t of drawers, the tiled stove, the low chairs, the pictures
embroidered in wool and silk on canvas in solid, ugly frames. When one
remembers that all those objects were standing in the same places and
precisely in the same order when I was a little child, and used to come
here to name-day parties with my mother, it is simply unbelievable that
they could ever cease to exist.

I thought what a fearful difference between Butyga and me! Butyga who
made things, above all, solidly and substantially, and seeing in that
his chief object, gave to length of life peculiar significance, had no
thought of death, and probably hardly believed in its possibility; I,
when I built my bridges of iron and stone which would last a thousand
years, could not keep from me the thought, "It's not for long....it's no
use." If in time Butyga's cupboard and my bridge should come under the
notice of some sensible historian of art, he would say: "These were two
men remarkable in their own way: Butyga loved his fellow-creatures and
would not admit the thought that they might die and be annihilated, and
so when he made his furniture he had the immortal man in his mind. The
engineer Asorin did not love life or his fellow-creatures; even in
the happy moments of creation, thoughts of death, of finiteness and
dissolution, were not alien to him, and we see how insignificant and
finite, how timid and poor, are these lines of his...."

"I only heat these rooms," muttered Ivan Ivanitch, showing me his rooms.
"Ever since my wife died and my son was killed in the war, I have kept
the best rooms shut up. Yes... see..."

He opened a door, and I saw a big room with four columns, an old piano,
and a heap of peas on the floor; it smelt cold and damp.

"The garden seats are in the next room..." muttered Ivan Ivanitch.
"There's no one to dance the mazurka now.... I've shut them up."

We heard a noise. It was Dr. Sobol arriving. While he was rubbing his
cold hands and stroking his wet beard, I had time to notice in the
first place that he had a very dull life, and so was pleased to see Ivan
Ivanitch and me; and, secondly, that he was a naive and simple-hearted
man. He looked at me as though I were very glad to see him and very much
interested in him.

"I have not slept for two nights," he said, looking at me naively and
stroking his beard. "One night with a confinement, and the next I stayed
at a peasant's with the bugs biting me all night. I am as sleepy as
Satan