I have become coarse myself, have forgotten what I knew, I can’t even speak French now, and I feel that I am base and despicable. I can’t fight in these surroundings; it is impossible! I might perhaps have been a hero: give me a regiment, gold epaulets, and trumpeters; but to march side by side with some uncivilized Antonov Bondarenko or other, and to think there is no difference between him and me, it is all the same whether I get killed or he does⁠—that is the thought that is killing me. You understand how terrible it is that some ragamuffin may kill me⁠—a man who thinks and feels, and that he might as well kill Antonov by my side, a creature indistinguishable from a brute; and it is quite likely to happen that it is I who will be killed and not Antonov⁠—it is always so, une fatalité