June 16.


... You want me to write my impressions to you.

My soul longs for breadth and altitude, but I am forced to lead a narrow
life spent over trashy roubles and kopecks. There is nothing more vulgar
than a petty bourgeois life with its halfpence, its victuals, its futile
talk, and its useless conventional virtue; my heart aches from the
consciousness that I am working for money, and money is the centre of all I
do. This aching feeling, together with a sense of justice, makes my writing
a contemptible pursuit in my eyes: I don't respect what I write, I am
apathetic and bored with myself, and glad that I have medicine which,
anyway, I practise not for the sake of money. I ought to have a bath in
sulphuric acid and flay off my skin, and then grow a new hide....




MELIHOVO,
August 1.


My letters chase you, but do not catch you. I have written to you often,
and among other places to St. Moritz. Judging from your letters you have
had nothing from me. In the first place, there is cholera in Moscow and
about Moscow, and it will be in our parts some day soon. In the second
place, I have been appointed cholera doctor, and my section includes
twenty-five villages, four factories, and one monastery. I am organizing