He came to me for his first vacation…. And, what marvel is this? I do not recognise my Yákoff! He had grown so tiresome and surly,—you couldn't get a word out of him. And his face had changed also: he had grown about ten years older. He had been taciturn before, there's no denying that! At the slightest thing he would grow shy and blush like a girl…. But when he raised his eyes, you could see that all was bright in his soul! But now it was quite different. He was not shy, but he held aloof, like a wolf, and was always looking askance. He had neither a smile nor a greeting for any one—he was just like a stone! If I undertook to interrogate him, he would either remain silent or snarl. I began to wonder whether he had taken to drink—which God forbid!—or had conceived a passion for cards; or whether something in the line of a weakness for women had happened to him. In youth love-longings act powerfully,—well, and in such a large city as Moscow bad examples and occasions are not lacking. But no; nothing of that sort was discernible. His drink was kvas[22] and water; he never looked at the female sex—and had no intercourse with people in general. And what was most bitter of all to me, he did not have his former confidence in me; a sort of indifference had made its appearance, just as though everything belonging to him had become loathsome to him. I turned the conversation on the sciences, on the university, but even there could get no real answer. He went to church, but he was not devoid of peculiarities there also; everywhere he was grim and scowling, but in church he seemed always to be grinning.
After this fashion he spent six weeks with me, then went back to Moscow. From Moscow he wrote to me twice, and it seemed to me, from his letters, as though he were regaining his sensibilities. But picture to yourself my surprise, my dear sir! Suddenly, in the very middle of the winter, just before the Christmas holidays, he presents himself before me!
"How didst thou get here? How is this? What's the matter? I know that thou hast no vacation at this time.—Dost thou come from Moscow?"—I ask.
"Yes."
"And how about … the university?"
"I have left the university."
"Thou hast left it?"
"Just so."
"For good?"
"For good."