"Are you a kammer-junker?" a voice whispered in my ear. "That's a very
pleasant thing. But yet you are a reptile."

"It's all nonsense, nonsense, nonsense," I muttered as I went
downstairs. "Nonsense... and it's nonsense, too, that I am actuated
by vanity or a love of display.... What rubbish! Am I going to get a
decoration for working for the peasants or be made the director of a
department? Nonsense, nonsense! And who is there to show off to here in
the country?"

I was tired, frightfully tired, and something kept whispering in my
ear: "Very pleasant. But, still, you are a reptile." For some reason I
remembered a line out of an old poem I knew as a child: "How pleasant it
is to be good!"

My wife was lying on the couch in the same attitude, on her face and
with her hands clutching her head. She was crying. A maid was standing
beside her with a perplexed and frightened face. I sent the maid away,
laid the papers on the table, thought a moment and said:

"Here are all your papers, Natalie. It's all in order, it's all capital,
and I am very much pleased. I am going away tomorrow."

She went on crying. I went into the drawing-room and sat there in the
dark. My wife's sobs, her sighs, accused me of something, and to justify
myself I remembered the whole of our quarrel, starting from my unhappy
idea of inviting my wife to our consultation and ending with the
exercise books and these tears. It was an ordinary attack of our
conjugal hatred, senseless and unseemly, such as had been frequent