"When I look upon people," I said, "I doubt the power of God." Again it was not right. I doubted God before I ever saw the people. Mikhail looked at me thoughtfully, with wise eyes, and the uncle walked heavily up and down the room, stroking his beard, and grunting low to himself. It made me uneasy that I had to lower myself to lie before them. I saw my soul with remarkable clearness and my thoughts raced through me stupidly and alarmed like a frightened bee-hive. I began to drive them out of me, irritated. I wished to empty myself. I spoke for a long time without connecting my words. I spoke at random on purpose. If they were such wise people, let them gather the sense themselves. I became tired and asked passionately: "How can you heal my sick soul?" Mikhail answered low, without looking at me: "I do not consider you sick." The uncle laughed again, and it pealed out as if a demon had come in through the roof. "To be sick," Mikhail continued, "is when a man is not conscious of himself, but knows only his pain and lives in it. But you, it is plain, have not lost yourself. You are seeking happiness in life, and only a healthy man does that." "But why is there such pain in my soul then?" "Because you like it," he answered. I gnashed my teeth. His calm was unbearable to me. "Do you know for sure," I asked, "that I like it?" He looked me straight in the eyes and drove his nails slowly into my breast. "As an honest man, you ought to recognize," he said, "that your pain is necessary to your soul. It places you above others and you esteem it as something which separates you from others. Is it not so?" His Lenten face was dry and drawn, his eyes darkened, he stroked his cheek with his hand, while he cleaned me hard, as one cleans copper with sand. "You are evidently afraid to mingle with people for you unconsciously think to yourself, 'Though they are ulcers, they are my own, and no one has ulcers but I.'" I wanted to contradict him, but found no words. He was younger than I, and weaker, and I did not believe that of the two I was the more stupid. The uncle laughed like a priest in a steam-bath. "But this does not separate you from people. You are mistaken," Mikhail went on. "Every one thinks the same. That is why life is weak and monstrous. Each one tries to go away from life and dig his own hole in the ground and look out upon the earth from it alone. From a hole, life seems low and futile, and it suits the isolated man to see life so. I say it about those people who for some reason or other cannot sit on the backs of their neighbors to drive them where they could eat tastier food." His speech angered and offended me.