“The student Sachkov, my former teacher, who is now a doctor of medicine, a whist-player and a mean fellow all around, used to tell me whenever I knew my lesson well: ‘You’re a fine fellow, Kolya! You are an able boy. We proletariats, plain and poor people, coming from the backyard of life, we must study and study, in order to come to the front, ahead of everybody. Russia is in need of wise and honest people. Try to be such, and you will be master of your fate and a useful member of society. On us commoners rest the best hopes of the country. We are destined to bring into it light, truth,’ and so on. I believed him, the brute. And since then about twenty years have elapsed. We proletariats have grown up, but have neither appropriated any wisdom, nor brought light into life. As before, Russia is still suffering from its chronic disease--a superabundance of rascals; while we, the proletariats, take pleasure in filling their dense throngs. My teacher, I repeat, is a lackey, a characterless and dumb creature, who must obey the orders of the mayor. While I am a clown in the employ of society. Fame pursues me here in town, dear. I walk along the street and I hear one driver say to another: ‘There goes Yozhov! How cleverly he barks, the deuce take him!’ Yes! Even this cannot be so easily attained.” Yozhov’s face wrinkled into a bitter grimace, and he began to laugh, noiselessly, with his lips only. Foma did not understand his words, and, just to say something, he remarked at random: “You didn’t hit, then, what you aimed at?” “Yes, I thought I would grow up higher. And so I should! So I should, I say!” He jumped up from his chair and began to run about in the room, exclaiming briskly in a shrill voice: