e sort of thing that happens."

His face still expressed mental inertia, and apparently Ananyev's
story had not touched him in the least. Only when the engineer after
a moment's pause, began expounding his view again and repeating
what he had said at first, the student frowned irritably, got up
from the table and walked away to his bed. He made his bed and began
undressing.

"You look as though you have really convinced some one this time,"
he said irritably.

"Me convince anybody!" said the engineer. "My dear soul, do you
suppose I claim to do that? God bless you! To convince you is
impossible. You can reach conviction only by way of personal
experience and suffering!"

"And then--it's queer logic!" grumbled the student as he put on
his nightshirt. "The ideas which you so dislike, which are so ruinous
for the young are, according to you, the normal thing for the old;
it's as though it were a question of grey hairs. . . . Where do the
old get this privilege? What is it based upon? If these ideas are
poison, they are equally poisonous for all?"

"Oh, no, my dear soul, don't say so!" said the engineer with a sly
wink. "Don't say so. In the first place, old men are not dilettanti.
Their pessimism comes to them not casually from outside, but from
the depths of their own brains, and only after they have exhaustively
studied the Hegels and Kants of all sorts, have suffered, have made
no end of mistakes, in fact--when they have climbed the whole
ladder from bottom to top. Their pessimism has both personal
experience and sound philosophic training behind it. Secondly, the
pessimism of old thinkers does not take the form of idle talk, as
it does with you and me, but of _Weltschmertz_, of suffering; it
rests in them on a Christian foundation because it is derived from
love for humanity and from thoughts about humanity, and is entirely
free from the egoism which is noticeable in dilettanti. You despise
life because its meaning and its object are hidden just from you,
and you are only afraid of your own death, while the real thinker
is unhappy because the truth is hidden from all and he is afraid
for all men. For instance, there is living not far from here the
Crown forester, Ivan Alexandritch. He is a nice old man. At one
time he was a teacher somewhere, and used to write something; the
devil only knows what he was, but anyway he is a remarkably clever
fellow and in philosophy he is A1. He has read a great deal and he
is c