, almost with
reverence. It was evident that they were fond of him. "What for?
What for?" I wondered. From time to time they were moved to drunken
enthusiasm and kissed each other. They talked of the Caucasus, of the
nature of true passion, of snug berths in the service, of the income of
an hussar called Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew personally, and
rejoiced in the largeness of it, of the extraordinary grace and beauty
of a Princess D., whom none of them had ever seen; then it came to
Shakespeare's being immortal.

I smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the
room, opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again. I
tried my very utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet
I purposely made a noise with my boots, thumping with my heels. But it
was all in vain. They paid no attention. I had the patience to walk
up and down in front of them from eight o'clock till eleven, in the
same place, from the table to the stove and back again. "I walk up and
down to please myself and no one can prevent me." The waiter who came
into the room stopped, from time to time, to look at me. I was
somewhat giddy from turning round so often; at moments it seemed to me
that I was in delirium. During those three hours I was three times
soaked with sweat and dry again. At times, with an intense, acute pang
I was stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years,
forty years would pass, and that even in forty years I would remember
with loathing and humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most
awful moments of my life. No one could have gone out of his way to
degrade himself more shamelessly, and I fully realised it, fully, and
yet I went on pacing up and down from the table to the stove. "Oh, if
you only knew what thoughts and feelings I am capable of, how cultured
I am!" I thought at moments, mentally addressing the sofa on which my
enemies were sitting. But my enemies behaved as though I were not in
the room. Once--only once--they turned towards me, just when Zverkov
was talking about Shakespeare, and I suddenly gave a contemptuous
laugh. I laughed in such an affected and disgusting way that they all
at once broke off their conversation, and silently and gravely for two
minutes watched me walking up and down from the table to the stove,
TAKING NO NOTICE OF THEM. But nothing came of it: they said nothing,
and two minutes later they ceased to not