seventeen then, I was at the high school. I made up that anecdote and told it to a schoolfellow called Korovkin, it was at Moscow. … The anecdote is so characteristic that I couldn’t have taken it from anywhere. I thought I’d forgotten it … but I’ve unconsciously recalled it—I recalled it myself—it was not you telling it! Thousands of things are unconsciously remembered like that even when people are being taken to execution … it’s come back to me in a dream. You are that dream! You are a dream, not a living creature!”
“From the vehemence with which you deny my existence,” laughed the gentleman, “I am convinced that you believe in me.”
“Not in the slightest! I haven’t a hundredth part of a grain of faith in you!”
“But you have the thousandth of a grain. Homeopathic doses perhaps are the strongest. Confess that you have faith even to