foreigners, and that I put down to his credit. It could be seen,
too, that there was some uneasiness in his soul, that he wanted to
talk more of himself than of women, and that I was in for a long
story in the nature of a confession. And when we had asked for a
bottle of wine and had each of us drunk a glass, this was how he
did in fact begin:

"I remember in a novel of Weltmann's some one says, 'So that's the
story!' and some one else answers, 'No, that's not the story--
that's only the introduction to the story.' In the same way what
I've said so far is only the introduction; what I really want to
tell you is my own love story. Excuse me, I must ask you again; it
won't bore you to listen?"

I told him it would not, and he went on:

The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow province in one of its
northern districts. The scenery there, I must tell you, is exquisite.
Our homestead is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the water
chatters noisily day and night: imagine a big old garden, neat
flower-beds, beehives, a kitchen-garden, and below it a river with
leafy willows, which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a
lustreless look as though they had turned grey; and on the other
side a meadow, and beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible, dark
pine forest. In that forest delicious, reddish agarics grow in
endless profusion, and elks still live in its deepest recesses.
When I am nailed up in my coffin I believe I shall still dream of
those early mornings, you know, when the sun hurts your eyes: or
the wonderful spring evenings when the nightingales and the landrails
call in the garden and beyond the garden, and sounds of the harmonica