However, this melancholy little note, met from time to time, gradually grew in intensity in the third volume, until later on it lost all trace of the old carelessness, and developed, on the contrary, into a profound sadness. Tchekoff unconsciously gave up the "genre" of pleasant anecdote in order to concentrate all his attention on facts. This practice made him sad. Russia was, at this time, going through a period of prostration as a result of the last Russo-Turkish war. This war, which, at the cost of enormous sacrifices, ended in the liberation of the Bulgarian people, awakened among the Russians a hope of obtaining their own liberty, and provoked among the younger generation the most energetic efforts to obtain this liberty, no matter what the cost might be. Alas, this hope was frustrated! All efforts were in vain, a reaction followed, and the year 1880 brought the reaction to its height. From then on apathy followed in the steps of the great enthusiasm. All illusion fled. A kind of disenchantment filled all minds. Those who had hoped with such ardor, and had counted on their own strength, felt weak and powerless. Some confined themselves to moaning incessantly. A grey twilight enveloped Russian life and filled it with melancholy. These are the dreary aspects that Tchekoff describes, and none has excelled him in portraying the events of this hopeless reaction. His stories and dramas give us a long procession of people who succumb to the monotony, to the platitudes, to the desolation, of existence. It is in the following manner that one of his characters expresses his ideas on the subject of this moral crisis: "I was then not more than twenty-six years of age; nevertheless I was conscious not only that life was senseless, but that it was without any visible goal; that all was illusion and dupery; that, in its consequences and even in its very essence, the life of the exiled on the island of Sakhaline was very much the same as the life that was led at Nice; that the difference between the brain of Kant and the brain of a fly was very small; finally, that no one in this world was either right or wrong." This idea of the nothingness of life, with its extremes, monstrous and profitless, is often found in the work of Tchekoff. His story "The Kiss" is but a variation of this theme,--the absurdity of life. Lieutenant Riabovich, under the influence of a chance kiss, a kiss that was not meant for him, dreams of love for an entire summer; he waits impatiently for the return of the pretty stranger; but alas, his lovely dream cannot be realized, for the simple and cruel reason that no one is waiting for _him_, no one is interested in him. One day, on the banks of a stream, the young officer gives himself up to his reflections: