be altogether sorry, for then my object will be attained. If you kick me, you must believe in my reality, for people don’t kick ghosts. Joking apart, it doesn’t matter to me, scold if you like, though it’s better to be a trifle more polite even to me. ‘Fool, flunkey!’ what words!”
“Scolding you, I scold myself,” Ivan laughed again, “you are myself, myself, only with a different face. You just say what I am thinking … and are incapable of saying anything new!”
“If I am like you in my way of thinking, it’s all to my credit,” the gentleman declared, with delicacy and dignity.
“You choose out only my worst thoughts, and what’s more, the stupid ones. You are stupid and vulgar. You are awfully stupid. No, I can’t put up with you! What am I to do, what am I to do?” Ivan said through his clenched teeth.
“My dear friend, above all things I want to behave like a gentleman and to be recognized as such,” the visitor began in an excess of deprecating and simple-hearted pride, typical of a poor relation. “I am poor, but … I won’t say very honest, but … it’s an axiom generally accepted in society that I am a fallen angel. I certainly can’t conceive how I can ever have been an angel. If I ever was, it must have been so long ago that there’s no harm in forgetting it. Now I only prize the reputation of being a gentlemanly person and live as I can, trying to make myself agreeable. I love men genuinely, I’ve been greatly calumniated! Here when I stay with you from time to time, my life gains a kind of reality and that’s what I like most of all. You see, like you, I suffer from the