[Footnote A:  He says in that original Skyeptuik instead of Skeptik, on which the author remarks, “Mikhalevich’s accent testified to his birth-place having been in Little Russia.”]

“She took you in, too,” morosely remarked Lavretsky.

“Granted, granted.  In that I was the tool of fate.  But I’m talking nonsense.  There’s no such thing as fate.  My old habit of expressing myself inaccurately!  But what does that prove?”

“It proves this much, that I have been distorted from childhood.”

“Well, then, straighten yourself.  That’s the good of being a man.  You haven’t got to borrow energy.  But, however that may be, is it possible, is it allowable, to work upwards from an isolated fact, so to speak, to a general law—­to an invariable rule?”

“What rule?” said Lavretsky, interrupting him.  “I do not admit—­”

“No, that is your rule, that is your rule,” cried the other, interrupting him in his turn.

“You are an egotist, that’s what it is!” thundered Mikhalevich an hour later.  “You wanted self-enjoyment; you wanted a happy life; you wanted to live only for yourself—­”

“What is self-enjoyment?”

“—­And every thing has failed you; everything has given way under your feet.”

“But what is self-enjoyment, I ask you?”

“—­And it ought to give way.  Because you looked for support there, where it is impossible to find it; because you built your house on the quicksands—­”

“Speak plainer, without metaphor, because I do not understand you.”

“—­Because—­laugh away if you like—­because there is no faith in you, no hearty warmth—­and only a poor farthingsworth of intellect;[A] you are simply a pitiable creature, a behind—­your—­age disciple of Voltaire.  That’s what you are.”

[Footnote A:  Literally, “intellect, in all merely a copeck intellect.”]

“Who?  I a disciple of Voltaire?”

“Yes, just such a one as your father was; and you have never so much as suspected it.”

“After that,” exclaimed Lavretsky, “I have a right to say that you are a fanatic.”

“Alas!” sorrowfully replied Mikhalevich, “unfortunately, I have not yet in any way deserved so grand a name—­”

“I have found out now what to call you!” cried the self-same Mikhalevich at three o’clock in the morning.

“You are not a sceptic, nor are you a blase, nor a disciple of Voltaire; you are a marmot,[A] and a culpable marmot; a marmot with a conscience, not a naive marmot.  Naive marmots lie on the stove[B] and do nothing, because they can do nothing.  They do not even think anything.  But you are a thinking man, and yet you lie idly there.  You could do something, and you do nothing.  You lie on the top with full paunch and say, ’To lie idle—­so must it be; because all that people ever do—­is all vanity, mere nonsense that conduces to nothing.’”

[Footnote A:  A baibak, a sort of marmot or “prairie dog.”]