Friend: Listen. For the last time I ask you to come back to us. I can’t believe that you could seriously—Lord! how my head’s turning from the mead and everything!
Master (coolly): He who is free from too firm convictions, who has passed through the school of the new Sakya-Muni and the new Zarathustra, who is far too clever to be ashamed to talk nonsense, who so resembles an Olympian that he is strong enough even to laugh at others’ misfortunes—tell me on your conscience, what should such a man do among wretched, grey, blue-eyed neurasthenics, people who to-day or to-morrow will become Americans!
Friend: H’m.—Certainly, on those conditions—H’m—you know, it seems to me, the dramatic upshot of your working life would not be so terrible if you actually did go mad.
Master: You think so?
Friend: And know this, whether you’ll be angry with me or not, all the same I’ll tell everybody at Petersburg that you’re mad!
Master: What for?
Friend: What for? Can I explain all this to them, are they capable of allowing for No,
