At home, I lay for the most part on my bed. Then I copied out some very good poetry:

An hour without my darling
Seemed as a year to me.
What care I for existence,
If I am rent from thee?

It must be by Pushkin. In the evening, wrapped up in my cloak, I went to the front door of Her Excellency’s house, and waited there for a long time on the chance that she might come out to get into her brougham, and I might have another glimpse of her. But no, she did not come out.

NOVEMBER 6

I GOT very angry with the Chief of Section. When I came into the Department, he called me up and spoke to me in the following manner: “Now, just tell me, my man, what is it you are trying to do?” “How do you mean?” I said, “I am not trying to do anything.” “Now look here. You are over forty—it is time you had a little sense. What do you imagine yourself to be? Do you suppose I am not aware of all your tricks? You are paying court to the Director’s daughter, aren’t you? Come, look at yourself, consider what you are. You are a nobody, an absolute nobody. You have not got a penny to your soul. Look at yourself in the looking-glass, —are you fit to think about such things?” Damn it! Because his face is like a medicine bottle, and he has a tuft of hair on his head that curls and sticks out, and he pomades it with I know not what rose-stuff, he imagines he may do anything. I quite understand why he detests me so. It is out of envy: he must have noticed the signs of benevolence I get in preference to him from His Excellency. But I spit on him! Tremendously important, indeed! An Aulic Councillor! Wears his watch on a gold chain, and orders boots at thirty roubles, the devil be with him! Am I a plebeian, a tailor’s apprentice, or the son of a non-commissioned officer? I am a gentleman. There is no reason why I should not rise in the service too. I am only forty-two—just the age to be beginning one’s career.Wait a bit, my friend! You shall see us a colonel too, and, with good luck, something even better than that.We shall have a flat, and maybe better than yours. Ha! do you imagine that no one is a decent man but yourself? Give me a fashionable suit from Rutsch’s, let me wear a cravat like yours, and you wouldn’t be good enough to clean my shoes for me. Poverty—ah, that is the trouble!

NOVEMBER 8

WAS at the theatre. The play was about the Russian clown, Filatka. Laughed quite a lot. There was also another vaudeville with some amusing couplets about the attorneys, especially about a certain Collegial Registrar, very outspoken; I even wondered that the censorship should have passed them. As to the merchants, it was said of them in plain words that they cheated the public, and that their sons behaved disreputably and tried to insinuate themselves into the gentry. There was also an amusing couplet about the journalists, saying that they were fond of abusing everything and everybody, and that the author begged the public to defend him against them. Very amusing plays are being written by authors nowadays. I like being at the theatre. As soon as I have a penny in my pocket, nothing can keep me from going. But others of our friends the Government clerks are such swine that they will never go to the theatre, unless, perhaps, you give them a free ticket. An actress sang very nicely. I thought of her . .