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"No, I see you don't believe me, you think I am playing a

harmless joke on you," Porfiry began again, getting more and more

lively, chuckling at every instant and again pacing round the

room. "And to be sure you're right: God has given me a figure

that can awaken none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon;

but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse an old man, my dear

Rodion Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to say, in your

first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like all

young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you

and that's for all the world like the old Austrian

Hof-kriegsrath, as far as I can judge of military matters, that

is: on paper they'd beaten Napoleon and taken him prisoner, and

there in their study they worked it all out in the cleverest

fashion, but look you, General Mack surrendered with all his

army, he-he-he!