Crossing the frontier I felt myself in safety, a sensation, strange and new, for the first time after so many years"-- and so on and so on.
"Come, it's all nonsense!" Varvara Petrovna commented, folding up that letter too.

"If he's up till daybreak with his Athenian nights, he isn't at his books for twelve hours a day.

Was he drunk when he wrote it?
That Dundasov woman dares to send me greetings! But there, let him amuse himself!" The phrase "_dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux_" meant: "wherever Makar may drive his calves." Stepan Trofimovitch sometimes purposely translated Russian proverbs and traditional sayings into French in the most stupid way, though no doubt he was able to understand and translate them better.

But he did it from a feeling that it was chic, and thought it witty.
But he did not amuse himself for long.

He could not hold out for four months, and was soon flying back to Skvoreshniki.