of them and of his life, as life would then lose all significance for
him. "You imagine perhaps," he brought out, glancing askance at me,
"that I shouldn't have the spirit to do it? You don't know me ... I
have a will of iron."

"Well said," I thought to myself.

Tyeglev pondered, heaved a deep sigh and dropping his chibouk out of
his hand, informed me that that day was a very important one for him.
"This is the prophet Elijah's day--my name day.... It is ... it is
always for me a difficult time."

I made no answer and only looked at him as he sat facing me, bent,
round-shouldered, and clumsy, with his drowsy, lustreless eyes fixed
on the ground.

"An old beggar woman" (Tyeglev never let a single beggar pass without
giving alms) "told me to-day," he went on, "that she would pray for my
soul.... Isn't that strange?"

"Why does the man want to be always bothering about himself!" I
thought again. I must add, however, that of late I had begun noticing
an unusual expression of anxiety and uneasiness on Tyeglev's face, and
it was not a "fatal" melancholy: something really was fretting and
worrying him. On this occasion, too, I was struck by the dejected
expression of his face. Were not those very doubts of which he had
spoken to me beginning to assail him? Tyeglev's comrades had told me
that not long before he had sent to the authorities a project for some
reforms in the artillery department and that the project had been
returned to him "with a comment," that is, a reprimand. Knowing his