Once when we were taking a walk on the wall round the town, and conversing about the tendency of men, which is evinced in such expressions, to deceive themselves and others, I said to Lapidoth, "Friend, let us be fair, and pass our censure on ourselves, as well as on others. Is not the contemplative life which we lead, and which is by no means adapted to our circumstances, to be regarded as a result of our indolence and inclination to idleness, which we seek to defend by reflections on the vanity of all things? We are content with our present circumstances; why? Because we cannot alter them without first fighting against our inclination to idleness. With all our pretence of contempt for everything outside of us, we cannot avoid the secret wish to be able to enjoy better food and clothing than at present. We reproach our friends as vain men addicted to the pleasures of sense, because they have abandoned our mode of life, and undertaken occupations adapted to their powers. But wherein consists our superiority over them, when we merely follow our inclination as they follow theirs? Let us seek to find this superiority merely in the fact, that we at least confess this truth to ourselves, while they profess as the motive of their actions, not the satisfaction of their own particular desires, but the impulse to general utility." Lapidoth, on whom my words produced a powerful impression, answered with some warmth, "Friend, you are perfectly right. If we cannot now mend our faults, we will not deceive ourselves about them, but at least keep the way open for amendment." In conversations of this kind we two cynics spent our pleasantest hours, while we made ourselves merry sometimes at the expense of the world, sometimes at our own. Lapidoth, for example, whose old dirty clothes had all fallen into rags, and one of whose sleeves was wholly parted from the rest of his coat, while he was not in a position even to have it mended, used to fix the sleeve on his back with a pin, and to ask me, "Don't I look like a _Schlachziz_ (a Polish noble)?" I, again, could not sufficiently commend my rent shoes, which were quite open at the toes, because, as I said, "They do not squeeze the foot."