The truth must be told: by no means all visitors spared A. P.'s time and nerves, and some of them were quite merciless. I remember one striking, and almost incredible instance of the banality and indelicacy which could be displayed by a man of the so-called artistic power.

It was a pleasant, cool and windless summer morning. A. P. was in an unusually light and cheerful mood. Suddenly there appeared as from the blue a stout gentleman (who subsequently turned out to be an architect), who sent his card to Chekhov and asked for an interview. A. P. received him. The architect came in, introduced himself, and, without taking any notice of the placard “You are requested not to smoke,” without asking any permission, lit a huge stinking Riga cigar. Then, after paying, as was inevitable, a few stone-heavy compliments to his host, he began on the business which brought him here.

The business consisted in the fact that the architect's little son, a school boy of the third form, was running in the streets the other day and from a habit peculiar to boys, whilst running, touched with his hand anything he came across: lamp-posts, or posts or fences. At last he managed to push his hand into a barbed wire fence and thus scratched his palm. “You see now, my worthy A. P.,”—the architect concluded his tale, “I shall very much like you to write a letter about it in the newspapers. It is lucky that Kolya (his boy) got off with a scratch, but it's only a chance. He might have cut an artery—what would have happened then?” “Yes, it's a nuisance,” Chekhov answered, “but, unfortunately, I cannot be of any use to you. I do not write, nor have ever written, letters in the newspapers. I only write stories.” “So much the better, so much the better! Put it in a story”—the architect was delighted. “Just put the name of the landlord in full letters. You may even put my own name, I do not object to it…. Still … it would be best if you only put my initials, not the full name…. There are only two genuine authors left in Russia, you and Mr. P.” (and the architect gave the name of a notorious literary tailor).

I am not able to repeat even a hundredth part of the boring commonplaces which the injured architect managed to speak, since he made the interview last until he finished the cigar to the end, and the study had to be aired for a long time to get rid of the smell. But when at last he left, A. P. came out into the garden completely upset with red spots on his cheeks. His voice trembled, when he turned reproachfully to his sister Marie and to a friend who sat on the bench:

“Could you not shield me from that man? You should have sent word that I was needed somewhere. He has tortured me!”

I also remember,—and this I am sorry to say was partly my fault—how a certain self-assured general came to him to express his appreciation as a reader, and, probably, desiring to give Chekhov pleasure, he began, with his legs spread open and the fists of his turned-out hand leaning on them, to vilify a young author, whose great popularity was then only beginning to grow. And Chekhov, at once, shrank into himself, and sat all the time with his eyes cast down, coldly, without saying a single word. And only from the quick reproachful look, which he cast at my friend, who had introduced that general, did he show what pain he caused.

Just as shyly and coldly he regarded praises lavished on him. He would retire into his niche, on the divan, his eyelids trembled, slowly fell and were not again raised, and his face became motionless and gloomy. Sometimes, when immoderate raptures came from some one he knew, he would try to turn the conversation into a joke, and give it a different direction. He would suddenly say, without rhyme or reason, with a light little laugh:

—“I like reading what the Odessa reporters write about me.”

“What is that?”

“It is very funny—all lies. Last spring one of them appeared in my hotel. He asked for an interview. And I had no time for it. So I said: ‘Excuse me but I am busy now. But write whatever you like; it is of no consequence to me.’ Well, he did write. It drove me into a fever.”