then be charitable to me, marry me, and keep me at your expense, that I may
be free to do nothing. If you really are going to die, it might be
undertaken by Varya Eberly, whom, as you know, I love. I am so all to
pieces with the perpetual thought of work I ought to do and can't avoid
that for the last week I have been continually tormented with palpitations
of the heart. It's a loathsome sensation.

I have sold my fox-skin greatcoat for twenty roubles! It cost sixty, but as
forty roubles' worth of fur has peeled off it, twenty roubles was not too
low a price. The gooseberries are not ripe here yet, but it is warm and
bright, the trees are coming out, the sea looks like summer, the young
ladies are yearning for sensations: but yet the north is better than the
south of Russia, in spring at any rate. In our part nature is more
melancholy, more lyrical, more Levitanesque; here it is neither one thing
nor the other, like good, sonorous, but frigid verse. Thanks to my
palpitations I haven't drunk wine for a week, and that makes the
surroundings seem even poorer....

M. gave a concert here, and made one hundred and fifty roubles clear
profit. He roared like a grampus but had an immense success. I am awfully
sorry I did not study singing; I could have roared too, as my throat is
rich in husky elements, and they say I have a real octave. I should have
earned money, and been a favourite with the ladies....




TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

MELIHOVO,