ircle. Lichonin's words, however, provoked him.

"Oh, my God, what does it matter what we did when we were youngsters?
We stole sugar, soiled our panties, tore the wings off beetles,"
Yarchenko began to speak, growing heated, and spluttering. "But there
is a limit and a mean to all this. I, gentlemen, do not presume, of
course, to give you counsels and to teach you, but one must be
consistent. We are all agreed that prostitution is one of the greatest
calamities of humanity, and are also agreed, that in this evil not the
women are guilty, but we, men, because the demand gives birth to the
offer. And therefore if, having drunk a glass of wine too much, I
still, notwithstanding my convictions, go to the prostitutes, I am
committing a triple vileness: before the unfortunate, foolish woman,
whom I subject to the most degrading form of slavery for my filthy
rouble; before humanity, because, hiring a public woman for an hour or
two for my abominable lust, I through this justify and uphold
prostitution; and finally, this is a vileness before one's own
conscience and mind. And before logic."

"Phew-ew!" Lichonin let out a long-drawn whistle and chanted in a thin,
dismal voice, nodding in time with his head hanging down to one side:
"The philosopher is off on our usual stuff: 'A rope--is a common cord.'"

"Of course, there's nothing easier than to play the tom-fool,"
responded Yarchenko. "But in my opinion there is not in the sorrowful
life of Russia a more mournful phenomenon than this lackadaisicalness
and vitiation of thought. To-day we will say to ourselves: Eh! It's all
the same, whether I go to a brothel or whether I do not go, from this
one time things will get neither worse nor better. And after five years
we will be saying: Undoubtedly a bribe is a horribly nasty bit of
business, but you know--children ... the family ... And just the same
way after ten years we, having remained fortuitous Russian liberals,
will be sighing about personal freedom and bowing low before worthless
scoundrels, whom we despise, and will be cooling our heels in their
ante-rooms. 'Because, don't you know,' we will say, tittering, 'when
you live with wolves, you must howl like a wolf.' By God, it wasn't in
vain that some minister called the Russian students future head-clerks!"

"Or professors," Lichonin put in.

"But most important of all," continued Yarchenko, letting this pointed
remark pass by, "most important of all is this, that I have