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If only I had your style–oh! what a picture I would draw for you! But unfortunately, as you are aware, I’m an illiterate person. The woman I am expecting, and who has kept me now more than a hour continually starting and looking at the door, loves me–but how I love her I fancy even your fluent pen could not describe.

‘I must tell you that it is three months since I got to know her, and from the very first day of our acquaintance my love mounts continually crescendo, like a chromatic scale, higher and higher, and at the present moment I am simply in the seventh heaven. I jest, but in reality my devotion to this woman is something extraordinary, supernatural. Fancy, I scarcely talk to her, I can do nothing but stare at her, and laugh like a fool. I sit at her feet, I feel that I’m awfully silly and happy, simply inexcusably happy. It sometimes happens that she lays her hand on my head…. Well, I tell you, simply … But there, you can’t understand it; you ‘re a philosopher and always were a philosopher. Her name is Nina, Ninetta, as you like; she’s the daughter of a rich merchant here. Fine as any of your Raphaels; fiery as gunpowder, gay, so clever that it’s amazing how she can care for a fool like me; she sings like a bird, and her eyes …

‘Please excuse this unintentional break…. I fancied the door creaked…. No, she’s not coming yet, the heartless wretch! You will ask me how all this is going to end, and what I intend to do with myself, and whether I shall stay here long? I know nothing about it, my boy, and I don’t want to. What will be, will be…. Why, if one were to be for ever stopping and considering … ‘She! … she’s running up the staircase, singing…. She is here. Well, my boy, good-bye…. I’ve no time for you now, I’m so sorry. She has bespattered the whole letter; she slapped a wet nosegay down on the paper. For the first moment, she thought I was writing to a woman; when she knew that it was to a friend, she told me to send her greetings, and ask you if you have any flowers, and whether they are sweet? Well, good-bye. … If you could hear her laughing. Silver can’t ring like it; and the good-nature in every note of it–you want to kiss her little feet for it. We are going, going. Don’t mind the untidy smudges, and envy yours, M.’

The letter was in fact bespattered all over, and smelt of orange-blossom … two white petals had stuck to the paper. This letter has agitated me…. I remember my stay in Naples…. The weather was magnificent then too–May was just beginning; I had just reached twenty-two; but I knew no Ninetta. I sauntered about alone, consumed with a thirst for bliss, at once torturing and sweet, so sweet that it was, as it were, like bliss itself. … Ah, what is it to be young! … I remember I went out once for a row in the bay. There were two of us; the boatman and I … what did you imagine? What a night it was, and what a sky, what stars, how they quivered and broke on the waves! with what delicate flame the water flashed and glimmered under the oars, what delicious fragrance filled the whole sea–cannot describe this, ‘eloquent’ though my style may be. In the harbour was a French ship of the line. It was all red with lights; long streaks of red, the reflection of the lighted windows, stretched over the dark sea. The captain of the ship was giving a ball. The gay music floated across to me in snatches at long intervals. I recall in particular the trill of a little flute in the midst of the deep blare of the trumpets; it seemed to flit, like a butterfly, about my boat. I bade the man row to the ship; twice he took me round it. … I caught glimpses at the windows of women’s figures, borne gaily round in the whirl-wind of the waltz…. I told the boatman to row away, far away, straight into the darkness…. I remember a long while the music persistently pursued me…. At last the sounds died away. I stood up in the boat, and in the dumb agony of desire stretched out my arms to the sea…. Oh! how my heart ached at that moment! How bitter was my loneliness to me! With what rapture would I have abandoned myself utterly then, utterly … utterly, if there had been any one to abandon myself to! With what a bitter emotion in my soul I flung myself down in the bottom of the boat and, like Repetilov, asked to be taken anywhere, anywhere away! But my friend here has experienced nothing like that. And why should he? He has managed things far more wisely than I. He is living … while I … He may well call me a philosopher…. Strange! they call you a philosopher too…. What has brought this calamity on both of us?