became as restless as if they had hundreds of prickles beneath their skin. Now, I look upon it like this. Here's a book. Very well! An interesting book. So much the better. But every book has been written by a man, and a man cannot leap higher than his own head. All books are written with one object: they want to prove that good is good and bad is bad, and it's all one whether you have read a hundred of them or a thousand. My wife discussed her little books by the dozen, so that I began to tell her straight out that I should have had a better time of it if I had married the parson instead of her. It was only the parson who saved me from boredom, and but for him I should have bolted from my wife there and then. As soon as the Pharisees called upon her--off I went to the parson. In this way I lived through a year and a half. From sheer boredom I helped the parson in the church services. At one time I read the epistles, at another I stood in the choir and sang: "From my youth up many passions have fought against me." [2] A boisterous national dance of Russia. I went through a good deal in those days, and I shall be justified for many things at the Last Day for this endurance. But now my parson was joined by a young kinswoman, and this woman came to him first because he was a widower, and in the second place because his swine had eaten him, _i.e.,_ had not eaten him entirely, but spoilt the look of him. He had, you must know, fallen down drunk in the yard and gone to sleep, and the swine had come into the courtyard and nibbled away at his ears, cheeks, and neck. It is notorious that swine eat all sorts of garbage. This diminution of his person threw my parson into a fever, and caused him to summon his kinswoman that she might cherish him and I might cherish her. Well, she and I set about the business very zealously, and with great success. But my wife found out how the land lay--found out I say, and at last it came to a quarrel. What was I to do? I gave her as good as I got. Then she said to me: "Leave my house!" Well, I thought the matter well over, and I quietly went away--right away from the town. Thus the bonds of my marriage were unloosed. If my consort is still alive she certainly regards me as happily dead to her. I have never felt the slightest desire to see her again. I also think that it is well for her to forget me. May she live in peace! Greatly did she bore me in those days.