[1] On 30 November he sent Tikhonov the manuscript of the story, originally titled "The Great Man" (Великий человек, Velikiy chelovek).

On 29 April 1892 he wrote to his regular correspondent, the writer Lydia Avilova: "Yesterday I was in Moscow and all but choked myself to death with boredom and all kinds of misfortunes.

Critics argued later that Osip Dymov was more like the Moscow doctor Illarion Dubrovo, who indeed used to risk his life by tube-sucking diphteritis phlegm out of sick people's throats and in May 1883 died, having caught the infection this way.

[3] Olga Ivanovna Dymova enjoys the company of extraordinary people, all painters, writers and musicians, who look to her bright and original.

Dymov gradually becomes aware of what's happening and reacts with characteristic mildness... "That man crushes me with his magnanimity," Olga Ivanovna never tires to tell the people around her.

Finally, Ryabovsky gets himself another woman and Olga Ivanovna, dejected and outraged, returns home, dreaming of how she'd either commit suicide or write Ryabovsky a scathing, condemning letter... Something happens, though, to detract her attention: it turns out that Dymov is seriously ill: he'd caught diphtheria at the hospital by sucking up the mucus through a pipette from a sick man's throat.

Several of his colleagues come to stay on duty by his bedside: they all speak of how gifted was this extraordinary, rare man, promising to become such a celebrity and is now dying due to his own carelessness.

Horrified with the realization, that, while hunting for artists and singers, she'd 'missed out on' what could have become a true celebrity and the greatest 'gem' in her collection through her silliness, Olga Ivanovna rushes to her husband's deathbed to explain how wrong she'd been and how everything could be different from now on...

They made peace though three years later, due to the efforts of a mutual friend Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik, according to Mikhail Chekhov.