"What dost thou mean by personal enjoyment?"

"And everything has deceived thee; everything has crumbled away beneath
thy feet."

"What is personal enjoyment,--I ask thee?"

"And it was bound to crumble. For thou hast sought support where it was
not to be found, for thou hast built thy house on a quicksand...."

"Speak more plainly, without metaphors, because I do not understand
thee."

"Because,--laugh if it pleases thee,--because there is no faith in thee,
no warmth of heart; mind, merely a farthing mind; thou art simply a
pitiful, lagging Voltairian--that's what thou art!"

"Who--I am a Voltairian?"

"Yes, just the same sort as thy father was, and dost not suspect it
thyself."

"After that,"--cried Lavretzky,--"I have a right to say that thou art a
fanatic!"

"Alas!"--returned Mikhalevitch, with contrition:--"unhappily, as yet I
have in no way earned so lofty an appellation...."

"Now I have discovered what to call thee,"--shouted this same
Mikhalevitch, at three o'clock in the morning;--"thou art not a sceptic,
not a disillusioned man, not a Voltairian,--thou art a trifler, and thou
art an evil-minded trifler, a conscious trifler, not an ingenuous
trifler. Ingenuous triflers lie around on the oven and do nothing,
because they do not know how to do anything; and they think of nothing.
But thou art a thinking man,--and thou liest around; thou mightest do
something--and thou dost nothing; thou liest with thy well-fed belly
upward and sayest: 'It is proper to lie thus, because everything that men
do is nonsense, and twaddle which leads to nothing.'"

"But what makes thee think that I trifle,"--insisted Lavretzky:--"why
dost thou assume such thoughts on my part?"

"And more than that, all of you, all the people of your sort,"--pursued
the obstreperous Mikhalevitch:--"are erudite triflers. You know on what
foot the German limps, you know what is bad about the English and the
French,--and your knowledge comes to your assistance, justifies your
shameful laziness, your disgusting inactivity. Some men will even pride
themselves, and say, 'What a clever fellow I am!--I lie around, but the
others, the fools, bustle about.' Yes!--And there are such gentlemen
among us,--I am not saying this with reference to thee, however,--who
pass their whole lives in a sort of stupor of tedium, grow accustomed to
it, sit in it like ... like a mushroom in sour cream," Mikhalevitch
caught himself up, and burst out laughing at his