"Is that really your opinion?"
"And why pray shouldn't I speak as I think?"
"Well, you know that a man always tries to brag a little bit whatever he may be..."
"I know not why I should have inspired you with such a distrust of me," and this wolf shrugged his shoulders—"I suppose it is because I gave you some bread and tea? I did this not from any brotherly feeling, but out of curiosity. I see a man not in his proper place and I want to know how and by what means he was chucked out of life...."
"And I, too, wanted to know the same thing. Tell me who and what you are?" I asked.
He looked searchingly at me and said, after a moment's silence: "A man never knows exactly who he is. One must be always asking him what he takes himself for."
"Weill, take it like that."
"Well ... I think I am a man who has no room in life. Life is narrow and I—am broad. Possibly this may not be true. But in this world there is a peculiar sort of people who must be descendants of the Wandering Jew. Their peculiarity is that they can never find a place for themselves in the world to which they can stick fast. Inside them lives an unruly aching desire for something new. The small fry of this order of men are never able to work things out to their liking, and for that reason are always discontented and unhappy, while the big fish are never satisfied with anything—whether it be women, money, or honour. Such people are not beloved in this life—they are audacious and unendurable. You see, the majority of people are sixpences in current coin, and all the difference between them is the date when they were struck off. This one is worn out, that one is quite new; but their value is the same, their substance is of the same sort, and in every respect they are absolutely similar. Now I am not of these sixpences ... although perhaps I may be a half-sovereign.... That is all."
He said all this smiling sceptically, and it seemed to me that he did not believe himself. But he excited in me an eager curiosity, and I resolved to go with him till I discovered who he was. It was plain that he was a so-called "intelligent person." There are many of them among the vagabonds, but they are all—dead people, people who have lost all self-respect, who lack the capacity of esteeming themselves, and only manage to live by falling lower every day into filth and nastiness; finally, they dissolve in it and disappear from life.
But there was something substantial and durable about Promtov. And he did not grumble at life as all the others do.