is dark they seem to be alive. Fourthly, one wants to cry because on all
sides one hears music and superb singing. A gondola glides up hung with
many-coloured lanterns; there is light enough for one to distinguish a
double-bass, a guitar, a mandolin, a violin.... Then another gondola like
it.... Men and women sing, and how they sing! It's quite an opera.

Fifthly, it's warm.

In short, the man's a fool who does not go to Venice. Living is cheap here.
Board and lodging costs eighteen francs a week--that is, six roubles each
or twenty-five roubles a month. A gondolier asks a franc for an hour-that
is, thirty kopecks. Admission to the academies, museums, and so on, is
free. The Crimea is ten times as expensive, and the Crimea beside Venice is
a cuttle-fish beside a whale.

I am afraid Father is angry with me for not having said good-bye to him. I
ask his forgiveness.

What glass there is here! what mirrors! Why am I not a millionaire! ...
Next year let us all take a summer cottage in Venice.

The air is full of the vibration of church bells: my dear Tunguses, let us
all embrace Catholicism. If only you knew how lovely the organs are in the
churches, what sculptures there are here, what Italian women on their knees
with prayer-books!

Keep well and don't forget me, a sinner.

A picturesque railway line, of which I have been told a great deal, runs
from Vienna to Venice. But I was disappointed in the journey. The