JAMES KENNEDY. ASSJA. BY IVAN TOURGUÉNEFF. I was then twenty-five years old, began N. N. As you see, the story is of days long past. I was absolutely my own master, and was making a foreign tour, not to "finish my education," as the phrase is nowadays, but to look about me in the world a little. I was healthy, young, light-hearted; I had plenty of money and as yet no cares; I lived in the present and did precisely as I wished; in one word, life was in full flower with me. It did not occur to me that man is not like a plant, and that his time of bloom is but once. Youth eats its gilded gingerbread, and thinks that is to be its daily food; but the time comes when one longs in vain for a bit of dry bread. But it is not worth while to speak of that. I was travelling without aim or plan: made stops wherever it pleased me, and went on whenever I felt the need of seeing fresh faces--especially faces. Men interested me above all things. I detested monuments, collections of curiosities. The mere sight of a guide roused in me feelings of weariness and fury. In the Dresden "Grüne Gewölbe" I nearly lost my wits. Nature made a powerful impression upon me; but I did not love her so-called beauties--her mighty hills, her crags and torrents. I did not like to have them take possession of me and disturb my tranquillity. Faces, on the contrary--living, earthly faces, men's talk, laughter, movements--I could not do without. In the midst of a crowd I was always particularly gay and at my ease. It gave me real pleasure merely to go where others went, to shout when others shouted, and at the same time to observe how these others shouted. It pleased me to observe men--yes, I did not observe them merely; I studied them with a delighted and insatiable curiosity. But I am digressing again. Twenty years ago, then, I was living in the little German town of S----, on the left bank of the Rhine. I sought solitude. I had been wounded to the heart by a young widow whose acquaintance I had made at a watering-place. She was extremely pretty and vivacious, flirted with everybody--alas! with me also, poor rustic! At first she had lifted me to the skies, but soon plunged me in despair when she sacrificed me to a rosy-cheeked lieutenant from Bavaria. Seriously speaking, the wound in my heart was not very deep; but I considered it my duty to give myself for a time to melancholy and retirement--what pleasure youth finds in these!--and accordingly settled myself in S----.