The work is made up of 389 stanzas of iambic tetrameter with the unusual rhyme scheme "AbAbCCddEffEgg," where the uppercase letters represent feminine rhymes while the lowercase letters represent masculine rhymes. This form has come to be known as the "Onegin stanza" or the "Pushkin sonnet." The story is told by a narrator (a lightly fictionalized version of Pushkin's public image), whose tone is educated, worldly, and intimate. Notoriously touchy about his honor, Pushkin fought a total of twenty-nine duels. At the age of thirty-seven years, Pushkin was fatally wounded in such an encounter with a French officer serving with the Chevalier Guard Regiment, who had been attempting to seduce the poet's wife, Natalya Pushkina. Pushkin's early death is still regarded as a catastrophe for Russian literature.