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158 adverse stroke of fortune has occurred to destroy my self-conceit. Yet for some reason or another I have gone to pieces." He sighed. "You see, Andrei, at no point, in my life have I been touched with a fire which could either save me or destroy me. I have lived a life different from that of others. With me it has not been a morning dawn which, gradually broadening to a sultry, bustling noon, has faded, imperceptibly, naturally, into eventide. No, I began life with a quenching of the light of day, and, from the first moment that I realized myself, realized also that I was on the wane. I realized that fact as I sat at my desk in the chancellory, as I read, as I consorted with friends, as I squandered my means upon Minia, as I lounged on the Nevski Prospect, as I attended receptions where I was welcomed as an eligible parti, as I wasted my life and brains in fluctuating between town and country. Even my self-conceit—upon what was it flung away? Upon figuring in clothes made by a good tailor, upon gaining the entrée to well-known houses, upon having my hand shaken by Prince P! Yet self-conceit ought to be the very salt of life. Whither is mine gone? Either I have never understood the life of