To write stories is stupid and shameful. To write verses--well, write them; but to love a good man is very pleasant. Yet perhaps, against my will and intention, not I, but an unripe story inside me, compels me to love you. It sometimes seems like that. Do what one will amid the manure and the mange, one somehow begins to compose. Thank heaven, I have not yet allowed myself to write, and will not do so.... Thank you exceedingly for your trouble about a veterinary. I have found one in Toúla and have begun the cure, but I do not know what will come of it.--And, may the devil take them all,--Drouzhínin is appealing to me as a matter of friendship to write a story. I really want to. I will spin such a yarn that there will be no head or tail to it.... But joking apart, how is your Hafiz getting on? [Fet was translating some poems by Hafiz.] Turn it which way you will, the height of wisdom and fortitude for me is to enjoy the poetry of others, and not to let my own in ugly garb loose among men, but to consume it myself with my daily bread. But at times one suddenly wishes to be a great man, and it is so annoying that this has not yet come about! One even hurries to get up quicker or to finish dinner in order to begin.... Send me a poem, the healthiest of those you have translated from Hafiz, _me faire venir l'eau à la bouche_,[39] and I will send you a sample of wheat. Hunting has bored me to death. The weather is excellent, but I do not hunt alone. [39] To make my mouth water. In company, Tolstoy was however a keen sportsman, and in December 1858 nearly lost his life while out bear-shooting. He has told the story, with some embellishments, in one of the tales for children contained in the volume. _Twenty-three Tales_.[40] The real facts were these: [40] Included in the _World's Classics_. Tolstoy and his brother Nicholas had made the acquaintance of S. S. Gromeka, a well-known publicist who shared their fondness for hunting--a sport very different in Russia from what it is in England, as readers of Tolstoy's descriptions well know.