c fit.

"It is shameful and degrading for a man of my age to sit in a stuffy
room and compete with a typewriting-machine," I said. "What has that to
do with the sacred fire?"

"Still, it is intellectual work," said my father. "But that's enough.
Let us drop the conversation and I warn you that if you refuse to
return to your office and indulge your contemptible inclinations, then
you will lose my love and your sister's. I shall cut you out of my
will--that I swear, by God!"

With perfect sincerity, in order to show the purity of my motives, by
which I hope to be guided all through my life, I said:

"The matter of inheritance does not strike me as important. I renounce
any rights I may have."

For some unexpected reason these words greatly offended my father. He
went purple in the face.

"How dare you talk to me like that, you fool!" he cried to me in a thin,
shrill voice. "You scoundrel!" And he struck me quickly and dexterously
with a familiar movement; once--twice. "You forget yourself!"

When I was a boy and my father struck me, I used to stand bolt upright
like a soldier and look him straight in the face; and, exactly as if I
were still a boy, I stood erect, and tried to look into his eyes. My
father was old and very thin, but his spare muscles must have been as
strong as whip-cord, for he hit very hard.

I returned to the hall, but there he seized his umbrella and struck me
several times over the head and shoulders; at that moment my sister
opened the drawing-room door to see what the noise was, but immediately
drew back with an expression of pity and horror, and said not one word
in my defence.

My intention not to return to the office, but to start a new working
life, was unshakable. It only remained to choose the kind of work--and
there seemed to be no great difficulty about that, because I was strong,
patient, and willing. I was prepared to face a monotonous, laborious
life, of semi-starvation, filth, and rough surroundings, always
overshadowed with the thought of finding a job and a living. And--who
knows--returning from work in the Great Gentry Street, I might often
envy Dolyhikov, the engineer, who lives by intellectual work, but I was
happy in thinking of my coming troubles. I used to dream of intellectual
activity, and to imagine myself a teacher, a doctor, a writer, but my
dreams remained only dreams. A liking for intellectual pleasures--like
the theatre and reading--grew into a passion with me