TRANSLATORS' NOTE
Stiepanovich and Stepanich are two forms of the same name, meaning—"son of Stephen." The abbreviated form is the more intimate and familiar.
The Russian dishes mentioned in "A Tedious Story" have no exact equivalents. Sossoulki are a kind of little dumplings eaten in soup; schi is a soup made of sour cabbage; and kasha is a kind of porridge.
The words of the song which the students sing in "The Fit" come from Poushkin.
CONTENTS
[THE BET]
[A TEDIOUS STORY]
[THE FIT]
[MISFORTUNE]
[AFTER THE THEATRE]
[THAT WRETCHED BOY]
[ENEMIES]
[A TRIFLING OCCURRENCE]
[A GENTLEMAN FRIEND]
[OVERWHELMING SENSATIONS]
[EXPENSIVE LESSONS]
[A LIVING CALENDAR]
[OLD AGE]
[THE BET]
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years ago. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment.