ould embrace the whole world at such a moment. Pyotr Petrovitch,
allow me to embrace you!"

"Delighted, I'm sure." The two friends embrace while the passengers
laugh in chorus. And the happy bridegroom continues:

"And to complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to complete
the illusion, one goes to the refreshment-room and tosses off two
or three glasses. And then something happens in your head and your
heart, finer than you can read of in a fairy tale. I am a man of
no importance, but I feel as though I were limitless: I embrace the
whole world!"

The passengers, looking at the tipsy and blissful bridegroom, are
infected by his cheerfulness and no longer feel sleepy. Instead of
one listener, Ivan Alexyevitch has now an audience of five. He
wriggles and splutters, gesticulates, and prattles on without
ceasing. He laughs and they all laugh.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen, don't think so much! Damn all this analysis!
If you want a drink, drink, no need to philosophize as to whether
it's bad for you or not. . . . Damn all this philosophy and
psychology!"

The guard walks through the compartment.

"My dear fellow," the bridegroom addresses him, "when you pass
through the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with
a white bird and tell her I'm here!"

"Yes, sir. Only there isn't a No. 209 in this train; there's 219!"

"Well, 219, then! It's all the same. Tell that lady, then, that her
husband is all right!"

Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:

"Husband. . . . Lady. . . . All in a minute! Husband. . . . Ha-ha!
I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a husband! Ach,
idiot! But think of her! . . . Yesterday she was a little girl, a
midget . . . it s simply incredible!"

"Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man," observes one
of the passengers; "one as soon expects to see a white elephant."

"Yes, and whose fault is it?" says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching his
long legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed toes.
"If you are not happy it's your own fault! Yes, what else do you
suppose it is? Man is the creator of his own happiness. If you want
to be happy you will be, but you don't want to be! You obstinately
turn away from happiness."

"Why, what next! How do you make that out?"

"Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his
life man should love. When that time comes you should love like a
house on fire, but you won't heed the