And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to Bolés, and an answer from Bolés to Teresa. I wrote those answers well.... She, of course, listened to them, and wept like anything, roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in return for my thus moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Bolés, she began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history, began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this time she is dead. My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up at the sky, and thus concluded: Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of better things the more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do not understand this. And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly---and very cruelly. The fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh, and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after day for ages. And we actually listen--and the Devil only knows how hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud sermonizing of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and so far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough of this. It is all as old as the hills--so old that it is a shame to speak of it Very old indeed--yes, that's where it is! VIII.--CHELKASH. The blue southern sky was bedimmed by the dust rising from the haven; the burning sun looked dully down into the greenish sea as if through a thin grey veil. It could not reflect itself in the water, which indeed was cut up by the strokes of oars and the furrows made by steam-screws and the sharp keels of Turkish feluccas and other sailing vessels, ploughing up in every direction the crowded harbour in which the free billows of the sea were confined within fetters of granite and crushed beneath the huge weights gliding over their crests, though they beat against the sides of the ships, beat against the shore, beat themselves into raging foam--foam begrimed by all sorts of floating rubbish.