most repulsive, pock-marked face, which looked positively villainous. I
believe I should not have dared to look at anyone with such an unsightly
countenance. Another had such a very dirty old uniform that there was
an unpleasant odour in his proximity. Yet not one of these gentlemen
showed the slightest self-consciousness--either about their clothes or
their countenance or their character in any way. Neither of them ever
imagined that they were looked at with repulsion; if they had imagined it
they would not have minded--so long as their superiors did not look at
them in that way. It is clear to me now that, owing to my unbounded
vanity and to the high standard I set for myself, I often looked at myself
with furious discontent, which verged on loathing, and so I inwardly
attributed the same feeling to everyone. I hated my face, for instance: I
thought it disgusting, and even suspected that there was something base
in my expression, and so every day when I turned up at the office I tried to
behave as independently as possible, and to assume a lofty expression, so
that I might not be suspected of being abject. "My face may be ugly," I
thought, "but let it be lofty, expressive, and, above all, EXTREMELY
intelligent." But I was positively and painfully certain that it was
impossible for my countenance ever to express those qualities. And what was
worst of all, I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite
satisfied if I could have looked intelligent. In fact, I would even have put
up with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have been
thought strikingly intelligent.
Of course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them all,
yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them. In fact, it happened at
times that I thought more highly of them than of myself. It somehow
happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising them and
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