et them come out. They tormented me
till I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at
last, how they sickened me! Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that
I am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your
forgiveness for something? I am sure you are fancying that ...
However, I assure you I do not care if you are....

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to
become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an
honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life
in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation
that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is
only the fool who becomes anything. Yes, a man in the nineteenth
century must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless
creature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited
creature. That is my conviction of forty years. I am forty years old
now, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is
extreme old age. To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is
vulgar, immoral. Who does live beyond forty? Answer that, sincerely
and honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows. I
tell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all
these silver-haired and reverend seniors! I tell the whole world that
to its face! I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to
sixty myself. To seventy! To eighty! ... Stay, let me take breath
...

You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you. You are
mistaken in that, too. I am by no means such a mirthful person as you
imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble
(and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I
am--then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor. I was in the
service that I might have something to eat (and solely for that
reason), and when last year a distant relation left me six thousand
roubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and settled
down in my corner. I used to live in this corner before, but now I
have settled down in it. My room is a wretched, horrid one in the
outskirts of the town. My servant is an old country-woman, ill-natured
from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty smell about her.
I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and that with my
small means it is very ex