All the stages of man's life passed in order before his mental gaze
(he had himself lately reached his fifty-second year), and not one
found grace in his eyes. Everywhere the same ever-lasting pouring of
water into a sieve, the ever-lasting beating of the air, everywhere
the same self-deception--half in good faith, half conscious--any toy
to amuse the child, so long as it keeps him from crying. And then, all
of a sudden, old age drops down like snow on the head, and with it the
ever-growing, ever-gnawing, and devouring dread of death ... and the
plunge into the abyss! Lucky indeed if life works out so to the end!
May be, before the end, like rust on iron, sufferings, infirmities
come.... He did not picture life's sea, as the poets depict it,
covered with tempestuous waves; no, he thought of that sea as a
smooth, untroubled surface, stagnant and transparent to its darkest
depths. He himself sits in a little tottering boat, and down below
in those dark oozy depths, like prodigious fishes, he can just make
out the shapes of hideous monsters: all the ills of life, diseases,
sorrows, madness, poverty, blindness.... He gazes, and behold, one
of these monsters separates itself off from the darkness, rises
higher and higher, stands out more and more distinct, more and more
loathsomely distinct.... An instant yet, and the boat that bears him
will be overturned! But behold, it grows dim again, it withdraws,
sinks down to the bottom, and there it lies, faintly stirring in the
slime.... But the fated day will come, and it will overturn the boat.

He shook his head, jumped up from his low chair, took two turns up and
down the room, sat down to the writing-table, and opening one drawer
after another, began to rummage among his papers, among old letters,
mostly from women. He could not have said why he was doing it; he was
not looking for anything--he simply wanted by some kind of external
occupation to get away from the thoughts oppressing him. Opening