“Leave science alone! Science is a drink of the gods; but it has not yet fermented sufficiently, and, therefore is not fit for use, like vodka which has not yet been purified from empyreumatic oil. Science is not ready for man’s happiness, my friend. And those living people that use it get nothing but headaches. Like those you and I have at present. Why do you drink so rashly?”
“I? What else am I to do?” asked Foma, laughing. Yozhov looked at Foma searchingly with his eyes half closed, and he said:
“Connecting your question with everything you jabbered last night, I feel within my troubled soul that you, too, my friend, do not amuse yourself because life is cheerful to you.”
“Eh!” sighed Foma, heavily, rising from the lounge. “What is my life? It is something meaningless. I live alone. I understand nothing. And yet there is something I long for. I yearn to spit on all and then disappear somewhere! I would like to run away from everything. I am so weary!”
“That’s interesting!” said Yozhov, rubbing his hands and turning about in all directions. “This is interesting, if it is true and deep, for it shows that the holy spirit of dissatisfaction with life has already penetrated into the bed chambers of the merchants, into the death chambers of souls drowned in fat cabbage soup, in lakes of tea and other liquids. Give me a circumstantial account of it. Then, my dear, I shall write a novel.”
“I have been told that you have already written something about me?” inquired Foma, with curiosity, and once more attentively scrutinized his old friend unable to understand what so wretched a creature could write.
“Of course I have! Did you read it?”
“No, I did not have the chance.”
“And what have they told you?”
“That you gave me a clever scolding.”