Daddy writes very, very quickly, without corrections or pauses, he has scarcely time to turn over the pages. The busts and portraits of celebrated authors look at his swiftly racing pen and, keeping stock still, seem to be thinking: “Oh my, how you are going it!”

“Sh!” squeaks the pen.

“Sh!” whisper the authors, when his knee jolts the table and they are set trembling.

All at once Krasnyhin draws himself up, lays down his pen and listens.…He hears an even monotonous whispering.…It is Foma Nikolaevitch, the lodger in the next room, saying his prayers.

“I say!” cries Krasnyhin. “Couldn’t you, please, say your prayers more quietly? You prevent me from writing!”

“Very sorry.…” Foma Nikolaevitch answers timidly.

“Sh!”

After covering five pages, Krasnyhin stretches and looks at his watch.

“Goodness, three o’clock already,” he moans. “Other people are asleep while I…I alone must work!”

Shattered and exhausted he goes, with his head on one side, to the bedroom to wake his wife, and says in a languid voice:

“Nadya, get me some more tea! I…feel weak.”

He writes till four o’clock and would readily have written till six if his subject had not been exhausted. Coquetting and posing to himself and the inanimate objects about him, far from any indiscreet, critical eye, tyrannizing and domineering over the little anthill that fate has put in his power are the honey and the salt of his existence. And how different is this despot here at home from the humble, meek, dull- witted little man we are accustomed to see in the editor’s offices!

“I am so exhausted that I am afraid I shan’t sleep…”he says as he gets into bed. “Our work, this cursed, ungrateful, hard labour, exhausts the soul even more than the body.…I had better take some bromide.…God knows, if it were not for my family I’d throw up the work.…To write to order! It is awful.”

He sleeps till twelve or one o’clock in the day, sleeps a sound, healthy sleep.…Ah! how he would sleep, what dreams he would have, how he would spread himself if he were to become a well- known writer, an editor, or even a sub-editor!

“He has been writing all night,” whispers his wife with a scared expression on her face. “Sh!”

No one dares to speak or move or make a sound. His sleep is something sacred, and the culprit who offends against it will pay dearly for his fault.

“Hush!” floats over the flat. “Hush!”

1886