In the past when I was younger my friends and relations had known what to do with me:  some of them used to advise me to volunteer for the army, others to get a job in a pharmacy, and others in the telegraph department; now that I am over twenty-five, that grey hairs are beginning to show on my temples, and that I have been already in the army, and in a pharmacy, and in the telegraph department, it would seem that all earthly possibilities have been exhausted, and people have given up advising me, and merely sigh or shake their heads.

“What do you think about yourself?” my father went on.  “By the time they are your age, young men have a secure social position, while look at you:  you are a proletarian, a beggar, a burden on your father!”

And as usual he proceeded to declare that the young people of to-day were on the road to perdition through infidelity, materialism, and self-conceit, and that amateur theatricals ought to be prohibited, because they seduced young people from religion and their duties.

“To-morrow we shall go together, and you shall apologize to the superintendent, and promise him to work conscientiously,” he said in conclusion.  “You ought not to remain one single day with no regular position in society.”

“I beg you to listen to me,” I said sullenly, expecting nothing good from this conversation.  “What you call a position in society is the privilege of capital and education.  Those who have neither wealth nor education earn their daily bread by manual labour, and I see no grounds for my being an exception.”

“When you begin talking about manual labour it is always stupid and vulgar!” said my father with irritation.  “Understand, you dense fellow—­understand, you addle-pate, that besides coarse physical strength you have the divine spirit, a spark of the holy fire, which distinguishes you in the most striking way from the ass or the reptile, and brings you nearer to the Deity!  This fire is the fruit of the efforts of the best of mankind during thousands of years.  Your great-grandfather Poloznev, the general, fought at Borodino; your grandfather was a poet, an orator, and a Marshal of Nobility; your uncle is a schoolmaster; and lastly, I, your father, am an architect!  All the Poloznevs have guarded the sacred fire for you to put it out!”

“One must be just,” I said.  “Millions of people put up with manual labour.”

“And let them put up with it!  They don’t know how to do anything else!  Anybody, even the most abject fool or criminal, is capable of manual labour; such labour is the distinguishing mark of the slave and the barbarian, while the holy fire is vouchsafed only to a few!”