ey will
have disappeared or given place to other fresh defects, which are all
inevitable and will in their turn alarm the faint-hearted. The students'
sins often vex me, but that vexation is nothing in comparison with the
joy I have been experiencing now for the last thirty years when I talk
to my pupils, lecture to them, watch their relations, and compare them
with people not of their circle.

Mihail Fyodorovitch speaks evil of everything. Katya listens, and
neither of them notices into what depths the apparently innocent
diversion of finding fault with their neighbours is gradually drawing
them. They are not conscious how by degrees simple talk passes into
malicious mockery and jeering, and how they are both beginning to drop
into the habits and methods of slander.

"Killing types one meets with," says Mihail Fyodorovitch. "I went
yesterday to our friend Yegor Petrovitch's, and there I found a studious
gentleman, one of your medicals in his third year, I believe. Such a
face!... in the Dobrolubov style, the imprint of profound thought on his
brow; we got into talk. 'Such doings, young man,' said I. 'I've read,'
said I, 'that some German--I've forgotten his name--has created from
the human brain a new kind of alkaloid, idiotine.' What do you think?
He believed it, and there was positively an expression of respect on his
face, as though to say, 'See what we fellows can do!' And the other day
I went to the theatre. I took my seat. In the next row directly in front
of me were sitting two men: one of 'us fellows' and apparently a law
student, the other a shaggy-looking figure, a medical student. The
latter was as drunk as a cobbler. He did not look at the stage at all.
He was dozing with his nose on his shirt-front. But as soon as an actor
begins loudly reciting a monologue, or simply raises his voice, our
friend starts, pokes his neighbour in the ribs, and asks, 'What is
he saying? Is it elevating?' 'Yes,' answers one of our fellows.
'B-r-r-ravo!' roars the medical student. 'Elevating! Bravo!' He had gone
to the theatre, you see, the drunken blockhead, not for the sake of art,
the play, but for elevation! He wanted noble sentiments."

Katya listens and laughs. She has a strange laugh; she catches her
breath in rhythmically regular gasps, very much as though she were
playing the accordion, and nothing in her face is laughing but her
nostrils. I grow depressed and don't know what to say. Beside myself, I
fire up, leap up