mutter incoherent words.

Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course,
never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some
government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune
and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done
anything or even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is
termed un jeune homme.

At the age of eighteen he was free--as only rich young Russians in
the 'forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be.
Neither physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he
could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing.
Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants,
existed for him. He believed in nothing and admitted nothing. But
although he believed in nothing he was not a morose or blase young
man, nor self-opinionated, but on the contrary continually let
himself be carried away. He had come to the conclusion that there
is no such thing as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the
presence of any young and attractive woman. He had long been aware
that honours and position were nonsense, yet involuntarily he felt
pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and spoke to him
affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as they did
not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any influence
and became conscious of its leading on to labour and struggle, he
instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or
activity into which he was being drawn and to regain his freedom.
In this way he experimented with society-life, the civil service,
farming, music--to which at one time he intended to devote his
life--and even with the love of women in which he did not believe.