The guard walks through the compartment.

“My dear fellow,” the bridegroom addresses him, “when you pass through the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with a white bird and tell her I’m here!”

“Yes, sir.  Only there isn’t a No. 209 in this train; there’s 219!”

“Well, 219, then!  It’s all the same.  Tell that lady, then, that her husband is all right!”

Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans: 

“Husband. . . .  Lady. . . .  All in a minute!  Husband. . . .  Ha-ha!  I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a husband!  Ach, idiot!  But think of her! . . .  Yesterday she was a little girl, a midget . . . it s simply incredible!”

“Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man,” observes one of the passengers; “one as soon expects to see a white elephant.”

“Yes, and whose fault is it?” says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching his long legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed toes.  “If you are not happy it’s your own fault!  Yes, what else do you suppose it is?  Man is the creator of his own happiness.  If you want to be happy you will be, but you don’t want to be!  You obstinately turn away from happiness.”

“Why, what next!  How do you make that out?”

“Very simply.  Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his life man should love.  When that time comes you should love like a house on fire, but you won’t heed the dictates of nature, you keep waiting for something.  What’s more, it’s laid down by law that the normal man should enter upon matrimony.  There’s no happiness without marriage.  When the propitious moment has come, get married.  There’s no use in shilly-shallying. . . .  But you don’t get married, you keep waiting for something!  Then the Scriptures tell us that ’wine maketh glad the heart of man.’ . . .  If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go to the refreshment bar and have a drink.  The great thing is not to be too clever, but to follow the beaten track!  The beaten track is a grand thing!”

“You say that man is the creator of his own happiness.  How the devil is he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured mother-in-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the winds?  Everything depends on chance.  If we had an accident at this moment you’d sing a different tune.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” retorts the bridegroom.  “Railway accidents only happen once a year.  I’m not afraid of an accident, for there is no reason for one.  Accidents are exceptional!  Confound them!  I don’t want to talk of them!  Oh, I believe we’re stopping at a station.”

“Where are you going now?” asks Pyotr Petrovitch.  “To Moscow or somewhere further south?

“Why, bless you!  How could I go somewhere further south, when I’m on my way to the north?”

“But Moscow isn’t in the north.”

“I know that, but we’re on our way to Petersburg,” says Ivan Alexyevitch.