I could with pleasure thrash myself for my early marriage, but at
the time, I don't know what would have become of me if Natasha had
refused me. My love was absolutely the real thing, just as it is
described in novels--frantic, passionate, and so on. My happiness
overwhelmed me and I did not know how to get away from it, and I
bored my father and my friends and the servants, continually talking
about the fervour of my passion. Happy people are the most sickening
bores. I was a fearful bore; I feel ashamed of it even now. . . .

"Among my friends there was in those days a young man who was
beginning his career as a lawyer. Now he is a lawyer known all over
Russia; in those days he was only just beginning to gain recognition
and was not rich and famous enough to be entitled to cut an old
friend when he met him. I used to go and see him once or twice a
week. We used to loll on sofas and begin discussing philosophy.

"One day I was lying on his sofa, arguing that there was no more
ungrateful profession than that of a lawyer. I tried to prove that
as soon as the examination of witnesses is over the court can easily
dispense with both the counsels for the prosecution and for the
defence, because they are neither of them necessary and are only
in the way. If a grown-up juryman, morally and mentally sane, is
convinced that the ceiling is white, or that Ivanov is guilty, to
struggle with that conviction and to vanquish it is beyond the power
of any Demosthenes. Who can convince me that I have a red moustache
when I know that it is black? As I listen to an orator I may perhaps
grow sentimental and weep, but my fundamental conviction, based for
the most part on unmistakable evidence and fact, is not changed in
the least. My lawyer maintained that I was young and foolish and
that I was talking childish nonsense. In his opinion, for one thing,
an obvious fact becomes still more obvious through light being
thrown upon it by conscientious, well-informed people; for another,
talent is an elemental force, a hurricane capable of turning even
stones to dust, let alone such trifles as the convictions of artisans
and merchants of the second guild. It is as hard for human weakness
to struggle against talent as to look at the sun without winking,
or to stop the wind. One simple mortal by the power of the word
turns thousands of convinced savages to Christianity; Odysseus was
a man of the firmest convictions, but he succumbed to the Syrens,