and posing to himself before he
writes the title. . . . He presses his temples, he wriggles, and
draws his legs up under his chair as though he were in pain, or
half closes his eyes languidly like a cat on the sofa. At last, not
without hesitation, he stretches out his hand towards the inkstand,
and with an expression as though he were signing a death-warrant,
writes the title. . . .

"Mammy, give me some water!" he hears his son's voice.

"Hush!" says his mother. "Daddy's writing! Hush!"

Daddy writes very, very quickly, without corrections or pauses, he
has scarcely time to turn over the pages. The busts and portraits
of celebrated authors look at his swiftly racing pen and, keeping
stock still, seem to be thinking: "Oh my, how you are going it!"

"Sh!" squeaks the pen.

"Sh!" whisper the authors, when his knee jolts the table and they
are set trembling.

All at once Krasnyhin draws himself up, lays down his pen and
listens. . . . He hears an even monotonous whispering. . . . It is
Foma Nikolaevitch, the lodger in the next room, saying his prayers.

"I say!" cries Krasnyhin. "Couldn't you, please, say your prayers
more quietly? You prevent me from writing!"

"Very sorry. . . ." Foma Nikolaevitch answers timidly.

After covering five pages, Krasnyhin stretches and looks at his
watch.

"Goodness, three o'clock already," he moans. "Other people are
asleep while I . . . I alone must work!"

Shattered and exhausted he goes, with his head on one side, to the
bedroom to wake his wife, and says in a languid voice:

"Nadya, get me some more tea! I . . . feel weak."

He writes till four o'clock and would readily have written till six
if his subject had not been exhausted. Coquetting and posing to
himself and the inanimate objects about him, far from any indiscreet,
critical eye, tyrannizing and domineering over the little anthill
that fate has put in his power are the honey and the salt of his
existence. And how different is this despot here at home from the
humble, meek, dull-witted little man we are accustomed to see in
the editor's offices!

"I am so exhausted that I am afraid I shan't sleep . . ." he says
as he gets into bed. "Our work, this cursed, ungrateful hard labour,
exhausts the soul even more than the body. . . . I had better take
some bromide. . . . God knows, if it were not for my family I'd
throw up the work. . . . To write to order! It is awful."

He sleeps till twelve or one o'clock in the