"No--pray do. I don't want to talk to you about any of my silly scrapes.
What are my scrapes? Absolutely nothing. Mere childishness. The other
night I flung a fellow out of a certain place where I was having a
fairly good time. A tyrannical little beast of a quill-driver from the
Treasury department. He was bullying the people of the house. I rebuked
him. 'You are not behaving humanely to God's creatures that are a jolly
sight more estimable than yourself,' I said. I can't bear to see any
tyranny, Kirylo Sidorovitch. Upon my word I can't. He didn't take it in
good part at all. 'Who's that impudent puppy?' he begins to shout. I
was in excellent form as it happened, and he went through the closed
window very suddenly. He flew quite a long way into the yard. I raged
like--like a--minotaur. The women clung to me and screamed, the fiddlers
got under the table.... Such fun! My dad had to put his hand pretty
deep into his pocket, I can tell you." He chuckled.
"My dad is a very useful man. Jolly good thing it is for me, too. I do
get into unholy scrapes."
His elation fell. That was just it. What was his life? Insignificant;
no good to anyone; a mere festivity. It would end some fine day in his
getting his skull split with a champagne bottle in a drunken brawl. At
such times, too, when men were sacrificing themselves to ideas.
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