risk his life, and so on. He always had one answer—'wretchedness.'
'But why are you wretched?'
'Why! how can you ask? If one comes, anyway, to one's self, begins to feel, to think of the poverty, of the injustice, of Russia. . . . Well, it's all over with me!. . . one's so wretched at once—one wants to put a bullet through one's head! One's forced to start drinking.'
'Why ever do you drag Russia in?'
'How can I help it? Can't be helped! That's why I'm afraid to think.'
'It all comes, and your wretchedness too, from having nothing to do.'
'But I don't know how to do anything, uncle! dear fellow! Take one's life, and stake it on a card—that I can do! Come, you tell me what I ought to do, what to risk my life for? This instant. . . I'll. . .'
'But you must simply live. . . . Why risk your life?'
'I can't! You say I act thoughtlessly. . . . But what else can I do?. . . If one starts thinking—good God, all that comes into one's head! It's only Germans who can think!. . .'
What use was it talking to him? He was a desperate man, and that's all one can say.
Of the Caucasus legends I have spoken about, I will tell you two or three. One day, in a party of officers, Misha began boasting of a sabre he had got by exchange—'a genuine Persian
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