For God's sake write what you are doing, whether you are all well and how
things are in regard to mushrooms and gudgeon.

We are living at Bogimovo in the province of Kaluga.... It's a huge house,
a fine park, the inevitable views, at the sight of which I am for some
reason expected to say "Ach!" A river, a pond with hungry carp who love to
get on to the hook, a mass of sick people, a smell of iodoform, and walks
in the evenings. I am busy with my Sahalin; and in the intervals, that I
may not let my family starve, I cherish the muse and write stories.
Everything goes on in the old way, there is nothing new. I get up every day
at five o'clock, and prepare my coffee with my own hands--a sign that I
have already got into old bachelor habits and am resigned to them. Masha is
painting, Misha wears his cockade creditably, father talks about bishops,
mother bustles about the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estate with us
there is living a zoologist called Wagner and his family, and some
Kisilyovs--not the Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones.

Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the father sketches, as
he is an artist. We get up performances, _tableaux-vivants_, and picnics.
It is very gay and amusing, but I have only to catch a perch or find a
mushroom for my head to droop, and my thoughts to be carried back to the
past, and my brain and soul begin in a funereal voice to sing the duet "We
are parted." The "deposed idol and the deserted temple" rise up before my
imagination, and I think devoutly: "I would exchange all the zoologists and
great artists in the world for one little Idiotik." [Footnote: Madame
Kisilyov's son.] The weather has all the while been hot and dry, and only
to-day there has been a crash of thunder and the gates of heaven are open.
One longs to get away somewhere--for instance, to America, or Norway.... Be
well and happy, and may the good spirits, of whom there are so many at