clever fellow and in philosophy he is A1.  He has read a great deal and he is continually reading now.  Well, we came across him lately in the Gruzovsky district. . . .  They were laying the sleepers and rails just at the time.  It’s not a difficult job, but Ivan Alexandritch, not being a specialist, looked at it as though it were a conjuring trick.  It takes an experienced workman less than a minute to lay a sleeper and fix a rail on it.  The workmen were in good form and really were working smartly and rapidly; one rascal in particular brought his hammer down with exceptional smartness on the head of the nail and drove it in at one blow, though the handle of the hammer was two yards or more in length and each nail was a foot long.  Ivan Alexandritch watched the workmen a long time, was moved, and said to me with tears in his eyes: 

“‘What a pity that these splendid men will die!’ Such pessimism I understand.”

“All that proves nothing and explains nothing,” said the student, covering himself up with a sheet; “all that is simply pounding liquid in a mortar.  No one knows anything and nothing can be proved by words.”

He peeped out from under the sheet, lifted up his head and, frowning irritably, said quickly: 

“One must be very naive to believe in human words and logic and to ascribe any determining value to them.  You can prove and disprove anything you like with words, and people will soon perfect the technique of language to such a point that they will prove with mathematical certainty that twice two is seven.  I am fond of reading and listening, but as to believing, no thank you; I can’t, and I don’t want to.  I believe only in God, but as for you, if you talk to me till the Second Coming and seduce another five hundred Kisothchkas, I shall believe in you only when I go out of my mind . . . .  Goodnight.”

The student hid his head under the sheet and turned his face towards the wall, meaning by this action to let us know that he did not want to speak or listen.  The argument ended at that.

Before going to bed the engineer and I went out of the hut, and I saw the lights once more.

“We have tired you out with our chatter,” said Ananyev, yawning and looking at the sky.  “Well, my good sir!  The only pleasure we have in this dull hole is drinking and philosophising. . . .  What an embankment, Lord have mercy on us!” he said admiringly, as we approached the embankment; “it is more like Mount Ararat than an embankment.”

He paused for a little, then said:  “Those lights remind the Baron of the Amalekites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts of man. . . .  You know the thoughts of each individual man are scattered like that in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards some goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding light on anything, without lighting up the night, they vanish somewhere far beyond old age.  But enough philosophising!  It’s time to go bye-bye.”