In trifles,

I am ready to give way and be trivial only about trifles. I never give way in things that are really important. In trifles, in little matters of etiquette, you can do anything you like with me, and I curse this peculiarity in myself. From a sort of putrid good nature I've sometimes been ready to knuckle under to some fashionable snob, simply flattered by his affability, or I've let myself be drawn into argument with a fool, which is more unpardonable than anything. All this is due to lack of self- control, and to my having grown up in seclusion, but next day it would be the same thing again: that's why I was sometimes taken for a boy of sixteen. But instead of gaining self-control I prefer even now to bottle myself up more tightly than ever in my shell-- "I may be clumsy--but good-bye!"--however misanthropic that may seem. I say that seriously and for good. But I don't write this with reference to the prince or even with reference to that conversation. "I'm not speaking for your entertainment," I almost shouted at him. "I am speaking from conviction." "But how do you mean that women have no manners and are unseemly in their dress? That's something new." "They have no manners. Go to the theatre, go for a walk. Every man knows the right side of the road, when they meet they step aside, he keeps to the right, I keep to the right. A woman, that is a lady--it's ladies I'm talking about--dashes straight at you as though she doesn't see you, as though you were absolutely bound to skip aside and make way for her. I'm prepared to make way for her as a weaker creature, but why has she the right, why is she so sure it's my duty--that's what's offensive. I always curse when I meet them. And after that they cry out that they're oppressed and demand equality; a fine sort of equality when she tramples me under foot and fills my mouth with sand." "With sand?"