In _Váreñka Olésova_ Górkiy expresses all his contempt for the average “intellectual” of our own days. He introduces to us the interesting type of a girl, full of vitality; a most primitive creature, absolutely untouched by any ideals of liberty and equality, but so full of an intense life, so independent, so much herself, that one cannot but feel greatly interested in her. She meets with one of those “intellectuals” who know and admire higher ideals, but are weaklings, utterly devoid of the nerve of life. Of course, Váreñka laughs at the very idea of such a man’s falling in love with her; and these are the expressions in which Górkiy makes her define the usual hero of Russian novels: “The Russian hero is always silly and stupid,” she says; “he is always sick of something; always thinking about something that cannot be understood, and is himself so miserable, so mi-i-serable! He will think, think, then talk, then he will go and make a declaration of love, and after that he thinks, and thinks again, till he marries.... And when he is married, he talks all sorts of nonsense to his wife, and then abandons her.” (_Váreñka Olésova_, II, 281.) Górkiy’s favourite type is the “rebel”--the man in full revolt against Society, but at the same time a strong man, a power; and as he has found among the tramps with whom he has lived at least the embryo of this type, it is from this stratum of society that he takes his most interesting heroes. In _Konováloff_ Górkiy himself gives the psychology, or, rather, a partial psychology, of his tramp hero:--“An ‘intellectual’ amongst those whom fate has ill-used--amongst the ragged, the hungry and embittered half-men and half-beasts with whom the city slums teem.”--“Usually a being that can be included in no order,” the man who has “been torn from all his moorings, who is hostile to everything and ready to turn upon anything the force of his angry, embittered scepticism” (II, 23). His tramp feels that he has been defeated in life, but he does not seek excuse in circumstances. Konováloff, for instance, will not admit the theory which is in such vogue among the educated ne’er-do-well, namely, that he is the sad product of adverse conditions. “One must be faint-hearted indeed,” he says, “to become such a man.” “I live, and something goads me on” ... but “I have no inner line to follow ... do you understand me? I don’t know how to say it. I have not that spark in my soul, ... force, perhaps? Something is missing; that’s all!” And when his young friend who has read in books all sorts of excuses for weakness of character mentions “the dark hostile forces round you,” Konováloff retorts: “Then make a stand! take a stronger footing! find your ground, and make a stand!”