Some one told in his presence how the editor of a popular magazine, who was always talking of the necessity of love and pity, had, for no reason at all, insulted a railway guard, and how he usually acted with extreme rudeness towards his inferiors. "Well," said Anton Pavlovitch with a gloomy smile, "but isn't he an aristocrat, an educated gentleman? He studied at the seminary. His father wore bast shoes, and he wears patent-leather boots." And in his tone there was something which at once made the "aristocrat" trivial and ridiculous. "He's a very gifted man," he said of a certain journalist. "He always writes so nobly, humanely, ... lemonadely. Calls his wife a fool in public ... the servants' rooms are damp and the maids constantly get rheumatics." "Don't you like N. N., Anton Pavlovitch?" "Yes, I do--very much. He's a pleasant fellow," Anton Pavlovitch agrees, coughing. "He knows everything ... reads a lot ... he hasn't returned three of my books ... he's absent-minded. To-day he will tell you that you're a wonderful fellow, and to-morrow he will tell somebody else that you cheat your servants, and that you have stolen from your mistress's husband his silk socks ... the black ones with the blue stripes." Some one in his presence complained of the heaviness and tediousness of the "serious" sections in thick monthly magazines. "But you mustn't read those articles," said Anton Pavlovitch. "They are friends' literature--written for friends. They are written by Messrs. Red, Black, and White. One writes an article; the other replies to it; and the third reconciles the contradictions of the other two. It is like playing whist with a dummy. Yet none of them asks himself what good it is to the reader." Once a plump, healthy, handsome, well-dressed lady came to him and began to speak _à la Chekhov_:-- "Life is so boring, Anton Pavlovitch. Everything is so gray: people, the sea, even the flowers seem to me gray.... And I have no desires ... my soul is in pain ... it is like a disease." "It is a disease," said Anton Pavlovitch with conviction, "it is a disease; in Latin it is called _morbus imitatis_." Fortunately the lady did not seem to know Latin, or, perhaps, she pretended not to know it. "Critics are like horse-flies which prevent the horse from plowing," he said, smiling his wise smile. "The horse works, all its muscles drawn tight like the strings on a doublebass, and a fly settles on his flanks and tickles and buzzes ... he has to twitch his skin and swish his tail. And what does the fly buzz about? It scarcely knows itself; simply because it is restless and wants to proclaim: 'Look, I too am living on the earth. See, I can buzz, too, buzz about anything.' For twenty-five years I have read criticisms of my stories, and I don't remember a single remark of any value or one word of valuable advice. Only once Skabitchevsky wrote something which made an impression on me ... he said I would die in a ditch, drunk."