MOSCOW,
November 22, 1891.


My health is on the road to improvement. My cough is less, my strength is
greater. My mood is livelier, and there is sunrise in my head. I wake up in
the morning in good spirits, go to bed without gloomy thoughts, and at
dinner I am not ill-humoured and don't say nasty things to my mother.

I don't know when I shall come to you. I have heaps of work _pour manger_.
Till the spring I must work--that is, at senseless grind. A ray of liberty
has beamed upon my horizon. There has come a whiff of freedom. Yesterday I
got a letter from the province of Poltava. They write they have found me a
suitable place. A brick house of seven rooms with an iron roof, lately
built and needing no repairs, a stable, a cellar, an icehouse, eighteen
acres of land, an excellent meadow for hay, an old shady garden on the bank
of the river Psyol. The river bank is mine; on that side there is a
marvellous view over a wide expanse. The price is merciful. Three thousand,
and two thousand deferred payment over several years. Five in all. If
heaven has mercy upon me, and the purchase comes off, I shall move there in
March _for good_, to live quietly in the lap of nature for nine months and
the rest of the year in Petersburg. I am sending my sister to look at the
place.

Ach! liberty, liberty! If I can live on not more than two thousand a
year, which is only possible in the country, I shall be absolutely free
from all anxieties over money coming in and going out. Then I shall work
and read, read ... in a word it will be marmelad. [Translator's Note:
A kind of sweetmeat made by boiling down fruit to the consistency of
damson cheese.] ...