le. You don't believe me? You are smiling. Do you know,
I am sometimes very wicked--for I lose my faith? This evening as I came
here, I thought to myself, 'What shall I talk about? How am I to begin,
so that they may be able to understand partially, at all events?' How
afraid I was--dreadfully afraid! And yet, how COULD I be afraid--was it
not shameful of me? Was I afraid of finding a bottomless abyss of empty
selfishness? Ah! that's why I am so happy at this moment, because I find
there is no bottomless abyss at all--but good, healthy material, full of
life.

"It is not such a very dreadful circumstance that we are odd people, is
it? For we really are odd, you know--careless, reckless, easily wearied
of anything. We don't look thoroughly into matters--don't care to
understand things. We are all like this--you and I, and all of them!
Why, here are you, now--you are not a bit angry with me for calling you
odd,' are you? And, if so, surely there is good material in you? Do you
know, I sometimes think it is a good thing to be odd. We can forgive
one another more easily, and be more humble. No one can begin by being
perfect--there is much one cannot understand in life at first. In order
to attain to perfection, one must begin by failing to understand much.
And if we take in knowledge too quickly, we very likely are not taking
it in at all. I say all this to you--you who by this time understand so
much--and doubtless have failed to understand so much, also. I am not
afraid of you any longer. You are not angry that a mere boy should say
such words to you, are you? Of course not! You know how to forget and to
forgive. You are laughing, Ivan Petrovitch? You think I am a champion
of other classes of people--that I am THEIR advocate, a democrat, and
an orator of Equality?" The prince laughed hysterically; he had several
times burst into these little, short nervous laughs. "Oh, no--it is for
you, for myself, and for all of us together, that I am alarmed. I am a
prince of an old family myself, and I am sitting among my peers; and I
am talking like this in the hope of saving us all; in the hope that our
class will not disappear altogether--into the darkness--unguessing its
danger--blaming everything around it, and losing ground every day. Why
should we disappear and give place to others, when we may still, if
we choose, remain in the front rank and lead the battle? Let us be
servants, that we may become lords in due season!"

He tr