Part 13 (1/2)

On a Sunday morning in summer is heard the rumble of a carriage--people driving to ma.s.s.

For the first time in her life a man kissed her hand; it was too much for her, it turned her head.

What wonderful names: the little tears of Our Lady, warbler, crows-eyes.[1]

[Footnote 1: The names of flowers.]

A government forest officer with shoulder straps, who has never seen a forest.

A gentleman owns a villa near Mentone; he bought it out of the proceeds of the sale of his estate in the Tula province. I saw him in Kharkhov to which he had come on business; he gambled away the villa at cards and became a railway clerk; after that he died.

At supper he noticed a pretty woman and choked; a little later he caught sight of another pretty woman and choked again, so that he did not eat his supper--there were a lot of pretty women.

A doctor, recently qualified, supervises the food in a restaurant.

”The food is tinder the special supervision of a doctor.” He copies out the chemical composition of the mineral water; the students believe him--and all is well.

He did not eat, he partook of food.

A man, married to an actress, during a performance of a play in which his wife was acting, sat in a box, with beaming face, and from time to time got up and bowed to the audience.

Dinner at Count O.D.'s. Fat lazy footmen; tasteless cutlets; a feeling that a lot of money is being spent, that the situation is hopeless, and that it is impossible to change the course of things.

A district doctor: ”What other d.a.m.ned creature but a doctor would have to go out in such weather?”--he is proud of it, grumbles about it to every one, and is proud to think that his work is so troublesome; he does not drink and often sends articles to medical journals that do not publish them.

When N. married her husband, he was junior Public Prosecutor; he became judge of the High Court and then judge of the Court of Appeals; he is an average uninteresting man. N. loves her husband very much.