“Ah, Jennka,” said Platonov reproachfully and with regret. “For do you know, that after this two of the students got sick...Wasn’t it from you?” Jennka wrathfully and disdainfully flashed her eyes. “Perhaps even from me...How should I know? There were a lot of them...I remember there was this one, now, who was even trying to pick a fight with you all the time ...A tall sort of fellow, fair-haired, in pince-nez...” “Yes, yes...That’s Sobashnikov. They passed the news to me...That’s he...that one was nothing—a little coxcomb! But then the other—him I’m sorry for. Although I’ve known him long, somehow I never made the right inquiries about his name...I only remember that he comes from some city or other—Poliyansk...Zvenigorodsk... His comrades called him Ramses...When the physicians—he turned to several physicians—when they told him irrevocably that he had the lues, he went home and shot himself...And in the note that he wrote there were amazing things, something like this: I supposed all the meaning of life to be in the triumph of mind, beauty and good; with this disease I am not a man, but junk, rottenness, carrion; a candidate for a progressive paralytic. My human dignity cannot reconcile itself to this. But guilty in all that has happened, and therefore in my death as well, am I alone; for that I, obeying a momentary bestial inclination, took a woman without love, for money. For that reason have I earned the punishment which I myself lay upon me...” “I am sorry for him...” added Platonov quietly. Jennka dilated her nostrils. “But I, now, not the very least bit.” “That’s wrong...You go away now, young fellow. When I’ll need you I’ll call out,” said Platonov to the serving-man “Absolutely wrong, Jennechka! This was an unusually big and forceful man. Such come only one to the hundreds of thousands. I don’t respect suicides. Most frequent of all, these are little boys, who shoot and hang themselves over trifles, like a child that has not been given a piece of candy, and hits itself against the wall to spite those around it. But before his death I reverently and with sorrow bow my head. He was a wise, generous, kindly man, attentive to all; and, as you see, too strict to himself.” “But to me this is absolutely all one,” obstinately contradicted Jennka, “wise or foolish, honest or dishonest, old or young—I have come to hate them all. Because—look upon me—what am I? Some sort of universal spittoon, cesspool, privy. Think of it, Platonov; why, thousands, thousands of people have taken me, clutched me; grunted, snorted over me; and all those who were, and all those who might yet have been on my bed—oh, how I hate them all! If I only could, I would sentence them to torture by fire and iron! ... I would order...” “You are malicious and proud, Jennie,” said Platonov quietly.