What do I love? Myself. And
I feel that the object of my love does not deserve my love. What
can I accomplish?"
He almost wept, and kept on scratching his breast and his neck
with his thin, feeble hands.
But sometimes he was seized with a flow of courage, and then he
spoke in a different spirit:
"I? Oh, no, my song is not yet sung to the end! My breast has
imbibed something, and I'll hiss like a whip! Wait, I'll drop the
newspaper, I'll start to do serious work, and write one small
book, which I will entitle 'The Passing of the Soul'; there is a
prayer by that name, it is read for the dying. And before its
death this society, cursed by the anathema of inward impotence,
will receive my book like incense."
Listening to each and every word of his, watching him and
comparing his remarks, Foma saw that Yozhov was just as weak as
he was, that he, too, had lost his way. But Yozhov's mood still
infected Foma, his speeches enriched Foma's vocabulary, and
sometimes he noticed with joyous delight how cleverly and
forcibly he had himself expressed this or that idea.
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