* * * * *

When that radical, having dined with his coat off, walked into his bedroom and I saw the braces on his back, it became clear to me that that radical is a bourgeois, a hopeless bourgeois.

* * * * *

Some one saw Z., an unbeliever and blasphemer, secretly praying in front of the icon in the cathedral, and they all teased him.

* * * * *

They called the manager “four-funneled cruiser,” because he had already gone “through the chimney” (bankrupt) four times.

* * * * *

He is not stupid, he was at the university, has studied long and assiduously, but in writing he makes gross mistakes.

* * * * *

Countess Nadin’s daughter gradually turns into a housekeeper; she is very timid, and can only say “No-o,” “Yes-s,” and her hands always tremble.  Somehow or other a Zemstvo official wished to marry her; he is a widower and she marries him, with him too it was “Yes-s,” “No-o”; she was very much afraid of her husband and did not love him; one day he happened to give a loud cough, it gave her a fright, and she died.

* * * * *

Caressing her lover:  “My vulture.”

* * * * *

For a play:  If only you would say something funny.  But for twenty years we have lived together and you have always talked of serious things; I hate serious things.

* * * * *

A cook, with a cigarette in her mouth, lies:  “I studied at a high school ...  I know what for the earth is round.”

* * * * *

“Society for finding and raising anchors of steamers and barges,” and the Society’s agent at all functions without fail makes a speech, a la N., and without fail promises.

* * * * *

Super-mysticism.

* * * * *

When I become rich, I shall have a harem in which I shall keep fat naked women, with their buttocks painted green.

* * * * *

A shy young man came on a visit for the night:  suddenly a deaf old woman came into his room, carrying a cupping-glass, and bled him; he thought that this must be the usual thing and so did not protest; in the morning it turned out that the old woman had made a mistake.

* * * * *

Surname:  Verstax.

* * * * *

The more stupid the peasant, the better does the horse understand him.

THEMES, THOUGHTS, NOTES, AND FRAGMENTS.

...  How stupid and for the most part how false, since if one man seeks to devour another or tell him something unpleasant it has nothing to do with Granovsky.[1]