No one could have gone out of his way to degrade himself more shamelessly,
and I fully realised it, fully, and yet I went on pacing up and down
from the table to the stove. "Oh, if you only knew what thoughts and
feelings I am capable of, how cultured I am!" I thought at moments,
mentally addressing the sofa on which my enemies were sitting. But my
enemies behaved as though I were not in the room. Once--only once--
they turned towards me, just when Zverkov was talking about Shakespeare,
and I suddenly gave a contemptuous laugh. I laughed in such an
affected and disgusting way that they all at once broke off their conversation,
and silently and gravely for two minutes watched me walking up and
down from the table to the stove, TAKING NO NOTICE OF THEM. But nothing
came of it: they said nothing, and two minutes later they ceased to notice
me again. It struck eleven.

"Friends," cried Zverkov getting up from the sofa, "let us all be off
now, THERE!"

"Of course, of course," the others assented. I turned sharply to
Zverkov. I was so harassed, so exhausted, that I would have cut my throat
to put an end to it. I was in a fever; my hair, soaked with perspiration,
stuck to my forehead and temples.

"Zverkov, I beg your pardon," I said abruptly and resolutely.
"Ferfitchkin, yours too, and everyone's, everyone's: I have insulted you all!"

"Aha! A duel is not in your line, old man," Ferfitchkin
hissed venomously.

It sent a sharp pang to my heart.