Educated at the university of ***, Aleksey [the hero of this tale] proposed to go into the army, but his father would not agree to this. The young man felt himself entirely unsuited to the civil service. Neither would yield to the other, and in the meantime Aleksey lived the life of a nobleman, cultivating his moustache ready for the army, should he win his way.

Aleksey was a fine young man indeed. It would, for sure, be a pity if his handsome figure were never to be shown off by a military uniform, and if,
instead of cutting a dash on horseback, he were to spend his youth poring over official papers. The neighbours, noticing how he always rode at the head of the hunt, regardless of obstacles, were unanimous in their opinion that he would never make a successful departmental chief. The young ladies looked him over - some more than once; but Aleksey paid little heed to them, and they attributed his coldness to a love affair....

Those of my readers who have never lived in the country cannot imagine how
charming these provincial young ladies are! Brought up in the open air, in the shade of the apple-trees in their gardens, they obtain all their knowledge of life and of the world from books. Solitude, freedom and reading develop in them very early on feelings and passions unknowh to our frivolous townswomen. For these young ladies the jingle of harness-bells is in itself an adventure, a trip to the nearest town a major event in their lives, and the visit of a guest leaves behind long, sometimes life-long memories. Of course, anybody is at liberty to laugh at some of their peculiarities, but the jokes of a superficial observer cannot
destroy their essential qualities, of which the chief is that singularity of character, that individualitié without which, in the opinion of Jean-Paul, there can be no human greatness. In towns and capital cities women perhaps receive a better education, but their characters are quickly levelled out by the ways of the world, and their souls rendered as uniform as their headdress. This is said neither in judgement nor in censure, even so, nota nostra manet, to use the words of an ancient scribe.

It is not difficult to imagine the sort of impression Aleksey would be bound to make on young ladies such as these. He was the first gloomy, disenchanted person they had met, the first to speak of spent pleasures and a faded youth; and moreover, on his finger he wore a black ring engraved with a death's head. This was all extraordinarily novel to the province. The young ladies went out of their minds about him.