Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/90

78 liberally scattered over the book or the article by the translator—seem to me an assault on the author's person, as well as on my independence as a reader.

Once I was invited as an expert to the High Court. In the interval one of my fellow-experts called my attention to the rude behaviour of the public prosecutor to the prisoners, among whom were two women intellectuals. I don't think I exaggerated at all when I replied to my colleague that he was not behaving more rudely than authors of serious articles behave to one another. Indeed their behaviour is so rude that one speaks of them with bitterness. They behave to each other or to the writers whom they criticise either with too much deference, careless of their own dignity, or, on the other hand, they treat them much worse than I have treated Gnekker, my future son-in-law, in these notes and thoughts of mine. Accusations of irresponsibility, of impure intentions, of any kind of crime even, are the usual adornment of serious articles. And this, as our young medicos love to say in their little articles—quite ultima ratio. Such an attitude must necessarily be reflected in the character of the young generation of writers, and therefore I'm not at all surprised that in the new books which have been added to our belles lettres in the last ten or fifteen years, the heroes drink a great deal of vodka and the heroines are not sufficiently chaste.

I read French books and look out of the