When you are at the Alhambra with Trofimov I hope you may accidentally jab out his eye with your fork.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
ALEXIN, May 18, 1891.
... I get up at five o’clock in the morning; evidently when I am old I shall get up at four. My forefathers all got up very early, before the cock. And I notice people who get up very early are horribly fussy. So I suppose I shall be a fussy, restless old man....
BOGIMOVO,
May 20.
... The carp bite capitally. I forgot all my sorrows yesterday; first I sat by the pond and caught carp, and then by the old mill and caught perch.
... The last two proclamations—about the Siberian railway and the exiles—pleased me very much. The Siberian railway is called a national concern, and the tone of the proclamation guarantees its speedy completion; and convicts who have completed such and such terms as settlers are allowed to return to Russia without the right to live in the provinces of Petersburg and Moscow. The newspapers have let this pass unnoticed, and yet it is something which has never been in Russia before—it is the first step towards abolishing the life sentence which has so long weighed on the public conscience as unjust and cruel in the extreme....