just a peep out of one eye at what is happening in
science. I should have liked to have lived another ten years... What
further? Why, nothing further. I think and think, and can think of
nothing more. And however much I might think, and however far my
thoughts might travel, it is clear to me that there is nothing vital,
nothing of great importance in my desires. In my passion for science,
in my desire to live, in this sitting on a strange bed, and in this
striving to know myself--in all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas I form
about everything, there is no common bond to connect it all into one
whole. Every feeling and every thought exists apart in me; and in all
my criticisms of science, the theatre, literature, my pupils, and in all
the pictures my imagination draws, even the most skilful analyst could
not find what is called a general idea, or the god of a living man.

And if there is not that, then there is nothing.

In a state so poverty-stricken, a serious ailment, the fear of death,
the influences of circumstance and men were enough to turn upside down
and scatter in fragments all which I had once looked upon as my theory
of life, and in which I had seen the meaning and joy of my existence.
So there is nothing surprising in the fact that I have over-shadowed the
last months of my life with thoughts and feelings only worthy of a slave
and barbarian, and that now I am indifferent and take no heed of the
dawn. When a man has not in him what is loftier and mightier than
all external impressions a bad cold is really enough to upset his
equilibrium and make him begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a
dog howling in every sound. And all his pessimism or optimism with his
thoughts great and small have at such times significance as symptoms and
nothing more.

I am vanquished. If it is so, it is useless to think, it is useless to
talk. I will sit and wait in silence for what is to come.

In the morning the corridor attendant brings me tea and a copy of the
local newspaper. Mechanically I read the advertisements on the first
page, the leading article, the extracts from the newspapers and
journals, the chronicle of events.... In the latter I find, among other
things, the following paragraph: "Our distinguished savant, Professor
Nikolay Stepanovitch So-and-so, arrived yesterday in Harkov, and is
staying in the So-and-so Hotel."

Apparently, illustrious names are created to live on their own account,
apart from thos