... By the way, read Grigorovitch’s letter to my enemy Anna Ivanovna. Let her soul rejoice. “Chekhov belongs to the generation which has perceptibly begun to turn away from the West and concentrate more closely on their own world....” “Venice and Florence are nothing else than dull towns for a man of any intelligence....” _Merci_, but I don’t understand persons of such intelligence. One would have to be a bull to “turn away from the West” on arriving for the first time in Venice or Florence. There is very little intelligence in doing so. But I should like to know who is taking the trouble to announce to the whole universe that I did not like foreign parts. Good Lord! I never let drop one word about it. I liked even Bologna. Whatever ought I to have done? Howled with rapture? Broken the windows? Embraced Frenchmen? Do they say I gained no ideas? But I fancy I did.... We must see each other--or more correctly, I must see you. I am missing you already, although to-day I caught two hundred and fifty-two carp and one crayfish. BOGIMOVO, June 4, 1891. Why did you go away so soon? I was very dull, and could not get back into my usual petty routine very quickly afterwards. As luck would have it, after you went away the weather became warm and magnificent, and the fish began to bite. ... The mongoose has been found. A sportsman with dogs found him on this side of the Oka in a quarry; if there had not been a crevice in the quarry the dogs would have torn the mongoose to pieces. It had been astray in the woods for eighteen days. In spite of the climatic conditions, which are awful for it, it had grown fat--such is the effect of freedom. Yes, my dear sir, freedom is a grand thing. I advise you again to go to Feodosia by the Volga. Anna Ivanovna and you will enjoy it, and it will be new and interesting for the children. If I were free I would come with you. It’s snug now on those Volga steamers, they feed you well and the passengers are interesting. Forgive me for your having been so uncomfortable with us. When I am grown up and order furniture from Venice, as I certainly shall do, you won’t have such a cold and rough time with me. TO L. S. MIZINOV. BOGIMOVO, June 12, 1891. Enchanting, amazing Lika! Captivated by the Circassian Levitan, you have completely forgotten that you promised my brother Ivan you would come on the 1st of June, and you do not answer my sister’s letter at all. I wrote to you from Moscow to invite you, but my letter, too, remained a voice crying in the wilderness. Though you are received in aristocratic society, you have been badly brought up all the same, and I don’t regret having once chastised you with a switch. You must understand that expecting your arrival from day to day not only wearies us, but puts us to expense. In an ordinary way we only have for dinner what is left of yesterday’s soup, but when we expect visitors we have also a dish of boiled beef, which we buy from the neighbouring cooks.