and at last
they asked our advice. It turned out that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was
thinking of bringing out a book which she thought would be of use,
but being quite inexperienced she needed some one to help her. The
earnestness with which she began to explain her plan to Shatov quite
surprised me.

"She must be one of the new people," I thought. "She has not been to
Switzerland for nothing."

Shatov listened with attention, his eyes fixed on the ground, showing
not the slightest surprise that a giddy young lady in society should
take up work that seemed so out of keeping with her.

Her literary scheme was as follows. Numbers of papers and journals are
published in the capitals and the provinces of Russia, and every day a
number of events are reported in them. The year passes, the newspapers
are everywhere folded up and put away in cupboards, or are torn up
and become litter, or are used for making parcels or wrapping things.
Numbers of these facts make an impression and are remembered by the
public, but in the course of years they are forgotten. Many people would
like to look them up, but it is a labour for them to embark upon this
sea of paper, often knowing nothing of the day or place or even year in
which the incident occurred. Yet if all the facts for a whole year were
brought together into one book, on a definite plan, and with a definite
object, under headings with references, arranged according to months and
days, such a compilation might reflect the characteristics of Russian
life for the whole year, even though the facts published are only a
small fraction of the events that take place.

"Instead of a number of newspapers there would be a few fat books,
that's all," observed Shatov.

But Lizaveta Nikolaevna clung to her idea, in spite of the difficulty
of carrying it out and her inability to describe it. "It ought to be
one book, and not even a very thick one," she maintained. But even if it
were thick it would be clear, for the great point would be the plan and
the character of the presentation of facts. Of course not all would
be collected and reprinted. The decrees and acts of government,
local regulations, laws--all such facts, however important, might be
altogether omitted from the proposed publication. They could leave out a
great deal and confine themselves to a selection of events more or
less characteristic of the moral life of the people, of the personal
character of the Russian people at the prese