Your true friend,
Makar Dievushkin.
September 9th.
My dearest Barbara Alexievna —I am beside myself as I take up my pen, for a most terrible thing has happened. My head is whirling round. Ah, beloved, how am I to tell you about it all? I had never foreseen what has happened. But no—I cannot say that I had never foreseen it, for my mind did get an inkling of what was coming, through my seeing something very similar to it in a dream.