[Footnote A: Literally, "disillusioned.">[
"Does a blasé man ever look like me?" answered Lavretsky. "He is always pale and sickly; but I, if you like, will lift you off the ground with one hand."
"Well then, if not blasé, at least a sceptic,[A] and that is still worse. But what right have you to be a sceptic? Your life has not been a success, I admit. That wasn't your fault. You were endowed with a soul full of affection, fit for passionate love, and you were kept away from women by force. The first woman you came across was sure to take you in."
[Footnote A: He says in that original Skyeptuik instead of Skeptik, on which the author remarks, "Mikhalevich's accent testified to his birth-place having been in Little Russia.">[
"She took you in, too," morosely remarked Lavretsky.
"Granted, granted. In that I was the tool of fate. But I'm talking nonsense. There's no such thing as fate. My old habit of expressing myself inaccurately! But what does that prove?"
"It proves this much, that I have been distorted from childhood."
"Well, then, straighten yourself. That's the good of being a man. You haven't got to borrow energy. But, however that may be, is it possible, is it allowable, to work upwards from an isolated fact, so to speak, to a general law—to an invariable rule?"
"What rule?" said Lavretsky, interrupting him. "I do not admit—"
"No, that is your rule, that is your rule," cried the other, interrupting him in his turn.