Part 23 (2/2)

I rented a country house for the summer; the owner, a very fat old lady, lived in the lodge, I in the great house; her husband was dead and so were all her children, she was left alone, very fat, the estate sold for debt, her furniture old and in good taste; all day long she reads letters which her husband and son had written to her. Yet she is an optimist. When some one fell ill in my house, she smiled and said again and again: ”My dear, G.o.d will help.”

N. and Z. are school friends, each seventeen or eighteen years old; and suddenly N. learns that Z. is with child by N.'s father.

The priezt came ... zaint ... praize to thee, O Lord.

What empty words these discussions about the rights of women! If a dog writes a work of talent, they will even accept the dog.

Haemorrhage: ”It's an abscess that's just burst inside you ... it's all right, have some more vodka.”

The intelligentsia are good for nothing, because they drink a lot of tea, talk a lot in stuffy rooms, with empty bottles.

When she was young, she ran away with a doctor, a Jew, and had a daughter by him; now she hates her past, hates the red-haired daughter, and the father still loves her as well as the daughter, and walks under her window, chubby and handsome.

He picked his teeth and put the toothpick back into the gla.s.s.

The husband and wife could not sleep; they began to discuss how bad literature had become and how nice it would be to publish a magazine: the idea carried them away; they lay awake silent for awhile. ”Shall we ask Boborykin to write?” he asked. ”Certainly, do ask him.” At five in the morning he starts for his work at the depot; she sees him off walking in the snow to the gate, shuts the gate after him.... ”And shall we ask Potapenko?” he asks, already outside the gate.

When he learnt that his father had been raised to the n.o.bility he began to sign himself Alexis.

Teacher: ”'The collision of a train with human victims' ... that is wrong ... it ought to be 'the collision of a train that resulted in human victims' ... for the cause of the people on the line.”

t.i.tle of play: Golden Rain.

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