“Listen,” he said, “you’re a first-rate fellow, but among your other failings, you’re a loose fish, that I know, and a dirty one, too. You are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you’re getting fat and lazy and can’t deny yourself anything⁠—and I call that dirty because it leads one straight into the dirt. You’ve let yourself get so slack that I don’t know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor. You⁠—a doctor⁠—sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your patients! In another three or four years you won’t get up for your patients⁠ ⁠… But hang it all, that’s not the point!⁠ ⁠… You are going to spend tonight in the landlady’s flat here. (Hard work I’ve had to persuade her!) And I’ll be in the kitchen. So here’s a chance for you to get to know her better.⁠ ⁠… It’s not as you think! There’s not a trace of anything of the sort, brother⁠ ⁠… !”

“But I don’t think!”

“Here you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue⁠ ⁠… and yet she’s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that’s unholy! She’s most prepossessing⁠ ⁠… I’ll repay you, I’ll do anything.⁠ ⁠…”