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perpetual semi-intoxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above all,
the use of wine and tobacco. It was because of this irregularity that my
wife so passionately pursued her occupations. The sudden changes of her
disposition, from extreme sadness to extreme gayety, and her babble,
arose from the need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her life, in
the continual intoxication of varied and very brief occupations.
"Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which we did not distinguish our
condition. We were like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball,
cursing each other, poisoning each other's existence, and trying to
shake each other off. I was still unaware that ninety-nine families out
of every hundred live in the same hell, and that it cannot be otherwise.
I had not learned this fact from others or from myself. The coincidences
that are met in regular, and even in irregular life, are surprising. At
the very period when the life of parents becomes impossible, it becomes
indispensable that they go to the city to live, in order to educate
their children. That is what we did."
Posdnicheff became silent, and twice there escaped him, in the
half-darkness, sighs, which at that moment seemed to me like suppressed
sobs. Then he continued.
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