tendent of the diffusion of truth and righteousness in life," the
newspaper he called "the go-between, engaged in introducing the reader
to dangerous ideas," and his own work, "the sale of a soul in retail,"
and "an inclination to audacity against holy institutions."

Foma could hardly make out when Yozhov jested and when he was in
earnest. He spoke of everything enthusiastically and passionately, he
condemned everything harshly, and Foma liked it. But often, beginning to
argue enthusiastically, he refuted and contradicted himself with equal
enthusiasm or wound up his speech with some ridiculous turn. Then it
appeared to Foma that that man loved nothing, that nothing was firmly
rooted within him, that nothing guided him. Only when speaking of
himself he talked in a rather peculiar voice, and the more impassioned
he was in speaking of himself, the more merciless and enraged was he
in reviling everything and everybody. And his relation toward Foma was
dual; sometimes he gave him courage and spoke to him hotly, quivering in
every limb.

"Go ahead! Refute and overthrow everything you can! Push forward with
all your might. There is nothing more valuable than man, know this! Cry
at the top of your voice: 'Freedom! Freedom!"

But when Foma, warmed up by the glowing sparks of these words, began to
dream of how he should start to refute and overthrow people who, for the
sake of personal profit, do not want to broaden life, Yozhov would often
cut him short:

"Drop it! You cannot do anything! People like you are not needed. Your
time, the time of the strong but not clever, is past, my dear! You are
too late! There is no place for you in life."

"No? You are lying!" cried Foma, irritated by contradiction.

"Well, what can you accomplish?"

"I?"

"You!"

"Why, I can kill you!" said Foma, angrily, clenching his fist.

"Eh, you scarecrow!" said Yozhov, convincingly and pitifully, with a
shrug of the shoulder. "Is there anything in that? Why, I am anyway half
dead already from my wounds."

And suddenly inflamed with melancholy malice, he stretched himself and
said:

"My fate has wronged me. Why have I lowered myself, accepting the sops
of the public? Why have I worked like a machine for twelve years in
succession in order to study? Why have I swallowed for twelve long years
in the Gymnasium and the University the dry and tedious trash and the
contradictory nonsense which is absolutely useless to me? In order
to become f