... but no! laughter not only accompanies tears to the end, to
exhaustion, to the impossibility of shedding more--it even rings and
echoes, where the tongue is dumb, and complaint itself is dead.... And
so, as in the first place I don't intend to expose myself as
ridiculous, even to myself, and secondly as I am fearfully tired, I
will put off the continuation, and please God the conclusion, of my
story till tomorrow....


_March 29.

A slight frost; yesterday it was thawing._

Yesterday I had not the strength to go on with my diary; like
Poprishtchin, I lay, for the most part, on my bed, and talked to
Terentyevna. What a woman! Sixty years ago she lost her first betrothed
from the plague, she has outlived all her children, she is inexcusably
old, drinks tea to her heart's desire, is well fed, and warmly clothed;
and what do you suppose she was talking to me about, all day yesterday?
I had sent another utterly destitute old woman the collar of an old
livery, half moth-eaten, to put on her vest (she wears strips over the
chest by way of vest) ... and why wasn't it given to her? 'But I'm your
nurse; I should think... Oh ... oh, my good sir, it's too bad of you
... after I've looked after you as I have!' ... and so on. The
merciless old woman utterly wore me out with her reproaches.... But to
get back to my story.

And so, I suffered like a dog, whose hindquarters have been run over by
a wheel. It was only then, only after my banishment from the Ozhogins'
house, that I fully realised how much happiness a man can extract from