He leant his elbow upon the table by his side, took a pinch of snuff, and, in the peculiarly measured, guttural tone in which he used to dictate us our lessons, began the story of his career.

Since he many times in later years repeated the whole to me again — always in the same order, and with the same expressions and the same unvarying intonation — I will try to render it literally, and without omitting the innumerable grammatical errors into which he always strayed when speaking in Russian.

Whether it was really the history of his life, or whether it was the mere product of his imagination — that is to say, some narrative which he had conceived during his lonely residence in our house, and had at last, from endless repetition, come to believe in himself — or