decided that before going to sleep, each one of them should ransack
among his memories and tell something that had happened to him.
Man's life is brief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast that
there have been terrible moments in his past.

One juryman told the story of how he was nearly drowned; another
described how, in a place where there were neither doctors nor
chemists, he had one night poisoned his own son through giving him
zinc vitriol by mistake for soda. The child did not die, but the
father nearly went out of his mind. A third, a man not old but in
bad health, told how he had twice attempted to commit suicide: the
first time by shooting himself and the second time by throwing
himself before a train.

The fourth, a foppishly dressed, fat little man, told us the following
story:

"I was not more than twenty-two or twenty-three when I fell head
over ears in love with my present wife and made her an offer. Now
I could with pleasure thrash myself for my early marriage, but at
the time, I don't know what would have become of me if Natasha had
refused me. My love was absolutely the real thing, just as it is
described in novels--frantic, passionate, and so on. My happiness
overwhelmed me and I did not know how to get away from it, and I
bored my father and my friends and the servants, continually talking
about the fervour of my passion. Happy people are the most sickening
bores. I was a fearful bore; I feel ashamed of it even now. . . .

"Among my friends there was in those days a young man who was
beginning his career as a lawyer. Now he is a lawyer known all over