excerpt from the book...There were eight of us in the room, and we were discussing contemporarymatters and persons,"I do not understand these gentlemen!" remarked A.--"They are fellows ofa reckless sort.... Really, desperate.... There has never been anythingof the kind before.""Yes, there has," put in P., a grey-haired old man, who had been bornabout the twenties of the present century;--"there were reckless men indays gone by also. Some one said of the poet Yazykoff, that he hadenthusiasm which was not directed to anything, an objectless enthusiasm;and it was much the same with those people--their recklessness waswithout an object. But see here, if you will permit me, I will narrateto you the story of my grandnephew, Misha Polteff. It may serve as asample of the recklessness of those days."