casual circumstances, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to
be a coward and a slave. It is the law of nature for all decent people all over
the earth. If anyone of them happens to be valiant about something, he
need not be comforted nor carried away by that; he would show the white
feather just the same before something else. That is how it invariably and
inevitably ends. Only donkeys and mules are valiant, and they only till
they are pushed up to the wall. It is not worth while to pay attention to
them for they really are of no consequence.

Another circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no
one like me and I was unlike anyone else. "I am alone and they are
EVERYONE," I thought--and pondered.

From that it is evident that I was still a youngster.

The very opposite sometimes happened. It was loathsome sometimes
to go to the office; things reached such a point that I often came home ill.
But all at once, A PROPOS of nothing, there would come a phase of
scepticism and indifference (everything happened in phases to me), and I
would laugh myself at my intolerance and fastidiousness, I would reproach
myself with being ROMANTIC. At one time I was unwilling to speak
to anyone, while at other times I would not only talk, but go to the length
of contemplating making friends with them. All my fastidiousness would
suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, vanish. Who knows, perhaps I never
had really had it, and it had simply been affected, and got out of books. I
have not decided that question even now. Once I quite made friends with
them, visited their homes, played preference, drank vodka, talked of
promotions .... But here let me make a digression.

We Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish