“Well, where are we to go to now, father?” he asked. “You don’t want to go to the prince’s; you have quarrelled with Lebedeff; you have no money; I never have any; and here we are in the middle of the road, in a nice sort of mess.”

“Better to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke something like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty⁠—forty⁠—I forget. ‘Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?’ Who was it said that, Colia?”

“It was Gogol, in Dead Souls , father,” cried Colia, glancing at him in some alarm.

“ Dead Souls , yes, of course, dead. When I die, Colia, you must engrave on my tomb: