I-VII

This strange, mysterious thing happened on June 19, 19 .. Kornet Elagin killed his mistress, artist Maria Sosnovskaya.

Yelagin as if born as an officer - ten generations of his ancestors served. When he was stripped of his officer rank, he sobbed. Elagin came from a noble and wealthy family. His mother, a very exalted woman, died very early. Father was a stern and strict man, inspiring fear.

Contrary to the general low opinion about Yelagin, his regimental comrades spoke of him in the best way.

VIII

Sosnovskaya was a purebred polka. Her father, a petty official, committed suicide when she was three years old. The Sosnowski family was of average wealth. Maria studied in a private boarding school very well. Sometimes she wrote out on scraps of paper thoughts and sayings that she liked. For example, “Not to be born is the first happiness, and the second is to quickly return to non-existence.”

For eighteen years she left for Lviv, easily entered the stage and soon gained fame among the public and in theatrical circles. A “villain” appeared in her life, a very wealthy Galician landowner. With him she went to Constantinople, to Venice, to Paris, was in Krakow, Berlin. Another villain accustomed her to hashish and guilt.

XIX

In the city and in the theater, she became a byword.She very persistently searched for a heart capable of love, and constantly said: “My main goal is to live and enjoy life.” Sosnovskaya longed for fame, human attention. She was twenty eight years old. She was very beautiful. Her constant activity was to play, to tease. So she behaved with Yelagin. It inflamed him, then doused it with cold water.

She suffered from bouts of melancholy, despair, suffered from severe nervous breakdown, memory loss, hallucinations. Her consumption began.

X-XII

During interrogations, Yelagin persistently reiterated that both of them were in a tragic situation, and, killing Sosnovskaya, he only obeyed her order. In Elagin’s business card, found on her chest, it was written in her hand in Polish: "This man did the right thing by killing me ... I’m dying not of my own free will."

Elagin’s father would never let him marry Sosnovskaya. It was impossible to live with Elagin without marriage - Polish society would never forgive an open illegal connection with a Russian officer. It was not without reason that she was called "a woman of easy virtue," and the Catholic Church refused her Christian burial, "as an evil and dissolute person."

XIII-XIV

At the trial, Yelagin spoke about the events of June 19. They met at the apartment in which their dates took place. In the second hour of the night she said that she wanted to go home, but she couldn’t say that Yelagin was her rock, her fate, God's will: “Kill me, for the sake of our love!”. Elagin hugged her with his left hand, holding the finger of his right hand on the descent of the revolver. Then somehow the finger twitched by itself ...

He did not shoot himself because he had forgotten everything in the world.He was completely indifferent. "He is guilty before human law, before God, but not before her."