Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume IV).djvu/254

 But if not, you're devoured by ennui. One wants to have to do with people if only to abuse them.'

'One ought so to order one's life that every moment in it should be of significance,' Arkady affirmed reflectively.

'I dare say! What's of significance is sweet, however mistaken; one could make up one's mind to what's insignificant even. But pettiness, pettiness, that's what's insufferable.'

'Pettiness doesn't exist for a man so long as he refuses to recognise it.'

'H'm ... what you've just said is a common-place reversed.'

'What? What do you mean by that term?'

'I'll tell you; saying, for instance, that education is beneficial, that's a common-place; but to say that education is injurious, that's a common-place turned upside down. There's more style about it, so to say, but in reality it's one and the same.'

'And the truth is—where, which side?'

'Where? Like an echo I answer, Where?'

'You're in a melancholy mood to-day, Yevgeny.'

'Really? The sun must have softened my brain, I suppose, and I can't stand so many raspberries either.'