Faust

I have been here for three days, my dear fellow, and, as I promised, I take up my pen to write to you. It has been drizzling with fine rain ever since the morning; I can’t go out; and I want a little chat with you, too. Here I am again in my old home, where—it’s a dreadful thing to say—I have not been for nine long years. Really, as you may fancy, I have become quite a different man. Yes, utterly different, indeed; do you remember, in the drawing-room, the little tarnished looking-glass of my great-grandmother’s, with the queer little curly scrolls in the corners—you always used to be speculating on what it had seen a hundred years ago—directly I arrived, I went up to it, and I could not help feeling disconcerted. I suddenly saw how old and changed I had become in these last years. But I am not alone in that respect. My little house, which was old and tottering long ago, will hardly hold together now, it is all on the slant, and seems sunk into the ground.

- Taken from "Faust" written by Ivan Turgenev