HONOURED NATALYA MIHAILOVNA,

I have not gone to Nizhni as I meant to, but am sitting at home, writing
and sneezing. Madame Morozov has seen the Minister, he has absolutely
prohibited private initiative in the work of famine relief, and actually
waved her out of his presence. This has reduced me to apathy at once. Add
to that, complete lack of money, sneezing, a mass of work, the illness of
my aunt who died to-day, the indefiniteness, the uncertainty in
fact--everything has come together to hinder a lazy person like me. I have
put off my going away till the first of December.

We felt dull without you for a long time, and when the Shah of Persia
[Footnote: A. I. Smagin.] went away it was duller still. I have given
orders that no one is to be admitted, and sit in my room like a heron in
the reeds; I see no one, and no one sees me. And it is better so, or the
public would pull the bell off, and my study would be turned into a smoking
and talking room. It's dull to live like this, but what am I to do? I shall
wait till the summer and then let myself go.

I shall sell the mongoose by auction. I should be glad to sell N. and his
poems too, but no one would buy him. He dashes in to see me almost every
evening as he used to do, and bores me with his doubts, his struggles, his
volcanoes, slit nostrils, atamans, the life of the free, and such tosh, for
which God forgive him.

Russkiya Vyedomosti is printing a _Sbornik_ for the famine fund. With your
permission, I shall send you a copy.

Well, good health and happiness to you; respects and greetings to all yours
from