“After a good dinner the most trifling subject is sufficient to arouse devilishly great thoughts in my brain.  For instance, we saw just now near the refreshment bar two young men, and you heard one congratulate the other on being celebrated.  ‘I congratulate you,’ he said; ’you are already a celebrity and are beginning to win fame.’  Evidently actors or journalists of microscopic dimensions.  But they are not the point.  The question that is occupying my mind at the moment, sir, is exactly what is to be understood by the word fame or charity.  What do you think?  Pushkin called fame a bright patch on a ragged garment; we all understand it as Pushkin does—­that is, more or less subjectively—­but no one has yet given a clear, logical definition of the word....  I would give a good deal for such a definition!”

“Why do you feel such a need for it?”

“You see, if we knew what fame is, the means of attaining it might also perhaps be known to us,” said the first-class passenger, after a moment’s thought.  “I must tell you, sir, that when I was younger I strove after celebrity with every fiber of my being.  To be popular was my craze, so to speak.  For the sake of it I studied, worked, sat up at night, neglected my meals.  And I fancy, as far as I can judge without partiality, I had all the natural gifts for attaining it.  To begin with, I am an engineer by profession.  In the course of my life I have built in Russia some two dozen magnificent bridges, I have laid aqueducts for three towns; I have worked in Russia, in England, in Belgium....  Secondly, I am the author of several special treatises in my own line.  And thirdly, my dear sir, I have from a boy had a weakness for chemistry.  Studying that science in my leisure hours, I discovered methods of obtaining certain organic acids, so that you will find my name in all the foreign manuals of chemistry.  I have always been in the service, I have risen to the grade of actual civil councilor, and I have an unblemished record.  I will not fatigue your attention by enumerating my works and my merits, I will only say that I have done far more than some celebrities.  And yet here I am in my old age, I am getting ready for my coffin, so to say, and I am as celebrated as that black dog yonder running on the embankment.”

“How can you tell?  Perhaps you are celebrated.”

“H’m!  Well, we will test it at once.  Tell me, have you ever heard the name Krikunov?”

The vis-a-vis raised his eyes to the ceiling, thought a minute, and laughed.

“No, I haven’t heard it,...” he said.

“That is my surname.  You, a man of education, getting on in years, have never heard of me—­a convincing proof!  It is evident that in my efforts to gain fame I have not done the right thing at all:  I did not know the right way to set to work, and, trying to catch fame by the tail, got on the wrong side of her.”

“What is the right way to set to work?”