Leonid Andreyev: 45 books

There stood once in a public place a black tower with massive fortress-like walls and a few grim bastioned windows. It had been built by robber barons, but time swept them into the beyond, and the tower became partly a prison for dangerous criminals and grave offenders, and partly a residence. In...

SOLDIER, what hast thou been under Nicholas the Secone? Thou hast been a slave of the autocrat. Conscience, honor, love for the people, were beaten out of thee in merciless training by whip and stick. “Kill thy father and thy mother if they raise their hands against me,” commanded the autocrat, —...

He was six years old, and the world was to him enormous, alive and bewitchingly mysterious. He knew the sky quite well. He knew its deep azure by day, and the white-breasted, half silvery, half golden clouds slowly floating by. He often watched them as he lay on his back upon the grass or upon the roof....