eir glasses.

'You know, Mihail,' Rudin began again with a smile and a stress on the
name, 'there is a worm in me which gnaws and worries me and never
lets me be at peace till the end. It brings me into collision with
people,--at first they fall under my influence, but afterwards...'

Rudin waved his hand in the air.

'Since I parted from you, Mihail, I have seen much, have experienced
many changes.... I have begun life, have started on something new twenty
times--and here--you see!'

'You had no stability,' said Lezhnyov, as though to himself.

'As you say, I had no stability. I never was able to construct anything;
and it's a difficult thing, brother, to construct when one has to create
the very ground under one's feet, to make one's own foundation for one's
self! All my adventures--that is, speaking accurately, all my failures,
I will not describe. I will tell of two or three incidents--those
incidents of my life when it seemed as if success were smiling on me,
or rather when I began to hope for success--which is not altogether the
same thing...'

Rudin pushed back his grey and already sparse locks with the same
gesture which he used once to toss back his thick, dark curls.

'Well, I will tell you, Mihail,' he began. 'In Moscow I came across a
rather strange man. He was very wealthy and was the owner of extensive
estates. His chief and only passion was love of science, universal
science. I have never yet been able to arrive at how this passion arose
in him! It fitted him about as well as a saddle on a cow. He managed
with difficulty to maintain himself at his mental elevation, he was
almost without the power of speech, he only rolled his eyes with
expression and shook his head significantly. I never met, brother, a
poorer and less gifted nature than his.... In the Smolensk province
there are places like that--nothing but sand and a few tufts of grass
which no animal can eat. Nothing succeeded in his hands; everything
seemed to slip away from him; but he was still mad on making everything
plain complicated. If it had depended on his arrangements, his people
would have eaten standing on their heads. He worked, and wrote, and read
indefatigably. He devoted himself to science with a kind of stubborn
perseverance, a terrible patience; his vanity was immense, and he had a
will of iron. He lived alone, and had the reputation of an eccentric.
I made friends with him... and he liked me. I quickly, I must own, saw
thro