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70 old, forgotten rubbish, I find a vague feeling which may be called artistic. Comparing this with what you say, I admit that you are right, and even I find pleasure in rummaging among such old rubbish and memories instinct with the fragrance of the past, once so dear to me. Even the desire to write is awakened. Certainly you are right. But readers like you are few. Polikushka is gossip about the first subject to hand by a man who knows how to handle a pen; ‘The Cossacks’ has more vitality, though also rather poor work. I am now writing the story of a horse, which I hope to publish in the autumn.”

His creative energy soon reasserted itself, and he conceived the idea of a gigantic work. His attention was drawn to the remarkable epoch of the Decembrists, and he desired to represent it in an artistic form. The results of the preliminary work were fragments published in the complete edition of his works. Studying that historic period, he did not neglect to examine the causes of the events he wished to describe, and the whole period of the Napoleonic wars unfolded itself before him. Impassioned by his subject, he gave himself up to it with the whole strength of his