“Pyotr Stepanovitch is an astronomer, and has learnt all God’s planets, but even he may be criticised. I stand before you, sir, as before God, because I have heard so much about you. Pyotr Stepanovitch is one thing, but you, sir, maybe, are something else. When he’s said of a man he’s a scoundrel, he knows nothing more about him except that he’s a scoundrel. Or if he’s said he’s a fool, then that man has no calling with him except that of fool. But I may be a fool Tuesday and Wednesday, and on Thursday wiser than he. Here now he knows about me that I’m awfully sick to get a passport, for there’s no getting on in Russia without papers⁠—so he thinks that he’s snared my soul. I tell you, sir, life’s a very easy business for Pyotr Stepanovitch, for he fancies a man to be this and that, and goes on as though he really was. And, what’s more, he’s beastly stingy. It’s his notion that, apart from him, I daren’t trouble you, but I stand before you, sir, as before God. This is the fourth night I’ve been waiting for your honour on this bridge, to show that I can find my own way on the quiet, without him. I’d better bow to a boot, thinks I, than to a peasant’s shoe.”