The Short Stories

I am still tempted to imagine that nature had some grand, marvellous design when she created that girl.

I was ashamed at the sight of the footmen, the coachmen, and the workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they were looking at me and thinking: “Why are you doing nothing?”

The Russian actor does not know how to be funny; he acts with profundity even in a farce.

Good-bye, Yegor Vlassitch,” whispered Pelagea, and she stood on tiptoe to see the white cap once more

eyes were full of sadness and tender affection

They give me a rouble and a half a month

deliberately uncocking the gun

sturgeon was a bit too strong!”

These words, so ordinary, for some reason moved Gurov to indignation

And he thought, musing, that there had been another episode or adventure in his life, and it, too, was at an end, and nothing was left of it but a memory

higher aims of our existence