II
  Twelve or fifteen years ago, on the main street in the town, the bureaucrat Gromov was living in his own house, a respectable and affluent man. He had two sons: Sergey and Ivan. Being a student already in the fourth year, Sergey became ill with severe tuberculosis and died, and it would appear as if this death served as the beginning of a whole series of misfortunes, which suddenly began to rain down upon the Gromov family. A week after Sergey’s funeral, the elder-father was put before a judge for fraud and embezzlement and soon after died in a prison hospital from typhus. The house and all the property were sold at auction, and Ivan Dmitrich and his mother were left without any means.   
  Earlier with his father, Ivan Dmitrich, living in St. Petersburg where he studied in the university, received sixty to seventy rubles a month and did not have any kind of understanding of privation, now it was imposed upon him to sharply change his life. From morning to night he had to give cut-rate lessons, do copying work and all the same go hungry, since all of his earnings were being sent to mother for provisions. Such a life did not sustain Ivan Dmitrch; his spirits fell, he withered away and, dropping out of university, he went back home. Through connections here in the little town, he received a position as a teacher at a local school, but he did not get along with his colleagues, his students did not like him and he soon quit the position. Mother passed away. For six months he traveled without a job, nourishing himself with only bread and water, and later obtained a position with the court officers. He worked in this position until that time, when he was not fired due to illness. 
   He never made a strong impression, even in his young student years. He was always pale, thin, susceptible to a cold, ate little, slept poorly. Over a single glass of wine his head spun and he became hysterical. He was always drawn to people, but, thanks to his irritable personality and distrustfulness, he did not get along closely with anyone and lacked friends. He always referred to the townspeople with spite, saying that their rude ignorance and sleepy animal life appeared foul and repugnant to him. He spoke in a tenor, loudly, passionately, and never otherwise than becoming indignant and getting angry, or with excitement and amazement, and always candidly. Regardless of what you begin to talk about with him, he leads always to the same thing: it is stuffy and boring to live in town, society lacks elevated interests, it propels a lackluster, senseless life, distinguishing itself with violence, vile corruption, and hypocrisy; the scoundrels are satisfied and clothed, but honest live off crumbs; schools are needed, a local newspaper with honest managment, a theater, public readings, the cohesion of intellectual endeavors; needed, so that society would become conscious of itself and be horrified. In his judgments of people he laid on thick tints, only black and white, not allowing any shades; humanity for him was made up of the honest and the scoundrels; there was none at all in between. Of women and love, he always spoke passionately, with excitement, but he was not ever once in love.
  In town, despite the harshness of his judgment and irritability, they loved him and called him Vanya tenderly behind his back. His innate delicacy, servility, honesty, moral purity, and his worn overcoat, sickly look and family misfortune inspired a nice, warm and melancholy feeling; precisely because, that he was well educated and read, he knew everything in the estimation of the townspeople and was in town was something along the lines of a walking encyclopedia.
   He read a great deal. It used to be he sits always in a club, nervously tugging at his beard and leafing through magazines and books; by his appearance it is evident he is not reading but swallows, hardly having time to chew. One must think, that reading was one of his sickly habits, since he threw himself with the same avarice into everything that fell into his hands, even last years newspapers and calendars. At home he read always lying down.