devil must have put it into his head to start a
conversation with a drunken man at night!

However, it is evident that fate had written it
so at his birth!"

I could not get anything more out of Maksim
Maksimych; generally speaking, he had no

liking for metaphysical disputations.
BOOK V THE THIRD EXTRACT FROM PECHORIN'S DIARY

PRINCESS MARY
CHAPTER I

11th May.
YESTERDAY I arrived at Pyatigorsk.

I have engaged lodgings at the extreme
end of the town, the highest part, at the foot of

Mount Mashuk: during a storm the clouds will
descend on to the roof of my dwelling.

This morning at five o'clock, when I opened
my window, the room was filled with the fra-

grance of the flowers growing in the modest little
front-garden. Branches of bloom-laden bird-

cherry trees peep in at my window, and now and
again the breeze bestrews my writing-table with

their white petals. The view which meets my
gaze on three sides is wonderful: westward

towers five-peaked Beshtau, blue as "the last
cloud of a dispersed storm,"[1] and northward rises

Mashuk, like a shaggy Persian cap, shutting in
the whole of that quarter of the horizon. Eastward

the outlook is more cheery: down below are dis-
played the varied hues of the brand-new, spotlessly

clean, little town, with its murmuring, health-
giving springs and its babbling, many-tongued

throng. Yonder, further away, the mountains
tower up in an amphitheatre, ever bluer and

mistier; and, at the edge of the horizon, stretches
the silver chain of snow-clad summits, begin-

ning with Kazbek and ending with two-peaked
Elbruz. . . Blithe is life in such a land! A feeling

akin to rapture is diffused through all my veins.
The air is pure and fresh, like the kiss of a child;

the sun is bright, the sky is blue -- what more could
one possibly wish for? What need, in such a place

as this, of passions, desires, regrets?
[1] Pushkin. Compare Shelley's Adonais, xxxi. 3: "as the

last cloud of an expiring storm."
However, it is time to be stirring. I will go to

the Elizaveta spring -- I am told that the whole
society of the watering-place assembles there in

the morning.
. . . . .

Descending into the middle of the town, I
walked along the boulevard, on which I met a few

melancholy groups slowly ascending the moun-
tain. These, for the most part, were the families

of landed-gentry from the steppes -- as could be
guessed at once from the threadbare, old-

fashioned frock-coats of the husbands and the
exquisite attire of the wives and daughters.

Evidently they already had all the young men of
the watering-place at their fingers' ends, because

they looked at me with a tender curiosity. The
Petersburg cut of my coat misled them; but they

soon recognised the military epaulettes, and
turned away with indignation.

The wives of the local authorities -- the host-
esses, so to speak, of the waters -- were more

graciously inclined. They carry lorgnettes, and
they pay less attention to a uniform -- they have

grown accustomed in the Caucasus to meeting a
fervid heart beneath a numbered button and a

cultured intellect beneath a white forage-cap.
These ladies are very charming, and long continue

to be charming. Each year their adorers are
exchanged for new ones, and in that very fact, it

may be, lies the secret of their unwearying
amiability.

Ascending by the narrow path to the Elizaveta
spring, I overtook a crowd of officials and military

men, who, as I subsequentlylearned, compose a
class apart amongst those who place their hopes

in the medicinal waters. They drink -- but not
water -- take but few walks, indulge in only mild

flirtations, gamble, and complain of boredom.
They are dandies. In letting their wicker-

sheathed tumblers down into the well of sulphur-
ous water they assume academical poses. The

officials wear bright blue cravats; the military men
have ruffs sticking out above their collars. They

affect a profoundcontempt for provincial ladies,
and sigh for the aristocratic drawing-rooms of the

capitals -- to which they are not admitted.
Here is the well at last! . . . Upon the small

square adjoining it a little house with a red roof
over the bath is erected, and somewhat further

on there is a gallery in which the people
walk when it rains. Some wounded officers

were sitting -- pale and melancholy -- on a bench,
with their crutches drawn up. A few ladies,

their tumbler of water finished, were walking
with rapid steps to and fro about the square.

There were two or three pretty faces amongst
them. Beneath the avenues of the vines with

which the slope of Mashuk is covered, occasional
glimpses could be caught of the gay-coloured hat

of a lover of solitude for two -- for beside that hat
I always noticed either a military forage-cap or

the ugly round hat of a civilian. Upon the steep
cliff, where the pavilion called "The Aeolian

Harp" is erected, figured the lovers of scenery,
directing their telescopes upon Elbruz. Amongst

them were a couple of tutors, with their pupils
who had come to be cured of scrofula.

Out of breath, I came to a standstill at the
edge of the mountain, and, leaning against the

corner of a little house, I began to examine the
picturesque surroundings, when suddenly I heard

behind me a familiar voice.
"Pechorin! Have you been here long?"

I turned round. Grushnitski! We embraced.
I had made his acquaintance in the active service

detachment. He had been wounded in the foot by
a bullet and had come to the waters a week or so

before me.
Grushnitski is a cadet; he has only been a year

in the service. From a kind of foppery peculiar
to himself, he wears the thick cloak of a common