very highly educated, but has
his oddities. To a certain extent we are all odd and all queer fish,
but in his oddities there is something exceptional, apt to cause anxiety
among his acquaintances. I know a good many people for whom his oddities
completely obscure his good qualities.

Coming in to us, he slowly takes off his gloves and says in his velvety
bass:

"Good-evening. Are you having tea? That's just right. It's diabolically
cold."

Then he sits down to the table, takes a glass, and at once begins
talking. What is most characteristic in his manner of talking is the
continually jesting tone, a sort of mixture of philosophy and drollery
as in Shakespeare's gravediggers. He is always talking about serious
things, but he never speaks seriously. His judgments are always harsh
and railing, but, thanks to his soft, even, jesting tone, the harshness
and abuse do not jar upon the ear, and one soon grows used to them.
Every evening he brings with him five or six anecdotes from the
University, and he usually begins with them when he sits down to table.

"Oh, Lord!" he sighs, twitching his black eyebrows ironically. "What
comic people there are in the world!"

"Well?" asks Katya.

"As I was coming from my lecture this morning I met that old idiot N.
N---- on the stairs.... He was going along as usual, sticking out his
chin like a horse, looking for some one to listen to his grumblings
at his migraine, at his wife, and his students who won't attend his
lectures. 'Oh,' I thought, 'he has seen me--I am done for now; it is all
up....'"

And so on in the same style. Or he will begin like this:

"I was yesterday at our friend Z. Z----'s public lecture. I wonder how
it is our alma mater--don't speak of it after dark--dare display in
public such noodles and patent dullards as that Z. Z---- Why, he is a
European fool! Upon my word, you could not find another like him all
over Europe! He lectures--can you imagine?--as though he were sucking
a sugar-stick--sue, sue, sue;... he is in a nervous funk; he can hardly
decipher his own manuscript; his poor little thoughts crawl along like
a bishop on a bicycle, and, what's worse, you can never make out what he
is trying to say. The deadly dulness is awful, the very flies expire. It
can only be compared with the boredom in the assembly-hall at the yearly
meeting when the traditional address is read--damn it!"

And at once an abrupt transition:

"Three years ago--Nikolay Stepanovit