ustification for an idle, careless life, as
it is indeed nothing but a sham, one of the forms of that same
idleness. Real intellectual work I have in all probability never
known.

Evening came on. We lived in Great Dvoryansky Street; it was the
principal street in the town, and in the absence of decent public
gardens our _beau monde_ used to use it as a promenade in the
evenings. This charming street did to some extent take the place
of a public garden, as on each side of it there was a row of poplars
which smelt sweet, particularly after rain, and acacias, tall bushes
of lilac, wild-cherries and apple-trees hung over the fences and
palings. The May twilight, the tender young greenery with its
shifting shades, the scent of the lilac, the buzzing of the insects,
the stillness, the warmth--how fresh and marvellous it all is,
though spring is repeated every year! I stood at the garden gate
and watched the passers-by. With most of them I had grown up and
at one time played pranks; now they might have been disconcerted
by my being near them, for I was poorly and unfashionably dressed,
and they used to say of my very narrow trousers and huge, clumsy
boots that they were like sticks of macaroni stuck in boats. Besides,
I had a bad reputation in the town because I had no decent social
position, and used often to play billiards in cheap taverns, and
also, perhaps, because I had on two occasions been hauled up before
an officer of the police, though I had done nothing whatever to
account for this.

In the big house opposite someone was playing the piano at Dolzhikov's.
It was beginning to get dark, and stars were twinkling in the sky.
Here my father, in an old top-hat with wide upturned brim, walked
slowly by with my sister on his arm, bowing in response to greetings.

"Look up," he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the same
umbrella with which he had beaten me that afternoon. "Look up at
the sky! Even the tiniest stars are all worlds! How insignificant
is man in comparison with the universe!"

And he said this in a tone that suggested that it was particularly
agreeable and flattering to him that he was so insignificant. How
absolutely devoid of talent and imagination he was! Sad to say, he
was the only architect in the town, and in the fifteen to twenty
years that I could remember not one single decent house had been
built in it. When any one asked him to plan a house, he usually
drew first the reception hall and