‘Yes, yes,’ he began again, with the special dejected but not peevish humour peculiar to him, ‘it is all very strange. And there is something else I want you to note. Let a dozen Englishmen, for example, come together, and they will at once begin to talk of the sub-marine telegraph, or the tax on paper, or a method of tanning rats’ skins,--of something, that’s to say, practical and definite; a dozen Germans, and of course Schleswig-Holstein and the unity of Germany will be brought on the scene; given a dozen Frenchmen, and the conversation will infallibly turn upon amorous adventures, however much you try to divert them from the subject; but let a dozen Russians meet together, and instantly there springs up the question--you had an opportunity of being convinced of the fact this evening--the question of the significance and the future of Russia, and in terms so general, beginning with creation, without facts or conclusions. They worry and worry away at that unlucky subject, as children chew away at a bit of india-rubber--neither for pleasure nor profit, as the saying is. Well, then, of course the rotten West comes in for its share. It’s a curious thing, it beats us at every point, this West--but yet we declare that it’s rotten! And if only we had a genuine contempt for it,’ pursued Potugin, ‘but that’s really all cant and humbug. We can do well enough as far as abuse goes, but the opinion of the West is the only thing we value, the opinion, that’s to say, of the Parisian loafers.... I know a man--a good fellow, I fancy--the father of a family, and no longer young; he was thrown into deep dejection for some days because in a Parisian restaurant he had asked for _une portion de biftek aux pommes de terre_, and a real Frenchman thereupon shouted: _Garçon! biftek pommes!_ My friend was ready to die with shame, and after that he shouted everywhere, _Biftek pommes!_ and taught others to do the same. The very _cocottes_ are surprised at the reverential trepidation with which our young barbarians enter their shameful drawing-rooms. “Good God!” they are thinking, “is this really where I am, with no less a person than Anna Deslions herself!”’ ‘Tell me, pray,’ continued Litvinov, ‘to what do you ascribe the influence Gubaryov undoubtedly has over all about him? Is it his talent, his abilities?’ ‘No, no; there is nothing of that sort about him....’ ‘His personal character is it, then?’