“Well?” asks Katya.

“As I was coming from my lecture this morning I met that old idiot N. N——­ on the stairs....  He was going along as usual, sticking out his chin like a horse, looking for some one to listen to his grumblings at his migraine, at his wife, and his students who won’t attend his lectures.  ‘Oh,’ I thought, ’he has seen me—­I am done for now; it is all up....’”

And so on in the same style.  Or he will begin like this: 

“I was yesterday at our friend Z. Z——­’s public lecture.  I wonder how it is our alma mater—­don’t speak of it after dark—­dare display in public such noodles and patent dullards as that Z. Z——­ Why, he is a European fool!  Upon my word, you could not find another like him all over Europe!  He lectures—­can you imagine?—­as though he were sucking a sugar-stick—­sue, sue, sue;... he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly decipher his own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like a bishop on a bicycle, and, what’s worse, you can never make out what he is trying to say.  The deadly dulness is awful, the very flies expire.  It can only be compared with the boredom in the assembly-hall at the yearly meeting when the traditional address is read—­damn it!”

And at once an abrupt transition: 

“Three years ago—­Nikolay Stepanovitch here will remember it—­I had to deliver that address.  It was hot, stifling, my uniform cut me under the arms—­it was deadly!  I read for half an hour, for an hour, for an hour and a half, for two hours....  ‘Come,’ I thought; ’thank God, there are only ten pages left!’ And at the end there were four pages that there was no need to read, and I reckoned to leave them out.  ’So there are only six really,’ I thought; ‘that is, only six pages left to read.’  But, only fancy, I chanced to glance before me, and, sitting in the front row, side by side, were a general with a ribbon on his breast and a bishop.  The poor beggars were numb with boredom; they were staring with their eyes wide open to keep awake, and yet they were trying to put on an expression of attention and to pretend that they understood what I was saying and liked it.  ‘Well,’ I thought, ’since you like it you shall have it!  I’ll pay you out;’ so I just gave them those four pages too.”

As is usual with ironical people, when he talks nothing in his face smiles but his eyes and eyebrows.  At such times there is no trace of hatred or spite in his eyes, but a great deal of humour, and that peculiar fox-like slyness which is only to be noticed in very observant people.  Since I am speaking about his eyes, I notice another peculiarity in them.  When he takes a glass from Katya, or listens to her speaking, or looks after her as she goes out of the room for a moment, I notice in his eyes something gentle, beseeching, pure....