“I must go away again to-morrow, brother,” he said.  “To-day, if you will allow it, we will sit up late.  I want to get a thoroughly good idea of what you are now, what your intentions are and your convictions, what sort of man you have become, what life has taught you” (Mikhalevich still made use of the phraseology current in the year 1830).  “As for me, brother, I have become changed in many respects.  The waters of life have gone over my breast.  Who was it said that?  But in what is important, what is substantial, I have not changed.  I believe, as I used to do, in the Good, in the True.  And not only do I believe, but I feel certain now—­yes, I feel certain, certain.  Listen; I make verses, you know.  There’s no poetry in them, but there is truth.  I will read you my last piece.  I have expressed in it my most sincere convictions.  Now listen.”

Mikhalevich began to read his poem, which was rather a long one.  It ended with the following lines:—­

  “With my whole heart have I given myself up to new feelings;
    In spirit I have become like unto a child,
  And I have burnt all that I used to worship,
    I worship all that I used to burn.”

Mikhalevich all but wept as he pronounced these last two verses.  A slight twitching, the sign of a strong emotion, affected his large lips; his plain face lighted up.  Lavretsky went on listening until at last the spirit of contradiction was roused within him.  He became irritated by the Moscow student’s enthusiasm, so perpetually on the boil, so continually ready for use.  A quarter of an hour had not elapsed before a dispute had been kindled between the two friends, one of those endless disputes of which only Russians are capable.  They two, after a separation which had lasted for many years, and those passed in two different worlds, neither of them clearly understanding the other’s thoughts, not even his own, holding fast by words, and differing in words alone, disputed about the most purely abstract ideas—­and disputed exactly as if the matter had been one of life and death to both of them.  They shouted and cried aloud to such an extent that every one in the house was disturbed, and poor Lemm, who had shut himself up in his room the moment Mikhalevich arrived, felt utterly perplexed, and even began to entertain some vague form of fear.

“But after all this, what are you? blase!"[A] cried Mikhalevich at midnight.

[Footnote A:  Literally, “disillusioned.”]

“Does a blase man ever look like me?” answered Lavretsky.  “He is always pale and sickly; but I, if you like, will lift you off the ground with one hand.”

“Well then, if not blase, at least a sceptic,[A] and that is still worse.  But what right have you to be a sceptic?  Your life has not been a success, I admit.  That wasn’t your fault.  You were endowed with a soul full of affection, fit for passionate love, and you were kept away from women by force.  The first woman you came across was sure to take you in.”