YALTA, January 29, 1900.
DEAR LIRA,
They have written to me that you have grown very fat and become dignified, and I did not expect that you would remember me and write to me. But you have remembered me—and thank you very much for it, dear. You write nothing about your health: evidently it’s not bad, and I am glad. I hope your mother is well and that everything is going on all right. I am nearly well; I am ill from time to time, but not often, and only because I am old—the bacilli have nothing to do with it. And when I see a lovely woman now I smile in an aged way, and drop my lower lip—that’s all.
Lika, I am dreadfully bored in Yalta. My life does not run or flow, but crawls along. Don’t forget me; write to me now and then, anyway. In your letters just as in your life you are a very interesting woman. I press your hand warmly.
TO GORKY.
YALTA, February 3, 1900.
DEAR ALEXEY MAXIMOVITCH,
Thank you for your letter, for the lines about Tolstoy and about “Uncle Vanya,” which I haven’t seen on the stage; thanks altogether for not forgetting me. Here in this blessed Yalta one could hardly keep alive without letters. The idleness, the idiotic winter with the temperature always above freezing-point, the complete absence of interesting women, the pig-faces on the sea-front—all this may spoil a man and wear him out in a very short time. I am tired of it; it seems to me as though the winter had been going on for ten years.