The princess

Dr. Michael Ivanovich's pent-up fury with the unwelcome philanthropy of Princess Vera finds a long-awaited vent when he encounters her one evening in the garden of a monastery she has honoured with a visit. Throwing caution and class protocol to the winds, he accuses her of monstrous interference in others' lives, to nobody's good but her own . . .

A doctor himself, Chekhov was acutely observant of Russian society in all its aspects of sickness, both physical and moral. The question for him as a writer was whether to moralize - to attempt to reform - or to entertain. It was a question which is implicitly answered by the stories themselves. They offer no easy answers, but they pinpoint the anguish, tedium, or downright evil of his characters with an irony that makes them both poignant and truthful.