when I have paid my debts and settled with you, I'll accept a loan of 2,000
from you. Do not imagine that it is disagreeable to me to be in your debt.
I lend other people money, and so I feel I have the right to borrow money,
but I am afraid of getting into difficulties and the habit of being in
debt. You know I owe your firm a devilish lot.

There is a fine view from my window. Trains are continually passing. There
is a bridge across the Oka.




ALEXIN,
May 10, 1891.


Yes, you are right, my soul needs balsam. I should read now with pleasure,
even with joy, something serious, not merely about myself but things in
general. I pine for serious reading, and recent Russian criticism does not
nourish but simply irritates me. I could read with enthusiasm something new
about Pushkin or Tolstoy. That would be balsam for my idle mind.

I am homesick for Venice and Florence too, and am ready to climb Vesuvius
again; Bologna has been effaced from my memory and grown dim. As for Nice
and Paris, when I recall them "I look on my life with loathing."

In the last number of _The Messenger of Foreign Literature_ there is a
story by Ouida, translated from the English by our Mihail. Why don't I know
foreign languages? It seems to me I could translate magnificently. When I
read anyone else's translation I keep altering and transposing the words in