“I remember in a novel of Weltmann’s some one says, ’So that’s the story!’ and some one else answers, ’No, that’s not the story—­ that’s only the introduction to the story.’  In the same way what I’ve said so far is only the introduction; what I really want to tell you is my own love story.  Excuse me, I must ask you again; it won’t bore you to listen?”

I told him it would not, and he went on: 

The scene of my story is laid in the Moscow province in one of its northern districts.  The scenery there, I must tell you, is exquisite.  Our homestead is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the water chatters noisily day and night:  imagine a big old garden, neat flower-beds, beehives, a kitchen-garden, and below it a river with leafy willows, which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a lustreless look as though they had turned grey; and on the other side a meadow, and beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible, dark pine forest.  In that forest delicious, reddish agarics grow in endless profusion, and elks still live in its deepest recesses.  When I am nailed up in my coffin I believe I shall still dream of those early mornings, you know, when the sun hurts your eyes:  or the wonderful spring evenings when the nightingales and the landrails call in the garden and beyond the garden, and sounds of the harmonica float across from the village, while they play the piano indoors and the stream babbles . . . when there is such music, in fact, that one wants at the same time to cry and to sing aloud.

We have not much arable land, but our pasture makes up for it, and with the forest yields about two thousand roubles a year.  I am the only son of my father; we are both modest persons, and with my father’s pension that sum was amply sufficient for us.

The first three years after finishing at the university I spent in the country, looking after the estate and constantly expecting to be elected on some local assembly; but what was most important, I was violently in love with an extraordinarily beautiful and fascinating girl.  She was the sister of our neighbour, Kotlovitch, a ruined landowner who had on his estate pine-apples, marvellous peaches, lightning conductors, a fountain in the courtyard, and at the same time not a farthing in his pocket.  He did nothing and knew how to do nothing.  He was as flabby as though he had been made of boiled turnip; he used to doctor the peasants by homeopathy and was interested in spiritualism.  He was, however, a man of great delicacy and mildness, and by no means a fool, but I have no fondness for these gentlemen who converse with spirits and cure peasant women by magnetism.  In the first place, the ideas of people who are not intellectually free are always in a muddle, and it’s extremely difficult to talk to them; and, secondly, they usually love no one, and have nothing to do with women, and their mysticism has an unpleasant effect on sensitive people.  I did not care for his appearance either.  He was tall, stout, white-skinned, with a little head, little shining eyes, and chubby white fingers.  He did not shake hands, but kneaded one’s hands in his.  And he was always apologising.  If he asked for anything it was “Excuse me”; if he gave you anything it was “Excuse me” too.