of life.

Judging from your telegram I have not satisfied you with my story. You
should not have hesitated to send it back to me.

Oh, how weary I am of sick people! A neighbouring landowner had a nervous
stroke and they trundled me off to him in a scurvy jolting britchka. Most
of all I am sick of peasant women with babies, and of powders which it is
so tedious to weigh out.

There is a famine year coming. I suppose there will be epidemics of all
sorts and risings on a small scale....




August 28.


So you like my story? [Footnote: "The Duel."] Well, thank God! Of late I
have become devilishly suspicious and uneasy. I am constantly fancying that
my trousers are horrid, and that I am writing not as I want to, and that I
am giving my patients the wrong powders. It must be a special neurosis.

If Ladzievsky's surname is really horrible, you can call him something
else. Let him be Lagievsky, let von Koren remain von Koren. The multitude
of Wagners, Brandts, and so on, in all the scientific world, make a Russian
name out of the question for a zoologist--though there is Kovalevsky. And
by the way, Russian life is so mixed up nowadays that any surnames will do.