And he kisses me eagerly on the shoulders, on my sleeves, and buttons.
"Is everything all right over there?" I ask.
He never stops swearing, quite unnecessarily, and I soon get bored, and send him to the kitchen, where they give him dinner. Piotr Ignatievich also comes on holidays specially to visit me and communicate his thoughts to me. He usually sits by the table in my room, modest, clean, judicious, without daring to cross his legs or lean his elbows on the table, all the while telling me in a quiet, even voice what he considers very piquant items of news gathered from journals and pamphlets.
These items are all alike and can be reduced to the following type: A Frenchman made a discovery. Another--a German--exposed him by showing that this discovery had been made as long ago as 1870 by some American. Then a third--also a German--outwitted them both by showing that both of them had been confused, by taking spherules of air under a microscope for dark pigment. Even when he wants to make me laugh, Piotr Ignatievich tells his story at great length, very much as though he were defending a thesis, enumerating his literary sources in detail, with every effort to avoid mistakes in the dates, the particular number of the journal and the names. Moreover, he does not say Petit simply but inevitably, Jean Jacques Petit. If he happens to stay to dinner, he will tell the same sort of piquant stories and drive all the company to despondency. If Gnekker and Liza begin to speak of fugues and counter-fugues in his presence he modestly lowers his eyes, and his face falls. He is ashamed that such trivialities should be spoken of in the presence of such serious men as him and me.
In my present state of mind five minutes are enough for him to bore me as though I had seen and listened to him for a whole eternity. I hate the poor man. I wither away beneath his quiet, even voice and his bookish language. His stories make me stupid.... He cherishes the kindliest feelings towards me and talks to me only to give me pleasure. I reward him by staring at his face as if I wanted to hypnotise him, and thinking "Go away. Go, go...." But he is proof against my mental suggestion and sits, sits, sits....