still continued to follow our ordinary routine.

"When tea was over I sat down to the piano to play a duct with
Lubotshka, (you would be astonished to hear what progress she has
made!), but imagine my surprise when I found that I could not count the
beats! Several times I began to do so, yet always felt confused in
my head, and kept hearing strange noises in my ears. I would begin
'One-two-three--' and then suddenly go on '-eight-fifteen,' and so on,
as though I were talking nonsense and could not help it. At last Mimi
came to my assistance and forced me to retire to bed. That was how my
illness began, and it was all through my own fault. The next day I had
a good deal of fever, and our good Ivan Vassilitch came. He has not left
us since, but promises soon to restore me to the world.

"What a wonderful old man he is! While I was feverish and delirious he
sat the whole night by my bedside without once closing his eyes; and at
this moment (since he knows I am busy writing) he is with the girls in
the divannaia, and I can hear him telling them German stories, and them
laughing as they listen to him.

"'La Belle Flamande,' as you call her, is now spending her second week
here as my guest (her mother having gone to pay a visit somewhere), and
she is most attentive and attached to me, She even tells me her secret
affairs. Under different circumstances her beautiful face, good temper,
and youth might have made a most excellent girl of her, but in the
society in which according to her own account, she moves she will be
wasted. The idea has more than once occurred to me that, had I not had
so many children of my own, it would have been a deed of mercy to have
adopted her.