y guldens, and being
suddenly revived by the money as a morphia-maniac is by morphia,
beginning to laugh loudly at his wife, at himself, at his creditors.

At last it began to be rainy and cold. We went to Italy, and I
telegraphed to my father begging him for mercy's sake to send me
eight hundred roubles to Rome. We stayed in Venice, in Bologna, in
Florence, and in every town invariably put up at an expensive hotel,
where we were charged separately for lights, and for service, and
for heating, and for bread at lunch, and for the right of having
dinner by ourselves. We ate enormously. In the morning they gave
us _cafe complet_; at one o'clock lunch: meat, fish, some sort of
omelette, cheese, fruits, and wine. At six o'clock dinner of eight
courses with long intervals, during which we drank beer and wine.
At nine o'clock tea. At midnight Ariadne would declare she was
hungry, and ask for ham and boiled eggs. We would eat to keep her
company.

In the intervals between meals we used to rush about the museums
and exhibitions in continual anxiety for fear we should be late for
dinner or lunch. I was bored at the sight of the pictures; I longed
to be at home to rest; I was exhausted, looked about for a chair
and hypocritically repeated after other people: "How exquisite,
what atmosphere!" Like overfed boa constrictors, we noticed only
the most glaring objects. The shop windows hypnotised us; we went
into ecstasies over imitation brooches and bought a mass of useless
trumpery.

The same thing happened in Rome, where it rained and there was a
cold wind. After a heavy lunch we went to look at St. Peter's, and
thanks to our replete condition and perhaps the bad weather, it
made no sort of impression on us, and detecting in each other an
indifference to art, we almost quarrelled.

The money came from my father. I went to get it, I remember, in the
morning. Lubkov went with me.

"The present cannot be full and happy when one has a past," said
he. "I have heavy burdens left on me by the past. However, if only
I get the money, it's no great matter, but if not, I'm in a fix.
Would you believe it, I have only eight francs left, yet I must
send my wife a hundred and my mother another. And we must live here
too. Ariadne's like a child; she won't enter into the position, and
flings away money like a duchess. Why did she buy a watch yesterday?
And, tell me, what object is there in our going on playing at being
good children? Why, our