labour."

"And let them put up with it! They don't know how to do anything
else! Anybody, even the most abject fool or criminal, is capable
of manual labour; such labour is the distinguishing mark of the
slave and the barbarian, while the holy fire is vouchsafed only to
a few!"

To continue this conversation was unprofitable. My father worshipped
himself, and nothing was convincing to him but what he said himself.
Besides, I knew perfectly well that the disdain with which he talked
of physical toil was founded not so much on reverence for the sacred
fire as on a secret dread that I should become a workman, and should
set the whole town talking about me; what was worse, all my
contemporaries had long ago taken their degrees and were getting
on well, and the son of the manager of the State Bank was already
a collegiate assessor, while I, his only son, was nothing! To
continue the conversation was unprofitable and unpleasant, but I
still sat on and feebly retorted, hoping that I might at last be
understood. The whole question, of course, was clear and simple,
and only concerned with the means of my earning my living; but the
simplicity of it was not seen, and I was talked to in mawkishly
rounded phrases of Borodino, of the sacred fire, of my uncle a
forgotten poet, who had once written poor and artificial verses; I
was rudely called an addlepate and a dense fellow. And how I longed
to be understood! In spite of everything, I loved my father and my
sister and it had been my habit from childhood to consult them--
a habit so deeply rooted that I doubt whether I could ever have got
rid of it; whether I were in the right or the wrong, I was in
constant dread of wounding them, constantly afraid that my father's