g like it. Please read it aloud.
I want Mr. Shatov to hear it too."

With no little astonishment I read aloud the following missive:

"To the Perfection, Miss Tushin.

"Gracious Lady
"Lizaveta Nikolaevna!

"Oh, she's a sweet queen,
Lizaveta Tushin!
When on side-saddle she gallops by,
And in the breeze her fair tresses fly!
Or when with her mother in church she bows low
And on devout faces a red flush doth flow!
Then for the joys of lawful wedlock I aspire,
And follow her and her mother with tears of desire.

"Composed by an unlearned man in the midst of a discussion.

"Gracious Lady!

"I pity myself above all men that I did not lose my arm at Sevastopol,
not having been there at all, but served all the campaign delivering
paltry provisions, which I look on as a degradation. You are a goddess
of antiquity, and I am nothing, but have had a glimpse of infinity.
Look on it as a poem and no more, for, after all, poetry is nonsense and
justifies what would be considered impudence in prose. Can the sun be
angry with the infusoria if the latter composes verses to her from the
drop of water, where there is a multitude of them if you look through
the microscope? Even the club for promoting humanity to the larger
animals in tip-top society in Petersburg, which rightly feels compassion
for dogs and horses, despises the brief infusoria making no reference
to it whatever, because it is not big enough. I'm not big enough either.
The idea of marriage might seem droll, but soon I shall have property
worth two hundred souls through a misanthropist whom you ought to
despise. I can tell a lot and I can undertake to produce documents
that would mean Siberia. Don't despise my proposal. A letter from an
infusoria is of course in verse.

"Captain Lebyadkin your most humble friend.

"And he has time no end."

"That was written by a man in a drunken condition, a worthless fellow,"
I cried indignantly. "I know him."

"That letter I received yesterday," Liza began to explain, flushing
and speaking hurriedly. "I saw myself, at once, that it came from some
foolish creature, and I haven't yet shown it to maman, for fear of
upsetting her more. But if he is going to keep on like that, I don't
know how to act. Mavriky Nikolaevitch wants to go out and forbid him to
do it. As I have looked upon you as a colleague," she turned to Shatov,
"and as you live there, I wanted to question you so a