"Did you see that?" he asked, gripping my hand firmly. "She's simply an angel!"

"Why?" asked I, pretending utter innocence.

"Didn't you see?"

"Of course, I saw her picking up your glass. If there had been a park keeper around he would have done the same, only quicker in hopes of getting a tip. Though it is not surprising that she took pity on you: you made such an awful face when you put your weight on your wounded leg…"

"Weren't you moved at all, the moment that you saw her soul shining in her eyes?"

"No."

I was lying, but I wanted to stir him up. I have an inborn urge to contradict. My whole life has been a mere chain of sad and futile opposition to the dictates of either heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast makes me as cold as a midwinter's day, and, I believe, frequent association with a listless phlegmatic would make me an impassioned dreamer. I must also admit that at that moment an unpleasant but familiar sensation lightly crept over my heart; that sensation was envy. I say "envy" frankly, because I am accustomed to being honest with myself. And it is unlikely that any young man (a man of the world accustomed to indulging his vanities, of course), who, having met a woman who attracted his idle fancy, would not be unpleasantly impressed upon seeing her favor another man no less a stranger than he.

Grushnitsky and I descended the hill in silence and walked down the boulevard past the windows of the house which our enchantress had entered. She was sitting at the window. Tugging at my sleeve, Grushnitsky gave her one of those mistily tender looks that evoke so little response in women. I directed my eyeglass at her and saw that Grushnitsky's glance brought a smile to her face while my impertinent examination made her very angry. Indeed, how dare a Caucasian army officer level an eyeglass at a princess from Moscow?

The doctor dropped in to see me this morning. His name is Werner, but he is a Russian. There is nothing surprising in that. I once knew an Ivanov who was a German.

Werner is in many respects a remarkable man. He's a skeptic and a materialist like most medical men, but he's also a poet, and that quite seriously-a poet in all his deeds and frequently in words, though he never wrote two verses in his life. He has studied the vital chords of the human heart the way men study the ligaments of a corpse, but he had never been able to make use of his knowledge just as a splendid anatomist may not be able to cure a fever. As a rule, Werner secretly laughed at his patients, yet once I saw him cry over a dying soldier. He was poor and dreamed of possessing millions, but he would not have gone a step out of his way for the sake of money. Once he told me that he would rather do an enemy a favor than a friend, because in the latter case it would amount to profiting by one's charity, whereas hatred grows in proportion to the generosity of the enemy. He had a malicious tongue, and branded by his epigrams, more than one kindly soul came to be regarded as a vulgar fool. His competitors, envious practitioners at the spa, spread a rumor that he drew caricatures of his patients-the latter were furious and he lost practically all his clientele. His friends, that is, all the really decent people serving in the Caucasus, tried in vain to boost his fallen prestige.

His appearance was of the kind that strikes one disagreeably at first sight but subsequently becomes likeable, when the eye has learned to find in the irregular features the imprint of suffering and nobility. There have been cases when women have fallen madly in love with men like him and would not have exchanged their ugliness for the beauty of the freshest and pinkest of Endymions[89]. Women must be given credit for possessing an instinct for spiritual beauty. Perhaps that is why men like Werner love women so passionately.

Werner was short, thin, and as frail as a child. Like Byron, he had one leg shorter than the other. His head was disproportionately large. He wore his hair cut very short, and the irregularities of his skull thus exposed would have astounded a phrenologist by their queer combination of contradictory inclinations. His small, black, ever restless eyes probed your thoughts. He dressed immaculately and with good taste, and his lean, small, sinewy hands were neatly gloved in pale yellow. His coat, necktie and vest were invariably black. The young set called him Mephistopheles, and though he pretended to be displeased by the name, in reality it flattered his vanity. We soon understood each other and became companions-for I am incapable of friendship. Between two friends one is always the slave of the other, though frequently neither will admit it-the slave I cannot be, and to dominate is an hard job since one has to use deception as well. Besides, I have the servants and the money! This is how we became acquainted: I met Werner in the town of S-, at a large and boisterous gathering of the young set. Toward the end of the evening the conversation took a philosophical and metaphysical turn. We spoke about convictions, of which each had his own.

"As for me, I am convinced of only one thing …" said the doctor.

"And what is that?" I asked, wishing to hear the opinion of a man who had been silent till then.

"That some fine morning, sooner or later, I will die," he replied.

"I am better off than you," said I. "I have another conviction besides, which is that one exceedingly foul night I had the misfortune to be born."

Everyone else was of the opinion that we were talking nonsense, but really nobody had anything more clever to say. From that moment we singled each other out from among the crowd. We used to meet frequently and discuss abstract matters in all seriousness until we both noticed that we were pulling each other's leg. Then, after looking each other in the eye significantly-the way Cicero[90] tells us the Roman augurs did - we would burst out laughing and leave separately, satisfied with an evening well spent.

I was lying on a couch, my eyes fixed upon the ceiling and my hands behind my head, when Werner walked into my room. He sat down in a chair, stood his cane in a corner, yawned and observed that it was getting hot outdoors. I replied that the flies were bothering me, and we both fell silent.

"You will have noticed, my dear doctor," said I, "that without fools the world would be very boring... Now here we are, two intelligent people. We know in advance that it's possible to argue about everything endlessly, and so we don't argue. We each know nearly all the other's innermost thoughts. A single word tells us a whole story, and we see the kernel of each of our thoughts through a triple husk: Sad things strike us as funny, funny things as sad, and generally speaking, if you want to know, we are rather indifferent to everything except ourselves. Hence there can be no exchange of emotions and ideas between us. We know all we want to know about each other and don't wish to know more[91]. That leaves only one thing to talk about: the latest news. Haven't you any news to tell me?"

Tired by the long speech, I closed my eyes and yawned.

"There is one idea in the trash you are talking," he replied after a pause for thought.

"Two!" I replied.

"Tell me one of them and I will say what the other is."

"Good. You begin," said I, continuing to inspect the ceiling and smiling inwardly.

"You would like to know some details about someone who has arrived at the spa, and I can guess who it is you have in mind because that person has already been inquiring about you.

"Doctor! We definitely don't need to converse; we can read each other's minds."