been as alike as one drop of water is to another: I had to sit,
write, listen to rude or stupid observations, and go on doing so
till I was dismissed.

When I came in to my father he was sitting buried in a low arm-chair
with his eyes closed. His dry, emaciated face, with a shade of dark
blue where it was shaved (he looked like an old Catholic organist),
expressed meekness and resignation. Without responding to my greeting
or opening his eyes, he said:

"If my dear wife and your mother were living, your life would have
been a source of continual distress to her. I see the Divine
Providence in her premature death. I beg you, unhappy boy," he
continued, opening his eyes, "tell me: what am I to do with you?"

In the past when I was younger my friends and relations had known
what to do with me: some of them used to advise me to volunteer for
the army, others to get a job in a pharmacy, and others in the
telegraph department; now that I am over twenty-five, that grey
hairs are beginning to show on my temples, and that I have been
already in the army, and in a pharmacy, and in the telegraph
department, it would seem that all earthly possibilities have been
exhausted, and people have given up advising me, and merely sigh
or shake their heads.

"What do you think about yourself?" my father went on. "By the time
they are your age, young men have a secure social position, while
look at you: you are a proletarian, a beggar, a burden on your
father!"