pecially at the haymaking, I did not succeed in getting to
my bed at all, and slept in the sledge in the barn, or somewhere in the
forester's lodge, what chance was there of reading? Little by little
I moved downstairs, began dining in the servants' kitchen, and of my
former luxury nothing is left but the servants who were in my father's
service, and whom it would be painful to turn away.

"In the first years I was elected here an honourary justice of the
peace. I used to have to go to the town and take part in the sessions
of the congress and of the circuit court, and this was a pleasant change
for me. When you live here for two or three months without a break,
especially in the winter, you begin at last to pine for a black coat.
And in the circuit court there were frock-coats, and uniforms,
and dress-coats, too, all lawyers, men who have received a general
education; I had some one to talk to. After sleeping in the sledge and
dining in the kitchen, to sit in an arm-chair in clean linen, in thin
boots, with a chain on one's waistcoat, is such luxury!

"I received a warm welcome in the town. I made friends eagerly. And of
all my acquaintanceships the most intimate and, to tell the truth,
the most agreeable to me was my acquaintance with Luganovitch, the
vice-president of the circuit court. You both know him: a most
charming personality. It all happened just after a celebrated case of
incendiarism; the preliminary investigation lasted two days; we were
exhausted. Luganovitch looked at me and said:

"'Look here, come round to dinner with me.'

"This was unexpected, as I knew Luganovitch very little, only
officially, and I had never been to his house. I only just went to my
hotel room to change and went off to dinner. And here it was my lot to
meet Anna Alexyevna, Luganovitch's wife. At that time she was still very
young, not more than twenty-two, and her first baby had been born just
six months before. It is all a thing of the past; and now I should find
it difficult to define what there was so exceptional in her, what it
was in her attracted me so much; at the time, at dinner, it was
all perfectly clear to me. I saw a lovely young, good, intelligent,
fascinating woman, such as I had never met before; and I felt her at
once some one close and already familiar, as though that face, those
cordial, intelligent eyes, I had seen somewhere in my childhood, in the
album which lay on my mother's chest of drawers.

"Four Jews