ment. Then he put one gooseberry in his mouth, looked at me with
the triumph of a child who has at last received his favourite toy, and
said:

"'How delicious!'

"And he ate them greedily, continually repeating, 'Ah, how delicious! Do
taste them!'

"They were sour and unripe, but, as Pushkin says:

"'Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts
Than hosts of baser truths.'

"I saw a happy man whose cherished dream was so obviously fulfilled, who
had attained his object in life, who had gained what he wanted, who was
satisfied with his fate and himself. There is always, for some reason,
an element of sadness mingled with my thoughts of human happiness,
and, on this occasion, at the sight of a happy man I was overcome by
an oppressive feeling that was close upon despair. It was particularly
oppressive at night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my
brother's bedroom, and I could hear that he was awake, and that he kept
getting up and going to the plate of gooseberries and taking one. I
reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! 'What a
suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness
of the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible
poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness,
hypocrisy, lying.... Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in
the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one
who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see
the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by
night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old,
serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and
we do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on
somewhere behind the scenes.... Everything is quiet and peaceful, and
nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their
minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from
malnutrition.... And this order of things is evidently necessary;
evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear
their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be
impossible. It's a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind
the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer
continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that
however happy he may be, life will show him her laws soon