Boyish boastfulness which is at the same time coarse and clumsy.... "If we
are not as talented as you, Monsieur Zola, to make up for it we believe in
God." ...




July 29.


Well, thank God! To-day I have received from the bookshop notice that there
is 690 roubles 6 kopecks coming to me. I have written in answer that they
are to send five hundred roubles to Feodosia and the other one hundred and
ninety to me. And so I am left owing you only one hundred and seventy. That
is comforting, it's an advance anyway. To meet the debt to the newspaper I
am arming myself with an immense story which I shall finish in a day or two
and send. I ought to knock three hundred roubles off the debt, and get as
much for myself. Ough! ...




August 6.


... The death of a servant in the house makes a strange impression, doesn't
it? The man while he was alive attracted attention only so far as he was
one's "man"; but when he is dead he suddenly engrosses the attention of
all, lies like a weight on the whole house, and becomes the despotic master
who is talked of to the exclusion of everything.