avenue with the prince, our neighbour, and was talking when all at once
something seemed to break in my chest, I had a feeling of warmth and
suffocation, there was a singing in my ears, I remembered that I had been
having palpitations for a long time and thought--"they must have meant
something then." I went rapidly towards the verandah on which visitors were
sitting, and had one thought--that it would be awkward to fall down and die
before strangers; but I went into my bedroom, drank some water, and
recovered.

So you are not the only one who suffers from staggering!

I am beginning to build a pretty lodge....




May 9.


I have no news. The weather is most exquisite, and in the foliage near the
house a nightingale is building and shouting incessantly. About twelve
miles from me there is the village of Pokrovskoe-Meshtcherskoe; the old
manor house there is now the lunatic asylum of the province. The Zemsky
doctors from the whole Moscow province met there on the fourth of May, to
the number of about seventy-five; I was there too. There are a great many
patients but all that is interesting material for alienists and not for
psychologists. One patient, a mystic, preaches that the Holy Trinity has
come upon earth in the form of the metropolitan of Kiev, Ioannikiy. "A
limit of ten years has been given us; eight have passed, only two years are
left. If we do not want Russia to fall into ruins like Sodom, all Russia