'Our people toil, but what are we doing?...' Akh, Nikolái Nikoláitch, he
was a fine man--and he loved me ... and I.... Akh, forgive me...."

Here the young woman actually burst into tears. I would have liked to
comfort her, but I did not know how.

"Have you a baby?" I asked at last.

She sighed.--"No, I have not.... How could I have?"--And here tears
streamed worse than before.

So this was the end of Mísha's wanderings through tribulations [old P.
concluded his story].--You will agree with me, gentlemen, as a matter of
course, that I had a right to call him reckless; but you will probably
also agree with me that he did not resemble the reckless fellows of the
present day, although we must suppose that any philosopher would find
traits of similarity between him and them. In both cases there is the
thirst for self-annihilation, melancholy, dissatisfaction.... And what
that springs from I will permit precisely that philosopher to decide.







THE DREAM

(1876)