: Trying to escape from the reality frightening them, the three heroes choose their “cases”. For one, this is his own estate, another finds refuge in work, and the third - in the "most reliable case" - to the tomb.

The trilogy is united by three heroes, hunting comrades: Burkin, Ivan Ivanovich and Alekhine. Each of the characters tells one of three stories.

The man in the case

Two hunters stopped to spend the night in the hayloft of a local headman. The conversation went about the wife of the headman, who for many years leaves the house only at night. One of the hunters, the teacher of the gymnasium Burkin, believed that there were a lot of people trying to isolate themselves from the outside world, and as an example he told about his colleague Belikov.

Belikov tried his best to isolate himself from real life - he always went in a coat with a raised collar, galoshes and dark glasses, rode in a carriage with a raised top, slept in a cap and dressing gown with clogged windows and doors, and lived according to the directives of his superiors.

In a word, this person had a constant and irresistible desire to surround himself with a shell, to create for himself, so to speak, a case that would unite him, protect him from external influences.

The influence of this “man in the case” swept the city, people stopped visiting, reading books, studying, helping the poor. When a new teacher appeared in the gymnasium, Belikova decided to marry his cheerful sister Varenka.

At first Belikov agreed to matchmaking, but then a caricature appeared in the city, portraying him and Varenka funny and evil. Then he saw his bride on a bicycle. It seemed to Belikov so indecent that he expressed his thoughts to Varenkin’s brother, he lowered him from the stairs, and Varenka saw this. This ended the matchmaking.

After this attempt of colleagues to stir him up, remove him from the “case”, Belikov fell down and died a month later. In the coffin he lay with such a happy face, as if he had finally found the most reliable case in the world. Life in the city with his death has not changed, because there are still a lot of such "people in cases".

Gooseberry

The next day, the hunters came under heavy and prolonged rain and stopped at their mutual acquaintance, the landowner. In the evening, the second hunter, veterinarian Ivan Ivanovich Chimsha-Himalayan, told the story of his younger brother.

The father of Ivan Ivanovich and Nikolai from ordinary soldiers served as officers, leaving his sons a hereditary noble title and estate, after his death, selected for debt. Ivan Ivanovich graduated from the university, and his brother Nikolai became a petty official.

Growing up in his own estate, Nikolai dreamed all his life to buy the estate. For this, he was malnourished, putting every penny in the bank. Having married an old widow, he took her small capital to the bank, and his wife was starved to death without feeling any guilt.

Finally, Nikolai bought the little girl and planted the gooseberry, which he had dreamed about. Ivan Ivanitch, who came to visit with bitterness, discovered that his kind and gentle brother had become an impudent, fat and self-confident gentleman, who believed that he knew everything about the needs of the people.

A change of life for the better, satiety, idleness develop in the Russian man conceit, the most arrogant.

Nikolai treated his brother with the first harvest of gooseberries. The berries were hard and sour, but for Nicholas there was nothing tastier.

After that, Ivan Ivanovich hated the bourgeois contentment, which overshadows the real misfortunes - poverty, total drunkenness, child mortality. He regretted that he was too old to fight this evil.

About love

In the morning at breakfast they started talking about love. The landowner Pavel Konstantinovich Alyokhin, whose hunters spent the night, believed that Russian people tend to complicate their love with "fatal questions" - is it good or bad, honest or dishonest, and to what all this will lead. These questions greatly complicate and even sever relations between lovers.

As an example, Alekhine told the story of his life. To give his son an education, Alekhine’s father went into debt. To work off the debt, after graduating from the university, Alekhine took the economy of a huge estate onto his shoulders.

He was immediately elected an honorary magistrate, he often began to come to the city, where he met Dmitry Luganovich and his young wife Anna Alekseevna.

Alekhine immediately fell in love with her, but did not dare to confess her love. He believed that he could not give her what she, in his opinion, deserved.

Anna Alekseevna also fell in love with Alekhine, but her thoughts about her husband and children stopped her. In addition, she believed that she was not young enough and energetic for him. Many years passed, lovers often saw each other, and this tormented them.

... when you love, in your arguments about this love you must proceed from the highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue ... or you should not reason at all.

Finally, it was time for them to leave - Luganovich was transferred to work in another province. Left alone before leaving, Anna Alekseevna and Alyokhin confessed their love to each other and parted forever.Only then did Alekhine realize how finely everything was that prevented them from loving.