A Reckless Character, and Other Stories

There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing contemporary matters and persons, "I do not understand these gentlemen " remarked A.-"They are fellows of a reckless sort.... Really, desperate.... There has never been anything of the kind before." "Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been born about the twenties of the present century;-"there were reckless men in days gone by also. Some one said of the poet Yazykoff, that he had enthusiasm which was not directed to anything, an objectless enthusiasm; and it was much the same with those people-their recklessness was without an object. But see here, if you will permit me, I will narrate to you the story of my grandnephew, Misha Polteff. It may serve as a sample of the recklessness of those days.""