tion at every mouthful, at every step--all this
will reduce me at last to idiocy. I went out of my mind, I had
megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident, and even happy; I
was interesting and original. Now I have become more sensible and
stolid, but I am just like every one else: I am--mediocrity; I
am weary of life. . . . Oh, how cruelly you have treated me! . . .
I saw hallucinations, but what harm did that do to any one? I ask,
what harm did that do any one?"

"Goodness knows what you are saying!" sighed Yegor Semyonitch. "It's
positively wearisome to listen to it."

"Then don't listen."

The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch, irritated
Kovrin now; he answered him drily, coldly, and even rudely, never
looked at him but with irony and hatred, while Yegor Semyonitch was
overcome with confusion and cleared his throat guiltily, though he
was not conscious of any fault in himself. At a loss to understand
why their charming and affectionate relations had changed so abruptly,
Tanya huddled up to her father and looked anxiously in his face;
she wanted to understand and could not understand, and all that was
clear to her was that their relations were growing worse and worse
every day, that of late her father had begun to look much older,
and her husband had grown irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and
uninteresting. She could not laugh or sing; at dinner she ate
nothing; did not sleep for nights together, expecting something
awful, and was so worn out that on one occasion she lay in a dead
faint from dinner-time till evening. During the service she thought
her father was crying, and now while the three of them were sitting
together on the terrace she made an effort not to think of it.

"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their
kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy and
their inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed had taken bromide for
his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the twenty-four, and
had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have left no more trace
after him than his dog. Doctors and kind relations will succeed in
stupefying mankind, in making mediocrity pass for genius and in
bringing civilisation to ruin. If only you knew," Kovrin said with
annoyance, "how grateful I am to you."

He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got
up quickly and went into the house. It was still, and the fragrance
of the tobacco plant