. . well, the medal of course was sold—long ago, hm . . . but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she quarrels with the landlady most continually, yet she wanted to boast to someone or other of her past honors and to tell of the happy days that are gone. I don’t condemn her for it, I don’t condemn her, for the one thing left her is her memories of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes! Yes, yes, she is a hot-tempered lady, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won’t allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That’s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov’s rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father’s house. She loved her husband very much; but he gave way to cards, wound up in court and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she didn’t let him get away with it, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy . . . And she was left at his death with three children in a beastly and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless destitution that, although I have seen many ups and downs of all sorts, I am unable to describe it even. Her relations had all abandoned her. And she was proud, too, excessively proud . . . And then, dear sir, and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, dear sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you don’t understand yet . . . And for a whole year, I performed my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this” (he tapped the jug with his finger), “for I have feelings. But even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place too, and that through no fault of mine but through changes in the office; and then I did touch it! . .