"Heavenly mother! Lord preserve us!" sighed Dáryushka.
"And how we drank! How we used to eat! What desperate Liberals we were!"
Andréi Yéfimitch listened, but heard nothing; he was thinking of something else and drinking his beer.
"I often dream of clever people and have imaginary conversations with them," he said, suddenly, interrupting Mikhail Averyanitch. "My father gave me a splendid education, but, under the influence of the ideas current in the sixties, forced me to become a doctor. It seems to me that if I had disobeyed him I might now be living in the very centre of the intellectual movement—probably a member of some faculty. Of course intellect itself is not eternal but transitory—but you already know why I worship it so. Life is a vexatious snare. When a reflecting man attains manhood and ripe consciousness, he cannot but feel himself in a trap from which there is no escape.... By an accident, without consulting his own will, he is called from non-existence into life.... Why? He wishes to know the aim and significance of his existence; he is answered with silence or absurdities; he knocks but it is not opened to him; and death itself comes against his will. And so, as prisoners united by common misfortune are relieved when they meet, men inclined to analysis and generalisation do not notice the snare in which they live when they spend their days in the exchange of free ideas. In this sense intellect is an irreplaceable enjoyment."
"Entirely true!"
And still with his face averted from his companion, Andréi Yéfimitch, in a soft voice, with constant pauses, continues to speak of clever men and of the joy of communion with them, and Mikhail Averyanitch listens attentively and says: "It is entirely true."
"Then you do not believe in the immortality of the soul?" asks the postmaster.
"No, my dear Mikhail Averyanitch. I do not believe, and I have no reason for believing."
"I admit that I also doubt it. Still I have a feeling that I can never die. 'Come,' I say to myself, 'Come, old man, it's time for you to die.' But in my heart a voice answers: 'Don't believe it, you will never die.'"
At nine o'clock Mikhail Averyanitch takes leave. As he puts on his overcoat in the hall, he says with a sigh: