“One night, as I was passing a tavern, I saw through a lighted window some gentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out of the window. At other times, I should have felt very much disgusted, but I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the gentleman thrown out of the window--and I envied him so much that I even went into the tavern and into the billiard-room. ‘Perhaps,’ I thought, ‘I’ll have a fight, too, and they’ll throw me out of the window.’ “I was not drunk--but what is one to do?--depression will drive a man to such a pitch of hysteria! But nothing happened. It seemed that I was not even equal to being thrown out of the window, and I went away without having my fight. “An officer put me in my place from the first moment. I was standing by the billiard-room tables and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word, without warning or explanation, moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me. “Devil knows what I would have given for a real, regular quarrel--a more decent, a more literary one, so to speak. I had been treated like a fly. This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little fellow. But the quarrel was in my hands. I had only to protest and I certainly would have been thrown out of the window. But I changed my mind, and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.”[54] But if we carry the story further, we shall soon see the excess of hatred to be nothing other than love inverted. “... I often met that officer afterwards in the street, and noticed him very carefully. I am not quite sure whether he recognized me: I imagine not, I judge from certain signs. But I--I stared at him with spite and hatred, and so it went on--for several years! My resentment grew even deeper with years. At first I began making stealthy inquiries about this officer. It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no one. But one day I heard one shout his name in the street as I was following him at a distance, as though I was tied to him,--and so I learned his surname. Another time I followed him to his flat, and for ten kopecks learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey, whether he lived alone or with others, and so on--in fact, everything one could learn from a porter. One morning, though I had never tried my hand with the pen, it suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on this officer in the form of a novel which would unmask his villainy; I even exaggerated it: at first I so altered his surname that it could not easily be recognized, but on second thoughts I changed it, and sent the story to the _O.Z._