float across from the village, while they play the piano indoors
and the stream babbles . . . when there is such music, in fact,
that one wants at the same time to cry and to sing aloud.

We have not much arable land, but our pasture makes up for it, and
with the forest yields about two thousand roubles a year. I am the
only son of my father; we are both modest persons, and with my
father's pension that sum was amply sufficient for us.

The first three years after finishing at the university I spent in
the country, looking after the estate and constantly expecting to
be elected on some local assembly; but what was most important, I
was violently in love with an extraordinarily beautiful and fascinating
girl. She was the sister of our neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined
landowner who had on his estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches,
lightning conductors, a fountain in the courtyard, and at the same
time not a farthing in his pocket. He did nothing and knew how to
do nothing. He was as flabby as though he had been made of boiled
turnip; he used to doctor the peasants by homeopathy and was
interested in spiritualism. He was, however, a man of great delicacy
and mildness, and by no means a fool, but I have no fondness for
these gentlemen who converse with spirits and cure peasant women
by magnetism. In the first place, the ideas of people who are not
intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it's extremely
difficult to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no one,
and have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an
unpleasant effect on sensitive people. I did not care for his
appearance either. He was tall, stout, white-skinned, with a little
head, little shining eyes, and chubby white fingers. He did not
shake hands, but kneaded one's hands in his. And he was always