“At least I can say for myself,” observed Nechludoff, “that I have met a few people whom I believe to excel me in wisdom.”

“It is impossible,” I replied with conviction.

“Do you really think so?” he said, looking at me gravely.

“Yes, really,” I answered, and an idea crossed my mind which I proceeded to expound further.  “Let me prove it to you.  Why do we love ourselves better than any one else?  Because we think ourselves better than any one else—­more worthy of our own love.  If we thought others better than ourselves, we should love them better than ourselves:  but that is never the case.  And even if it were so, I should still be right,” I added with an involuntary smile of complacency.

For a few minutes Nechludoff was silent.

“I never thought you were so clever,” he said with a smile so goodhumoured and charming that I at once felt happy.

Praise exercises an all-potent influence, not only upon the feelings, but also upon the intellect; so that under the influence of that agreeable sensation I straightway felt much cleverer than before, and thoughts began to rush with extraordinary rapidity through my head.  From egotism we passed insensibly to the theme of love, which seemed inexhaustible.  Although our reasonings might have sounded nonsensical to a listener (so vague and one-sided were they), for ourselves they had a profound significance.  Our minds were so perfectly in harmony that not a chord was struck in the one without awakening an echo in the other, and in this harmonious striking of different chords we found the greatest delight.  Indeed, we felt as though time and language were insufficient to express the thoughts which seethed within us.

XXVII.  THE BEGINNING OF OUR FRIENDSHIP

From that time forth, a strange, but exceedingly pleasant, relation subsisted between Dimitri Nechludoff and myself.  Before other people he paid me scanty attention, but as soon as ever we were alone, we would sit down together in some comfortable corner and, forgetful both of time and of everything around us, fall to reasoning.

We talked of a future life, of art, service, marriage, and education; nor did the idea ever occur to us that very possibly all we said was shocking nonsense.  The reason why it never occurred to us was that the nonsense which we talked was good, sensible nonsense, and that, so long as one is young, one can appreciate good nonsense, and believe in it.  In youth the powers of the mind are directed wholly to the future, and that future assumes such various, vivid, and alluring forms under the influence of hope—­hope based, not upon the experience of the past, but upon an assumed possibility of happiness to come—­that such dreams of expected felicity constitute in themselves the true happiness of that period of our life.  How I loved those moments in our metaphysical discussions