Honored Sir, Aleksandr Matvéitch,—
According to the desire of the late Dmitri Sergéitch, I must send you the assurance that for him the best circumstance seemed the fact that he was compelled to leave his place to you. With those relations which brought about this change, relations which gradually formed, in the course of three years, from the time when you almost ceased coming to his house, and therefore were formed without your aid, exclusively from the lack of correspondence between the characters of the two people whom you afterwards tried in vain to reconcile; with such relations, the final scene which came was unavoidable. Evidently Dmitri Sergéitch could not feel right in blaming you; of course this explanation is unnecessary; however, merely for form's sake, he authorized me to make it. Thus it had to be either one way or the other: either you or he had to take the place which he could not fill, and which another could take only because Dmitri Sergéitch could not fill it; and the fact that you took this place, according to the opinion of the late Dmitri Sergéitch makes the best result that could be devised. I press your hand.
"Ah! I know."
What is that? A familiar voice. I turn around; there he is! He, himself, the sapient reader, who was not long ago banished in disgrace for not knowing A from B,[1] in regard to the artistic, but here he is again and again with his former shrewdness. Again he knows something!
"Ah! I know who wrote it—"
But I hastily seize the first thing that comes most convenient for my purpose. I seize a napkin, because after I copied the former student's letter, I sat down to breakfast, and so I seize the napkin, and stuff it in his mouth, "Well, keep what you know to yourself; why do you shout it all over town?"
II.
Dear Sir,—
You will understand what a degree of happiness your letter gave me. With all my soul I thank you for it. Your intimacy with the late Dmitri Sergéitch gives me the right to re-
- ↑ Aza for glaza, literally, does not recognize a when he has it in his eyes.
