"Straight from the pipe. A man so binds himself to an idea, grows one with it completely, and then something comes and, behold! of those palaces as much remains as of the smoke which I blow out at this moment." An immense roll of smoke rose up from Augustinovich's lips, and striking the ceiling was scattered on all sides. The conversation was stopped for a while. "Yosef, hadst thou been in love before knowing Gustav and Pani Helena?" "Had I lo-v-ed?" drawled Yosef, looking at the light through his glass of tea. "What? had I loved? Yes, I turned my head for a moment, but that did not push me out of life's ordinary conditions, it did not lead me out of the order of the day. I will say sincerely, though, that I have not been in love." Augustinovich, raising the stem of his pipe, began to declaim with solemnity,-- "O woman! helpless down! O giddy creature!" "Well, what is it?" asked Yosef, laughing. "Nothing, my reminiscences. Ei, it was different with me. I was as mad as a maniac a couple of times. Once, even in spite of misery, I tried to be an orderly person; it was difficult, but I tried." "And how did it end?" "Prosaically. I was giving lessons in a certain house. There were two children, a little son and a grown-up daughter. I taught the son and fell in love with the daughter. I told her this one evening, and tears came to my eyes. She was confused a little, and then she laughed. Thou wilt not believe, Yosef, what an ugly laugh that was, for she saw how much the confession had cost me, and besides she had enticed me on, to begin with. She went at once with a complaint to her 'mamma.'" "Well, what did the mamma do?" "The 'mamma' told me first that I was a scrub, whereupon I bowed to her; second she told me to go my way, and third she threw a five-ruble note on the floor before me. I picked up the note, for it belonged to me, and from it I got drunk that evening and next morning also." "And then?" "Then the next evening and the third morning." "And so on?" "No. On the fourth day I had an immense cry, and later, when I had cured myself a little, not of drinking, but of love, I tried to fall in love with the first woman I met; but I could not love any more, I give thee my word of honor." "And hast thou no hope for the future?" Augustinovich thought a moment, and answered,-- "No, I have no respect now for women. As much as I believed in them before, as much as I honored and loved them as the highest reward of toil and effort, that much do I like them now, dost understand? That excludes love." "But happiness." "Not a word about happiness. So to-day I whistle when I want to cry, and therefore envy thee." Yosef looked quickly at Augustinovich. "What dost thou envy me?"