listened to a discussion between Dmitri Sergéitch and two students, the most radical of all his younger friends. They found in each other's arguments inconsequentiality, moderantism, and bourgeoisism.[1] These were the terms that they applied to each other; but in private each one had a special sin. One student, romanticism, and Dmitri Sergéitch was a schematist, and the other student believed in rigorism. Of course a stranger would find it hard to keep up his interest in such a discussion longer than five minutes; even one of the disputants, the romanticist, could not hold out longer than an hour and a half, then ran off to those who were dancing; but he did not run off ingloriously. He was indignant at some moderantist or other (almost with me, though I was not there at all), and, knowing that the cause of his indignation was not very old, he cried out, "Why are you talking about him? I will tell you the words which were said to me a few days ago by a respectable person—a very witty woman, 'Only till a man is twenty-five may he preserve intact the style of his thoughts.'" "I know who that lady is," said an officer who, to the romanticist's mortification, joined the disputants, "It was Mrs. N. She said it in my presence, and she is really an elegant woman; but she was caught on the spot. Half an hour before she had said that she was twenty-six years old, and do you remember how we all roared?"
And at this all four laughed, and the romanticist beat a retreat, laughing. But the officer took his place in the dispute, and the fun was much more lively than before until it was tea-time. The officer, while showing up the rigorist and the schematist much more cruelly than the romanticist had done, was himself mournfully convicted of Auguste Comteism. After tea, the officer announced that as long as his age still allowed his style of thought to be intact, he would not refrain from joining other people of his age. Then Dmitri Sergéitch and, though it was much against his will, the rigorist followed his example. They did not dance in the dances, but they played high spy. And when the men decided to run races, to jump over the ditch, then the three thinkers distinguished themselves as the most agile champions of manly exercise. The officer received the first prize for jumping over the ditch. Dmitri Sergéitch, who was a very strong man, got into a great rage when the
- ↑ Nyekonsekventnosti, moderantizm, burzhuaznost.
