I am not able to repeat even a hundredth part of the boring commonplaces which the injured architect managed to speak, since he made the interview last until he finished the cigar to the end, and the study had to be aired for a long time to get rid of the smell. But when at last he left, A. P. came out into the garden completely upset with red spots on his cheeks. His voice trembled, when he turned reproachfully to his sister Marie and to a friend who sat on the bench: "Could you not shield me from that man? You should have sent word that I was needed somewhere. He has tortured me!" I also remember,--and this I am sorry to say was partly my fault--how a certain self-assured general came to him to express his appreciation as a reader, and, probably, desiring to give Chekhov pleasure, he began, with his legs spread open and the fists of his turned-out hand leaning on them, to vilify a young author, whose great popularity was then only beginning to grow. And Chekhov, at once, shrank into himself, and sat all the time with his eyes cast down, coldly, without saying a single word. And only from the quick reproachful look, which he cast at my friend, who had introduced that general, did he show what pain he caused. Just as shyly and coldly he regarded praises lavished on him. He would retire into his niche, on the divan, his eyelids trembled, slowly fell and were not again raised, and his face became motionless and gloomy. Sometimes, when immoderate raptures came from some one he knew, he would try to turn the conversation into a joke, and give it a different direction. He would suddenly say, without rhyme or reason, with a light little laugh: --"I like reading what the Odessa reporters write about me." "What is that?" "It is very funny--all lies. Last spring one of them appeared in my hotel. He asked for an interview. And I had no time for it. So I said: 'Excuse me but I am busy now. But write whatever you like; it is of no consequence to me.' Well, he did write. It drove me into a fever." And once with a most serious face he said: --"You know, in Yalta every cabman knows me. They say: 'O, Chekhov, that man, the reader? I know him.' For some reason they call me reader. Perhaps they think that I read psalm-services for the dead? You, old fellow, ought to ask a cabman what my occupation is...." V