adition has been preserved--the white tie still
worn by doctors; for a learned--in fact, for any educated man the only
traditions that can exist are those of the University as a whole, with
no distinction between medicine, law, etc. But it would be hard for
Pyotr Ignatyevitch to accept these facts, and he is ready to argue with
you till the day of judgment.

I have a clear picture in my mind of his future. In the course of his
life he will prepare many hundreds of chemicals of exceptional purity;
he will write a number of dry and very accurate memoranda, will
make some dozen conscientious translations, but he won't do anything
striking. To do that one must have imagination, inventiveness, the gift
of insight, and Pyotr Ignatyevitch has nothing of the kind. In short, he
is not a master in science, but a journeyman.

Pyotr Ignatyevitch, Nikolay, and I, talk in subdued tones. We are not
quite ourselves. There is always a peculiar feeling when one hears
through the doors a murmur as of the sea from the lecture-theatre. In
the course of thirty years I have not grown accustomed to this feeling,
and I experience it every morning. I nervously button up my coat, ask
Nikolay unnecessary questions, lose my temper.... It is just as though
I were frightened; it is not timidity, though, but something different
which I can neither describe nor find a name for.

Quite unnecessarily, I look at my watch and say: "Well, it's time to go
in."

And we march into the room in the following order: foremost goes
Nikolay, with the chemicals and apparatus or with a chart; after him I
come; and then the carthorse follows humbly, with hanging head; or, when
necessary, a dead body is carried in first on a stretcher, followed by
Nikolay, and so on. On my entrance the students all stand up, then they
sit down, and the sound as of the sea is suddenly hushed. Stillness
reigns.

I know what I am going to lecture about, but I don't know how I am going
to lecture, where I am going to begin or with what I am going to end.
I haven't a single sentence ready in my head. But I have only to look
round the lecture-hall (it is built in the form of an amphitheatre)
and utter the stereotyped phrase, "Last lecture we stopped at..." when
sentences spring up from my soul in a long string, and I am carried away
by my own eloquence. I speak with irresistible rapidity and passion, and
it seems as though there were no force which could check the flow of
my words. To l