"You are an egotist, that's what it is!" thundered Mikhalevich an hour later. "You wanted self-enjoyment; you wanted a happy life; you wanted to live only for yourself—"
"What is self-enjoyment?"
"—And every thing has failed you; everything has given way under your feet."
"But what is self-enjoyment, I ask you?"
"—And it ought to give way. Because you looked for support there, where it is impossible to find it; because you built your house on the quicksands—"
"Speak plainer, without metaphor, because I do not understand you."
"—Because—laugh away if you like—because there is no faith in you, no hearty warmth—and only a poor farthingsworth of intellect;[A] you are simply a pitiable creature, a behind—your—age disciple of Voltaire. That's what you are."
[Footnote A: Literally, "intellect, in all merely a copeck intellect.">[
"Who? I a disciple of Voltaire?"
"Yes, just such a one as your father was; and you have never so much as suspected it."