Zakhár felt very ashamed. He could not understand what had provoked the reproachful exclamation of his master, and did not reply. “Others are not worse than we are!” repeated Iliyá Iliych (Oblómoff) with a sense of horror. “That is what you have come to. Now I shall know henceforth that I am for you the same as ‘the others’.” After a time Oblómoff calls Zakhár back and has with him an explanation which is worth reproducing. “Have you ever thought what it meant--‘the others,’” Oblómoff began. “Must I tell you what this means?” Poor Zakhár shifted about uneasily, like a bear in his den, and sighed aloud. “‘Another’--that means a wild, uneducated man; he lives poorly, dirtily, in an attic; he can sleep on a piece of felt stretched somewhere on the floor--what does that matter to him?--Nothing! He will feed on potatoes and herrings; misery compels him continuously to shift from one place to another. He runs about all day long--_he_, he may, of course, go to new lodgings. There is Lagáeff; he takes under his arm his ruler and his two shirts wrapped in a handkerchief, and he is off. ‘Where are you going?’ you ask him.--‘I am moving’, he says. That is what ‘the others’ means.--Am I one of those others, do you mean?” Zakhár threw a glance upon his master, shifted from one foot to the other, but said nothing. “Do you understand now what ‘another’ means?” continued Oblómoff. “‘Another,’ that is the man who cleans his own boots, who himself puts on his clothes--without any help! Of course, he may sometimes look like a gentleman, but that is mere deceit: he does not know what it means to have a servant--he has nobody to send to the shop to make his purchases; he makes them himself--he will even poke his own fire, and occasionally use a duster.” “Yes,” replied Zakhár sternly, “there are many such people among the Germans.” “That’s it, that’s it! And I? do you think that I am one of them?” “No, you are different,” Zakhár said, still unable to understand what his master was driving at.... “But God knows what is coming upon you....” “Ah! I am different! Most certainly, I am. Do I run about? do I work? don’t I eat whenever I am hungry? Look at me--am I thin? am I sickly to look at? Is there anything I lack? Thank God, I have people to do things for me. I have never put on my own socks since I was born, thank God! Must I also be restless like the others?--What for?--And to whom am I saying all this? Have you not been with me from childhood?... You have seen it all. You know that I have received a delicate education; that I have never suffered from cold or from hunger,--never knew want--never worked for my own bread--have never done any sort of dirty work.... Well, how dare you put me on the same level as the ‘others’?”