Part 5 (1/2)

In a letter: ”A Russian abroad, if not a spy, is a fool.” The neighbor goes to Florence to cure himself of love, but at a distance his love grows stronger.

Yalta. A young man, interesting, liked by a lady of forty. He is indifferent to her, avoids her. She suffers and at last, out of spite, gets up a scandal about him.

Pete's mother even in her old age beaded her eyes.

Viciousness is a bag with which man is born.

B. said seriously that he is the Russian Maupa.s.sant. And so did S.

A Jewish surname: Cap.

A lady looking like a fish standing on its head; her mouth like a slit, one longs to put a penny in it.

Russians abroad: the men love Russia pa.s.sionately, but the women don't like her and soon forget her.

Chemist Propter.

Rosalie Ossipovna Aromat.

It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.

And she began to engage in prost.i.tution, got used to sleeping on the bed, while her aunt, fallen into poverty, used to lie on the little carpet by her side and jumped up each time the bell rang; when they left, she would say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace; ”Something for the chamber-maid.” And they would tip her sixpence.

Prost.i.tutes in Monte Carlo, the whole tone is prost.i.tutional; the palm trees, it seems, are prost.i.tutes, and the chickens are prost.i.tutes.

A big dolt, Z., a qualified nurse, of the Petersburg Rozhdestvensky School, having ideals, fell in love with X., a teacher, and believed him to be ideal, a public spirited worker after the manner of novels and stories of which she was so fond. Little by little she found him out, a drunkard, an idler, good-natured and not very clever.