The Madwoman

“Ivan Vasilievich got talking on the way. I was surprised by this, because in the two or three times I saw him — he seemed to be silent, not move much, and struck me as a gloomy, unsociable person. In a backwoods county town where I had to live for about a month, he served as an acting justice of the peace for something like ten years. I remember that once I found out, I immediately thought that his gloominess was quite natural: the town was worse than any village. Empty, dusty streets, crooked rows in the marketplace overgrown with thin grass, gloomy cottages — all around, semi-sandy, semi-swampy fields — no garden, no forest… The little town seemed terrible to me at once, and we usually judge everything by ourselves and don’t believe that what seems horrible to us could be different in reality — or, at least, for other people…”