_"Oh, c'est un histoire bien bête! Je vous attendais, ma bonne amie, pour vous raconter..."_ "Enough, Stepan Trofimovitch. Leave me in peace. I'm worn out. We shall have time to talk to our heart's content, especially of what's unpleasant. You've begun to splutter when you laugh, it's a sign of senility! And what a strange way of laughing you've taken to!... Good Heavens, what a lot of bad habits you've fallen into! Karmazinov won't come and see you! And people are only too glad to make the most of anything as it is.... You've betrayed yourself completely now. Well, come, that's enough, that's enough, I'm tired. You really might have mercy upon one!" Stepan Trofimovitch "had mercy," but he withdrew in great perturbation. V Our friend certainly had fallen into not a few bad habits, especially of late. He had obviously and rapidly deteriorated; and it was true that he had become slovenly. He drank more and had become more tearful and nervous; and had grown too impressionable on the artistic side. His face had acquired a strange facility for changing with extraordinary quickness, from the most solemn expression, for instance, to the most absurd, and even foolish. He could not endure solitude, and was always craving for amusement. One had always to repeat to him some gossip, some local anecdote, and every day a new one. If no one came to see him for a long time he wandered disconsolately about the rooms, walked to the window, puckering up his lips, heaved deep sighs, and almost fell to whimpering at last. He was always full of forebodings, was afraid of something unexpected and inevitable; he had become timorous; he began to pay great attention to his dreams. He spent all that day and evening in great depression, he sent for me, was very much agitated, talked a long while, gave me a long account of things, but all rather disconnected. Varvara Petrovna had known for a long time that he concealed nothing from me. It seemed to me at last that he was worried about something particular, and was perhaps unable to form a definite idea of it himself. As a rule when we met _tête-à-tête_ and he began making long complaints to me, a bottle was almost always brought in after a little time, and things became much more comfortable. This time there was no wine, and he was evidently struggling all the while against the desire to send for it. "And why is she always so cross?" he complained every minute, like a child. _"Tous les hommes de génie et de progrès en Russie étaient, sont, et seront toujours des_ gamblers _et des_ drunkards _qui boivent_ in outbreaks... and I'm not such a gambler after all, and I'm not such a drunkard. She reproaches me for not writing anything. Strange idea!... She asks why I lie down? She says I ought to stand, 'an example and reproach.' _Mais, entre nous soit dit,_ what is a man to do who is destined to stand as a 'reproach,' if not to lie down? Does she understand that?"