ve that she had suffered
much in life. This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing
herself, did not hinder the young people who came to her house from
passing the time pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid
his tribute to the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused
himself with society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts
rimes, which were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young
men, among them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and
with these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity
of all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with
mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.

To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early
disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of friendship
as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and showed him her
album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote: "Rustic trees,
your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."

On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:

La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.
Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile. *

* Death gives relief and death is peaceful.

Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.

Julie said this was charming

"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she said
to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a book.
"It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness and
despair, showing the possibility of consolation."

In reply Boris wrote these lines:

Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,
Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,
Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,
Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,
Et mele une douceur secrete
A ces pleurs que je sens couler. *

*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,
Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,
Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,
Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,
And mingle a secret sweetness
With these tears that I feel to be flowing.

For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris read
Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the reading
because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large gatherings
Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who