“He is studying the marine fauna.”

“No, no, brother, no!” Laevsky sighed.  “A scientific man who was on the steamer told me the Black Sea was poor in animal life, and that in its depths, thanks to the abundance of sulphuric hydrogen, organic life was impossible.  All the serious zoologists work at the biological station at Naples or Villefranche.  But Von Koren is independent and obstinate:  he works on the Black Sea because nobody else is working there; he is at loggerheads with the university, does not care to know his comrades and other scientific men because he is first of all a despot and only secondly a zoologist.  And you’ll see he’ll do something.  He is already dreaming that when he comes back from his expedition he will purify our universities from intrigue and mediocrity, and will make the scientific men mind their p’s and q’s.  Despotism is just as strong in science as in the army.  And he is spending his second summer in this stinking little town because he would rather be first in a village than second in a town.  Here he is a king and an eagle; he keeps all the inhabitants under his thumb and oppresses them with his authority.  He has appropriated every one, he meddles in other people’s affairs; everything is of use to him, and every one is afraid of him.  I am slipping out of his clutches, he feels that and hates me.  Hasn’t he told you that I ought to be destroyed or sent to hard labour?”

“Yes,” laughed Samoylenko.

Laevsky laughed too, and drank some wine.

“His ideals are despotic too,” he said, laughing, and biting a peach.  “Ordinary mortals think of their neighbour—­me, you, man in fact—­if they work for the common weal.  To Von Koren men are puppets and nonentities, too trivial to be the object of his life.  He works, will go for his expedition and break his neck there, not for the sake of love for his neighbour, but for the sake of such abstractions as humanity, future generations, an ideal race of men.  He exerts himself for the improvement of the human race, and we are in his eyes only slaves, food for the cannon, beasts of burden; some he would destroy or stow away in Siberia, others he would break by discipline, would, like Araktcheev, force them to get up and go to bed to the sound of the drum; would appoint eunuchs to preserve our chastity and morality, would order them to fire at any one who steps out of the circle of our narrow conservative morality; and all this in the name of the improvement of the human race. . . .  And what is the human race?  Illusion, mirage . . . despots have always been illusionists.  I understand him very well, brother.  I appreciate him and don’t deny his importance; this world rests on men like him, and if the world were left only to such men as us, for all our good-nature and good intentions, we should make as great a mess of it as the flies have of that picture.  Yes.”

Laevsky sat down beside Samoylenko, and said with genuine feeling:  “I’m a foolish, worthless, depraved man.  The air I breathe, this wine, love, life in fact—­for all that, I have given nothing in exchange so far but lying, idleness, and cowardice.  Till now I have deceived myself and other people; I have been miserable about it, and my misery was cheap and common.  I bow my back humbly before Von Koren’s hatred because at times I hate and despise myself.”