“I realised and appreciated my abnormality and utter ignorance, thanks to a misfortune.  My normal thinking, so it seems to me now, dates from the day when I began again from the A, B, C, when my conscience sent me flying back to N., when with no philosophical subleties I repented, besought Kisotchka’s forgiveness like a naughty boy and wept with her. . . .”

Ananyev briefly described his last interview with Kisotchka.

“H’m. . . .” the student filtered through his teeth when the engineer had finished.  “That’s the sort of thing that happens.”

His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev’s story had not touched him in the least.  Only when the engineer after a moment’s pause, began expounding his view again and repeating what he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up from the table and walked away to his bed.  He made his bed and began undressing.

“You look as though you have really convinced some one this time,” he said irritably.

“Me convince anybody!” said the engineer.  “My dear soul, do you suppose I claim to do that?  God bless you!  To convince you is impossible.  You can reach conviction only by way of personal experience and suffering!”

“And then—­it’s queer logic!” grumbled the student as he put on his nightshirt.  “The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinous for the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old; it’s as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . .  Where do the old get this privilege?  What is it based upon?  If these ideas are poison, they are equally poisonous for all?”

“Oh, no, my dear soul, don’t say so!” said the engineer with a sly wink.  “Don’t say so.  In the first place, old men are not dilettanti.  Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from the depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made no end of mistakes, in fact—­when they have climbed the whole ladder from bottom to top.  Their pessimism has both personal experience and sound philosophic training behind it.  Secondly, the pessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, as it does with you and me, but of Weltschmertz, of suffering; it rests in them on a Christian foundation because it is derived from love for humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirely free from the egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti.  You despise life because its meaning and its object are hidden just from you, and you are only afraid of your own death, while the real thinker is unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he is afraid for all men.  For instance, there is living not far from here the Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch.  He is a nice old man.  At one time he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; the devil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably