ssible to live in town. The peace and the quiet of it oppress me.
I dare not look in at the windows, for nothing is more dreadful to see
than the sight of a happy family, sitting round a table, having tea. I
am an old man now and am no good for the struggle. I commenced late. I
can only grieve within my soul, and fret and sulk. At night my head
buzzes with the rush of my thoughts and I cannot sleep.... Ah! If I were
young!"

Ivan Ivanich walked excitedly up and down the room and repeated:

"If I were young."

He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him first by one hand and
then by the other.

"Pavel Konstantinich," he said in a voice of entreaty, "don't be
satisfied, don't let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young,
strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor
should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not
in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand.
Do good!"

Ivan Ivanich said this with a piteous supplicating smile, as though he
were asking a personal favour.

Then they all three sat in different corners of the drawing-room and
were silent. Ivan Ivanich's story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor
Aliokhin. With the generals and ladies looking down from their gilt
frames, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to hear the story
of a miserable official who ate gooseberries.... Somehow they had a
longing to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And the
mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything--the lamp with
its coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet--told
how the very people who now looked down at them from their frames once
walked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueya
was near--was much better than any story.

Aliokhin wanted very much to go to bed; he had to get up for his work
very early, about two in the morning, and now his eyes were closing,
but he was afraid of his guests saying something interesting without his
hearing it, so he would not go. He did not trouble to think whether what
Ivan Ivanich had been saying was clever or right; his guests were
talking of neither groats, nor hay, nor tar, but of something which had
no bearing on his life, and he liked it and wanted them to go on....

"However, it's time to go to bed," said Bourkin, getting up. "I will
wish you good night."

Aliokhin said good night and went down-stairs, and