'What is our life? A vale in which grief has taken up its abode. What is the world? The crowd of the unfeeling.' Then the writer mentioned that she was bedewing the lines with tears for a tender mother, who twenty-five years before had left this earthly sphere; Tchitchikov was invited to flee to the desert, to abandon for ever the town where, shut in by spiritual barriers, people did not breathe the air of freedom; the latter part of the letter had a note of positive despair, and ended with the following verses:
'Two turtle doves will show thee
Where my cold ashes lie
And sadly murmuring tell thee
How in tears I did die.'
The last line did not scan, that did not matter, though: the letter was written in the spirit of the day. There was no signature: neither Christian name nor surname nor even the date. But a postscript was added to the effect that his own heart should divine who was the writer, and that the author would be at the governor's ball that was to take place on the following day.
This greatly interested him. There was so much that was alluring and that excited the curiosity in the anonymity of it, that he read the letter through a second and a third time, and said at last: 'It would be interesting, though, to know who the writer is!' In fact, things were becoming serious, as may be seen. He
