
He was a man of small property, but independent, almost without family ties. Sanin was in his twenty-second year, and he was in Frankfort on his way home from Italy to Russia. But first I must mention his name, his father's name and his surname. 'Why to-day? just to-day?' was his thought, and he remembered many things, long since past. He got up, and going back to the hearth, he sat down again in the arm-chair, and again hid his face in his hands. . . Such an expression a man's face wears when he suddenly meets some one whom he has long lost sight of, whom he has at one time tenderly loved, and who suddenly springs up before his eyes, still the same, and utterly transformed by the years. Something between regret and delight was expressed in his features.

In the box, under two layers of cotton wool, yellow with age, was a little garnet cross.įor a few instants he looked in perplexity at this cross-suddenly he gave a faint cry. . . Hurriedly, thrusting his hands first into one, and then into another drawer, he suddenly opened his eyes wide, and slowly bringing out a little octagonal box of old-fashioned make, he slowly raised its lid. Opening several letters at random (in one of them there was a withered flower tied with a bit of faded ribbon), he merely shrugged his shoulders, and glancing at the hearth, he tossed them on one side, probably with the idea of burning all this useless rubbish. 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. 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. But the fated day will come, and it will overturn the boat. 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. . . 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. . . 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 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. 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. . . 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. 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. 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. He thought of the vanity, the uselessness, the vulgar falsity of all things human. Sleep it was useless to reckon upon he knew he should not sleep.
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A sort of clinging repugnance, a weight of loathing closed in upon him on all sides like a dark night of autumn and he did not know how to get free from this darkness, this bitterness.


Had he been a little younger, he would have cried with misery, weariness, and exasperation: a biting, burning bitterness, like the bitter of wormwood, filled his whole soul. and, for all that, never yet had the taedium vitae of which the Romans talked of old, the 'disgust for life,' taken hold of him with such irresistible, such suffocating force. He had passed the whole evening in the company of charming ladies and cultivated men some of the ladies were beautiful, almost all the men were distinguished by intellect or talent he himself had talked with great success, even with brilliance. Never had he felt such weariness of body and of spirit. He had dismissed the servant after the candles were lighted, and throwing himself into a low chair by the hearth, he hid his face in both hands. At two o'clock in the night he had gone back to his study.
