A cobbler and his wife in a Volga cellar quarrel, drink and beat each other until cholera comes to the town and both are taken on as hospital orderlies. Gorky published "Orlóff and His Wife" in 1897 out of the tramping years that made him; the other stories here come from the same road. Nothing is resolved and nobody is redeemed, which was the offence and the point. Fifty-five plates by painters including Perov and Repin bring the hard world of these tales into view, from peasant huts to an operating room, 1821 to 1915.
