hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the
steppe.

The barrows, the water-towers, the buildings--everything is familiar and
well-remembered. At the station I have a helping of remarkably good and
rich sorrel soup. Then I walk along the platform. Young ladies. At an upper
window at the far end of the station sits a young girl (or a married lady,
goodness knows which) in a white blouse, beautiful and languid. [Footnote:
See the story "Two Beauties."] I look at her, she looks at me.... I put on
my glasses, she does the same.... Oh, lovely vision! I caught a catarrh of
the heart and continued my journey. The weather is devilishly, revoltingly
fine. Little Russians, oxen, ravens, white huts, rivers, the line of the
Donets railway with one telegraph wire, daughters of landowners and
farmers, red dogs, the trees--it all flits by like a dream.... It is hot.
The inspector begins to bore me. The rissoles and pies, half of which I
have not got through, begin to smell bitter.... I shove them under somebody
else's seat, together with the remains of the vodka.

... I arrive at Taganrog.... It gives one the impression of Herculaneum and
Pompeii; there are no people, and instead of mummies there are sleepy
_drishpaks_ [Footnote: Uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog.] and
melon-shaped heads. All the houses look flattened out, and as though they
had long needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the shutters are
closed....

At eight o'clock in the evening my uncle, his family, Irina, the dogs, the
rats that live in the storeroom, the rabbits were fast asleep. There was
nothing for it but to go to bed too. I sleep on the drawing-room sofa. The
sofa has not increased in length, and is as short as it was before, and so
when I go to bed I have either to stick up my legs in an unseemly way or to