ece round your neck? do you put it over your writing-desk, or hang
it up in your drawing-room? I only ask as a man who has no idea what
to do with it if he once obtains it?"

"Let us suppose I have won it; the man must be deuced ill-bred
mentally either to wear the so-called fame as an ornament or to put it
up for show. I confess that at first it gratifies one's vanity; but
only a spiritual parvenu would find it sufficient to fill the whole
life, or take the place of real happiness. It is quite another thing
to be conscious you are doing good work; that the public appreciates
it, and that your work calls forth an echo in other minds,--a public
man has the right to feel pleased with that. But as to feeling
gratified when somebody, looking more or less foolish, comes up and
says: 'We are indebted to you for so much pleasure;' or, when a dinner
does not agree with me, our daily press remarks: 'We communicate
to our readers the sad news that our famous XX suffers from a
stomachache,'--pshaw! what do you take me for, that such a thing could
give me satisfaction?"

"Listen," I said, "I am not inordinately vain; but I confess that,
when people speak of my extraordinary talents, and regret that I make
not a better use of them, it flatters me; and though I feel more
than ever my uselessness, it gives me pleasure; humankind is fond of
approbation."

"That is because you pity yourself, and in that you are quite right.
But you are turning away from the question. I do not say that it would
give one pleasure to be called an ass."

"But the public esteem that goes hand in hand with fame?"

Sniatynski, who is very lively and always walks about the room,
sitting down on any table or chair, now sat on the window-sill, and
replied:--

"Public esteem? You are wrong there, old fellow; there is no such
thing. Ours is a strange society, dominated by a pure republican
jealousy. I write plays, work for the stage; very good. I have gained
a certain reputation; better still. Now, these plays excite the
jealousy,--of another playwright, you think? Not at all; it is the
engineer, the bank clerk, the teacher, the physician, the railway
official,--in short, people who never wrote a play in their
lives,--that envy you. All these in their intercourse will show that
they do not think much of you, will speak slightingly of you behind
your back, and belittle you on purpose, so as to add an inch or two to
their own height. 'Sniatynski? who is he? Y