It is over.... Life is over. I shall certainly die to-day. It's hot outside ... almost suffocating ... or is it that my lungs are already refusing to breathe? My little comedy is played out. The curtain is falling. Sinking into nothing, I cease to be superfluous ... Ah, how brilliant that sun is! Those mighty beams breathe of eternity ... Farewell, Terentyevna!... This morning as she sat at the window she was crying ... perhaps over me ... and perhaps because she too will soon have to die. I have made her promise not to kill Tresor. It's hard for me to write.... I will put down the pen.... It's high time; death is already approaching with ever-increasing rumble, like a carriage at night over the pavement; it is here, it is flitting about me, like the light breath which made the prophet's hair stand up on end. I am dying.... Live, you who are living, 'And about the grave May youthful life rejoice, And nature heedless Glow with eternal beauty. _Note by the Editor_.--Under this last line was a head in profile with a big streak of hair and moustaches, with eyes _en face_, and eyelashes like rays; and under the head some one had written the following words: 'This manuscript was read And the Contents of it Not Approved By Peter Zudotyeshin My My My My dear Sir, Peter Zudotyeshin, Dear Sir.' But as the handwriting of these lines was not in the least like the handwriting in which the other part of the manuscript was written, the editor considers that he is justified in concluding that the above lines were added subsequently by another person, especially since it has come to his (the editor's) knowledge that Mr. Tchulkaturin actually did die on the night between the 1st and 2nd of April in the year 18--, at his native place, Sheep's Springs. * * * * * A TOUR IN THE FOREST FIRST DAY