e, and
the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a
samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.

"To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the doctor.
"If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains, one ought to do
it at home in some outhouse."

He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat, and his
felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining magistrate, sat down
opposite.

"These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists," the doctor
went on hotly. "If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he
rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he gets up a scene
with his wife without troubling about your presence; and when he feels
inclined to shoot himself, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo
hut, so as to give the maximum of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen
in every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves! That's why
the elderly so dislike our 'nervous age.'"

"The elderly dislike so many things," said the examining magistrate,
yawning. "You should point out to the elder generation what the
difference is between the suicides of the past and the suicides of
to-day. In the old days the so-called gentleman shot himself because he
had made away with Government money, but nowadays it is because he is
sick of life, depressed.... Which is better?"

"Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have shot
himself somewhere else."

"Such trouble!" said the constable, "such trouble! It's a real
affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they haven't
slept these three nights. The children are crying. The cows ought to be
milked, but the women won't go to the stall--they are afraid... for
fear the gentleman should appear to them in the darkness. Of course they
are silly women, but some of the men are frightened too. As soon as
it is dark they won't go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock
together. And the witnesses too...."

Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark beard, and
the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still young, who had only
taken his degree two years before and looked more like a student than an
official, sat in silence, musing. They were vexed that they were late.
Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night,
though it was not yet six o'clock; and they had before them a long
evening, a dark