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But how much love, Lord, how much love I used to experience in those dreams of mine, in those "escapes into everything beautiful and lofty": though it was a fantastical love, though it was never in reality applied to anything human, there was so much of it, this love, that afterwards, in reality, I never even felt any need to apply it; that would have been an u
I had, however, another acquaintance as it were - Simonov, a former schoolfellow. No doubt there were many of my schoolfellows in Petersburg, but I did not associate with them, and had even stopped nodding to them in the street. I perhaps got myself transferred to another department so as not to be together with them and to cut off all at once the whole of that hateful childhood of mine. Curses on that school, on those terrible years of penal servitude! In short, I parted ways with my fellows as soon as I was set free. There were two or three people left whom I still greeted when we met. Among them was Simonov, who had not been distinguished for anything in our school, was quiet and equable, but in whom I distinguished a certain independence of character and even honesty. I do not even think he was so very narrow-minded. I had once had some rather bright moments with him, but they did not last long and somehow suddenly clouded over. These recollections were apparently burdensome for him, and it seemed he kept being afraid I would lapse into the former tone. I suspected that he found me quite disgusting, but I kept going to him all the same, having no sure assurance of it.
And so once, on a Thursday, unable to endure my solitude, and knowing that on Thursdays Anton Antonych's door was closed, I remembered about Simonov. On the way up to his fourth-floor apartment, I was precisely thinking that I was a burden to this gentleman and that I shouldn't be going to him. But since in the end such considerations, as if by design, always egged me on further into some ambiguous situation, I did go in. It was almost a year since I had last seen Simonov.
III
I found two more of my schoolfellows with him. They were apparently discussing an important matter. None of them paid more than the slightest attention to my coming, which was even strange, because I hadn't seen them for years. Obviously they regarded me as something like a quite ordinary fly. I had not been treated that way even at school, though everyone there hated me. Of course, I understood that they must scorn me now for the unsuccess of my career in the service and for my having gone too much to seed, walking around badly dressed, and so on - which in their eyes constituted a signboard of my incapacity and slight significance. But all the same I did not expect such a degree of scorn. Simonov was even surprised at my coming. Before, too, he had always seemed surprised at my coming. All this took me aback; I sat down in some anguish and began to listen to what they were talking about.
The conversation, a serious and even heated one, was about a farewell di