time, I perceived that life is not lived wholly as it should be."

"What in life is 'not lived wholly as it should be'?"

"Everything in life. For life is mere folly, mere fatuous nonsense. The
truth is that our dogs do not bark always at the right moment. For
instance, when I said to folk, 'How would it be if we were to open a
technical school for girls?' They merely laughed and replied, 'Trade
workers are hopeless drunkards. Already have we enough of them.
Besides, hitherto women have contrived to get on WITHOUT education.'
And when next I conceived a scheme for instituting a match factory, it
befell that the factory was burnt down during its first year of
existence, and I found myself once more at a loose end. Next a certain
woman got hold of me, and I flitted about her like a martin around a
belfry, and so lost my head as to live life as though I were not on
earth at all--for three years I did not know even what I was doing, and
only when I recovered my senses did I perceive myself to be a pauper,
and my all, every single thing that I had possessed, to have passed
into HER white hands. Yes, at twenty-eight I found myself a beggar. Yet
I have never wholly regretted the fact, for certainly for a time I
lived life as few men ever live it. 'Take my all--take it!' I used to
say to her. And, truly enough, I should never have done much good with
my father's fortune, whereas she--well, so it befell. Somehow I think
that in those days my opinions must have been different from now--now
that I have lost everything.... Yet the woman used to say, 'You have
NOT lost everything,' and she had wit enough to fit out a whole townful
of people."

"This woman--who was she?"

"The wife of a merchant. Whenever she unrobed and said, 'Come! What is
this body of mine worth?' I used to make reply, 'A price that is beyond
compute.'... So within three years everything that I possessed
vanished like smoke. Sometimes, of course, folk laughed at and jibed at
me; nor did I ever refute them. But now that I have come to have a
better understanding of life's affairs, I see that life is not wholly
lived as it should be. For that matter, too, I do not hold my tongue on
the subject, for that is not my way--still left to me I have a tongue
and my soul. The same reason accounts for the fact that no one likes
me, and that by everyone I am looked upon as a fool."

"How, in your opinion, ought life to be lived?"

Without answering me at once, Gubin suc