallpaper. On the wall hung two portraits painted in Paris by m-me Lebrun. One of them depicted a man of about forty, ruddy and plump, in a light green uniform and with a star; the other, a young beauty with an aquiline nose, combed temples, and a rose in her powdered hair. Porcelain shepherdesses, table clocks made by the glorious Leroy, boxes, tape measures, fans and various ladies' toys, invented at the end of the last century, together with the Montgolfier ball and Mesmer magnetism, stuck out in all corners. Hermann went behind the screen. Behind them stood a small iron bed; on the right was a door leading to an office; on the left, the other - in the corridor. Hermann opened it, saw a narrow, winding staircase that led to the room of a poor pupil ... But he turned back and entered a dark office.

Time passed slowly. Everything was quiet. Twelve struck in the living room; in all the rooms the clocks chimed twelve one after another, and everything was silent again. Hermann stood leaning against the cold stove. He was calm; his heart was beating evenly, like that of a man who has decided on something dangerous, but necessary. The clock struck one and two in the morning, and he heard the distant rumble of a carriage. Involuntary excitement took possession of him. The carriage pulled up and stopped. He heard the thud of the step being lowered. There was a fuss in the house. People ran, voices were heard and the house was lit up. Three old maids ran into the bedroom, and the countess, barely alive, entered and sank into the Voltaire chairs. Hermann looked through the crack: Lizaveta Ivanovna passed him. Hermann heard her hurried steps on the steps of her stairs. Something akin to remorse echoed in his heart and fell silent again. He turned to stone.

The Countess began to undress in front of the mirror. They broke off her cap, decorated with roses; removed the powdered wig from her gray and close-cropped head. Pins rained down around her. A yellow dress embroidered with silver fell at her swollen feet. Hermann had witnessed the hideous mysteries of her toilet; finally, the countess remained in her sleeping jacket and nightcap: in this outfit, more characteristic of her old age, she seemed less terrible and ugly.

Like all old people in general, the Countess suffered from insomnia. Having undressed, she sat down at the window in the Voltaire chairs and sent the maids away. The candles were taken out, the room was again lit up by one lamp. The countess sat all yellow, moving her pendulous lips, swaying right and left. In her cloudy eyes there was a complete absence of thought; looking at her, one might think that the swaying of the terrible old woman did not come from her will, but from the action of hidden galvanism.

Suddenly this dead face changed inexplicably. The lips ceased to move, the eyes brightened: an unfamiliar man stood in front of the countess.

"Don't be scared, for God's sake, don't be scared!" he said in a clear and quiet voice. “I have no intention of harming you; I have come to beg you for one favor.

The old woman looked at him silently and seemed not to hear him. Hermann imagined that she was deaf, and, leaning over her very ear, repeated the same thing to her. The old woman was still silent.

“You can,” continued Hermann, “make up the happiness of my life, and it will cost you nothing: I know that you can guess three cards in a row ...

Hermann stopped. The countess seemed to understand what was required of her; she seemed to be searching for words for her answer.

“It was a joke,” she said at last, “I swear to you!” it was a joke!

“This is nothing to joke about,” Hermann objected angrily. - Remember Chaplitsky, whom you helped to recoup.

The Countess seemed to be confused. Her features depicted a strong movement of the soul, but she soon fell into her former insensibility.

“Can you,” continued Hermann, “assign these three correct cards to me?”

The Countess was silent; Hermann continued:

Who are you keeping your secret for? For grandchildren? They are rich without that, they do not know the value of money. Your three cards won't help Motu. Whoever does not know how to take care of his father's inheritance, he will still die in poverty, despite any demonic efforts. I'm not a mote; I know the value of money. Your three cards will not be wasted for me. Well!..

He stopped and waited in trepidation for her answer. The Countess was silent; Hermann knelt down.

“If ever,” he said, “your heart knew the feeling of love, if you remember its delights, if you ever smiled at the crying of a newborn son, if something human ever beat in your chest, then I implore you with feelings spouses, mistresses, mothers - everything that is sacred in life - do not refuse me my request! - tell me your secret! - what do you need in it? .. Maybe it is associated with a terrible sin, with the destruction of eternal bliss, with a diabolical contract ... Think: you are old; you will not live long - I am ready to take your sin on my soul. Reveal your secret to me. Think that a person's happiness is in your hands; that not only I, but my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will bless your memory and will honor it as a shrine ...

The old woman did not answer a word.

Hermann got up.

- Old witch! he said, gritting his teeth, “then I’ll make you answer…”

With that, he took a pistol out of his pocket.

At the sight of the pistol, the countess for the second time showed a strong feeling. She nodded her head and raised her hand, as if shielding herself from the shot... Then she rolled backwards... and remained motionless.

“Stop being childish,” Hermann said, taking her hand. - I ask for the last time: do you want to assign me your three cards? - Yes or no?

The Countess did not answer. Hermann saw that she was dead.

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin

Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades means secret malevolence.

The latest divination book

And on rainy days

They were going

Bent - God forgive them! -

From fifty

And they won

And unsubscribed

So, on rainy days,

They were engaged

- What did you do, Surin? the owner asked.

Lost, as usual. I must admit that I am unhappy: I play mirandole, I never get excited, nothing can confuse me, but I keep losing!

"And you've never been tempted?" never put on rue?.. Your firmness is amazing for me.

“The game occupies me greatly,” Hermann said, “but I am not in a position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of gaining the superfluous.

“Hermann is a German: he is prudent, that’s all!” Tomsky remarked. - And if anyone is incomprehensible to me, it's my grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna.

- How? what? the guests shouted.

“I can’t comprehend,” continued Tomsky, “how my grandmother doesn’t ponte!”

“Well, why is it surprising,” said Narumov, “that an eighty-year old woman does not ponte?”

"So you don't know anything about her?"

- Not! right, nothing!

- Oh, so listen:

You need to know that my grandmother, sixty years ago, went to Paris and was there in great fashion. The people ran after her to see la Vénus moscovite; Richelieu dragged after her, and grandmother assures that he nearly shot himself because of her cruelty.

Saint Germain considered.

Young players doubled the focus. Tomsky lit his pipe, took a puff, and went on.

That same evening my grandmother appeared at Versailles, au jeu de la Reine. Duke of Orleans Metal; grandmother slightly apologized for not bringing her debt, wove a little story to justify it and began to play against him. She chose three cards, put them one after the other: all three won her a sonic, and her grandmother won back completely.

- Chance! one of the guests said.

- Story! Hermann noted.

“Maybe powder cards?” - picked up the third.

"I don't think so," replied Tomsky importantly.

- How! - said Narumov, - do you have a grandmother who guesses three cards in a row, and you still have not adopted her cabalism from her?

- Yes, damn it! - answered Tomsky - she had four sons, including my father: all four are desperate players, and she did not reveal her secret to anyone; although it would not be bad for them and even for me. But this is what my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, told me, and of what he assured me with honor. The late Chaplitsky, the same one who died in poverty, having squandered millions, once in his youth lost - Zorich remembers - about three hundred thousand. He was in despair. Grandmother, who was always strict with the pranks of young people, somehow took pity on Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, so that he put them one after another, and took from him his word of honor never to play again. Chaplitsky appeared to his winner: they sat down to play. Chaplitsky bet fifty thousand on the first card and won the sonic; bent passwords, passwords-ne, - recouped and still won ...

But it's time for bed: it's already a quarter to six.

In fact, it was already dawn: the young people finished their glasses and parted.

- II paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes.

– Que voulez-vous, inadame? Elles sont plus fraîches.

small talk