!
Thou findest it only
When thou swallowest the dust of the grave....
Bitter, bitter is this rest!
Sleep, ye dead.... But weep, ye living!

These verses were composed by a certain Gormitch-Gormitzky, a roving
poetaster, whom Alexyei Sergyeitch had harboured in his house because he
seemed to him a delicate and even subtle man; he wore shoes with knots
of ribbon, pronounced his _o's_ broadly, and, raising his eyes to
heaven, he sighed frequently. In addition to all these merits,
Gormitch-Gormitzky spoke French passably well, for he had been educated
in a Jesuit college, while Alexyei Sergyeitch only "understood" it. But
having once drunk himself dead-drunk in a dram-shop, this same subtle
Gormitzky displayed outrageous violence. He thrashed "to flinders"
Alexyei Sergyeitch's valet, the cook, two laundresses who happened
along, and even an independent carpenter, and smashed several panes in
the windows, yelling lustily the while: "Here now, I'll just show these
Russian sluggards, these unlicked katzapy!"[37]--And what strength that
puny little man displayed! Eight men could hardly control him! For this
turbulence Alexyei Sergyeitch gave orders that the rhymster should be
flung out of the house, after he had preliminarily been rolled in the
snow (it happened in the winter), to sober him.

"Yes," Alexyei Sergyeitch was wont to say, "my day is over; the horse is
worn out. I used to keep poets at my expense, and I used to buy pictures
and books from the Jews--and my geese were quite as good as those of
Mukhan, and I had genuine slate-coloured tumbler-pigeons.... I was an
amateur of all sorts of things! Except that I never was a dog-fancier,
because of the drunkenness and the clownishness! I was mettlesome,
untamable! God forbid that a Telyegin should be anything but first-class
in everything! And I had a splendid horse-breeding establishment.... And
those horses came ... whence, thinkest thou, my little sir?--From those
very renowned studs of the Tzar Ivan Alexyeitch, the brother of Peter
the Great.... I'm telling you the truth! All stallions, dark brown in
colour, with manes to their knees, tails to their hoofs.... Lions!
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! But what's the use of regretting it?
Every man has his limit fixed for him.--You cannot fly higher than
heaven, nor live in the water, nor escape from the earth.... Let us live
on a while longer, at any rate!"

And again the old man smiled and took a pin