Our farming labours have been crowned with complete success. The harvest is
considerable, and when we sell the corn Melihovo will bring us more than a
thousand roubles. The kitchen garden is magnificent. There are perfect
mountains of cucumbers and the cabbage is wonderful. If it were not for the
accursed cholera I might say that I have never spent a summer so happily as
this one.

Nothing has been heard of cholera riots yet. There is talk of some arrests,
some manifestoes, and so on. They say that A., the writer, has been
condemned to fifteen years' penal servitude. If the socialists are really
going to exploit the cholera for their own ends I shall despise them.
Revolting means for good ends make the ends themselves revolting. Let them
get a lift on the backs of the doctors and feldshers, but why lie to the
peasants? Why persuade them that they are right in their ignorance and that
their coarse prejudices are the holy truth? If I were a politician I could
never bring myself to disgrace my present for the sake of the future, even
though I were promised tons of felicity for an ounce of mean lying. Write
to me as often as possible in consideration of my exceptional position. I
cannot be in a good mood now, and your letters snatch me away from cholera
concerns, and carry me for a brief space to another world....




August 16.


I'll be damned if I write to you again. I have written to Abbazzio, to St.
Moritz. I have written a dozen times at least, so far you have not sent me
one correct address, and so not one of my letters has reached and my long