crowd, and than Shakespeare.  In reality our thinking leads to nothing because we have no inclination to go down to the lower steps and there is nowhere higher to go, so our brain stands at the freezing point—­ neither up nor down; I was in bondage to these ideas for six years, and by all that is holy, I never read a sensible book all that time, did not gain a ha’porth of wisdom, and did not raise my moral standard an inch.  Was not that disastrous?  Moreover, besides being corrupted ourselves, we bring poison into the lives of those surrounding us.  It would be all right if, with our pessimism, we renounced life, went to live in a cave, or made haste to die, but, as it is, in obedience to the universal law, we live, feel, love women, bring up children, construct railways!”

“Our thoughts make no one hot or cold,” the student said reluctantly.

“Ah! there you are again!—­do stop it!  You have not yet had a good sniff at life.  But when you have lived as long as I have you will know a thing or two!  Our theory of life is not so innocent as you suppose.  In practical life, in contact with human beings, it leads to nothing but horrors and follies.  It has been my lot to pass through experiences which I would not wish a wicked Tatar to endure.”

“For instance?” I asked.

“For instance?” repeated the engineer.

He thought a minute, smiled and said: 

“For instance, take this example.  More correctly, it is not an example, but a regular drama, with a plot and a denouement.  An excellent lesson!  Ah, what a lesson!”

He poured out wine for himself and us, emptied his glass, stroked his broad chest with his open hands, and went on, addressing himself more to me than to the student.

“It was in the year 187—­, soon after the war, and when I had just left the University.  I was going to the Caucasus, and on the way stopped for five days in the seaside town of N. I must tell you that I was born and grew up in that town, and so there is nothing odd in my thinking N. extraordinarily snug, cosy, and beautiful, though for a man from Petersburg or Moscow, life in it would be as dreary and comfortless as in any Tchuhloma or Kashira.  With melancholy I passed by the high school where I had been a pupil; with melancholy I walked about the very familiar park, I made a melancholy attempt to get a nearer look at people I had not seen for a long time—­ all with the same melancholy.

“Among other things, I drove out one evening to the so-called Quarantine.  It was a small mangy copse in which, at some forgotten time of plague, there really had been a quarantine station, and which was now the resort of summer visitors.  It was a drive of three miles from the town along a good soft road.  As one drove along one saw on the left the blue sea, on the right the unending gloomy steppe; there was plenty of air to breathe, and wide views for the eyes to rest on.  The copse itself lay on the seashore.  Dismissing my cabman, I