Title:      A Raw Youth
Author:     Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
	    [Translated by Constance Garnett (1861-1946)]
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Language:   English
Date first posted: October 2001
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Title: A Raw Youth
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
        [Translated by Constance Garnett (1861-1946)]





PART I


CHAPTER I


1


I cannot resist sitting down to write the history of the first steps
in my career, though I might very well abstain from doing so. . . .
I know one thing for certain: I shall never again sit down to
write my autobiography even if I live to be a hundred.  One must
be too disgustingly in love with self to be able without shame to
write about oneself.  I can only excuse myself on the ground that I
am not writing with the same object with which other people write,
that is, to win the praise of my readers.  It has suddenly occurred
to me to write out word for word all that has happened to me during
this last year, simply from an inward impulse, because I am so
impressed by all that has happened.  I shall simply record the
incidents, doing my utmost to exclude everything extraneous,
especially all literary graces.  The professional writer writes for
thirty years, and is quite unable to say at the end why he has been
writing for all that time.  I am not a professional writer and
don't want to be, and to drag forth into the literary market-place
the inmost secrets of my soul and an artistic description of my
feelings I should regard as indecent and contemptible.  I foresee,
however, with vexation, that it will be impossible to avoid
describing feelings altogether and making reflections (even,
perhaps, cheap ones), so corrupting is every sort of literary
pursuit in its effect, even if it be undertaken only for one's own
satisfaction.  The reflections may indeed be very cheap, because
what is of value for oneself may very well have no value for
others.  But all this is beside the mark.  It will do for a
preface, however.  There will be nothing more of the sort.  Let us
get to work, though there is nothing more difficult than to begin
upon some sorts of work--perhaps any sort of work.


2


I am beginning--or rather, I should like to begin--these notes from
the 19th of September of last year, that is, from the very day I
first met . . .

But to explain so prematurely who it was I met before anything else
is known would be cheap; in fact, I believe my tone is cheap.  I
vowed I would eschew all literary graces, and here at the first
sentence I am being seduced by them.  It seems as if writing
sensibly can't be done simply by wanting to.  I may remark, also,
that I fancy writing is more difficult in Russian than in any other
European language.  I am now reading over what I have just written,
and I see that I am much cleverer than what I have written.  How is
it that what is expressed by a clever man is much more stupid than
what is left in him?  I have more than once during this momentous
year noticed this with myself in my relations with people, and have
been very much worried by it.

Although I am beginning from the 19th of September, I must put in a
word or two about who I am and where I had been till then, and what
was consequently my state of mind on the morning of that day, to
make things clearer to the reader, and perhaps to myself also.


3


I have passed the leaving examination at the grammar school, and
now I am in my twenty-first year.  My surname is Dolgoruky, and my
legal father is Makar Ivanov Dolgoruky, formerly a serf in the
household of the Versilovs.  In this way I am a legitimate son,
although I am, as a matter of fact, conspicuously illegitimate,
and there is not the faintest doubt about my origin.

The facts are as follows.  Twenty-two years ago Versilov (that is
my father), being twenty-five years old, visited his estate in the
province of Tula.  I imagine that at that time his character was
still quite unformed.  It is curious that this man who, even in my
childhood, made such an impression upon me, who had such a crucial
influence on the whole bent of my mind, and who perhaps has even
cast his shadow over the whole of my future, still remains, even
now, a complete enigma to me in many respects.  Of this, more
particulars later.  There is no describing him straight off.  My
whole manuscript will be full of this man, anyway.

He had just been left a widower at that time, that is, when he was
twenty-five.  He had married one of the Fanariotovs--a girl of high
rank but without much money--and by her he had a son and a
daughter.  The facts that I have gathered about this wife whom he
lost so early are somewhat scanty, and are lost among my materials,
and, indeed, many of the circumstances of Versilov's private life
have eluded me, for he has always been so proud, disdainful,
reserved and casual with me, in spite of a sort of meekness towards
me which was striking at times.  I will mention, however, to make
things clear beforehand, that he ran through three fortunes in his
lifetime, and very big ones too, of over fourteen hundred souls,
and maybe more.  Now, of course, he has not a farthing.

He went to the village on that occasion, "God knows why," so at
least he said to me afterwards.  His young children were, as usual,
not with him but with relations.  This was always his method with
his children, legitimate and illegitimate alike.  The house-serfs
on this estate were rather numerous, and among them was a gardener
called Makar Ivanov Dolgoruky.  Here I will note in parenthesis, to
relieve my mind once and for all, I doubt whether anyone can ever
have raged against his surname as I have all my life; this is
stupid, of course, but so it has been.  Every time I entered a
school or met persons whom I had to treat with respect as my
elders, every wretched little teacher, tutor, priest--anyone you
like--on asking my name and hearing it was Dolgoruky, for some
reason invariably thought fitting to add, "Prince Dolgoruky?"  And
every single time I was forced to explain to these futile people,
"No, SIMPLY Dolgoruky."

That SIMPLY began to drive me mad at last.  Here I note as a
curious phenomenon that I don't remember a single exception; every
one asked the question.  For some it was apparently quite
superfluous, and indeed I don't know how the devil it could have
been necessary for anyone.  But all, every one of them asked it. 
On hearing that I was SIMPLY Dolgoruky, the questioner usually
looked me up and down with a blank and stupidly apathetic stare
that betrayed that he did not know why he had asked the question. 
Then he would walk away.  My comrades and schoolfellows were the
most insulting of all.  How do schoolboys question a new-comer? 
The new boy, abashed and confused on the first day of entering a
school (whatever school it may be), is the victim of all; they
order him about, they tease him, and treat him like a lackey.  A
stout, chubby urchin suddenly stands still before his victim and
watches him persistently for some moments with a stern and haughty
stare.  The new boy stands facing him in silence, looks at him out
of the corner of his eyes, and, if he is not a coward, waits to see
what is going to happen.

"What's your name?"

"Dolgoruky."

"Prince Dolgoruky?"

"No, simply Dolgoruky."

"Ah, simply!  Fool."

And he was right; nothing could be more foolish than to be called
Dolgoruky without being a prince.  I have to bear the burden of
that foolishness through no fault of my own.  Later on, when I
began to get very cross about it, I always answered the question
"Are you a prince?" by saying, "No, I'm the son of a servant,
formerly a serf."

At last, when I was roused to the utmost pitch of fury, I
resolutely answered:

"No, simply Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of my former owner."

I thought of this when I was in the sixth form of the grammar
school, and though I was very soon after thoroughly convinced that
I was stupid, I did not at once give up being so.  I remember that
one of the teachers opined--he was alone in his opinion, however--
that I was "filled with ideas of vengeance and civic rights."  As a
rule this reply was received with a sort of meditative pensiveness,
anything but flattering to me.

At last one of my schoolfellows, a very sarcastic boy, to whom I
hardly talked once in a year, said to me with a serious
countenance, looking a little away:

"Such sentiments do you credit, of course, and no doubt you have
something to be proud of; but if I were in your place I should not
be too festive over being illegitimate . . . you seem to expect
congratulations!"

From that time forth I dropped BOASTING of being illegitimate.

I repeat, it is very difficult to write in Russian: here I have
covered three pages with describing how furious I have been all my
life with my surname, and after all the reader will, no doubt,
probably have deduced that I was really furious at not being a
prince but simply Dolgoruky.  To explain again and defend myself
would be humiliating.


4


And so among the servants, of whom there were a great number
besides Makar Ivanitch, there was a maid, and she was eighteen when
Makar Dolgoruky, who was fifty, suddenly announced his intention of
marrying her.  In the days of serfdom marriages of house-serfs, as
every one knows, only took place with the sanction of their
masters, and were sometimes simply arranged by the latter.  At that
time "auntie" was living on the estate; not that she was my aunt,
though: she had, in fact, an estate of her own; but, I don't know
why, every one knew her all her life as "auntie"--not mine in
particular but an aunt in general, even in the family of Versilov,
to whom she can hardly have been related.  Her name was Tatyana
Pavlovna Prutkov, In those days she still had, in the same province
and district, a property of thirty-five serfs of her own.  She
didn't exactly administer Versilov's estate (of five hundred
serfs), but, being so near a neighbour, she kept a vigilant eye on
it, and her superintendence, so I have heard, was as efficient as
that of any trained steward.  However, her efficiency is nothing to
do with me.  But, to dispose of all suspicion of cringing or
flattery on my part, I should like to add that this Tatyana
Pavlovna was a generous and even original person.

Well, far from checking the gloomy Makar Dolgoruky's matrimonial
inclinations (I am told he was gloomy in those days), she gave them
the warmest encouragement.

Sofia Andreyevna, the serf-girl of eighteen (that is, my mother),
had been for some years fatherless and motherless.  Her father,
also a serf, who had a great respect for Makar Dolgoruky and was
under some obligation to him, had six years before, on his death-
bed, beckoned to the old gardener and, pointing significantly to
his daughter, had, in the presence of the priest and all the
servants, bequeathed her to him, saying, "When she's grown up,
marry her."  This was, so they say, a quarter of an hour before he
expired, so that it might, if need be, have been put down to
delirium; besides which, he had no right to dispose of property,
being a serf.  Every one heard his words.  As for Makar Ivanovitch,
I don't know in what spirit he afterwards entered upon the
marriage, whether with great eagerness or simply as the fulfilment
of a duty.  Probably he preserved an appearance of complete
indifference.  He was a man who even at that time knew how to "keep
up his dignity."  It was not that he was a particularly well-
educated or reading man (though he knew the whole of the church
service and some lives of the saints, but this was only from
hearing them).  It was not that he was a sort of backstairs
philosopher; it was simply that he was a man of obstinate, and even
at times rash character, was conceited in his talk, autocratic in
his judgment, and "respectful in his life," to use his own
surprising expression; that is what he was like at that time.  Of
course, he was universally respected, but, I am told, disliked by
every one.  It was a different matter when he ceased to be a house-
serf; then he was spoken about as a saint and a man who had
suffered much.  That I know for a fact.

As for my mother, Tatyana Pavlovna had kept her till the age of
eighteen in her house, although the steward had urged that the girl
should be sent to Moscow to be trained.  She had given the orphan
some education, that is, taught her sewing and cutting out clothes,
ladylike deportment, and even a little reading.  My mother was
never able to write decently.  She looked upon this marriage with
Makar Ivanovitch as something settled long ago, and everything that
happened to her in those days she considered very good and all for
the best.  She went to her wedding looking as unmoved as anyone
could on such an occasion, so much so that even Tatyana Pavlovna
called her a fish.  All this about my mother's character at that
time I heard from Tatyana Pavlovna herself.  Versilov arrived just
six months after this wedding.


5


I only want to say that I have never been able to find out or to
guess to my own satisfaction what led up to everything between him
and my mother.  I am quite ready to believe, as he himself assured
me last year with a flushed face, though he talked of all this with
the most unconstrained and flippant air, that there was no romance
about it at all, that it had just happened.  I believe that it did
just happen, and that little phrase JUST HAPPENED is delightful,
yet I always wanted to know how it could have come about.  I have
always hated that sort of nastiness all my life and always shall. 
It's not simply a disgraceful curiosity on my part, of course.  I
may remark that I knew absolutely nothing of my mother till a year
ago.  For the sake of Versilov's comfort I was sent away to
strangers, but of that later, and so I can never picture what she
looked like at that time.  If she had not been at all pretty, what
could a man such as Versilov was then have found attractive in her? 
This question is of importance to me because it throws a light on
an extremely interesting side of that man's character.  It is for
that reason I ask it and not from depravity.  Gloomy and reserved
as he always was, he told me himself on one occasion, with that
charming candour which he used to produce (from the devil knows
where--it seemed to come out of his pocket when he saw it was
indispensable) that at that time he was a "very silly young puppy";
not that he was exactly sentimental, but just that he had lately
read "Poor Anton" and "Polinka Sachs," two literary works which
exerted an immense, humanizing influence on the younger generation
of that day.  He added that it was perhaps through "Poor Anton"
that he went to the country, and he added it with the utmost
gravity.  How did that "silly puppy" begin at first with my mother? 
I have suddenly realized that if I had a single reader he would
certainly be laughing at me as a most ridiculous raw youth, still
stupidly innocent, putting himself forward to discuss and criticize
what he knows nothing about.  It is true that I know nothing about
it, though I recognize that not at all with pride, for I know how
stupid such inexperience is in a great dolt of twenty; only I would
tell such a gentleman that he knows nothing about it himself, and I
will prove it to him.  It is true that I know nothing about women,
and I don't want to either, for I shall always despise that sort of
thing, and I have sworn I will all my life.

But I know for certain, though, that some women fascinate by their
beauty, or by anything you like, all in a minute, while you may
ruminate over another for six months before you understand what is
in her; and that to see through and love such a woman it is not
enough to look at her, it is not enough to be simply ready for
anything, one must have a special gift besides.  Of that I am
convinced, although I do know nothing about it: and if it were not
true it would mean degrading all women to the level of domestic
animals, and only keeping them about one as such; possibly this is
what very many people would like.

I know from several sources that my mother was by no means a
beauty, though I have never seen the portrait of her at that age
which is in existence.  So it was impossible to have fallen in love
with her at first sight.  Simply to "amuse himself" Versilov might
have pitched on some one else, and there was some one else in the
house, an unmarried girl too, Anfisa Konstantinovna Sapozhkov, a
housemaid.  To a man who had brought "Poor Anton" with him to the
country it must have seemed shameful to take advantage of his
seignorial rights to violate the sanctity of a marriage, even that
of his serf, for I repeat, he spoke with extreme seriousness of
this "Poor Anton" only a few months ago, that is, twenty years
after the event.  Why, "Poor Anton" only had his horse taken from
him, but this was a wife!  So there must have been something
peculiar in this case, and Mlle. Sapozhkov was the loser by it (or
rather, I should say, the gainer).  I attacked him with all these
questions once or twice last year when it was possible to talk to
him (for it wasn't always possible to talk to him).  And, in spite
of all his society polish and the lapse of twenty years, I noticed
that he winced.  But I persisted.  On one occasion, anyway,
although he maintained the air of worldly superciliousness which he
invariably thought fit to assume with me, he muttered strangely
that my mother was one of those "defenceless" people whom one does
not fall in love with--quite the contrary, in fact--but whom one
suddenly pities for their gentleness, perhaps, though one cannot
tell what for.  That no one ever knows, but one goes on pitying
them, one pities them and grows fond of them.  "In fact, my dear
boy, there are cases when one can't shake it off."  That was what
he told me.  And if that was how it really happened I could not
look upon him as the "silly puppy" he had proclaimed himself.  That
is just what I wanted.

He went on to assure me, however, that my mother loved him "through
servility."  He positively pretended it was because he was her
master!  He lied, thinking this was chic!  He lied against his
conscience, against all honour and generosity.

I have said all this, of course, as it were to the credit of my
mother.  But I have explained already that I knew nothing whatever
of her as she was then.  What is more, I know the rigidity of her
environment, and the pitiful ideas in which she had become set from
her childhood and to which she remained enslaved for the rest of
her life.  The misfortune happened, nevertheless.  I must correct
myself, by the way.  Letting my fancy run away with me, I have
forgotten the fact which I ought to have stated first of all, that
is, that the misfortune happened at the very outset (I hope that
the reader will not be too squeamish to understand at once what I
mean).  In fact, it began with his exercising his seignorial
rights, although Mlle. Sapozhkov was passed over.  But here, in
self-defence, I must declare at once that I am not contradicting
myself.  For--good Lord!--what could a man like Versilov have
talked about at that date with a person like my mother even if he
had felt the most overwhelming love for her?  I have heard from
depraved people that men and women very often come together without
a word being uttered, which is, of course, the last extreme of
monstrous loathsomeness.  Nevertheless, I do not see how Versilov
could have begun differently with my mother if he had wanted to. 
Could he have begun by expounding "Polinka Sachs" to her?  And
besides, they had no thoughts to spare for Russian literature; on
the contrary, from what he said (he let himself go once), they used
to hide in corners, wait for each other on the stairs, fly apart
like bouncing balls, with flushed cheeks if anyone passed by, and
the "tyrant slave-owner" trembled before the lowest scrubbing-maid,
in spite of his seignorial rights.  And although it was at first an
affair of master and servant, it was that and yet not that, and
after all, there is no really explaining it.  In fact, the more you
go into it the more obscure it seems.  The very depth and duration
of their love makes it more mysterious, for it is a leading
characteristic of such men as Versilov to abandon as soon as their
object is attained.  That did not happen, though.  To transgress
with an attractive, giddy flirt who was his serf (and my mother was
not a flirt) was not only possible but inevitable for a depraved
young puppy (and they were all depraved, every one of them, the
progressives as well as the reactionaries), especially considering
his romantic position as a young widower and his having nothing to
do.  But to love her all his life is too much.  I cannot guarantee
that he did love her, but he has dragged her about with him all his
life--that's certain.

I put a great many questions to my mother, but there is one, most
important, which, I may remark, I did not venture to ask her
directly, though I got on such familiar terms with her last year;
and, what is more, like a coarse, ungrateful puppy, considering she
had wronged me, I did not spare her feelings at all.  This was the
question: how she after six months of marriage, crushed by her
ideas of the sanctity of wedlock, crushed like some helpless fly,
respecting her Makar Ivanovitch as though he had been a god--how
she could have brought herself in about a fortnight to such a sin? 
Was my mother a depraved woman, perhaps?  On the contrary, I may
say now at once that it is difficult to imagine anyone more pure-
hearted than she was then and has been all her life.  The
explanation may be, perhaps, that she scarcely knew what she was
doing (I don't mean in the sense in which lawyers nowadays urge
this in defence of their thieves and murderers), but was carried
away by a violent emotion, which sometimes gains a fatal and tragic
ascendancy when the victim is of a certain degree of simplicity. 
There is no telling: perhaps she fell madly in love with . . . the
cut of his clothes, the Parisian style in which he parted his hair,
his French accent--yes, French, though she didn't understand a word
of it--the song he sang at the piano; she fell in love with
something she had never seen or heard of (and he was very
handsome), and fell in love with him straight away, once for all,
hopelessly, fell in love with him altogether--manners, song, and
all.  I have heard that this did sometimes happen to peasant girls
in the days of serfdom, and to the most virtuous, too.  I
understand this, and the man is a scoundrel who puts it down to
nothing but servility.  And so perhaps this young man may have had
enough direct power of fascination to attract a creature who had
till then been so pure and who was of a different species, of an
utterly different world, and to lead her on to such evident ruin. 
That it was to her ruin my mother, I hope, realized all her life;
only probably when she went to it she did not think of ruin at all;
but that is how it always is with these "defenceless" creatures,
they know it is ruin and they rush upon it.

Having sinned, they promptly repented.  He told me flippantly that
he sobbed on the shoulder of Makar Ivanovitch, whom he sent for to
his study expressly for the purpose, and she--she meanwhile was
lying unconscious in some little back room in the servants'
quarters. . . .


6


But enough of questions and scandalous details.  After paying Makar
Ivanovitch a sum of money for my mother, Versilov went away shortly
afterwards, and ever since, as I have mentioned already, he dragged
her about with him, almost everywhere he went, except at certain
times when he absented himself for a considerable period.  Then, as
a rule, he left her in the care of "auntie," that is, of Tatyana
Pavlovna Prutkov, who always turned up on such occasions.  They
lived in Moscow, and also in other towns and villages, even abroad,
and finally in Petersburg.  Of all that later, though perhaps it is
not worth recording.  I will only mention that a year after my
mother left Makar Ivanovitch, I made my appearance, and a year
later my sister, and ten or eleven years afterwards a sickly child,
my younger brother, who died a few months later.  My mother's
terrible confinement with this baby was the end of her good looks,
so at least I was told: she began rapidly to grow older and
feebler.

But a correspondence with Makar Ivanovitch was always kept up. 
Wherever the Versilovs were, whether they lived for some years in
the same place, or were moving about, Makar Ivanovitch never failed
to send news of himself to the "family."  Strange relations grew
up, somewhat ceremonious and almost solemn.  Among the gentry there
is always an element of something comic in such relations, I know. 
But there was nothing of the sort in this case.  Letters were
exchanged twice a year, never more nor less frequently, and they
were extraordinarily alike.  I have seen them.  There was scarcely
anything personal in them.  On the contrary, they were practically
nothing but ceremonious statements of the most public incidents,
and the most public sentiments, if one may use such an expression
of sentiments; first came news of his own health, and inquiries
about their health, then ceremonious hopes, greetings and
blessings--that was all.

I believe that this publicity and impersonality is looked upon as
the essence of propriety and good breeding among the peasants.  "To
our much esteemed and respected spouse, Sofia Andreyevna, we send
our humblest greetings. . . ."  "We send to our beloved children,
our fatherly blessing, ever unalterable."  The children were
mentioned by name, including me.  I may remark here that Makar
Ivanovitch had so much wit as never to describe "His high-born most
respected master, Andrey Petrovitch" as his "benefactor"; though he
did invariably, in each letter, send him his most humble greetings,
beg for the continuance of his favour, and call down upon him the
blessing of God.  The answers to Makar Ivanovitch were sent shortly
after by my mother, and were always written in exactly the same
style.  Versilov, of course, took no part in the correspondence. 
Makar Ivanovitch wrote from all parts of Russia, from the towns and
monasteries in which he sometimes stayed for a considerable time. 
He had become a pilgrim, as it is called.  He never asked for
anything; but he invariably turned up at home once in three years
on a holiday, and stayed with my mother, who always, as it
happened, had her own lodgings apart from Versilov's.  Of this I
shall have to say more later, here I will only mention that Makar
Ivanovitch did not loll on the sofa in the drawing-room, but always
sat discreetly somewhere in the background.  He never stayed for
long: five days or a week.

I have omitted to say that he had the greatest affection and
respect for his surname, "Dolgoruky."  Of course this was ludicrous
stupidity.  And what was most stupid was that he prized his name
just because there were princes of the name.  A strange, topsy-
turvy idea.

I have said that the family were always together, but I mean except
for me, of course.  I was like an outcast, and, almost from my
birth, had been with strangers.  But this was done with no special
design, but simply because it had happened so.  When I was born my
mother was still young and good-looking, and therefore necessary to
Versilov; and a screaming child, of course, was always a nuisance,
especially when they were travelling.  That was how it happened
that until I was nineteen I had scarcely seen my mother except on
two or three brief occasions.  It was not due to my mother's
wishes, but to Versilov's lofty disregard for people.


7


Now for something quite different.  A month earlier, that is a
month before the 19th of September, I had made up my mind in Moscow
to renounce them all, and to retire into my own idea, finally.  I
record that expression "retire into my own idea" because that
expression may explain my leading motive, my object in life.  What
that "idea" of mine is, of that there will be only too much said
later.  In the solitary years of my dreamy life in Moscow it sprang
up in my mind before I had left the sixth form of the grammar
school, and from that time perhaps never left me for an instant. 
It absorbed my whole existence.  Till then I had lived in dreams;
from my childhood upwards I have lived in the world of dreams,
always of a certain colour.  But after this great and all-absorbing
idea turned up, my dreams gained in force, took a definite shape;
and became rational instead of foolish.  School did not hinder my
dreams, and it did not hinder the idea either.  I must add,
however, that I came out badly in the leaving exam, though I had
always been one of the first in all the forms up to the seventh,
and this was a result of that same idea, a result of a false
deduction from it perhaps.  So it was not school work that hindered
the idea, but the idea that hindered school work, and it hindered
university work too.  When I left school I intended at once not
only to cut myself off from my family completely, but from all the
world if necessary, though I was only nineteen at the time.  I
wrote through a suitable person to tell them to leave me entirely
alone, not to send me any more money for my maintenance, and, if
possible, to forget me altogether (that is if they ever did
remember me), and finally "nothing would induce" me to enter the
university.  An alternative presented itself from which there was
no escaping: to refuse to enter the university and go on with my
education, or to defer putting my idea into practice for another
four years.  I went for the idea without faltering, for I was
absolutely resolved about it.  In answer to my letter, which had
not been addressed to him, Versilov, my father, whom I had only
seen once for a moment when I was a boy of ten (though even in that
moment he made a great impression upon me), summoned me to
Petersburg in a letter written in his own hand, promising me a
private situation.  This cold, proud man, careless and disdainful
of me, after bringing me into the world and packing me off to
strangers, knew nothing of me at all and had never even regretted
his conduct; who knows, perhaps he had only a vague and confused
idea of my existence, for it appeared afterwards that the money for
my maintenance in Moscow had not been furnished by him but by other
people.  Yet the summons of this man who so suddenly remembered me
and deigned to write to me with his own hand, by flattering me,
decided my fate.  Strange to say, what pleased me in his note (one
tiny sheet of paper) was that he said not a word about the
university, did not ask me to change my mind, did not blame me for
not wanting to continue my studies, did not, in fact, trot out any
parental flourishes of the kind usual in such cases, and yet this
was wrong of him since it betrayed more than anything his lack of
interest in me.  I resolved to go, the more readily because it
would not hinder my great idea.  "I'll see what will come of it," I
argued, "in any case I shall associate with them only for a time;
possibly a very short time.  But as soon as I see that this step,
tentative and trifling as it is, is keeping me from the GREAT
OBJECT, I shall break off with them, throw up everything and
retreat into my shell."  Yes, into my shell!  "I shall hide in it
like a tortoise."  This comparison pleased me very much.  "I shall
not be alone," I went on musing, as I walked about Moscow those
last days like one possessed.  "I shall never be alone as I have
been for so many awful years till now; I shall have my idea to
which I will never be false, even if I like them all there, and
they make me happy, and I live with them for ten years!"  It was,
I may remark beforehand, just that impression, that is, just the
twofold nature of the plans and objects definitely formed before
leaving Moscow, and never out of my mind for one instant in
Petersburg (for I hardly think there was a day in Petersburg which
I had not fixed on beforehand as the final date for breaking off
with them and going away), it was this, I say, that was, I believe,
one of the chief causes of many of the indiscretions I have been
guilty of during this year, many nasty things, many even low
things, and stupid ones of course.  To be sure, a father, something
I had never had before, had appeared upon the scene.  This thought
intoxicated me as I made my preparations in Moscow and sat in the
railway carriage.  That he was my father would be nothing.  I was
not fond of sentimentality, but this man had humiliated me and had
not cared to know me, while all those years I had been chewing away
at my dreams of him, if one may use such an expression.  From my
childhood upward, my dreams were all coloured by him; all hovered
about him as the final goal.  I don't know whether I hated him or
loved him; but his figure dominated the future and all my schemes
of life.  And this happened of itself.  It grew up with me.

Another thing which influenced me in leaving Moscow was a
tremendous circumstance, a temptation which even then, three months
before my departure (before Petersburg had been mentioned), set my
heart leaping and throbbing.  I was drawn to this unknown ocean by
the thought that I could enter it as the lord and master of other
people's destinies, and what people, too!  But the feelings that
were surging in my heart were generous and not despotic--I hasten
to declare it that my words may not be mistaken.  Moreover,
Versilov might think (if he ever deigned to think of me) that a
small boy who had just left school, a raw youth, was coming who
would be agape with wonder at everything.  And meanwhile I knew all
his private life, and had about me a document of the utmost
importance, for which (I know that now for a fact) he would have
given some years of his life, if I had told him the secret at the
time.  But I notice that I am talking in riddles.  One cannot
describe feelings without facts.  Besides which, there will be
enough about all this in its proper place; it is with that object I
have taken up my pen.  Writing like this is like a cloud of words
or the ravings of delirium.


8


Finally, to pass once for all to the 19th of September, I will
observe briefly and, so to say, cursorily, that I found them all,
that is Versilov, my mother and my sister (the latter I saw for the
first time in my life) in difficult circumstances, almost
destitute, or at least, on the verge of destitution.  I knew of
this before leaving Moscow, but yet I was not prepared for what I
saw.  I had been accustomed from childhood to imagine this man,
this "future father of mine" in brilliant surroundings, and could
not picture him except as the leading figure everywhere.  Versilov
had never shared the same lodgings with my mother, but had always
taken rooms for her apart.  He did this, of course, out of regard
for their very contemptible "proprieties."  But here they were all
living together in a little wooden lodge in a back street in the
Semyonovsky Polk.  All their things were in pawn, so that, without
Versilov's knowledge, I gave my mother my secret sixty roubles. 
SECRET, because I had saved them up in the course of two years out
of my pocket money, which was five roubles a month.  I had begun
saving from the very day I had conceived my "idea," and so Versilov
must know nothing about the money.  I trembled at the thought of
that.

My help was like a drop in the ocean.  My mother worked hard and my
sister too took in sewing.  Versilov lived in idleness, indulged
his whims and kept up a number of his former rather expensive
habits.  He grumbled terribly, especially at dinner, and he was
absolutely despotic in all his ways.  But my mother, my sister,
Tatyana Pavlovna and the whole family of the late Andronikov (the
head of some department who used also to manage Versilov's affairs
and had died three months before), consisting of innumerable women,
grovelled before him as though he were a fetish.  I had not
imagined this.  I may remark that nine years before he had been
infinitely more elegant.  I have said already that I had kept the
image of him in my dreams surrounded by a sort of brilliance, and
so I could not conceive how it was possible after only nine years
for him to look so much older and to be so worn out; I felt at once
sad, sorry, ashamed.  The sight of him was one of the most painful
of my first impressions on my arrival.  Yet he was by no means an
old man, he was only forty-five.  Looking at him more closely I
found in his handsome face something even more striking than what I
had kept in my memory.  There was less of the brilliance of those
days, less external beauty, less elegance even; but life had, as it
were, stamped on that face something far more interesting than
before.

Meanwhile poverty was not the tenth or twentieth fraction of his
misfortunes, and I knew that.  There was something infinitely more
serious than poverty, apart from the fact that there was still a
hope that Versilov might win the lawsuit he had been contesting for
the last year with the Princes Sokolsky and might in the immediate
future come into an estate to the value of seventy thousand or
more.  I have said above that Versilov had run through three
fortunes in his life, and here another fortune was coming to his
rescue again!  The case was to be settled very shortly.  It was
just then that I arrived.  It is true that no one would lend him
money on his expectations, there was nowhere he could borrow, and
meanwhile they had to suffer.

Versilov visited no one, though he sometimes was out for the whole
day.  It was more than a year since he had been BANISHED from
society.  In spite of all my efforts, this scandal remained for the
most part a mystery though I had been a whole month in Petersburg. 
Was Versilov guilty or not guilty--that was what mattered to me,
that is what I had come to Petersburg for!  Every one had turned
against him--among others all the influential and distinguished
people with whom he had been particularly clever in maintaining
relations all his life--in consequence of rumours of an extremely
low and--what was much worse in the eyes of the "world"--scandalous
action which he was said to have committed more than a year ago in
Germany.  It was even reported that he had received a slap in the
face from Prince Sokolsky (one of those with whom he was now in
litigation) and had not followed it by a challenge.  Even his
children (the legitimate ones), his son and daughter, had turned
against him and were holding aloof.  It is true that through the
influence of the Fanariotovs and old Prince Sokolsky (who had been
a friend of Versilov) the son and daughter moved in the very
highest circles.  Yet, watching him all that month, I saw a haughty
man who had rather cast off "society" than been cast off by it, so
independent was his air.  But had he the right to look like that--
that was the question that agitated me.  I absolutely had to find
out the whole truth at the earliest possible date, for I had come--
to judge this man.  I still kept my power hidden from him, but I
had either to accept him or to reject him altogether.  But that
would have been too painful to me and I was in torment.  I will
confess it frankly at last: the man was dear to me!

And meanwhile I was living in the same flat with him, working, and
scarcely refraining from being rude.  In fact I did not refrain. 
After spending a month with him I became more convinced every day
that I could not possibly appeal to him for a full explanation. 
This man in his pride remained an enigma to me, while he wounded me
deeply.  He was positively charming to me, and jested with me, but
I should have liked quarrels better than such jests.  There was a
certain note of ambiguity about all my conversations with him, or
more simply, a strange irony on his part.  From our first meeting,
on my arrival from Moscow, he did not treat me seriously.  I never
could make out why he took up this line.  It is true that by this
means he succeeded in remaining impenetrable, but I would not have
humbled myself so far as to ask him to treat me seriously. 
Besides, he had certain wonderful and irresistible ways which I did
not know how to deal with.  In short he behaved to me as though I
were the greenest of raw youths, which I was hardly able to endure,
though I knew it would be so.  I, too, gave up talking seriously in
consequence, and waited; in fact, I almost gave up talking
altogether.  I waited for a person on whose arrival in Petersburg I
might finally learn the truth; that was my last hope.  In any case
I prepared myself for a final rupture, and had already taken all
necessary measures.  I was sorry for my mother but--"either him or
me," that was the choice I meant to offer her and my sister.  I had
even fixed on the day; and meanwhile I went to my work.



CHAPTER II


1


On that 19th of September I was also to receive my first salary for
the first month of my work in Petersburg in my "private" situation. 
They did not ask me about this job but simply handed me over to it,
I believe, on the very first day of my arrival.  This was very
unmannerly, and it was almost my duty to protest.  The job turned
out to be a situation in the household of old Prince Sokolsky.  But
to protest then would have meant breaking off relations on the
spot, and though I was not in the least afraid of that, it would
have hindered the attainment of my primary objects; and so in
silence I accepted the job for the time, maintaining my dignity by
silence.  I must explain from the very first that this Prince
Sokolsky, a wealthy man and a privy councillor, was no relation at
all of the Moscow princes of that name (who had been poor and
insignificant for several generations past) with whom Versilov was
contesting his lawsuit.  It was only that they had the same name. 
Yet the old prince took a great interest in them, and was
particularly fond of one of them who was, so to speak, the head of
the family--a young officer.  Versilov had till recently had an
immense influence in this old man's affairs and had been his
friend, a strange sort of friend, for the poor old prince, as I
detected, was awfully afraid of him, not only at the time when I
arrived on the scene, but had apparently been always afraid of him
all through their friendship.  They had not seen each other for a
long time, however.  The dishonourable conduct of which Versilov
was accused concerned the old prince's family.  But Tatyana
Pavlovna had intervened and it was through her that I was placed in
attendance on the old prince, who wanted a "young man" in his
study.  At the same time it appeared that he was very anxious to do
something to please Versilov, to make, so to speak, the first
advance to him, and Versilov ALLOWED it.  The old man had made the
arrangement in the absence of his daughter, the widow of a general,
who would certainly not have permitted him to take this step.  Of
this later, but I may remark that the strangeness of his relations
with Versilov impressed me in the latter's favour.  It occurred to
the imagination that if the head of the injured family still
cherished a respect for Versilov, the rumours of Versilov's
scoundrelly behaviour must be absurd, or at least exaggerated, and
might have more than one explanation.  It was partly this
circumstance which kept me from protesting against the situation;
in accepting it I hoped to verify all this.

Tatyana Pavlovna was playing a strange part at the time when I
found her in Petersburg.  I had almost forgotten her, and had not
at all expected to find her possessed of such influence.  She had
met me three or four times during my life in Moscow, and had always
turned up, goodness knows where from, sent by some one or other
whenever I needed fitting out--to go into Touchard's boarding
school, or two and a half years later, when I was being transferred
to the grammar school and sent to board with Nikolay Semyonovitch,
a friend I shall never forget.  She used to spend the whole day
with me and inspect my linen and my clothes.  She drove about the
town with me, took me to Kuznetsky Street, bought me what was
necessary, provided me with a complete outfit, in fact, down to the
smallest box and penknife.  All the while she nagged at me, scolded
me, reproached me, cross-examined me, quoting as examples to me
various phantom boys among her relations and acquaintances who were
all said to be better than I was.  She even pinched me and actually
gave me several vicious pokes.  After fitting me out and installing
me, she would disappear completely for several years.  On this
occasion, too, she turned up at once on my arrival to instal me
again.  She was a spare little figure with a sharp nose like a
beak, and sharp little eyes like a bird's.  She waited on Versilov
like a slave, and grovelled before him as though he were the Pope,
but she did it through conviction.  But I soon noticed with
surprise that she was respected by all and, what was more, known
to every one everywhere.  Old Prince Sokolsky treated her with
extraordinary deference; it was the same thing with his family;
the same with Versilov's haughty children; the same with the
Fanariotovs; and yet she lived by taking in sewing, and washing
lace, and fetched work from the shops.  She and I fell out at the
first word, for she thought fit to begin nagging at me just as she
had done six years before.  And from that time forward we
quarrelled every day, but that did not prevent us from sometimes
talking, and I must confess that by the end of the month I began to
like her: for her independent character, I believe.  But I did not
tell her so.

I realized at once that I had only been given this post at the old
invalid prince's in order to "amuse" him, and that that was my
whole duty.  Naturally this was humiliating, and I should at once
have taken steps, but the queer old fellow soon made an unexpected
impression upon me.  I felt something like compassion for him, and
by the end of the month I had become strangely attached to him;
anyway I gave up my intention of being rude.  He was not more than
sixty, however, but there had been a great to-do with him a year
and a half before, when he suddenly had a fit.  He was travelling
somewhere and went mad on the way, so there was something of a
scandal of which people talked in Petersburg.  As is usual in such
cases, he was instantly taken abroad, but five months later he
suddenly reappeared perfectly well, though he gave up the service. 
Versilov asserted seriously (and with noticeable heat) that he had
not been insane at all, but had only had some sort of nervous fit. 
I promptly made a note of Versilov's warmth about it.  I may
observe, however, that I was disposed to share his opinion.  The
old man only showed perhaps an excessive frivolity at times, not
quite appropriate to his years, of which, so they say, there was no
sign in him before.  It was said that in the past he had been a
councillor of some sort, and on one occasion had quite distinguished
himself in some commission with which he had been charged.  After
knowing him for a whole month, I should never have supposed he
could have any special capacity as a councillor. People observed
(though I saw nothing of it) that after his fit he developed a
marked disposition to rush into matrimony, and it was said that he
had more than once reverted to this idea during the last eighteen
months, that it was known in society and a subject of interest.
But as this weakness by no means fell in with the interests of
certain persons of the prince's circle, the old man was guarded on
all sides.  He had not a large family of his own; he had been a
widower for twenty years, and had only one daughter, the general's
widow, who was now daily expected from Moscow.  She was a young
person whose strength of will was evidently a source of apprehension
to the old man.  But he had masses of distant relatives, principally
through his wife, who were all almost beggars, besides a multitude
of protégés of all sorts, male and female, all of whom expected to
be mentioned in his will, and so they all supported the general's
widow in keeping watch over the old man.  He had, moreover, had one
strange propensity from his youth up (I don't know whether it was
ridiculous or not) for making matches for poor girls.  He had been
finding husbands for the last twenty-five years--for distant
relations, for the step-daughters of his wife's cousins, for his
god-daughters; he even found a husband for the daughter of his
house porter.  He used to take his protégées into his house when
they were little girls, provide them with governesses and French
mademoiselles, then have them educated in the best boarding
schools, and finally marry them off with a dowry. The calls upon
him were continually increasing.  When his protégées were married
they naturally produced more little girls and all these little
girls became his protégées.  He was always having to stand as
god-father.  The whole lot turned up to congratulate him on his
birthdays, and it was all very agreeable to him.

I noticed at once that the old man had lurking in his mind a
painful conviction (it was impossible to avoid noticing it, indeed)
that every one had begun to look at him strangely, that every one
had begun to behave to him not as before, not as to a healthy man. 
This impression never left him even at the liveliest social
functions.  The old man had become suspicious, had begun to detect
something in every one's eyes.  He was evidently tormented by the
idea that every one suspected him of being mad.  He sometimes
looked mistrustfully even at me.  And if he had found out that some
one was spreading or upholding such rumours, the benevolent old man
would have become his implacable foe.  I beg that this circumstance
may be noted.  I may add that it was what decided me from the first
day not to be rude to him; in fact, I was glad if I were able
sometimes to amuse or entertain him; I don't think that this
confession can cast any slur on my dignity.

The greater part of his money was invested.  He had since his
illness become a partner in a large joint stock enterprise, a very
safe one, however.  And though the management was in other hands he
took a great interest in it, too, attended the shareholders'
meetings, was appointed a director, presided at the board-meetings,
opposed motions, was noisy and obviously enjoyed himself.  He was
very fond of making speeches: every one could judge of his brain
anyway.  And in general he developed a great fancy for introducing
profound reflections and bon mots in his conversation, even in the
intimacy of private life.  I quite understand it.

On the ground floor of his house there was something like a private
office where a single clerk kept the books and accounts and also
managed the house.  This clerk was quite equal to the work alone,
though he had some government job as well, but by the prince's own
wish I was engaged to assist him; but I was immediately transferred
to the prince's study, and often had no work before me, not even
books or papers to keep up appearances.  I am writing now sobered
by time; and about many things feel now almost like an outsider;
but how can I describe the depression (I recall it vividly at this
moment) that weighed down my heart in those days, and still more,
the excitement which reached such a pitch of confused feverishness
that I did not sleep at night--all due to my impatience, to the
riddles I had set myself to solve.


2


To ask for money, even a salary, is a most disgusting business,
especially if one feels in the recesses of one's conscience that
one has not quite earned it.  Yet the evening before, my mother had
been whispering to my sister apart from Versilov ("so as not to
worry Andrey Petrovitch") that she intended to take the ikon
which for some reason was particularly precious to her to the
pawnbroker's.  I was to be paid fifty roubles a month, but I had no
idea how I should receive the money; nothing had been said to me
about it.

Meeting the clerk downstairs three days before, I inquired of him
whom one was to ask for one's salary.  He looked at me with a smile
as though of astonishment (he did not like me).

"Oh, you get a salary?"

I thought that on my answering he would add:

"What for?"

But he merely answered drily, that he "knew nothing about it," and
buried himself in the ruled exercise book into which he was copying
accounts from some bills.

He was not unaware, however, that I did something.  A fortnight
before I had spent four days over work he had given me, making a
fair copy, and as it turned out, almost a fresh draft of something. 
It was a perfect avalanche of "ideas" of the prince's which he was
preparing to present to the board of directors.  These had to be
put together into a whole and clothed in suitable language.  I
spent a whole day with the prince over it afterwards, and he argued
very warmly with me, but was well satisfied in the end.  But I
don't know whether he read the paper or not.  I say nothing of the
two or three letters, also about business, which I wrote at his
request.

It was annoying to me to have to ask for my salary because I had
already decided to give up my situation, foreseeing that I should
be obliged through unavoidable circumstances to go away.  When I
waked up and dressed that morning in my garret upstairs, I felt
that my heart was beating, and though I pooh-poohed it, yet I was
conscious of the same excitement as I walked towards the prince's
house.  That morning there was expected a woman, whose presence I
was reckoning upon for the explanation of all that was tormenting
me!  This was the prince's daughter, the young widow of General
Ahmakov, of whom I have spoken already and who was bitterly hostile
to Versilov.  At last I have written that name!  I had never seen
her, of course, and could not imagine how I should speak to her or
whether I should speak, but I imagined (perhaps on sufficient
grounds) that with her arrival there would be some light thrown on
the darkness surrounding Versilov in my eyes.  I could not remain
unmoved.  It was frightfully annoying that at the very outset I
should be so cowardly and awkward; it was awfully interesting, and,
still more, sickening--three impressions at once.  I remember every
detail of that day!

My old prince knew nothing of his daughter's probable arrival, and
was not expecting her to return from Moscow for a week.  I had
learnt this the evening before quite by chance: Tatyana Pavlovna,
who had received a letter from Mme. Ahmakov, let it out to my
mother.  Though they were whispering and spoke in veiled allusions,
I guessed what was meant.  Of course I was not eavesdropping, I
simply could not avoid listening when I saw how agitated my mother
was at the news of this woman's arrival.  Versilov was not in the
house.

I did not want to tell the old prince because I could not help
noticing all that time how he was dreading her arrival.  He had
even let drop three days before, though only by a timid and remote
hint, that he was afraid of her coming on my account; that is that
he would have trouble about me.  I must add, however, that in his
own family he preserved his independence and was still master in
his own house, especially in money matters.  My first judgment of
him was that he was a regular old woman, but I was afterwards
obliged to revise my opinion, and to recognize that, if he were an
old woman, there was still a fund of obstinacy, if not of real
manliness, in him.  There were moments when one could hardly do
anything with him in spite of his apprehensive and yielding
character.  Versilov explained this to me more fully later.  I
recall now with interest that the old prince and I scarcely ever
spoke of his daughter, we seemed to avoid it: I in particular
avoided it, while he, on his side, avoided mentioning Versilov, and
I guessed that he would not answer if I were to ask him one of the
delicate questions which interested me so much.

If anyone cares to know what we did talk about all that month I
must answer that we really talked of everything in the world,
but always of the queerest things.  I was delighted with the
extraordinary simplicity with which he treated me.  Sometimes I
looked with extreme astonishment at the old man and wondered how he
could ever have presided at meetings.  If he had been put into our
school and in the fourth class too, what a nice schoolfellow he
would have made.  More than once, too, I was surprised by his face;
it was very serious-looking, almost handsome and thin; he had thick
curly grey hair, wide-open eyes; and he was besides slim and well
built; but there was an unpleasant, almost unseemly, peculiarity
about his face, it would suddenly change from excessive gravity to
an expression of exaggerated playfulness, which was a complete
surprise to a person who saw him for the first time.  I spoke of
this to Versilov, who listened with curiosity; I fancy that he had
not expected me to be capable of making such observations; he
observed casually that this had come upon the prince since his
illness and probably only of late.

We used to talk principally of two abstract subjects--of God and
of His existence, that is, whether there was a God or not--and of
women.  The prince was very religious and sentimental.  He had in
his study a huge stand of ikons with a lamp burning before them. 
But something seemed to come over him--and he would begin
expressing doubts of the existence of God and would say astounding
things, obviously challenging me to answer.  I was not much
interested in the question, speaking generally, but we both got
very hot about it and quite genuinely.  I recall all those
conversations even now with pleasure.  But what he liked best was
gossiping about women, and he was sometimes positively disappointed
at my disliking this subject of conversation, and making such a
poor response to it.

He began talking in that style as soon as I went in that morning. 
I found him in a jocose mood, though I had left him the night
before extremely melancholy.  Meanwhile it was absolutely necessary
for me to settle the matter of the salary--before the arrival of
certain persons.  I reckoned that that morning we should certainly
be interrupted (it was not for nothing my heart was beating) and
then perhaps I should not be able to bring myself to speak of
money.  But I did not know how to begin about money and I was
naturally angry at my stupidity.  And, as I remember now in my
vexation at some too jocular question of his, I blurted out my
views on women point-blank and with great vigour.

And this led him to be more expansive with me than ever.


3


"I don't like women because they've no manners, because they are
awkward, because they are not self-reliant, and because they wear
unseemly clothes!"  I wound up my long tirade incoherently.

"My dear boy, spare us!" he cried, immensely delighted, which
enraged me more than ever.

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?"

"Yes, because they're not decently dressed--it's only depraved
people don't notice it.  In the law-courts they close the doors
when they're trying cases of indecency.  Why do they allow it in
the streets, where there are more people?  They openly hang bustles
on behind to look as though they had fine figures; openly!  I can't
help noticing; the young lad notices it too; and the child that's
growing into a boy notices it too; it's abominable.  Let old rakes
admire them and run after them with their tongues hanging out, but
there is such a thing as the purity of youth which must be
protected.  One can only despise them.  They walk along the parade
with trains half a yard long behind them, sweeping up the dust. 
It's a pleasant thing to walk behind them: you must run to get in
front of them, or jump on one side, or they'll sweep pounds of dust
into your mouth and nose.  And what's more it's silk, and they'll
drag it over the stones for a couple of miles simply because it's
the fashion, when their husbands get five hundred roubles a year in
the Senate: that's where bribes come in!  I've always despised
them.  I've cursed them aloud and abused them."

Though I describe this conversation somewhat humorously in the
style that was characteristic of me at that time, my ideas are
still the same.

"And how do you come off?" the prince queried.

"I curse them and turn away.  They feel it, of course, but they
don't show it, they prance along majestically without turning their
heads.  But I only came to actual abuse on one occasion with two
females, both wearing tails on the parade; of course I didn't use
bad language, but I said aloud that long tails were offensive."

"Did you use that expression?"

"Of course I did.  To begin with, they trample upon the rules of
social life, and secondly, they raise the dust, and the parade is
meant for all.  I walk there, other men walk, Fyodor, Ivan, it's
the same for all.  So that's what I said.  And I dislike the way
women walk altogether, when you look at their back view; I told
them that too, but only hinted at it."

"But, my dear boy, you might get into serious trouble; they might
have hauled you off to the police station."

"They couldn't do anything.  They had nothing to complain of: a man
walks beside them talking to himself.  Every one has the right to
express his convictions to the air.  I spoke in the abstract
without addressing them.  They began wrangling with me of
themselves; they began to abuse me, they used much worse language
than I did; they called me milksop, said I ought to go without my
dinner, called me a nihilist, and threatened to hand me over to the
police; said that I'd attacked them because they were alone and
weak women, but if there'd been a man with them I should soon sing
another tune.  I very coolly told them to leave off annoying me,
and I would cross to the other side of the street.  And to show
them that I was not in the least afraid of their men, and was ready
to accept their challenge, I would follow them to their house,
walking twenty paces behind them, then I would stand before the
house and wait for their men.  And so I did."

"You don't say so?"

"Of course it was stupid, but I was roused.  They dragged me over
two miles in the heat, as far as the 'institutions,' they went into
a wooden house of one storey--a very respectable-looking one I must
admit--one could see in at the windows a great many flowers, two
canaries, three pug-dogs and engravings in frames.  I stood for
half an hour in the street facing the house.  They peeped out two
or three times, then pulled down all the blinds.  Finally an
elderly government clerk came out of the little gate; judging from
his appearance he had been asleep and had been waked up on purpose;
he was not actually in a dressing-gown, but he was in a very
domestic-looking attire.  He stood at the gate, folded his hands
behind him, and proceeded to stare at me--I at him.  Then he looked
away, then gazed at me again, and suddenly began smiling at me.
I turned and walked away."

"My dear boy, how Schilleresque!  I've always wondered at you; with
your rosy cheeks, your face blooming with health, and such an
aversion, one may say, for women!  How is it possible that woman
does not make a certain impression on you at your age?  Why, when I
was a boy of eleven, mon cher, my tutor used to notice that I
looked too attentively at the statues in the Summer Gardens."

"You would like me to take up with some Josephine here, and come
and tell you all about it!  Rather not; I saw a woman completely
naked when I was thirteen; I've had a feeling of disgust ever
since."

"Do you mean it?  But, cher enfant, about a fresh, beautiful woman
there's a scent of apples; there's nothing disgusting."

"In the little boarding school I was at before I went to the
grammar school, there was a boy called Lambert.  He was always
thrashing me, for he was three years older than I was, and I used
to wait on him, and take off his boots.  When he was going to be
confirmed an abbé, called Rigaud, came to congratulate him on his
first communion, and they dissolved in tears on each other's necks,
and the abbé hugged him tightly to his bosom.  I shed tears, too,
and felt very envious.  He left school when his father died, and
for two years I saw nothing of him.  Then I met him in the street. 
He said he would come and see me.  By that time I was at the
grammar school and living at Nikolay Semyonovitch's.  He came in
the morning, showed me five hundred roubles, and told me to go with
him.  Though he had thrashed me two years before, he had always
wanted my company, not simply to take off his boots, but because he
liked to tell me things.  He told me that he had taken the money
that day out of his mother's desk, to which he had made a false
key, for legally all his father's money was his, and so much the
worse for her if she wouldn't give it to him.  He said that the
Abbé Rigaud had been to lecture him the day before, that he'd come
in, stood over him, begun whimpering, and described all sorts of
horrors, lifting up his hands to heaven.  "And I pulled out a knife
and told him I'd cut his throat" (he pronounced it 'thr-r-roat'). 
We went to Kuznetsky Street.  On the way he informed me that his
mother was the abbé's mistress, and that he'd found it out, and he
didn't care a hang for anything, and that all they said about the
sacrament was rubbish.  He said a great deal more, and I felt
frightened.  In Kuznetsky Street he bought a double-barrelled gun,
a game bag, cartridges, a riding-whip, and afterwards a pound of
sweets.  We were going out into the country to shoot, and on the
way we met a bird-catcher with cages of birds.  Lambert bought a
canary from him.  In a wood he let the canary go, as it couldn't
fly far after being in the cage, and began shooting at it, but did
not hit it.  It was the first time in his life he had fired off a
gun, but he had wanted to buy a gun years before; at Touchard's
even we were dreaming of one.  He was almost choking with
excitement.  His hair was black, awfully black, his face was white
and red, like a mask, he had a long aquiline nose, such as are
common with Frenchmen, white teeth and black eyes.  He tied the
canary by a thread to a branch, and an inch away fired off both
barrels, and the bird was blown into a hundred feathers.  Then we
returned, drove to an hotel, took a room, and began eating, and
drinking champagne; a lady came in. . . .  I remember being awfully
impressed by her being so splendidly dressed; she wore a green silk
dress.  It was then I saw . . . all that I told you about. . . . 
Afterwards, when we had begun drinking, he began taunting and
abusing her; she was sitting with nothing on, he took away her
clothes and when she began scolding and asking for her clothes to
dress again, he began with all his might beating her with the
riding-whip on her bare shoulders.  I got up, seized him by the
hair, and so neatly that I threw him on the ground at once.  He
snatched up a fork and stuck it in my leg.  Hearing the outcry,
people ran in, and I had time to run away.  Ever since then it's
disgusted me to think of nakedness; and, believe me, she was a
beauty."

As I talked, the prince's face changed from a playful expression to
one of great sadness.

"Mon pauvre enfant!  I have felt convinced all along that there
have been very many unhappy days in your childhood."

"Please don't distress yourself!"

"But you were alone, you told me so yourself, but for that Lambert;
you have described it so well, that canary, the confirmation and
shedding tears on the abbé's breast, and only a year or so later
saying that of his mother and the abbé! . . .  Oh, mon cher, the
question of childhood in our day is truly awful; for a time those
golden heads, curly and innocent, flutter before one and look at
one with their clear eyes like angels of God, or little birds, and
afterwards . . . and afterwards it turns out that it would have
been better if they had not grown up at all!"

"How soft you are, prince!  It's as though you had little children
of your own.  Why, you haven't any and never will have."

"Tiens!"  His whole face was instantly transformed, "that's just
what Alexandra Petrovna said--the day before yesterday, he-he!--
Alexandra Petrovna Sinitsky--you must have met her here three weeks
ago--only fancy, the day before yesterday, in reply to my jocular
remark that if I do get married now I could set my mind at rest,
there'd be no children, she suddenly said, and with such spite, 'On
the contrary, there certainly would be; people like you always have
them, they'll arrive the very first year, you'll see.'  He-he!  And
they've all taken it into their heads, for some reason, that I'm
going to get married; but though it was spiteful I admit it was--
witty!"

"Witty--but insulting!"

"Oh, cher enfant, one can't take offence at some people.  There's
nothing I prize so much in people as wit, which is evidently
disappearing among us; though what Alexandra Petrovna said--can
hardly be considered wit."

"What?  What did you say?" I said, catching at his words--"one
can't take offence at some people.  That's just it!  Some people
are not worth noticing--an excellent principle!  Just the one I
need.  I shall make a note of it.  You sometimes say the most
delightful things, prince."

He beamed all over.

"N'est ce pas?  Cher enfant, true wit is vanishing; the longer one
lives the more one sees it.  Eh, mais . . . c'est moi qui connait
les femmes!  Believe me, the life of every woman, whatever she may
profess, is nothing but a perpetual search for some one to submit
to . . . so to speak a thirst for submission.  And mark my words,
there's not a single exception."

"Perfectly true!  Magnificent!" I cried rapturously.  Another time
we should have launched into philosophical disquisitions on this
theme, lasting for an hour, but suddenly I felt as though something
had bitten me, and I flushed all over.  I suddenly imagined that in
admiring his bon mots I was flattering him as a prelude to asking
for money, and that he would certainly think so as soon as I began
to ask for it.  I purposely mention this now.

"Prince, I humbly beg you to pay me at once the fifty roubles you
owe me for the month," I fired off like a shot, in a tone of
irritability that was positively rude.

I remember (for I remember every detail of that morning) that there
followed between us then a scene most disgusting in its realistic
truth.  For the first minute he did not understand me, stared at me
for some time without understanding what money I was talking about. 
It was natural that he should not realize I was receiving a salary--
and indeed, why should I?  It is true that he proceeded to assure
me afterwards that he had forgotten, and when he grasped the
meaning of my words, he instantly began taking out fifty roubles,
but he was flustered and turned crimson.  Seeing how things stood,
I got up and abruptly announced that I could not take the money
now, that in what I had been told about a salary they had made a
mistake, or deceived me to induce me to accept the situation, and
that I saw only too well now, that I did nothing to earn one, for I
had no duties to perform.  The prince was alarmed and began
assuring me that I was of the greatest use to him, that I should be
still more useful to him in the future, and that fifty roubles was
so little that he should certainly add to it, for he was bound to
do so, and that he had made the arrangement himself with Tatyana
Pavlovna, but had "unpardonably forgotten it."  I flushed crimson
and declared resolutely that it was degrading for me to receive a
salary for telling scandalous stories of how I had followed two
draggle-tails to the 'institutions,' that I had not been engaged to
amuse him but to do work, and that if there was no work I must stop
it, and so on, and so on.  I could never have imagined that anyone
could have been so scared as he was by my words.  Of course it
ended in my ceasing to protest, and his somehow pressing the fifty
roubles into my hand: to this day I recall with a blush that I took
it.  Everything in the world always ends in meanness, and what was
worst of all, he somehow succeeded in almost proving to me that I
had unmistakably earned the money, and I was so stupid as to
believe it, and so it was absolutely impossible to avoid taking it.

"Cher, cher enfant!" he cried, kissing and embracing me (I must
admit I was on the point of tears myself, goodness knows why,
though I instantly restrained myself, and even now I blush as I
write it).  "My dear boy, you're like one of the family to me now;
in the course of this month you've won a warm place in my heart! 
In 'society' you get 'society' and nothing else.  Katerina
Nikolaevna (that was his daughter's name) is a magnificent woman
and I'm proud of her, but she often, my dear boy, very often,
wounds me.  And as for these girls (elles sont charmantes) and
their mothers who come on my birthday, they merely bring their
embroidery and never know how to tell one anything.  I've
accumulated over sixty cushions embroidered by them, all dogs and
stags.  I like them very much, but with you I feel as if you were
my own--not son, but brother, and I particularly like it when you
argue against me; you're literary, you have read, you can be
enthusiastic. . . ."

"I have read nothing, and I'm not literary at all.  I used to read
what I came across, but I've read nothing for two years and I'm not
going to read."

"Why aren't you going to?"

"I have other objects."

"Cher . . . it's a pity if at the end of your life you say, like
me, 'Je sais tout, mais je ne sais rien de bon.'  I don't know in
the least what I have lived in this world for!  But . . . I'm so
much indebted to you . . . and I should like, in fact . . ."

He suddenly broke off, and with an air of fatigue sank into
brooding.  After any agitation (and he might be overcome by
agitation at any minute, goodness knows why) he generally seemed
for some time to lose his faculties and his power of self-control,
but he soon recovered, so that it really did not matter.  We sat
still for a few minutes.  His very full lower lip hung down . . .
what surprised me most of all was that he had suddenly spoken of
his daughter, and with such openness too.  I put it down, of
course, to his being upset.

"Cher enfant, you don't mind my addressing you so familiarly, do
you?" broke from him suddenly.

"Not in the least.  I must confess that at the very first I was
rather offended by it and felt inclined to address you in the same
way, but I saw it was stupid because you didn't speak like that to
humiliate me."

But he had forgotten his question and was no longer listening.

"Well, how's your FATHER?" he said, suddenly raising his eyes and
looking dreamily at me.

I winced.  In the first place he called Versilov my FATHER, which
he had never permitted himself to do before, and secondly, he began
of himself to speak of Versilov, which he had never done before.

"He sits at home without a penny and is very gloomy," I answered
briefly, though I was burning with curiosity.

"Yes, about money.  His lawsuit is being decided to-day, and I'm
expecting Prince Sergay as soon as he arrives.  He promised to come
straight from the court to me.  Their whole future turns on it. 
It's a question of sixty or seventy thousand.  Of course, I've
always wished well to Andrey Petrovitch" (Versilov's name), "and I
believe he'll win the suit, and Prince Sergay has no case.  It's a
point of law."

"The case will be decided to-day?" I cried, amazed.  The thought
that Versilov had not deigned to tell me even that was a great
shook to me.  "Then he hasn't told my mother, perhaps not anyone,"
it suddenly struck me.  "What strength of will!"

"Then is Prince Sokolsky in Petersburg?" was another idea that
occurred to me immediately.

"He arrived yesterday.  He has come straight from Berlin expressly
for this day."

That too was an extremely important piece of news for me.  And he
would be here to-day, that man who had given HIM a slap in the
face!

"Well, what then?"  The old prince's face suddenly changed again. 
"He'll preach religion as before and . . . and . . . maybe run
after little girls, unfledged girls, again.  He-he!  There's a very
funny little story about that going about even now. . . .  He-he!"

"Who will preach?  Who will run after little girls?"

"Andrey Petrovitch!  Would you believe it, he used to pester us all
in those days.  'Where are we going?' he would say.  'What are we
thinking about?'  That was about it, anyway.  He frightened and
chastened us.  'If you're religious,' he'd say, 'why don't you
become a monk?'  That was about what he expected.  Mais quelle
idée!  If it's right, isn't it too severe?  He was particularly
fond of frightening me with the Day of Judgment--me of all people!"

"I've noticed nothing of all this, and I've been living with him a
month," I answered, listening with impatience.  I felt fearfully
vexed that he hadn't pulled himself together and was rambling on so
incoherently.

"It's only that he doesn't talk about that now, but, believe me, it
was so.  He's a clever man, and undoubtedly very learned; but is
his intellect quite sound?  All this happened to him after his
three years abroad.  And I must own he shocked me very much and
shocked every one.  Cher enfant, j'aime le bon Dieu. . . .  I
believe, I believe as much as I can, but I really was angry at the
time.  Supposing I did put on a frivolous manner, I did it on
purpose because I was annoyed--and besides, the basis of my
objection was as serious as it has been from the beginning of the
world.  'If there is a higher Being,' I said, 'and He has a
PERSONAL existence, and isn't some sort of diffused spirit for
creation, some sort of fluid (for that's even more difficult to
understand), where does He live?'  C'etait bête, no doubt, my dear
boy, but, you know, all the arguments come to that.  Un domicile is
an important thing.  He was awfully angry.  He had become a
Catholic out there."

"I've heard that too.  But it was probably nonsense."

"I assure you by everything that's sacred.  You've only to look at
him. . . .  But you say he's changed.  But in those days how he
used to worry us all!  Would you believe it, he used to behave as
though he were a saint and his relics were being displayed.  He
called us to account for our behaviour, I declare he did!  Relics! 
En voilà un autre!  It's all very well for a monk or a hermit, but
here was a man going about in a dress-coat and all the rest of it,
and then he sets up as a saint!  A strange inclination in a man in
good society, and a curious taste, I admit.  I say nothing about
that; no doubt all that's sacred, and anything may happen. . . . 
Besides, this is all l'inconnu, but it's positively unseemly for a
man in good society.  If anything happened to me and the offer were
made me I swear I should refuse it.  I go and dine to-day at the
club and then suddenly make a miraculous appearance as a saint! 
Why, I should be ridiculous.  I put all that to him at the
time. . . .  He used to wear chains."

I turned red with anger.

"Did you see the chains yourself?"

"I didn't see them myself but . . ."

"Then let me tell you that all that is false, a tissue of loathsome
fabrications, the calumny of enemies, that is, of one chief and
inhuman enemy--for he has only one enemy--your daughter!"

The old prince flared up in his turn.

"Mon cher, I beg and insist that from this time forth you never
couple with that revolting story the name of my daughter."

I stood up.  He was beside himself.  His chin was quivering.

"Cette histoire infame! . . . .  I did not believe it, I never
would believe it, but . . . they tell me, believe it, believe it,
I . . ."

At that instant a footman came in and announced visitors.  I
dropped into my chair again.


4


Two ladies came in.  They were both young and unmarried.  One was a
stepdaughter of a cousin of the old prince's deceased wife or
something of the sort, a protégée of his for whom he had already
set aside a dowry, and who (I mention it with a view to later
events) had money herself: the other was Anna Andreyevna Versilov,
the daughter of Versilov, three years older than I.  She lived with
her brother in the family of Mme. Fanariotov.  I had only seen her
once before in my life, for a minute in the street, though I had
had an encounter, also very brief, with her brother in Moscow.  (I
may very possibly refer to this encounter later--if I have space,
that is, for it is hardly worth recording.)  Anna Andreyevna had
been from childhood a special favourite of the old prince
(Versilov's acquaintance with the prince dated from very long ago). 
I was so overcome by what had just happened that I did not even
stand up on their entrance, though the old prince rose to greet
them.  Afterwards I thought it would be humiliating to get up, and
I remained where I was.  What overwhelmed me most was the prince's
having shouted at me like that three minutes before, and I did not
know whether to go away or not.  But the old man, as usual, had
already forgotten everything, and was all pleasure and animation at
sight of the young ladies.  At the very moment of their entrance he
hurriedly whispered to me, with a rapid change of expression and a
mysterious wink:

"Look at Olympiada, watch her, watch her; I'll tell you why
after. . . ."

I did look at her rather carefully, but I saw nothing special about
her.  She was a plump, not very tall young lady, with exceedingly
red cheeks.  Her face was rather pleasing, of the sort that
materialists like.  She had an expression of kindness, perhaps, but
with a touch of something different.  She could not have been very
brilliant intellectually--that is, not in the higher sense--for one
could see cunning in her eyes.  She was not more than nineteen.  In
fact, there was nothing remarkable about her.  In our school we
should have called her a cushion.  (I only give this minute
description of her because it will be useful later on.)

Indeed, all I have written hitherto with, apparently, such
unnecessary detail is all leading up to what is coming and is
necessary for it.  It will all come in in its proper place; I
cannot avoid it; and if it is dull, pray don't read it.

Versilov's daughter was a very different person.  She was tall and
somewhat slim, with a long and strikingly pale face and splendid
black hair.  She had large dark eyes with an earnest expression, a
small mouth, and most crimson lips.  She was the first woman who
did not disgust me by her horrid way of walking.  She was thin and
slender, however.  Her expression was not altogether good-natured,
but was dignified.  She was twenty-two.  There was hardly a trace
of resemblance to Versilov in her features, and yet, by some
miracle, there was an extraordinary similarity of expression.  I do
not know whether she was pretty; that is a matter of taste.  They
were both very simple in their dress, so that it is not worth while
to describe it.  I expected to be at once insulted by some glance
or gesture of Mlle. Versilov, and I was prepared for it.  Her
brother had insulted me in Moscow the first time we ever met.  She
could hardly know me by sight, but no doubt she had heard I was in
attendance on the prince.  Whatever the prince did or proposed to
do at once aroused interest and was looked upon as an event in the
whole gang of his relations and expectant beneficiaries, and this
was especially so with his sudden partiality for me.  I knew for a
fact that the old prince was particularly solicitous for Anna
Andreyevna's welfare and was on the look-out for a husband for her. 
But it was more difficult to find a suitor for Mlle. Versilov than
for the ladies who embroidered on canvas.

And, lo and behold! contrary to all my expectations, after shaking
hands with the prince and exchanging a few light, conventional
phrases with him, she looked at me with marked curiosity, and,
seeing that I too was looking at her, bowed to me with a smile.  It
is true that she had only just come into the room, and so might
naturally bow to anyone in it, but her smile was so friendly that
it was evidently premeditated; and, I remember, it gave me a
particularly pleasant feeling.

"And this . . . this is my dear young friend Arkady Andreyevitch
Dol . . ."  The prince faltered, noticing that she bowed to me
while I remained sitting--and he suddenly broke off; perhaps he was
confused at introducing me to her (that is, in reality, introducing
a brother to a sister).  The "cushion" bowed to me too; but I
suddenly leapt up with a clumsy scrape of my chair: it was a rush
of simulated pride, utterly senseless, all due to vanity.

"Excuse me, prince, I am not Arkady Andreyevitch but Arkady
Makarovitch!" I rapped out abruptly, utterly forgetting that I
ought to have bowed to the ladies.  Damnation take that unseemly
moment!

"Mais tiens!" cried the prince, tapping his forehead with his
finger.

"Where have you studied?" I heard the stupid question drawled by
the "cushion," who came straight up to me.

"In Moscow, at the grammar school."

"Ah! so I have heard.  Is the teaching good there?"

"Very good."

I remained standing and answered like a soldier reporting himself.

The young lady's questions were certainly not appropriate, but she
did succeed in smoothing over my stupid outbreak and relieving the
embarrassment of the prince, who was meanwhile listening with an
amused smile to something funny Mlle. Versilov was whispering in
his ear, evidently not about me.  But I wondered why this girl, who
was a complete stranger to me, should put herself out to smooth
over my stupid behaviour and all the rest of it.  At the same time,
it was impossible to imagine that she had addressed me quite
casually; it was obviously premeditated.  She looked at me with too
marked an interest; it was as though she wanted me, too, to notice
her as much as possible.  I pondered over all this later, and I was
not mistaken.

"What, surely not to-day?" the prince cried suddenly, jumping up
from his seat.

"Why, didn't you know?" Mlle. Versilov asked in surprise. 
"Olympie! the prince didn't know that Katerina Nikolaevna would be
here to-day.  Why, it's to see her we've come.  We thought she'd
have arrived by the morning train and have been here long ago.  She
has just driven up to the steps; she's come straight from the
station, and she told us to come up and she would be here in a
minute. . . .  And here she is!"

The side-door opened and--THAT WOMAN WALKED IN!

I knew her face already from the wonderful portrait of her that
hung in the prince's study.  I had been scrutinizing the portrait
all that month.  I spent three minutes in the study in her
presence, and I did not take my eyes off her face for a second. 
But if I had not known her portrait and had been asked, after those
three minutes, what she was like, I could not have answered, for
all was confusion within me.

I only remember from those three minutes the image of a really
beautiful woman, whom the prince was kissing and signing with the
cross, and who looked quickly at once--the very minute she came in--
at me.  I distinctly heard the prince muttering something, with a
little simper, about his new secretary and mentioning my name,
evidently pointing at me.  Her face seemed to contract; she threw a
vicious glance at me, and smiled so insolently that I took a sudden
step forward, went up to the prince, and muttered, trembling all
over and unable to finish my words (I believe my teeth were
chattering):

"From this time I . . . I've business of my own. . . .  I'm going."

And I turned and went out.  No one said a word to me, not even the
prince; they all simply stared.  The old prince told me afterwards
that I turned so white that he "was simply frightened."

But there was no need.



CHAPTER III


1


Indeed there was no need: a higher consideration swallowed up all
petty feelings, and one powerful emotion made up to me for
everything.  I went out in a sort of ecstasy.  As I stepped into
the street I was ready to sing aloud.  To match my mood it was an
exquisite morning, sunshine, people out walking, noise, movement,
joyousness, and crowds.  Why, had not that woman insulted me?  From
whom would I have endured that look and that insolent smile without
instant protest however stupid it might be.  I did not mind about
that.  Note that she had come expressly to insult me as soon as she
could, although she had never seen me.  In her eyes I was an "envoy
from Versilov," and she was convinced at that time, and for long
afterwards, that Versilov held her fate in his hands and could ruin
her at once if he wanted to, by means of a certain document; she
suspected that, anyway.  It was a duel to the death.  And yet--I
was not offended!  It was an insult, but I did not feel it.  How
should I?  I was positively glad of it; though I had come here to
hate her I felt I was beginning to love her.

I don't know whether the spider perhaps does not hate the fly he
has marked and is snaring.  Dear little fly!  It seems to me that
the victim is loved, or at least may be loved.  Here I love my
enemy; I am delighted, for instance, that she is so beautiful.  I
am delighted, madam, that you are so haughty and majestic.  If you
were meeker it would not be so delightful.  You have spat on me--
and I am triumphant.  If you were literally to spit in my face I
should really not be angry because you--are my victim; MINE and not
HIS.  How fascinating was that idea!  Yes, the secret consciousness
of power is more insupportably delightful than open domination.  If
I were a millionaire I believe I should take pleasure in going
about in the oldest clothes and being taken for a destitute man,
almost a beggar, being jostled and despised.  The consciousness of
the truth would be enough for me.

That is how I should interpret my thoughts and happiness, and much
of what I was feeling that day.  I will only add that in what I
have just written there is too much levity; in reality my feeling
was deeper and more modest.  Perhaps even now I am more modest in
myself than in my words and deeds--God grant it may be so!

Perhaps I have done amiss in sitting down to write at all. 
Infinitely more remains hidden within than comes out in words. 
Your thought, even if it is an evil one, is always deeper while it
is in your mind; it becomes more absurd and dishonourable when it
is put into words.  Versilov once said to me that the opposite was
true only with horrid people, they simply tell lies, it is easy for
them; but I am trying to write the whole truth, and that's
fearfully difficult!


2


On that 19th of September I took one other "step."

For the first time since I arrived I had money in my pocket, for
the sixty roubles I had saved up in two years I had given to my
mother, as I mentioned before.  But, a few days before, I had
determined that on the day I received my salary I would make an
"experiment" of which I had long been dreaming.  The day before I
had cut out of the paper an address; it was an advertisement that
on the 19th of September at twelve o'clock in the morning, in such-
and-such a street, at number so-and-so, there would be a sale by
the local police authority of the effects of Mme. Lebrecht, and
that the catalogue, valuation, and property for sale could be
inspected on the day of the auction, and so on.

It was just past one.  I hurried to the address on foot.  I had not
taken a cab for more than two years--I had taken a vow not to (or I
should never have saved up my sixty roubles).  I had never been to
an auction, I had never ALLOWED myself this indulgence.  And though
my present step was only an EXPERIMENT yet I had made up my mind
not to take even that step till I had left the grammar school, when
I should break off with everything, hide myself in my shell, and
become perfectly free.  It is true that I was far from being in my
shell and far from being free yet, but then I was only taking this
step by way of an experiment--simply to look into it, as it were to
indulge a fancy, and after that not to recur to it perhaps for a
long while, till the time of beginning seriously.  For every one
else this was only a stupid little auction, but for me it was the
first plank in the ship in which a Columbus would set out to
discover his America.  That was my feeling then.

When I arrived I went into the furthest corner of the yard of the
house mentioned in the advertisement, and entered Mme. Lebrecht's
flat, which consisted of an entry and four small low-pitched rooms. 
In the first room there was a crowd of about thirty persons, half
of them people who had come to bargain, while the rest, judging
from their appearance, were either inquisitive outsiders, or
connoisseurs, or representatives of Mme. Lebrecht.  There were
merchants and Jews gloating over the objects made of gold, and a
few people of the well-dressed class.  The very faces of some of
these gentlemen remain stamped in my memory.  In the doorway
leading to the room on the right there was placed a table so that
it was impossible to pass; on it lay the things catalogued for
sale.  There was another room on the left, but the door into it was
closed, though it was continually being opened a little way, and
some one could be seen peeping through the crack, no doubt some one
of the numerous family of Mme. Lebrecht, who must have been feeling
very much ashamed at the time.  At the table between the doors,
facing the public, sat the warrant officer, to judge by his badge,
presiding over the sale.  I found the auction half over; I squeezed
my way up to the table as soon as I went in.  Some bronze
candlesticks were being sold.  I began looking at the things.

I looked at the things and wondered what I could buy, and what I
could do with bronze candlesticks, and whether my object would be
attained, and how the thing would be done, and whether my project
would be successful, and whether my project were not childish.  All
this I wondered as I waited.  It was like the sensation one has at
the gambling table at the moment before one has put down a card,
though one has come to do so, feeling, "if I like I'll put it down,
if I don't I'll go away--I'm free to choose!"  One's heart does not
begin to throb at that point, but there is a faint thrill and
flutter in it--a sensation not without charm.  But indecision soon
begins to weigh painfully upon one: one's eyes grow dizzy, one
stretches out one's hand, picks up a card, but mechanically, almost
against one's will, as though some one else were directing one's
hand.  At last one has decided and thrown down the card--then the
feeling is quite different--immense.  I am not writing about the
auction; I am writing about myself; who else would feel his heart
throbbing at an auction?

Some were excited, some were waiting in silence, some had bought
things and were regretting it.  I felt no sympathy with a gentleman
who, misunderstanding what was said, bought an electro-plated milk-
jug in mistake for a silver one for five roubles instead of two; in
fact it amused me very much.  The warrant officer passed rapidly
from one class of objects to another: after the candlesticks,
displayed earrings, after earrings an embroidered leather cushion,
then a money-box--probably for the sake of variety, or to meet the
wishes of the purchasers.  I could not remain passive even for ten
minutes.  I went up to the cushion, and afterwards to the cash-box,
but at the critical moment my tongue failed me: these objects
seemed to me quite out of the question.  At last I saw an album in
the warrant officer's hand.

"A family album in real morocco, second-hand, with sketches in
water-colour and crayon, in a carved ivory case with silver clasps--
priced two roubles!"

I went up: it looked an elegant article, but the carving was
damaged in one place.  I was the only person who went up to look at
it, all were silent; there was no bidding for it.  I might have
undone the clasps and taken the album out of the case to look at
it, but I did not make use of my privilege, and only waved a
trembling hand as though to say "never mind."

"Two roubles, five kopecks," I said.  I believe my teeth were
chattering again.

The album was knocked down to me.  I at once took out the money,
paid for it, snatched up the album, and went into a corner of the
room.  There I took it out of its case, and began looking through
it with feverish haste--it was the most trumpery thing possible--a
little album of the size of a piece of notepaper, with rubbed gilt
edges, exactly like the albums girls used to keep in former days
when they left school.  There were crayon and colour sketches of
temples on mountain-sides, Cupids, a lake with floating swans;
there were verses:


          On a far journey I am starting,
          From Moscow I am departing,
          From my dear ones I am parting.
          And with post-horses flying South.


They are enshrined in my memory!

I made up my mind that I had made a mess of it; if there ever was
anything no one could possibly want it was this.

"Never mind," I decided, "one's bound to lose the first card; it's
a good omen, in fact."

I felt thoroughly light-hearted.

"Ach, I'm too late; is it yours?  You have bought it?"  I suddenly
heard beside me the voice of a well-dressed, presentable-looking
gentleman in a blue coat.  He had come in late.

"I am too late.  Ach, what a pity!  How much was it?"

"Two roubles, five kopecks."

"Ach, what a pity!  Would you give it up?"

"Come outside," I whispered to him, in a tremor.

We went out on the staircase.

"I'll let you have it for ten roubles," I said, feeling a shiver
run down my back.

"Ten roubles!  Upon my word!"

"As you like."

He stared at me open-eyed.  I was well dressed, not in the least
like a Jew or a second-hand dealer.

"Mercy on us--why it's a wretched old album, what use is it to
anyone?  The case isn't worth anything certainly.  You certainly
won't sell it to anyone."

"I see you will buy it."

"But that's for a special reason.  I only found out yesterday.  I'm
the only one who would.  Upon my word, what are you thinking
about!"

"I ought to have asked twenty-five roubles, but as there was, after
all, a risk you might draw back, I only asked for ten to make sure
of it.  I won't take a farthing less."

I turned and walked away.

"Well, take four roubles," he said, overtaking me in the yard,
"come, five!"

I strode on without speaking.

"Well, take it then!"

He took out ten roubles.  I gave him the album.

"But you must own it's not honest!  Two roubles--and then ten, eh?"

"Why not honest?  It's a question of market."

"What do you mean by market!"  He grew angry.

"When there's a demand one has a market--if you hadn't asked for it
I shouldn't have sold it for forty kopecks."

Though I was serious and didn't burst out laughing I was laughing
inwardly--not from delight--I don't know why myself, I was almost
breathless.

"Listen," I muttered, utterly unable to restrain myself, but
speaking in a friendly way and feeling quite fond of him.  "Listen,
when as a young man the late James Rothschild, the Parisian one,
who left seventeen hundred million francs (he nodded), heard of the
murder of the Duc de Berri some hours before anybody else he sent
the news to the proper quarter, and by that one stroke in an
instant made several millions--that's how people get on!"

"So you're a Rothschild, are you?" he cried as though indignant
with me for being such a fool.

I walked quickly out of the house.  One step, and I had made seven
roubles ninety-five kopecks.  It was a senseless step, a piece of
child's play I admit, but it chimed in with my theories, and I
could not help being deeply stirred by it.  But it is no good
describing one's feelings.  My ten roubles were in my waistcoat
pocket, I thrust in two fingers to feel it--and walked along
without taking my hand out.  After walking a hundred yards along
the street I took the note out to look at it, I looked at it and
felt like kissing it.  A carriage rumbled up to the steps of a
house.  The house porter opened the door and a lady came out to get
into the carriage.  She was young, handsome and wealthy-looking,
gorgeously dressed in silk and velvet, with a train more than two
yards long.  Suddenly a pretty little portfolio dropped out of her
hand and fell on the ground; she got into the carriage.  The
footman stooped down to pick the thing up, but I flew up quickly,
picked it up and handed it to the lady, taking off my hat.  (The
hat was a silk one, I was suitably dressed for a young man.)  With
a very pleasant smile, though with an air of reserve, the lady said
to me:  "Merci, m'sieu!"  The carriage rolled away.  I kissed the
ten-rouble note.


3


That same day I was to go and see Efim Zvyerev, one of my old
schoolfellows at the grammar school, who had gone to a special
college in Petersburg.  He is not worth describing, and I was not
on particularly friendly terms with him; but I looked him up in
Petersburg.  He might (through various circumstances which again
are not worth relating) be able to give me the address of a man
called Kraft, whom it was very important for me to see as soon as
he returned from Vilna.  Efim was expecting him that day or the
next, as he had let me know two days before.  I had to go to the
Petersburg Side, but I did not feel tired.

I found Efim (who was also nineteen) in the yard of his aunt's
house, where he was staying for the time.  He had just had dinner
and was walking about the yard on stilts.  He told me at once that
Kraft had arrived the day before, and was staying at his old
lodgings close by, and that he was anxious to see me as soon as
possible, as he had something important to tell me.

"He's going off somewhere again," added Efim.

As in the present circumstances it was of great importance to see
Kraft I asked Efim to take me round at once to his lodging, which
it appeared was in a back street only a few steps away.  But Efim
told me that he had met him an hour ago and that he was on his way
to Dergatchev's.

"But come along to Dergatchev's.  Why do you always cry off?  Are
you afraid?"

Kraft might as a fact stay on at Dergatchev's, and in that case
where could I wait for him?  I was not afraid of going to
Dergatchev's, but I did not want to go to his house, though Efim
had tried to get me there three times already.  And on each
occasion had asked "Are you afraid?" with a very nasty smile at my
expense.  It was not a case of fear I must state at once; if I was
afraid it was of something quite different.  This time I made up my
mind to go.  Dergatchev's, too, was only a few steps away.  On the
way I asked Efim if he still meant to run away to America.

"Maybe I shall wait a bit," he answered with a faint smile.

I was not particularly fond of him; in fact I did not like him at
all.  He had fair hair, and a full face of an excessive fairness,
an almost unseemly childish fairness, yet he was taller than I was,
but he would never have been taken for more than seventeen.  I had
nothing to talk to him about.

"What's going on there?  Is there always a crowd?" I asked.

"But why are you always so frightened?" he laughed again.

"Go to hell!" I said, getting angry.

"There won't be a crowd at all.  Only friends come, and they're all
his own set.  Don't worry yourself."

"But what the devil is it to me whether they're his set or not! 
I'm not one of his set.  How can they be sure of me?"

"I am bringing you and that's enough.  They've heard of you
already.  Kraft can answer for you, too."

"I say, will Vassin be there?"

"I don't know."

"If he is, give me a poke and point him out as soon as we go in. 
As soon as we go in.  Do you hear?"

I had heard a good deal about Vassin already, and had long been
interested in him.

Dergatchev lived in a little lodge in the courtyard of a wooden
house belonging to a merchant's wife, but he occupied the whole of
it.  There were only three living rooms.  All the four windows had
the blinds drawn down.  He was a mechanical engineer, and did work
in Petersburg.  I had heard casually that he had got a good private
berth in the provinces, and that he was just going away to it.

As soon as we stepped into the tiny entry we heard voices.  There
seemed to be a heated argument and some one shouted:

"Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat, quae ferrum non sanat--
ignis sanat!"

I certainly was in some uneasiness.  I was, of course, not
accustomed to society of any kind.  At school I had been on
familiar terms with my schoolfellows, but I was scarcely friends
with anyone; I made a little corner for myself and lived in it. 
But this was not what disturbed me.  In any case I vowed not to let
myself be drawn into argument and to say nothing beyond what was
necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me;
above all--to avoid argument.

In the room, which was really too small, there were seven men;
counting the ladies, ten persons.  Dergatchev was five-and-twenty,
and was married.  His wife had a sister and another female
relation, who lived with them.  The room was furnished after a
fashion, sufficiently though, and was even tidy.  There was a
lithographed portrait on the wall, but a very cheap one; in the
corner there was an ikon without a setting, but with a lamp burning
before it.

Dergatchev came up to me, shook hands and asked me to sit down.

"Sit down; they're all our own set here."

"You're very welcome," a rather nice-looking, modestly dressed
young woman added immediately, and making me a slight bow she at
once went out of the room.  This was his wife, and she, too, seemed
to have been taking part in the discussion, and went away to nurse
the baby.  But there were two other ladies left in the room; one
very short girl of about twenty, wearing a black dress, also rather
nice-looking, and the other a thin, keen-eyed lady of thirty.  They
sat listening eagerly, but not taking part in the conversation. 
All the men were standing except Kraft, Vassin and me.  Efim
pointed them out to me at once, for I had never seen Kraft before,
either.  I got up and went up to make their acquaintance.  Kraft's
face I shall never forget.  There was no particular beauty about
it, but a positive excess of mildness and delicacy, though personal
dignity was conspicuous in everything about him.  He was twenty-
six, rather thin, above medium height, fair-haired, with an earnest
but soft face; there was a peculiar gentleness about his whole
personality.  And yet if I were asked I would not have changed my
own, possibly very commonplace, countenance for his, which struck
me as so attractive.  There was something in his face I should not
have cared to have in mine, too marked a calm (in a moral sense)
and something like a secret, unconscious pride.  But I probably
could not have actually formed this judgment at the time.  It seems
so to me now, in the light of later events.

"I'm very glad you've come," said Kraft.  "I have a letter which
concerns you.  We'll stay here a little and then go home."

Dergatchev was a strong, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned man
of medium height, with a big beard.  His eyes showed acuteness,
habitual reserve, and a certain incessant watchfulness; though
he was for the most part silent, he evidently controlled the
conversation.  Vassin's face did not impress me much, though I had
heard of him as extraordinarily intelligent: he had fair hair,
large light grey eyes, and a very open face.  But at the same time
there was something, as it were, too hard in it; one had a
presentiment that he would not be communicative, but he looked
undeniably clever, cleverer than Dergatchev, of a more profound
intellect--cleverer than anyone in the room.  But perhaps I am
exaggerating.  Of the other young men I only recall two; one a
tall, dark man of twenty-seven, with black whiskers, who talked a
great deal, a teacher or something of the sort; the other was a
fellow of my own age, with good lines in his face, wearing a
Russian tunic without sleeves.  He was silent, and listened
attentively.  He turned out afterwards to be a peasant.

"No, that's not the way to put it," the black-whiskered teacher
began, obviously continuing the previous discussion.  He talked
more than anyone in the room.

"I'm not talking of mathematical proofs, but that idea which I am
prepared to believe without mathematical proof . . ."

"Wait a bit, Tihomirov," Dergatchev interrupted loudly, "the new-
comers don't understand.  You see," he suddenly addressed himself
to me alone (and I confess if he intended to put me as a novice
through an examination or to make me speak, it was adroitly done on
his part; I felt it and prepared myself) "it's all our friend
Kraft, who is well known to us all for his character and the
solidity of his convictions.  From a very ordinary fact he has
deduced a very extraordinary conviction that has surprised us all. 
He has deduced that the Russians are a second-rate people . . ."

"Third-rate," shouted some one.

"A second-rate people destined to serve as the raw material for a
nobler race, and not to play an independent part in the history of
humanity.  In view of this theory of his, which is perhaps correct,
Kraft has come to the conclusion that the activity of every Russian
must in the future be paralysed by this idea, that all, so to
speak, will fold their hands and . . ."

"Excuse me, Dergatchev, that's not the way to put it," Tihomirov
interrupted impatiently again (Dergatchev at once gave way),
"considering that Kraft has made a serious study of the subject,
has made on a physiological basis deductions which he regards as
mathematically proved, and has spent perhaps two years on his idea
(which I should be prepared a priori to accept with equanimity),
considering all this, that is considering Kraft's excitement and
earnestness, the case must be considered as a phenomenon.  All this
leads up to a question which Kraft cannot understand, and that's
what we must attend to--I mean, Kraft's not understanding it, for
that's the phenomenon.  We must decide whether this phenomenon
belongs to the domain of pathology as a solitary instance, or
whether it is an occurrence which may be normally repeated in
others; that's what is of interest for the common cause.  I believe
Kraft about Russia, and I will even say that I am glad of it,
perhaps; if this idea were assimilated by all it would free many
from patriotic prejudice and untie their hands . . ."

"I am not influenced by patriotism," said Kraft, speaking with a
certain stiffness.  All this debate seemed distasteful to him.

"Whether patriotism or not we need not consider," observed Vassin,
who had been very silent.

"But how, tell me, please, could Kraft's deduction weaken the
impulse to the cause of humanity," shouted the teacher.  (He was
the only one shouting.  All the others spoke in a low voice.)  "Let
Russia be condemned to second-rateness, but we can still work and
not for Russia alone.  And, what's more, how can Kraft be a patriot
if he has ceased to believe in Russia?"

"Besides being a German," a voice interrupted again.

"I am a Russian," said Kraft.

"That's a question that has no direct bearing on the subject,"
observed Dergatchev to the speaker who had interrupted.

"Take a wider view of your idea," cried Tihomirov, heeding nothing. 
"If Russia is only the material for nobler races why shouldn't she
serve as such material?  It's a sufficiently attractive part for
her to play.  Why not accept the idea calmly, considering how it
enlarges the task?  Humanity is on the eve of its regeneration,
which is already beginning.  None but the blind deny the task
before us.  Let Russia alone, if you've lost faith in her, and work
for the future, for the future unknown people that will be formed
of all humanity without distinction of race.  Russia would perish
some time, anyway; even the most gifted peoples exist for fifteen
hundred or at the most two thousand years.  Isn't it all the same
whether it's two thousand or two hundred?  The Romans did not last
fifteen hundred years as a vital force, they too have turned into
material.  They ceased to exist long ago, but they've left an idea,
and it has become an element in the future of mankind.  How can one
tell a man there's nothing to be done?  I can't conceive of a
position in which there ever could be nothing to do!  Work for
humanity and don't trouble about the rest.  There's so much to do
that life isn't long enough if you look into it more closely."

"One must live in harmony with the laws of nature and truth," Mme.
Dergatchev observed from the doorway.  The door was slightly ajar
and one could see that she was standing there, listening eagerly,
with the baby at her breast which was covered.

Kraft listened with a faint smile and brought out at last with a
somewhat harassed face, but with earnest sincerity:

"I don't understand how, if one is under the influence of some
over-mastering idea which completely dominates one's mind and one's
heart, one can live for something else which is outside that idea."

"But if it is logically, mathematically proved to you that your
deduction is erroneous--that your whole idea is erroneous, that you
have not the slightest right to exclude yourself from working for
the welfare of humanity simply because Russia is predestined to a
second-rate part, if it is pointed out to you, that in place of
your narrow horizon infinity lies open before you, that instead of
your narrow idea of patriotism . . ."

"Ah!" Kraft waved his hand gently, "I've told you there is no
question of patriotism."

"There is evidently a misunderstanding," Vassin interposed
suddenly, "the mistake arises from the fact that Kraft's conclusion
is not a mere logical theory but, so to say, a theory that has been
transmuted into a feeling.  All natures are not alike; in some men
a logical deduction is sometimes transmuted into a very powerful
emotion which takes possession of the whole being, and is sometimes
very difficult to dislodge or alter.  To cure such a man the
feeling itself must be changed, which is only possible by replacing
it by another, equally powerful one.  That's always difficult, and
in many cases impossible."

"That's a mistake," roared the argumentative teacher, "a logical
proof of itself will dissipate prejudices.  A rational conviction
will give rise to feeling, too.  Thought arises from feeling, and
dominating a man in its turn formulates new feeling."

"People are very different.  Some change their feelings readily,
while for others it's hard to do so," responded Vassin, as though
disinclined to continue the argument; but I was delighted by his
idea.

"That's perfectly true what you say," I said, turning to him, all
at once breaking the ice and suddenly beginning to speak; "that to
change a feeling one must replace it by another.  Four years ago a
general in Moscow . . . I didn't know him, you see, but . . .
Perhaps he couldn't have inspired respect of himself . . . And the
fact itself may seem irrational but . . . But he had lost a child,
that's to say two little girls who had died one after another of
scarlatina.  And he was utterly crushed, and did nothing but
grieve, so that one couldn't bear to go and look at him, and he
ended by dying scarcely six months later.  It's a fact that he died
of it!  What could have saved him?  The answer is--a feeling of
equal strength.  One would have had to dig those two little girls
out of the grave and give them back to him--that would have been
the only thing, I mean in that way.  And he died.  Yet one might
have presented him with excellent reflections: that life is
transitory, that all are mortal; one might have produced statistics
to show how many children do die of scarlatina . . . he was on the
retired list. . . ."

I stopped, out of breath, and looked round.

"That's nothing to do with it," said some one.

"The instance you have quoted, though it's not quite in the same
category, is very similar and illustrates the subject," said
Vassin, turning to me.


4


Here I must confess why I was so delighted with what Vassin had
said about the "idea transmuted into feeling," and at the same time
I must confess to a fiendish disgrace.  Yes, I was afraid to go to
Dergatchev's, though not for the reason Efim imagined.  I dreaded
going because I had been afraid of them even before I left Moscow. 
I knew that they (or some of their sort, it's all the same) were
great in argument and would perhaps shatter "my idea."  I was
firmly resolved in myself that I wouldn't give away my idea or say
a word to them about it; but they (or again some of their sort)
might easily say something to me which would destroy my faith in my
"idea," even though I might not utter a syllable about it.  There
were questions connected with my "idea" which I had not settled,
but I did not want anyone to settle them but myself.  For the last
two years I had even given up reading for fear of meeting with some
passage opposed to my "idea" which might shake me.  And all at once
Vassin had solved the difficulty and reassured me on the most
essential point.  Alter all, what was I afraid of and what could
they do to me, whatever skill in argument they might have?  I
perhaps was the only one who understood what Vassin meant by "an
idea transformed into an emotion."  It's not enough to refute a
fine idea, one must replace it by something fine of equal strength;
or else, refusing absolutely to part with my feeling, in my heart I
should refute the refutation, however strong the argument might be,
whatever they might say.  And what could they give me in place of
it?  And therefore I might be braver, I was bound to be more manly. 
While I was delighted with Vassin, I felt ashamed, and felt myself
an insignificant child.

Then there followed fresh ignominy.  It was not a contemptible
desire to show off my intelligence that made me break the ice and
speak, it was an impulse to "throw myself on his neck."  The
impulse to throw myself on people's necks that they might think
well of me and take me to their hearts or something of the sort
(pure beastliness, in fact) I look upon as the most abject of my
weaknesses, and I suspected it in myself long ago; in fact, when I
was in the corner in which I entrenched myself for so many years,
though I don't regret doing so, I knew I ought to behave in company
with more austerity.  What comforted me after every such
ignominious scene was that my "idea" was as great a secret as ever,
and that I hadn't given it away.  With a sinking at my heart I
sometimes imagined that when I did let out my idea to some one I
should suddenly have nothing left, that I should become like every
one else, and perhaps I should give up the idea; and so I was on my
guard and preserved it, and trembled at the thought of chattering. 
And now at Dergatchev's, almost at the first contact with anyone, I
broke down.  I hadn't betrayed anything, of course, but I had
chattered unpardonably; it was ignominious.  It is a horrid thing
to remember!  No, I must not associate with people.  I think so
even now.  Forty years hence I will speak.  My idea demands a
corner.


5


As soon as Vassin expressed approval I felt irresistibly impelled
to talk.

"I consider that every one has a right to have his own feelings . . .
if they are from conviction . . . and that no one should reproach
him with them," I went on, addressing Vassin.  Though I spoke
boldly, it was as though I was not speaking, not my own tongue
moving in my mouth.

"Re-all-ly?" the same voice which had interrupted Dergatchev and
shouted at Kraft that he was a German interposed with an ironical
drawl.  Regarding the speaker as a complete nonentity, I addressed
the teacher as though he had called out to me.

"It's my conviction that I should not dare to judge anyone," I
said, quivering, and conscious that I was going to make a fool of
myself.

"Why so mysterious?" cried the voice of the nonentity again.

"Every man has his own idea," I went on, gazing persistently at the
teacher, who for his part held his tongue and looked at me with a
smile.

"Yours is?" cried the nonentity.

"Too long to describe. . . .  But part of my idea is that I
should be left alone.  As long as I've two roubles I want to be
independent of every one (don't excite yourself, I know the
objection that will be made) and to do nothing--not even to work
for that grand future of humanity which Mr. Kraft is invited to
work for.  Personal freedom, that is, my own, is the first thing,
and I don't care about anything else."

My mistake was that I lost my temper.

"In other words you advocate the tranquillity of the well-fed cow?"

"So be it.  Cows don't hurt anyone.  I owe no one anything.  I pay
society in the form of taxes that I may not be robbed, killed or
assaulted, and no one dare demand anything more.  I personally,
perhaps, may have other ideas, and if I want to serve humanity I
shall, and perhaps ten times as much as those who preach about it;
only I want no one to dare to demand it of me, to force me to it
like Mr. Kraft.  I must be perfectly free not to lift a finger if I
like.  But to rush and 'fall on everybody's neck' from love to
humanity, and dissolve in tears of emotion--is only a fashion.  And
why should I be bound to love my neighbour, or your future humanity
which I shall never see, which will never know anything about me,
and which will in its turn disappear and leave no trace (time
counts for nothing in this) when the earth in its turn will be
changed into an iceberg, and will fly off into the void with an
infinite multitude of other similar icebergs; it's the most
senseless thing one could possibly imagine.  That's your teaching. 
Tell me why I am bound to be so noble, especially if it all lasts
only for a moment?"

"P-pooh!" cried a voice.

I had fired off all this with nervous exasperation, throwing off
all restraint.  I knew that I was making a fool of myself, but I
hurried on, afraid of being interrupted.  I felt that my words were
pouring out like water through a sieve, incoherently, nineteen to
the dozen, but I hurried on to convince them and get the better of
them.  It was a matter of such importance to me.  I had been
preparing for it for three years.  But it was remarkable that they
were all suddenly silent, they said absolutely nothing, every one
was listening.  I went on addressing my remarks to the teacher.

"That's just it.  A very clever man has said that nothing is more
difficult than to answer the question 'Why we must be honourable.' 
You know there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world; naïve
scoundrels, that is, convinced that their villany is the highest
virtue; scoundrels who are ashamed, that is, ashamed of their own
villany, though they fully intend to persevere with it; and lastly
simple scoundrels, pure-bred scoundrels.  For example I had a
schoolfellow called Lambert who told me at sixteen that when he
came into his fortune it would be his greatest satisfaction to feed
on meat and bread while the children of the poor were dying of
hunger; and when they had no fuel for their fires he would buy up a
whole woodstack, build it up in a field and set fire to it there,
and not give any of it to the poor.  Those were his feelings!  Tell
me, what am I to say to a pure-blooded scoundrel like that if he
asks me why he should be honourable?  Especially now in these times
which you have so transformed, for things have never been worse
than they are now.  Nothing is clear in our society.  You deny God,
you see, deny heroism.  What blind, deaf, dull-witted stagnation of
mind can force me to act in one way, if it's more to my advantage
to do the opposite?  You say 'a rational attitude to humanity is to
your own advantage, too'; but what if I think all these rational
considerations irrational, and dislike all these socialist barracks
and phalanxes?  What the devil do I care for them or for the future
when I shall only live once on earth!  Allow me to judge of my
advantage for myself; it's more amusing.  What does it matter to me
what will happen in a thousand years to your humanity if, on your
principles, I'm to get for it neither love, nor future life, nor
recognition of my heroism?  No, if that's how it is I'd rather live
in the most ignorant way for myself and let them all go to
perdition!"

"An excellent sentiment!"

"Though I'm always ready to go with them."

"That's one better!"--the same voice again.

The others still remained silent, they all scrutinized me, staring;
but little by little in different parts of the room there rose a
titter, subdued indeed, but they were all laughing at me to my
face.  Vassin and Kraft were the only ones not laughing, the
gentleman with the black whiskers was sniggering too; he sneered
at me persistently and listened.

"I'm not going to tell you my idea," I cried, quivering all over,
"nothing would induce me, but I ask you on the other hand, from
your point of view--don't imagine I'm speaking for myself, for I
dare say I love humanity a thousand times more than all of you put
together!  Tell me, and you must, you are bound now to answer
because you are laughing, tell me, what inducement do you hold out
to me to follow you?  Tell me, how do you prove to me that you'll
make things better?  How will you deal with my individual protest
in your barracks?  I have wanted to meet you, gentlemen, for ever
so long.  You will have barracks, communistic homes, stricte
necessaire, atheism, and communistic wives without children--that's
your ideal, I know all about it.  And for all this, for this little
part of mediocre advantage which your rational system guarantees
me, for a bit of bread and a warm corner you take away all my
personal liberty!  For instance; if my wife's carried off, are you
going to take away my personal liberty so that I mayn't bash my
rival's brains in?  You'll tell me I shall be more sensible then
myself, but what will the wife say to a husband so sensible, if she
has the slightest self-respect?  Why it's unnatural; you ought to
be ashamed!"

"You're a specialist on the woman question then?" the voice of the
nonentity pronounced malignantly.

For one instant I had an impulse to fly at him and pommel him with
my fists.  He was a short fellow with red hair and freckles though
what the devil does his appearance matter?

"Don't excite yourself.  I've never once had relations with a
woman," I rapped out, for the first time addressing him directly.

"A priceless avowal which might have been made more politely in the
presence of ladies."

But there was a general movement among them; they were all looking
for their hats and taking leave--not on my account, of course, but
simply because it was time to break up.  But I was crushed with
shame at the way they all ignored me.  I jumped up, too.

"Allow me to ask your name.  You kept looking at me," said the
teacher, coming up to me with a very nasty smile.

"Dolgoruky."

"Prince Dolgoruky?"

"No, simply Dolgoruky, legally the son of a former serf, Makar
Dolgoruky, but the illegitimate son of my former master, Monsieur
Versilov.  Don't make a mistake, gentlemen, I don't tell you this
to make you all fall upon my neck and begin howling like calves
from sentimentality."

There was a loud and unceremonious roar of laughter, so much so
that the baby, who was asleep in the next room, waked up and began
squealing.  I trembled with fury.  Every one shook hands with
Dergatchev and went out without taking the slightest notice of me.

"Come along," said Kraft, touching me.

I went up to Dergatchev, pressed his hand and shook it vigorously
several times.

"You must excuse Kudryumov's being so rude to you" (Kudryumov was
the red-haired man), said Dergatchev.

I followed Kraft out.  I was not in the least ashamed.


6


There is of course an immense difference between what I am now and
what I was then.

Still "not in the least ashamed" I overtook Vassin on the stairs,
leaving Kraft behind as of secondary importance, and with the most
natural air as though nothing had happened I asked:

"I believe you know my father, I mean Versilov."

"He's not exactly an acquaintance of mine," Vassin answered at once
(and without a trace of that insulting refinement of politeness
which delicate people adopt when they speak to people who have just
disgraced themselves), "but I do know him a little; I have met him
and I've heard him talk."

"If you've heard him no doubt you do know him, for you are you! 
What do you think of him?  Forgive the abrupt question but I need
to know.  It's what YOU would think, just your opinion that I
need."

"You are asking a great deal of me.  I believe that man is capable
of setting himself tremendous tasks and possibly carrying them
through--but without rendering an account of his doings to anyone."

"That's true, that's very true--he's a very proud man!  Is he a
sincere man?  Tell me, what do you think about his being a
Catholic?  But I forgot, perhaps you don't know?"

If I had not been so excited I should not, of course, have fired
off such questions so irrelevantly at a man of whom I had heard but
whom I had never seen before.  I was surprised that Vassin did not
seem to notice how rude I was.

"I heard something about it, but I don't know how far it may be
true," he answered in the same calm and even tone as before.

"Not a bit!  It's false!  Do you suppose he can believe in God?"

"He--is a very proud man, as you said just now, and many very proud
people like to believe in God, especially those who despise other
people.  Many strong natures seem to have a sort of natural craving
to find some one or something to which they can do homage.  Strong
natures often find it very difficult to bear the burden of their
strength."

"Do you know that must be awfully true," I cried again.  "Only I
should like to understand . . ."

"The reason is obvious.  They turn to God to avoid doing homage to
men, of course without recognizing how it comes about in them; to
do homage to God is not so humiliating.  They become the most
fervent of believers--or to be more accurate the most fervently
desirous of believing; but they take this desire for belief itself. 
These are the people who most frequently become disillusioned in
the end.  As for Monsieur Versilov, I imagine that he has some
extremely sincere characteristics.  And altogether he interested
me."

"Vassin!" I cried, "you rejoice my heart!  It's not your
intelligence I wonder at; I am astonished that you, a man of
such a lofty nature and so far above me, can walk with me and
talk to me as simply and courteously as though nothing had
happened!"

Vassin smiled.

"You are too flattering, and all that has happened is that you have
shown a weakness for abstract conversation.  You have probably been
through a long period of silence."

"For three years I have been silent; for three years I have been
preparing to speak . . . You couldn't of course have thought me a
fool, you're so extraordinarily clever, though no one could have
behaved more stupidly; but you must have thought me a scoundrel."

"A scoundrel!"

"Yes, certainly!  Tell me, don't you secretly despise me for saying
I was Versilov's illegitimate son. . . .  Boasting I was the son of
a serf?"

"You worry yourself too much.  If you think you did wrong in saying
so you've only to avoid saying it again.  You have fifty years
before you."

"Oh, I know that I ought to be very silent with other people.  This
throwing oneself on people's necks is the lowest of all vices; I
told them so just now, and here I am doing it to you!  But there is
a difference, isn't there?  If you realize that difference, if you
are capable of realizing it, then I bless this moment!"

Vassin smiled again.

"Come and see me if you care to," he said.  "I have work now and am
busy, but I shall be pleased to see you."

"I thought from your face just now that you were too hard and
uncommunicative."

"That may very well be true.  I saw something of your sister
Lizaveta Makarovna at Luga, last year. . . .  Kraft has stopped
and I believe is waiting for you.  He has to turn here."

I pressed Vassin's hand warmly, and ran up to Kraft, who had walked
on ahead all the while I talked to Vassin.  We walked in silence to
his lodgings.  I could not speak to him and did not want to.  One
of the strongest traits in Kraft's character was delicacy.



CHAPTER IV


1


Kraft had been somewhere in the service, and at the same time had
been a paid assistant of Andronikov's in the management of the
private business which the deceased gentleman had always carried on
in addition to his official duties.  What mattered to me was, that
from his close association with Andronikov, Kraft might well know a
great deal of what interested me.  But Marie Ivanovna, the wife of
Nikolay Semyonovitch, with whom I had boarded so many years while I
was at the grammar school in Moscow, was a favourite niece of
Andronikov and was brought up by him, and from her I learnt that
Kraft had actually been "commissioned" to give me something.  I had
been expecting him for a whole month.

He lived in a little flat of two rooms quite apart from the rest of
the house, and at the moment, having only just returned, he had no
servant.  His trunk stood open, not yet unpacked.  His belongings
lay about on the chairs, and were spread out on the table in front
of the sofa: his travelling bag, his cashbox, his revolver and so
on.  As we went in, Kraft seemed lost in thought, as though he had
altogether forgotten me.  He had perhaps not noticed that I had not
spoken to him on the way.  He began looking for something at once,
but happening to catch a glimpse of himself in the looking-glass he
stood still for a full minute gazing at his own face.  Though I
noticed this peculiar action, and recalled it all afterwards, I was
depressed and disturbed.  I was not feeling equal to concentrating
my mind.  For a moment I had a sudden impulse to go straight away
and to give it all up for ever.  And after all what did all these
things amount to in reality?  Was it not simply an unnecessary
worry I had taken upon myself?  I sank into despair at the thought
that I was wasting so much energy perhaps on worthless trifles from
mere sentimentality, while I had facing me a task that called for
all my powers.  And meanwhile my incapacity for any real work was
clearly obvious from what had happened at Dergatchev's.

"Kraft, shall you go to them again?" I asked him suddenly.

He turned slowly to me as though hardly understanding me.  I sat
down on a chair.

"Forgive them," said Kraft suddenly.

I fancied, of course, that this was a sneer, but looking
attentively at him, I saw such a strange and even wonderful
ingenuousness in his face that I positively wondered at his asking
me so earnestly to "forgive" them.  He brought up a chair and sat
down beside me.

"I know that I am perhaps a medley of all sorts of vanities and
nothing more," I began, "but I'm not apologizing."

"And you've no need to apologize to anyone," he said, quietly and
earnestly.  He talked all the time quietly and very slowly.

"I may be guilty in my own eyes. . . .  I like being guilty in my
own eyes. . . .  Kraft, forgive me for talking nonsense.  Tell me,
surely you don't belong to that circle?  That's what I wanted to
ask."

"They are no sillier than other people and no wiser; they are mad
like every one else. . . ."

"Why, is every one mad?" I asked, turning towards him with
involuntary curiosity.

"All the best people are mad nowadays; it's the carnival of
mediocrity and ineptitude and nothing else. . . .  But it's not
worth talking about."

As he talked he looked away into the air and began sentences and
broke off without finishing them.  I was particularly struck by a
note of despondency in his voice.

"Surely Vassin is not one of them, Vassin has a mind, Vassin has a
moral idea!" I cried.

"There are no moral ideas now.  It suddenly appears that there is
not one left and, what's worse, that there never have been any."

"Never have been any in the past?"

"Let us leave that!" he brought out with unmistakable weariness.

I was touched by his sorrowful earnestness.  Ashamed of my own
egoism I began to drop into his tone.

"The present day," he began after a pause lasting two minutes,
looking away into space, "the present day is the golden age of
mediocrity and callousness, of a passion for ignorance, idleness,
inefficiency, a craving for everything ready-made.  No one thinks;
it's rare for anyone to work out an idea for himself."

He broke off again and paused for a while; I listened.  "Nowadays
they are stripping Russia of her forests, and exhausting her
natural wealth, turning the country into a waste and making it only
fit for the Kalmucks.  If a man looks forward and plants a tree
every one laughs at him, and tells him he won't live to enjoy it. 
On the other hand those with aspirations discuss nothing but what
will be in a thousand years.  The idea that sustained men has
utterly gone.  It's as though they were all at an hotel and were
leaving Russia to-morrow.  They are alive if they could only. . . ."

"Excuse me, Kraft, you said they worried their heads about what
would happen in a thousand years.  But you despair about the future
of Russia . . . isn't that an anxiety of the same sort?"

"It--it's the most essential question in the world!" he said
irritably, and jumped up quickly from his seat.

"Ah, yes!  I forgot," he said suddenly in quite a different voice,
looking at me in perplexity.  "I asked you to come for something
special and meanwhile . . . for heaven's sake excuse me."

He seemed suddenly to wake up from a sort of dream, and was almost
disconcerted; he took a letter out of a portfolio on the table and
gave it to me.

"This is what I have to give you.  It's a document of some
importance," he began, speaking collectedly and with a businesslike
air.  Long afterwards, when I recalled it, I was struck by this
faculty in him (at an hour such as this was--for him!) of turning
such wholehearted attention on another person's affairs and going
into them with such firmness and composure.

"It is a letter of Stolbyeev's, that is of the man whose will gave
rise to Versilov's lawsuit with the Princes Sokolsky.  The case is
just being decided in the court, and will certainly be decided in
Versilov's favour; the law is on his side.  Meanwhile, in this
letter, a private letter written two years ago, the deceased sets
forth his real dispositions, or more accurately his desires, and
expresses them rather in favour of the Sokolskys than of Versilov. 
At any rate the points on which the Sokolskys rest their case in
contesting the will are materially strengthened by this letter. 
Versilov's opponents would give a great deal for this letter,
though it really has no positive legal value.  Alexey Nikanoritch
(Andronikov), who managed Versilov's affairs, kept this letter and
not long before his death gave it to me, telling me to 'take care
of it'; perhaps he had a presentiment that he was dying and was
anxious about his papers.  I was unwilling to judge of Alexey
Nikanoritch's intentions in the case, and I must confess that at
his death I found myself in disagreeable uncertainty what to do
with this document, especially as the case was so soon to be
concluded.  But Marie Ivanovna, in whom Alexey Nikanoritch seems to
have put great confidence in his lifetime, helped me out of the
difficulty.  She wrote to me three weeks ago telling me that I was
to give the letter to you, as this would, she BELIEVED (her own
expression) be in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, and I
am very glad that I can at last give it to you."

"Tell me," I said, dumbfoundered at this new and unexpected
information, "what am I to do with this letter now?  How am I to
act?"

"That's for you to decide."

"Impossible; my hands are tied, you must admit that!  Versilov is
so reckoning on this fortune . . . and, you know, he'll be utterly
lost without it; and it suddenly appears that a document like this
exists!"

"It only exists here in this room."

"Is that really so?"  I looked at him attentively.

"If you can't decide how to act in this case, what can I advise
you?"

"But I can't give it to the Sokolskys either.  I should ruin all
Versilov's hopes, and be a traitor to him besides. . . .  On the
other hand if I give it to Versilov I plunge the innocent into
poverty, and I should put Versilov in a hopeless dilemma too; he
would either have to give up the fortune or become a thief."

"You exaggerate the importance of the matter."

"Tell me one thing: is this letter decisive, conclusive?"

"No, it isn't.  I'm not much of a lawyer.  A lawyer on the other
side would, no doubt, know how to make use of such a document and
to turn it to account; but Alexey Nikanoritch considered positively
that if this letter were put forward it would have no great legal
value, so that Versilov's case might be won all the same.  This
letter is more a matter of conscience, so to say. . . ."

"But that's what matters most of all," I interrupted, "just because
it would put Versilov in a hopeless dilemma."

"He may on the contrary destroy the document, and so escape all
danger."

"Have you any grounds for supposing such a thing of him, Kraft? 
That's what I want to know; that's why I'm here."

"I believe every one would do the same in his place."

"Would you behave so, yourself?"

"I'm not going to receive a fortune, so I can't tell about myself."

"Very well," I said, putting the letter in my pocket.  "The
matter's settled for the present.  Listen, Kraft.  Marie Ivanovna,
who has, I assure you, told me a great deal, said to me that you
and only you could tell me the truth of what happened at Ems a year
and a half ago between Versilov and Mme. Ahmakov.  I've been
looking forward to seeing you as a sun that would throw light on
everything.  You don't know my position, Kraft.  I beseech you to
tell me the whole truth.  What I want to know is what kind of man
He is, and now--now I need to know it more than ever."

"I wonder Marie Ivanovna did not tell you all about it herself; she
might have heard it all from Andronikov, and of course she has
heard it and very likely knows more than I do."

"Andronikov was not clear about it himself, so Marie Ivanovna told
me.  It seems a maze to which no one has the clue.  The devil
himself would be lost in it.  I know that you were at Ems yourself
at the time."

"I never knew the whole of it, but what I do know I will willingly
tell you if you like, though I doubt whether I shall satisfy you."


2


I won't reproduce his story word for word, but will only give a
brief summary of it.

A year and a half before, Versilov (through the old prince) became
a constant visitor at the Ahmakovs' (they were all abroad then, at
Ems) and made a great impression on the general himself, a man who
had during three years of marriage squandered all his wife's large
dowry over cards, and as a result of his irregular life had already
had a paralytic stroke, though he was not an old man.  He had
recovered from it before going abroad, and was staying at Ems for
the sake of his daughter by his first wife.  She was a girl of
seventeen, in delicate health--consumptive--and said to be
extremely beautiful, but at the same time very fantastical.  She
had no dowry; but they rested their hopes, as usual, on the old
prince.  Mme. Ahmakov was said to be a good stepmother, but the
girl, for some reason, became particularly attached to Versilov. 
He was preaching at that time "something impassioned," as Kraft
expressed it, some sort of new life; "was in a state of religious
fervour of the most exalted kind," in the strange and perhaps
ironical phrase of Andronikov, which was repeated to me.  But it
was noticeable that they all soon began to dislike him.  The
general was positively afraid of him.  Kraft did not altogether
deny the rumour that Versilov succeeded in instilling into the
invalid husband's mind the suspicion that his wife, Katerina
Nikolaevna, was not indifferent to the young Prince Sokolsky (who
had left Ems and was at that time in Paris).  He did this not
directly, but "after his usual fashion"--by hints, inferences, and
all sorts of roundabout ways, "at which he is a great master," said
Kraft.  I may say that Kraft considered him, and preferred to
consider him, altogether rather as an impostor and an inveterate
intriguer than as a man genuinely possessed by some exalted, or at
least original, idea.  I knew, apart from Kraft, that Versilov, who
had at first had an extraordinary influence on Katerina Nikolaevna,
had by degrees come to an open rupture with her.  What lay behind
all this I could not find out from Kraft, but every one confirmed
the story of the mutual hatred that had sprung up between them
after their friendship.  Then came a strange circumstance: Katerina
Nikolaevna's invalid stepdaughter apparently fell in love with
Versilov, or was struck by something in him, or was inflamed by his
eloquence or I don't know what; but it is known that at one time
Versilov spent almost every day at her side.  It ended by the young
lady's suddenly announcing to her father that she wanted to marry
Versilov.  That this actually had happened was confirmed by every
one--by Kraft, by Andronikov, and by Marie Ivanovna, and even
Tatyana Pavlovna once spoke about it before me.  They asserted also
that Versilov not only desired it himself but positively insisted
on a marriage with this girl, and that these two creatures of such
different species, one old and the other young, were in complete
agreement about it.  But the father was alarmed at the idea.  As he
became more estranged from Katerina Nikolaevna, whom he had been
very fond of, he now began almost to idolize his daughter,
especially after his stroke.  But the bitterest opposition to the
idea of such a marriage came from Katerina Nikolaevna.  There
followed a great number of secret and extremely unpleasant family
wrangles, disputes, mortifying and in fact revolting scenes.  At
last the father began to give way before the persistence of the
love-sick girl who was, as Kraft expressed it, "fanaticized" by
Versilov.  But Katerina Nikolaevna still resisted it with
implacable hatred.  And it is at this stage that the muddle begins
which no one can understand.  But this was Kraft's conjecture based
on the facts--only a conjecture, however.

He thought Versilov had succeeded, IN HIS CHARACTERISTIC WAY, in
subtly suggesting to the young person that the reason Katerina
Nikolaevna would not agree was that she was in love with him
herself, and had been for a long time past worrying him with her
jealousy, pursuing him and intriguing; that she had declared her
feeling to him and was now ready to horsewhip him for loving some
one else: something of that sort, anyway.  Worst of all, that he
had "hinted" this to the girl's father, the husband of the
"unfaithful" wife, explaining that the prince had only been a
passing amusement.  The house, of course, began to be a perfect
hell.  In some versions of the story Katerina Nikolaevna was
devoted to her stepdaughter and now was in despair at being
calumniated to her, to say nothing of her relations with her
invalid husband.  And, what is more, there existed another version,
which, to my grief, I found Kraft fully believed, and therefore I
believed myself (of all this I had heard already). It was
maintained (Andronikov, it was said, had heard it from Katerina
Nikolaevna herself) that, on the contrary, Versilov had in the
past, before his feeling for the girl, made love to Katerina
Nikolaevna; that though she had been his friend and had been for a
time carried away by his religious exaltation, yet she had
constantly opposed and mistrusted him, and that she had met
Versilov's declaration with deep resentment and had ridiculed him
vindictively; that she had formally dismissed him for having openly
suggested that she should become his wife as her husband was
expected to have a second attack very shortly.  On this theory
Katerina Nikolaevna must have felt a peculiar hatred for Versilov
when she saw him afterwards so openly trying to win her
stepdaughter's hand.  Marie Ivanovna, who told me all this in
Moscow, believed in both versions--both together, that is; she
maintained that there was nothing inconsistent in all this, that it
was something in the style of la haine dans l'amour, of the wounded
pride of love on both sides, etc. etc.--something, in fact, like a
very subtle, intricate romance, quite out of keeping with any
serious and common-sense man and, moreover, with an element of
nastiness in it.  But Marie Ivanovna, in spite of her estimable
character, had been from childhood upwards saturated with
sentiment, from the novels which she read day and night.  The
sequel exhibited Versilov's evident baseness, his lying and
intriguing, something dark and loathsome in him, the more so as the
affair had a tragic ending.  The poor infatuated girl poisoned
herself, they say, by means of phosphorus matches, though even now
I don't know whether to believe that last detail.  They did their
utmost to hush it up, anyway.  The young lady was ill for a
fortnight and then died.  So the matches remained an open question,
but Kraft firmly believed in them.  Shortly afterwards the young
lady's father died too--it was said from his grief, which brought
on a second stroke, though this did not occur till three months
later.  But after the young lady's funeral the young Prince
Sokolsky, who had returned to Ems from Paris, gave Versilov a slap
in the face in a public garden, and the latter had not replied with
a challenge but had, on the contrary, showed himself next day on
the promenade as though nothing had happened.  Then every one
turned against him, in Petersburg as well.  Though Versilov kept up
with some acquaintances, they were quite in a different circle. 
All his aristocratic friends blamed him, though, as a fact,
scarcely anyone knew the details; they only knew something of the
young lady's romantic death and the slap in the face.  Only two or
three persons knew the story fully, so far as that was possible. 
The one who had known most of all was the deceased, Andronikov, who
had for many years had business relations with the Ahmakovs, and
had had to do with Katerina Nikolaevna particularly in one case. 
But he kept all these secrets even from his own family and had only
told part of the story to Kraft and Marie Ivanovna, and that from
necessity.

"The chief point is that there is a document in existence,"
concluded Kraft, "which Mme. Ahmakov is very much afraid of."

And this was what he told me about that.  When the old prince,
Katerina Nikolaevna's father, was abroad, beginning to recover from
his attack, she was so indiscreet as to write to Andronikov in dead
secret (Katerina Nikolaevna put implicit faith in him) an extremely
compromising letter.  During his convalescence the old prince
actually did, it was said, display a propensity to waste his money--
almost to fling it away, in fact; he began buying, when he was
abroad, quite useless but expensive objects, pictures, vases,
making donations and subscriptions of large sums to various
institutions out there, and goodness knows what.  He almost bought,
on the sly, for an immense sum, a ruined and encumbered estate from
a fashionable Russian spendthrift; and, finally, began even
dreaming of matrimony.  And in view of all this, Katerina
Nikolaevna, who had never left her father's side during his
illness, wrote to Andronikov, as a "lawyer" and "an old friend,"
inquiring whether "it would be legally possible to put the old
prince under guardianship or to declare him incompetent to manage
his own affairs, and, if so, how it could best be done without
scandal, that no one might blame her and that her father's feelings
might be spared, etc. etc." It was said that Andronikov advised her
against this and dissuaded her; and later on, when the old prince
had completely recovered, it was impossible to return to the idea:
but the letter remained in Andronikov's hands.  And now he had
died, and Katerina Nikolaevna had at once remembered the letter: if
it turned up among the deceased's papers and fell into the old
prince's hands, he would, no doubt, have cast her off for ever, cut
her out of his will and not have given her another farthing during
his lifetime.  The thought that his own daughter did not believe in
his sanity, and even wanted to have him certified as a lunatic
would change the lamb into a wild beast.  Her husband's gambling
habits had left her at his death without a farthing, and she had
only her father to look to.  She fully hoped to receive from him a
second dowry as ample as the first.

Kraft did not quite know what had become of the letter, but
observed that Andronikov never tore up papers of consequence, and
he was, besides, a man of "broad principles" as well as "broad
intelligence." (I was positively surprised at the independence of
Kraft's criticism of Andronikov, whom he had loved and respected so
much.)  But Kraft felt convinced that Versilov had obtained
possession of the compromising document through his close relations
with Andronikov's widow and daughters; it was known, indeed, that
they had at once, of necessity, handed over all the deceased's
papers to Versilov.  He knew, too, that Katerina Nikolaevna was
already aware that the letter was in Versilov's possession and that
she was frightened on account of it, imagining that Versilov would
take the letter straight to her old father; that on her return from
abroad she had searched for the document in Petersburg, had been at
the Andronikovs', and was still hunting for it now, so that she
must still have some hope that the letter was not in Versilov's
hands; and, finally, that she had gone to Moscow simply with the
same object, and had entreated Marie Ivanovna to look for it among
the papers that had remained with her.  She had only recently,
since her return to Petersburg, heard of the existence of Marie
Ivanovna, and of the footing on which the latter had stood with
Andronikov.

"You don't think she found it at Marie Ivanovna's?" I asked.  "I
have my own ideas."

"If Marie Ivanovna has not told even you about it, probably she
hasn't got it."

"Then you suppose the document is in Versilov's hands?"

"Most likely it is.  I don't know, though.  Anything is possible,"
he answered with evident weariness.

I gave up questioning him, and indeed there was no object in doing
so.  All that mattered most had been made clear to me, in spite of
all this sordid tangle; all that I feared most was confirmed.

"It's all like a delirious nightmare," I said, deeply dejected, as
I took up my hat.

"Is the man so dear to you?" asked Kraft.  I read his deep sympathy
on his face at that minute.

"I felt I shouldn't learn the whole story from you," said I.  "Mme.
Ahmakov is the only hope left me.  I was resting my hopes on her. 
Perhaps I shall go to her and perhaps not."

Kraft looked at me with some surprise.

"Good-bye, Kraft," I said.  "Why force oneself on people who don't
want to see one?  Isn't it better to break with everything, eh?"

"And what then?" he asked almost sullenly, keeping his eyes on the
ground.

"Retreat within oneself! Break with everything and withdraw within
oneself!"

"To America?"

"To America! Within oneself, simply within oneself!  That's my
whole idea, Kraft!" I said enthusiastically.

He looked at me with some curiosity.

"Have you such a place 'within yourself'?"

"Yes.  Good-bye, Kraft; thank you.  I am sorry to have troubled
you.  If I were in your place and had that sort of Russia in my
head I'd send them all to hell; I'd say:  'Get out with you; keep
your fretting and intriguing to yourselves--it's nothing to do with
me.'"

"Stay a little longer," he said suddenly when he was already with
me at the front door.

I was a little surprised.  I went back and sat down again.  Kraft
sat opposite.  We looked at each other with a sort of smile.  I can
see it all now.  I remember that I felt a sort of wonder at him.

"What I like in you is that you're so--courteous," I said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"I feel that, because I don't often succeed in being courteous
myself, though I should like to.  And yet perhaps it's better for
people to be rude to one; at least they save one from the
misfortune of liking them."

"What hour of the day do you like best?" he asked, evidently not
listening to me.

"What hour?  I don't know.  I don't like sunset."

"No?" he brought out with a peculiar curiosity.

"Are you going away again?"

"Yes.  I'm going away."

"Soon?"

"Yes."

"Surely you don't want a revolver to get to Vilna?" I asked,
without the faintest hidden meaning in my words--and indeed there
was no meaning at all! I asked the question simply because I
happened to glance at the revolver and I was at a loss for
something to say.

He turned and looked intently at the revolver.

"No, I take it simply from habit."

"If I had a revolver I should keep it hidden somewhere, locked up. 
It really is a temptation, you know.  I may not believe in an
epidemic of suicide, but if it's always catching my eye, there
really are moments, you know, when it might tempt one."

"Don't talk about it," he said, and suddenly got up from his chair.

"I wasn't thinking of myself," I said, standing up too.  "I'm not
going to use it.  If you were to give me three lives it wouldn't be
enough for me."

"Long life to you," broke from him.

He gave me an absent-minded smile and, strange to say, walked
straight into the passage as though to show me out, probably not
noticing what he was doing.

"I wish you every sort of success, Kraft," I said, as I went out on
to the stairs.

"That's as it may be," he answered firmly.

"Till we meet again."

"That's as it may be, too."

I remember his last glance at me.


3


And this was the man for whom my heart had been beating all those
years!  And what had I expected from Kraft, what new information?

As I came away from Kraft's I felt very hungry.  It was evening and
I had had no dinner.  I went to a little restaurant in Great
Prospect that I might not have to spend more than twenty, or at
most twenty-five, kopecks--I would not have allowed myself to spend
more at that time.  I took some soup for myself, and as I ate it I
sat looking out of window.  There were a great many people in the
room, and there was a smell of burnt meat, restaurant napkins, and
tobacco.  It was nasty.  Over my head a dumb nightingale, gloomy
and pensive, was pecking at the bottom of its cage.  There was a
noise in the adjoining billiard-room, but I sat there and sank into
deep thought.  The setting sun (why was Kraft surprised at my not
liking the sunset?) aroused in me a new and unexpected sensation
quite out of keeping with my surroundings.  I was haunted by the
soft look in my mother's eyes, her dear eyes which had been
watching me so timidly the whole month.  Of late I had been very
rude at home, to her especially.  I had a desire to be rude to
Versilov, but not daring, in my contemptible way tormented her
instead.  I had thoroughly frightened her, in fact; often she
looked at me with such imploring eyes when Andrey Petrovitch came
in, afraid of some outburst on my part.  It was a very strange
thing that, sitting here in the restaurant, I realized for the
first time that, while Versilov spoke to me familiarly, she always
addressed me deferentially.  I had wondered at it before and had
not been impressed in her favour by it, but now I realized it
particularly, and strange ideas passed one after another through my
brain.  I sat there a long time, till it got quite dark.  I thought
about my sister too.

It was a fateful moment for me.  At all costs I must decide.  Could
I be incapable of decision?  What is the difficulty of breaking
with them if they don't want me either?  My mother and sister?  But
I should not leave them, anyway, however things turned out.

It is true that the entrance of that man into my life, though only
for an instant in my early childhood, was the turning-point from
which my conscious development began.  Had he not met me then, my
mind, my way of thinking, my fate, would certainly have been
different, even in spite of the character ordained me by destiny,
which I could not anyway have escaped.

But it turned out that this man was only a dream, the dream of my
childhood.  I had invented him myself, and in reality he was a
different man who fell far below my imagination.  I had come to
find a genuine man, not a man like this.  And why had I fallen in
love with him once and for ever in that brief moment when I saw him
as a child?  That "for ever" must vanish.  Some time, if I have
space for it, I will describe that meeting, the most futile
incident leading up to nothing.  But I had built it up into a
pyramid.  I had begun building that pyramid as I lay in my little
bed, when, falling asleep, I could dream and weep--what for I
cannot tell.  Because I had been abandoned?  Because I was
tormented?  But I was only tormented a little, and only for two
years at Touchard's, the school into which he thrust me before
leaving me for ever.  Afterwards no one tormented me; quite the
contrary; I looked scornfully at my schoolfellows.  And I can't
endure the self-pity of the forlorn.  There is no rôle more
revolting than that of the orphan, the illegitimate, the outcast
and all such wretched creatures, for whom I never feel any pity
when they solemnly parade before the public and begin piteously but
insistently whining of how they have been treated.  I could beat
them all!  Will none of the filthy, conventional herd understand
that it would be ten times as creditable to hold their tongues, not
to whine and not to DEIGN to complain!  And if he does deign he
deserves his fate, the bastard.  That's my view!

But what is absurd is not that I used to dream of him in my little
bed but that, almost forgetting my chief object, I have come here
for the sake of him, of that "imagined" man.  I have come to help
him to stamp out a calumny, to crush his enemies.  The document of
which Kraft had spoken, that woman's letter to Andronikov about
which she was so afraid, which might ruin her and reduce her to
poverty, which she supposed to be in Versilov's hands, was not in
his possession but in mine, sewn up in my coat pocket!  I had sewn
it there myself, and no one in the whole world knew of it.  The
fact that the romantic Marie Ivanovna, in whose keeping the letter
was left "to be preserved," thought fit to give it to me and to no
one else was only her own idea and a matter for her to decide,
which I am not called upon to explain, though I may discuss it
later if it seems appropriate.  But, armed with this unexpected
weapon, I could not help yielding to the temptation to come to
Petersburg.  Of course, I proposed to assist this man secretly
without display or excitement, without expecting his praise or his
embraces.  And never, never would I condescend to reproach him for
anything.  And indeed, was it his fault that I had fallen in love
with him and had created a fantastic ideal of him?  Though, indeed,
I did not perhaps love him at all!  His original mind, his
interesting character, his intrigues and adventures, and what my
mother had been to him--all that, it seemed could not keep me.  It
was enough that my fantastic doll was shattered, and that I could
not, perhaps, love him any more.  And so what was keeping me? why
was I sticking there?--that was the question.  The upshot of it all
was that only I was a fool, no one else.

But, expecting honesty from others, I will be honest myself.  I
must confess that the letter sewn up in my pocket did not only
arouse in me the passionate desire to rush to Versilov's aid.  Now
it is quite clear to me, and even then I thought of it with a
blush.  I had visions of a woman--a proud, aristocratic creature--
whom I should meet face to face.  She would laugh at me, despise
me, as though I were a mouse; she would not even suspect that her
future was in my power.  This idea intoxicated me even in Moscow,
and still more in the train on the way; I have confessed this
already.  Yes, I hated that woman, but already I loved her as my
victim; and all this was true, all this was real.  But this was
childishness which I should not have expected even from anyone like
me.  I am describing my feelings then, that is, what passed through
my mind as I sat in the restaurant under the nightingale and made
up my mind to break with them for ever.  The memory of my recent
meeting with that woman sent a rush of colour to my face.  An
ignominious meeting!  An ignominious and stupid impression, and--
what mattered most--it showed my incapacity for action.  It proved--
I thought then--that I was not strong enough to withstand the
stupidest lure, though I told Kraft myself just now that I had my
place "within myself," and work of my own, and that if I had three
lives they wouldn't be enough for me.  I said that proudly.  My
having abandoned my idea and mixed myself up with Versilov's
affairs was to some extent excusable, but that I should run from
side to side like a frightened hare and be drawn into every trifle--
that, of course, was simply my own folly.  What induced me to go
to Dergatchev's and to burst out with my imbecilities, though I
knew long ago that I am incapable of saying anything cleverly or
sensibly, that it is always better for me to be silent?  And some
Vassin or other reassures me with the reflection that I've fifty
years of life ahead of me and so I've no need to worry.  It was a
good reply, I admit, and did credit to his unmistakable
intelligence; it was good because it was the simplest, and what is
simplest is never understood till the last, when everything that is
cleverer or stupider has been tried already.  But I knew that
answer before Vassin; I'd had an inkling of that thought more than
three years ago; what's more, my "idea" was to some extent included
in it.  Such were my reflections in the restaurant.

I felt disgusted as I made my way towards Semyonovsky Polk at eight
o'clock in the evening, worn out with walking and with thinking. 
It was quite dark by then and the weather had changed; it was dry,
but a horrid Petersburg wind had sprung up, blowing keenly and
malignantly on my back and whirling up the dust and sand.  How many
sullen faces of poor people hurrying home to their corners from
work and trade!  Every one had his own sullen anxiety in his face,
and there was perhaps not one common uniting thought in the crowd! 
Kraft was right; every one was different.  I met a little boy, so
little that it was strange he could be out alone in the street at
that hour; he seemed to have lost his way.  A peasant-woman stopped
for a minute to listen to him, but, not understanding what he said,
waved her hand and went on, leaving him alone in the darkness.  I
was going towards him, but he suddenly took fright and ran away.

As I approached the house I made up my mind that I should never go
and see Vassin.  I had an intense longing as I went up the stairs
to find them at home alone, without Versilov, that I might have
time before he came in to say something nice to my mother or to my
dear sister, to whom I had scarcely said anything particular all
that month.  It so happened that he was not at home.


4


By the way, as I am bringing on to the scene this "new character"
(I am speaking of Versilov), I will introduce briefly a formal
account of him, though it is of no significance.  I do this to make
things more comprehensible for the reader, and because I can't
foresee where this account could fit in in the later part of my
story.

He studied at the university but went into a cavalry regiment of
the guards.  He married Mlle. Fanariotov and retired from the army. 
He went abroad, and on his return lived a life of worldly gaiety in
Moscow.  On his wife's death he spent some time in the country;
then came the episode with my mother.  Then he lived for a long
time somewhere in the south.  During the war with Europe he served
in the army but did not reach the Crimea and was never in action. 
At the conclusion of the war he left the service and went abroad. 
He took my mother with him, though he left her at Königsberg.  The
poor woman used sometimes, shaking her head, to tell with a sort of
horror how she had spent six months there with her little girl, not
knowing the language, absolutely friendless, and in the end
penniless, as though she were lost in a forest.  Then Tatyana
Pavlovna came to fetch her and took her back to some place in the
Novgorod Province.  Then, on the emancipation of the serfs,
Versilov became one of the first "mediators," and is said to have
performed his duties admirably; but he soon gave this up, and in
Petersburg was occupied with the conduct of various private
lawsuits.  Andronikov always had a high opinion of his capacity; he
had a great respect for him, and only said he did not understand
his character.  Then Versilov gave that up too, and went abroad
again--this time for a long period, several years.  Then came his
close intimacy with old Prince Sokolsky.  During this period his
financial position underwent two or three radical changes.  At one
time he fell into complete poverty, then grew wealthy and rose
again.

Having brought my story to this point, I am determined to describe
my "idea" too.  For the first time since its conception I will
translate it into words.  I am determined to reveal it, so to
speak, to the reader, partly for the sake of greater clearness in
what I have to explain further.  And it is not only confusing for
the reader; even I, the author, am beginning to get muddled by the
difficulty of explaining each step without explaining what led up
to it and induced me to take it.  By keeping up this "attitude of
silence" I have clumsily descended to one of those "literary
graces" which I have ridiculed above.  Before entering upon my
Petersburg romance with all my ignominious adventures in it, I find
this preface is necessary.  But I was not tempted to silence for
the sake of literary "grace" but was forced to it by the nature of
the case, that is, the difficulty of the case; even now, when it is
all over, I find it very difficult to put this idea into words. 
Besides, I must describe it in its aspect at that time, that is,
the form it took and the way I looked at it, not now, but then, and
that is a fresh difficulty.  To describe some things is almost
impossible.  The ideas that are the simplest and the clearest are
the most difficult to understand.  If before the discovery of
America Columbus had begun telling his idea to other people, I am
convinced that for a very long time people would not have
understood him.  And indeed they did not understand him.  I don't
mean to compare myself with Columbus, and if anyone imagines that I
do he ought to be ashamed of himself, that's all.



CHAPTER V


1


My "idea" is--to become a Rothschild.  I invite the reader to keep
calm and not to excite himself.

I repeat it.  My "idea" is to become a Rothschild, to become as
rich as Rothschild, not simply rich, but as rich as Rothschild. 
What objects I have in view, what for, and why--all that shall come
later.  First I will simply show that the attainment of my object
is a mathematical certainty.

It is a very simple matter; the whole secret lies in two words:
OBSTINACY and PERSEVERANCE.

"We have heard that; it's nothing new," people will tell me.  Every
"vater," in Germany repeats this to his children, and meanwhile
your Rothschild (James Rothschild the Parisian, is the one I mean)
is unique while there are millions of such "vaters."

I should answer:

"You assert that you've heard it, but you've heard nothing.  It's
true that you're right about one thing.  When I said that this was
'very simple,' I forgot to add that it is most difficult.  All the
religions and the moralities of the world amount to one thing:
'Love virtue and avoid vice.'  One would think nothing could be
simpler.  But just try doing something virtuous and giving up any
one of your vices; just try it.  It's the same with this.

"That's why your innumerable German 'vaters' may, for ages past
reckoning, have repeated those two wonderful words which contain
the whole secret, and, meanwhile, Rothschild remains unique.  It
shows it's the same but not the same, and these 'vaters' don't
repeat the same idea.

"No doubt they too have heard of obstinacy and perseverance, but to
attain my object what I need is not these German 'vaters' '
obstinacy or these 'vaters' ' perseverance."

"The mere fact that he is a 'vater'--I don't mean only the
Germans--that he has a family, that he is living like other people,
has expenses like other people, has obligations like other people,
means that he can't become a Rothschild, but must remain an average
man.  I understand quite clearly that in becoming a Rothschild, or
merely desiring to become one, not in the German 'vaters'' way but
seriously, I must at the same time cut myself off from society."

Some years ago I read in the newspaper that on one of the steamers
on the Volga there died a beggar who went about begging in rags and
was known to every one.  On his death they found sewn up in his
shirt three thousand roubles in notes.  The other day I read of
another beggar of the "respectable" sort, who used to go about the
restaurants holding out his hand.  He was arrested and there was
found on him five thousand roubles.  Two conclusions follow
directly from this.  The first, that OBSTINACY in saving even the
smallest coin will produce enormous results in the long run (time
is of no account in this), and secondly that the most unskilful
form of accumulation if only PERSEVERING is mathematically certain
of success.

Meanwhile there are perhaps a good number of respectable, clever,
obstinate people who cannot save either three or five thousand,
however much they struggle, though they would be awfully glad to
have such a sum.  Why is that?  The answer is clear: it is because
not one of them, in spite of all their wishing it, DESIRES it to
such a degree that, for instance, if he is not able to save by
other means, he is ready to become a beggar, and so persistent that
after becoming a beggar, he will not waste the first farthing he is
given on an extra crust of bread for himself or his family.  With
this system of saving, that is in beggary, one must live on bread
and salt and nothing more, to save up such sums; at least, so I
imagine.  That is no doubt what the two beggars I have mentioned
above did do; they must have eaten nothing but bread and have lived
almost in the open air.  There is no doubt that they had no
intention of becoming Rothschilds; they were simply Harpagons or
Ilyushkins in their purest form, nothing more; but, when there is
intelligent accumulation in quite a different form with the object
of becoming a Rothschild, no less strength of will is needed than
in the case of those two beggars.  The German "vater" does not show
such strength of will.  There are many kinds of strength in the
world, especially of strength of will and of desire.  There is the
temperature of boiling water and there is the temperature of molten
iron.

One wants here the same thing as in a monastery, the same heroic
asceticism.  Feeling is wanted, not only idea.  What for?  Why?  Is
it moral and not monstrous to wear sackcloth and eat black bread
all one's life to heap up filthy lucre?  These questions I will
consider later.  Now I am discussing only the possibility of
attaining the object.  When I thought of my "idea" and it was
forged in white heat, I began asking myself--am I capable of
asceticism?  With this object, for the whole of the first month I
took bread and water, not more than two and a half pounds of black
bread a day.  To do this I was obliged to deceive Nikolay
Semyonovitch who was clever, and Marie Ivanovna who was anxious for
my welfare.  Though I wounded her and somewhat surprised Nikolay
Semyonovitch who was a man of great delicacy, I insisted on having
my dinner brought to my room.  There I simply got rid of it.  I
poured the soup out of window on to the nettles or elsewhere, the
meat I either flung out of window to a dog, or wrapping it up in
paper put it in my pocket and threw it away after, and so on.  As
the bread given me for dinner was much less than two and a half
pounds I bought bread on the sly.  I stood this for a month
perhaps, only upsetting my stomach a little, but the next month I
added soup to the bread and drank a glass of tea morning and
evening, and I assure you I passed a year like that in perfect
health and content, as well as in a moral ecstasy and perpetual
secret delight.  Far from regretting the dainties I missed, I was
overjoyed.  At the end of the year, having convinced myself I was
capable of standing any fast, however severe, I began eating as
they did, and went back to dine with them.  Not satisfied with this
experiment I made a second; apart from the sum paid to Nikolay
Semyonovitch for my board I was allowed five roubles a month for
pocket money.  I resolved to spend only half.  This was a very
great trial, but after at most two years I had in my pocket by the
time I went to Petersburg seventy roubles saved entirely in this
way, besides other money.  The result of these two experiments was
of vast importance to me: I had learnt positively that I could so
will a thing as to attain my objects, and that I repeat is the
essence of "my idea"--the rest is all nonsense.


2


Let us, however, look into the nonsense too.

I have described my two experiments.  In Petersburg, as the reader
knows, I made a third.  I went to the auction and at one stroke
made a profit of seven roubles ninety-five kopecks.  This of course
was not a real experiment, it was only by way of sport and
diversion.  I simply wanted to filch a moment from the future, and
to test how I should go and behave.  I had decided even at the very
first, in Moscow, to put off really beginning till I was perfectly
free.  I fully realized that I must, for instance, finish my work
at school.  (The university, as the reader knows already, I
sacrificed.)  There is no disputing that I went to Petersburg with
concealed anger in my heart.  No sooner had I left the grammar
school and become free for the first time, than I suddenly saw that
Versilov's affairs would distract me from beginning my enterprise
for an indefinite period.  But though I was angry I went to
Petersburg feeling perfectly serene about my object.

It is true I knew nothing of practical life; but I had been
thinking about it for three years and could have no doubt about it. 
I had pictured a thousand times over how I should begin.  I should
suddenly find myself, as though dropped from the clouds, in one of
our two capitals (I pitched on Petersburg or Moscow for my
beginning, and by choice Petersburg, to which I gave the preference
through certain considerations), perfectly free, not dependent on
anyone, in good health, and with a hundred roubles hidden in my
pocket, as the capital for my first investment.  Without a hundred
roubles it would be impossible to begin, as, without it, even the
earliest period of success would be too remote.  Apart from my
hundred roubles I should have, as the reader knows already,
courage, obstinacy, perseverance, absolute isolation and secrecy. 
Isolation was the principal thing.  I greatly disliked the idea of
any connection or association with others until the last moment. 
Speaking generally I proposed beginning my enterprise alone, that
was a sine qua non.  People weigh upon me, and with them I should
have been uneasy, and uneasiness would have hindered my success. 
Generally speaking, all my life up to now, in all my dreams of how
I would behave with people, I always imagined myself being very
clever; it was very different in reality--I was always very stupid;
and I confess sincerely, with indignation, I always gave myself
away and was flustered, and so I resolved to cut people off
altogether.  I should gain by it independence, tranquillity of mind
and clearness of motive.

In spite of the terrible prices in Petersburg I determined once for
all that I should never spend more than fifteen kopecks on food,
and I knew I should keep my word.  This question of food I had
thought over minutely for a long time past.  I resolved, for
instance, sometimes to eat nothing but bread and salt for two days
together, and to spend on the third day what I had saved on those
two days.  I fancied that this would be better for my health than a
perpetual uniform fast on a minimum of fifteen kopecks.  Then I
needed a corner, literally a "corner," solely to sleep the night in
and to have a refuge in very bad weather.  I proposed living in the
street, and, if necessary, I was ready to sleep in one of the night
refuges where they give you a piece of bread and a glass of tea as
well as a night's lodging.  Oh, I should be quite capable of hiding
my money so that it should not be stolen in the "corner," or in the
refuge, and should not even be suspected, I'll answer for that!

"Steal from me?  Why, I'm afraid of stealing myself!"  I once heard
a passer-by in the street say gaily.  Of course I only apply to
myself the caution and smartness of it, I don't intend to steal. 
What is more, while I was in Moscow, perhaps from the very first
day of my "idea," I resolved that I would not be a pawnbroker or
usurer either; there are Jews for that job, and such Russians as
have neither intelligence nor character.  Pawnbroking and usury are
for the commonplace.

As for clothes, I resolved to have two suits, one for every day and
one for best.  When once I had got them I felt sure I should wear
them a long time.  I purposely trained myself to wear a suit for
two and a half years, and in fact I discovered a secret: for
clothes always to look new and not to get shabby they should be
brushed as often as possible, five or six times a day.  Brushing
does not hurt the cloth.  I speak from knowledge.  What does hurt
it is dust and dirt.  Dust is the same thing as stones if you look
at it through the microscope, and, however hard a brush is, it is
almost the same as fur.  I trained myself to wear my boots evenly. 
The secret lies in putting down the whole sole at once, and
avoiding treading on the side.  One can train oneself to this in a
fortnight, after that the habit is unconscious.  In this way boots
last on an average a third as long again.  That is the experience
of two years.

Then followed my activity itself.

I started with the hypothesis that I had a hundred roubles.  In
Petersburg there are so many auction sales, petty hucksters' booths
and people who want things, that it would be impossible not to sell
anything one bought for a little more.  Over the album I had made
seven roubles ninety-five kopecks profit on two roubles five
kopecks of capital invested.  This immense profit was made without
any risk: I could see from his eyes that the purchaser would not
back out.  Of course I know quite well that this was only a chance;
but it is just such chances I am on the look-out for, that is why I
have made up my mind to live in the street.  Well, granted that
such a chance is unusual, no matter; my first principle will be to
risk nothing, and the second to make every day more than the
minimum spent on my subsistence, that the process of accumulation
may not be interrupted for a single day.

I shall be told that "all this is a dream, you don't know the
streets, and you'll be taken in at the first step."  But I have
will and character, and the science of the streets is a science
like any other: persistence, attention and capacity can conquer it. 
In the grammar school right up to the seventh form I was one of the
first; I was very good at mathematics.  Why, can one possibly
exaggerate the value of experience and knowledge of the streets to
such a fantastic pitch as to predict my failure for certain?  That
is only what people say who have never made an experiment in
anything, have never begun any sort of life, but have grown stiff
in second-hand stagnation.  "One man breaks his nose, so another
must break his."  No, I won't break mine.  I have character and if
I pay attention I can learn anything.  But is it possible to
imagine that with constant persistence, with incessant vigilance,
and continual calculation and reflection, with perpetual activity
and alertness one could fail to find out how to make twenty kopecks
to spare every day?  Above all I resolved not to struggle for the
maximum profit, but always to keep calm.  As time went on after
heaping up one or two thousand I should, of course, naturally rise
above second-hand dealing and street trading.  I know, of course,
far too little as yet about the stock exchange, about shares,
banking and all that sort of thing.  But to make up for that I
know, as I know I have five fingers on my hand, that I should learn
all the stock exchange and banking business as well as anyone else,
and that the subject would turn out to be perfectly simple, because
one is brought to it by practice.  What need is there of the wisdom
of Solomon so long as one has character; efficiency, skill and
knowledge come of themselves.  If only one does not leave off
"willing."

The great thing is to avoid risks, and that can only be done if one
has character.  Not long ago in Petersburg I had before me a
subscription list of shares in some railway investments; those who
succeeded in getting shares made a lot of money.  For some time the
shares went up and up.  Well, if one day some one who had not
succeeded in getting a share, or was greedy for more, had offered
to buy mine at a premium of so much per cent., I should certainly
have sold it.  People would have laughed at me, of course, and have
said that if I had waited I should have made ten times as much. 
Quite so, but my premium is safer, for it's a bird in the hand
while yours is on the bush.  I shall be told that one can't make
much like that; excuse me, that's your mistake, the mistake of all
our Kokorevs, Polyakovs, and Gubonins.  Let me tell you the truth;
perseverance and persistence in money making and still more in
saving is much more effective than these cent. per cent. profits.

Not long before the French Revolution there was a man called Law in
Paris who invented of himself a scheme what was theoretically
magnificent but which came utterly to grief in practice afterwards. 
All Paris was in excitement.  Law's shares were bought up at once
before allotment.  Money from all parts of Paris poured as from a
sack into the house where the shares were subscribed.  But the
house was not enough at last, the public thronged the street,
people of all callings, all classes, all ages: bourgeois, noblemen,
their children, countesses, marquises, prostitutes, were all
struggling in one infuriated, half-crazy, rabid mob.  Rank, the
prejudices of birth and pride, even honour and good name were all
trampled in the same mire; all, even women, were ready to sacrifice
anyone to gain a few shares.  The list at last was passed down into
the streets, but there was nothing to write on.  Then it was
suggested to a hunchback that he should lend his back for the time
as a table on which people could sign their names for shares.  The
hunchback agreed--one can fancy at what a price.  Some time (a very
short time) after, they were all bankrupt, the whole thing went
smash, the whole idea was exploded and the shares were worth
nothing.  Who got the best of it?  Why, the hunchback, because he
did not take shares but louis-d'or in cash.  Well, I am that
hunchback!  I had strength of will enough not to eat, and to save
seventy-two roubles out of my kopecks; I shall have strength enough
to restrain myself and prefer a safe profit to a large one, even
when every one around me is carried away by a fever of excitement. 
I am trivial only about trifles, not in what is important.  I have
often lacked fortitude for enduring little things ever since the
inception of my idea, but for enduring big things I shall always
have enough.  When in the morning my mother gave me cold coffee
before I set out to work, I was angry and rude to her, and yet I
was the same person who had lived a whole month on bread and water.

In short not to make money, not to learn how to make money, would
be unnatural.  It would be unnatural, too, in spite of incessant
and regular saving, unflagging care and mental sobriety, self-
control, economy, and growing energy--it would be unnatural, I
repeat, to fail to become a millionaire.  How did the beggar make
his money if not by fanatical determination and perseverance?  Am I
inferior to a beggar?  "And after all, supposing I don't arrive at
anything, suppose my calculation is incorrect, suppose I fall and
come to grief; no matter, I shall go on, I shall go on, because I
want to."  That is what I said in Moscow.

I shall be told that there is no "idea" in this, absolutely nothing
new.  But I say, and for the last time, that there are an immense
number of ideas in it, and a vast amount that is new.

Oh, I foresaw how trivial all objections would be, and that I
should be as trivial myself in expounding my "idea": why, what have
I said after all?  I haven't told a hundredth part of it.  I feel
that it is trivial, superficial, crude, and, somehow, too young for
my age.


3


I've still to answer the questions, "What for?" and "Why?"  Whether
it's moral," and all the rest of it.  I've undertaken to answer
them.

I am sad at disappointing the reader straight off, sad and glad
too.  Let him know that in my idea there is absolutely no feeling
of "revenge," nothing "Byronic"--no curses, no lamentations over my
orphaned state, no tears over my illegitimacy, nothing, nothing of
the sort.  In fact, if a romantic lady should chance to come across
my autobiography she would certainly turn up her nose.  The whole
object of my "idea" is--isolation.  But one can arrive at isolation
without straining to become a Rothschild.  What has Rothschild got
to do with it?

Why, this.  That besides isolation I want power.

Let me tell the reader, he will perhaps be horrified at the candour
of my confession, and in the simplicity of his heart will wonder
how the author could help blushing: but my answer is that I'm not
writing for publication, and I may not have a reader for ten years,
and by that time everything will be so thoroughly past, settled and
defined that there will be no need to blush.  And so, if I
sometimes in my autobiography appeal to my reader it is simply a
form of expression.  My reader is an imaginary figure.

No, it was not being illegitimate, with which I was so taunted at
Touchard's, not my sorrowful childhood, it was not revenge, nor the
desire to protest, that was at the bottom of my idea; my character
alone was responsible for everything.  At twelve years old, I
believe, that is almost at the dawn of real consciousness, I began
to dislike my fellow-creatures.  It was not that I disliked them
exactly, but that their presence weighed upon me.  I was sometimes
in my moments of purest sincerity quite sad that I never could
express everything even to my nearest and dearest, that is, I could
but will not; for some reason I restrain myself, so that I'm
mistrustful, sullen and reserved.  Again, I have noticed one
characteristic in myself almost from childhood, that I am too ready
to find fault, and given to blaming others.  But this impulse was
often followed at once by another which was very irksome to me: I
would ask myself whether it were not my fault rather than theirs. 
And how often I blamed myself for nothing!  To avoid such doubts I
naturally sought solitude.  Besides, I found nothing in the company
of others, however much I tried, and I did try.  All the boys of my
own age anyway, all my schoolfellows, all, every one of them,
turned out to be inferior to me in their ideas.  I don't recall one
single exception.

Yes, I am a gloomy person; I'm always shutting myself up.  I often
love to walk out of a room full of people.  I may perhaps do people
a kindness, but often I cannot see the slightest reason for doing
them a kindness.  People are not such splendid creatures that they
are worth taking much trouble about.  Why can't they approach me
openly and directly, why must I always be forced to make the first
overtures?

That is the question I asked myself.  I am a grateful creature, and
have shown it by a hundred imbecilities.  If some one were frank
with me, I should instantly respond with frankness and begin to
love them at once.  And so I have done, but they have all deceived
me promptly, and have withdrawn from me with a sneer.  The most
candid of them all was Lambert, who beat me so much as a child, but
he was only an open brute and scoundrel.  And even his openness was
only stupidity.  Such was my state of mind when I came to
Petersburg.

When I came out from Dergatchev's (and goodness only knows what
made me go to him) I had gone up to Vassin, and in a rush of
enthusiasm I had begun singing his praises.  And that very evening
I felt that I liked him much less.  Why?  Just because by my praise
of him I had demeaned myself before him.  Yet one might have
thought it would have been the other way: a man just and generous
enough to give another his due, even to his own detriment, ought to
stand higher in personal dignity than anyone.  And though I quite
understood this, I did like Vassin less, much less in fact.  I
purposely choose an example with which the reader is familiar.  I
even thought of Kraft with a bitter, sickly feeling, because he had
led me into the passage, and this feeling lasted till the day when
Kraft's state of mind at the time was revealed, and it was
impossible to be angry with him.  From the time when I was in the
lowest class in the grammar-school, as soon as any of my comrades
excelled me in school work, or witty answers or physical strength,
I immediately gave up talking or having anything to do with them. 
Not that I disliked them or wished them not to succeed; I simply
turned away from them because such was my character.

Yes, I thirsted for power, I've thirsted for it all my life, power
and solitude.  I dreamed of it at an age when every one would have
laughed at me to my face if they could have guessed what was in my
head.  That was why I so liked secrecy.  And indeed all my energy
went into dreams, so much so that I had no time to talk.  This led
to my being unsociable, and my absentmindedness led people to more
unpleasant conclusions about me, but my rosy cheeks belied their
suspicions.

I was particularly happy when, covering myself up in bed at night,
I began in complete solitude, with no stir or sound of other people
round me, to re-create life on a different plan.  I was most
desperately dreamy up to the time of the "idea," when all my dreams
became rational instead of foolish, and passed from the fantastic
realms of romance to the reasonable world of reality.

Everything was concentrated into one object.  Not that they were so
very stupid before, although there were masses and masses of them. 
But I had favourites . . . there is no need to bring them in here,
however.

Power!  I am convinced that very many people would think it very
funny if they knew that such a "pitiful" creature was struggling
for power.  But I shall surprise them even more: perhaps from my
very first dreams that is, almost from my earliest childhood, I
could never imagine myself except in the foremost place, always and
in every situation in life.  I will add a strange confession: it is
the same perhaps to this day.  At the same time, let me observe
that I am not apologizing for it.

That is the point of my idea, that is the force of it, that money
is the one means by which the humblest nonentity may rise to the
FOREMOST PLACE.  I may not be a nonentity, but I know from the
looking-glass that my exterior does not do me justice, for my face
is commonplace.  But if I were as rich as Rothschild, who would
find fault with my face?  And wouldn't thousands of women be ready
to fly to me with all their charms if I whistled to them?  I am
sure that they would honestly consider me good-looking.  Suppose I
am clever.  But were I as wise as Solomon some one would be found
wiser still, and I should be done for.  But if I were a Rothschild
what would that wise man be beside me?  Why, they would not let him
say a word beside me!  I may be witty, but with Talleyrand or Piron
I'm thrown into the shade; but if I were Rothschild, where would
Piron be, and where Talleyrand even, perhaps?  Money is, of course,
despotic power, and at the same time it is the greatest leveller,
and that is its chief power.  Money levels all inequality.  I
settled all that in Moscow.

You will see, of course, in this idea nothing but insolence,
violence, the triumph of the nonentity over the talented.  I admit
that it is an impudent idea (and for that reason a sweet one).  But
let it pass: you imagine that I desire power to be able to crush,
to avenge myself.  That is just the point, that that is how the
commonplace would behave.  What is more, I'm convinced that
thousands of the wise and talented who are so exalted, if the
Rothschilds' millions suddenly fell to their lot could not resist
behaving like the most vulgar and commonplace, and would be more
oppressive than any.  My idea is quite different.  I'm not afraid
of money.  It won't crush me and it won't make me crush others.

What I want isn't money, or rather money is not necessary to me,
nor power either.  I only want what is obtained by power, and
cannot be obtained without it; that is, the calm and solitary
consciousness of strength!  That is the fullest definition of
liberty for which the whole world is struggling!  Liberty!  At last
I have written that grand word. . . .  Yes, the solitary
consciousness of strength is splendid and alluring.  I have
strength and I am serene.  With the thunderbolts in his hands Jove
is serene; are his thunders often heard?  The fool fancies that he
is asleep.  But put a literary man or a peasant-woman in Jove's
place, and the thunder would never cease!

If I only have power, I argued, I should have no need to use it.  I
assure you that of my own free will I should take the lowest seat
everywhere.  If I were a Rothschild, I would go about in an old
overcoat with an umbrella.  What should I care if I were jostled in
the crowd, if I had to skip through the mud to avoid being run
over?  The consciousness that I was myself, a Rothschild, would
even amuse me at the moment.  I should know I could have a dinner
better than anyone, that I could have the best cook in the world,
it would be enough for me to know it.  I would eat a piece of bread
and ham and be satisfied with the consciousness of it.  I think so
even now.

I shouldn't run after the aristocracy, but they would run after me. 
I shouldn't pursue women, but they would fly to me like the wind,
offering me all that women can offer.  "The vulgar" run after
money, but the intelligent are attracted by curiosity to the
strange, proud and reserved being, indifferent to everything.  I
would be kind, and would give them money perhaps, but I would take
nothing from them.  Curiosity arouses passion, perhaps I may
inspire passion.  They will take nothing away with them I assure
you, except perhaps presents that will make me twice as interesting
to them.


          . . . to me enough
                The consciousness of this.


It is strange, but true, that I have been fascinated by this
picture since I was seventeen.

I don't want to oppress or torment anyone and I won't, but I know
that if I did want to ruin some man, some enemy of mine, no one
could prevent me, and every one would serve me, and that would be
enough again.  I would not revenge myself on anyone.  I could never
understand how James Rothschild could consent to become a Baron! 
Why, for what reason, when he was already more exalted than anyone
in the world.  "Oh, let that insolent general insult me at the
station where we are both waiting for our horses!  If he knew who I
was he would run himself to harness the horses and would hasten to
assist me into my modest vehicle!  They say that some foreign count
or baron at a Vienna railway station put an Austrian banker's
slippers on for him in public; and the latter was so vulgar as to
allow him to do it.  Oh, may that terrible beauty (yes, terrible,
there are such!), that daughter of that luxurious and aristocratic
lady meeting me by chance on a steamer or somewhere, glance askance
at me and turn up her nose, wondering contemptuously how that
humble, unpresentable man with a book or paper in his hand could
dare to be in a front seat beside her!  If only she knew who was
sitting beside her!  And she will find out, she will, and will come
to sit beside me of her own accord, humble, timid, ingratiating,
seeking my glance, radiant at my smile." . . .  I purposely
introduce these early day-dreams to express what was in my mind. 
But the picture is pale, and perhaps trivial.  Only reality will
justify everything.

I shall be told that such a life would be stupid: why not have a
mansion, keep open house, gather society round you, why not have
influence, why not marry?  But what would Rothschild be then?  He
would become like every one else.  All the charm of the "idea"
would disappear, all its moral force.  When I was quite a child I
learnt Pushkin's monologue of the "Miserly Knight."  Pushkin has
written nothing finer in conception than that!  I have the same
ideas now.

"But yours is too low an ideal," I shall be told with contempt. 
"Money, wealth.  Very different from the common weal, from self-
sacrifice for humanity."

But how can anyone tell how I should use my wealth?  In what way is
it immoral, in what way is it degrading, that these millions should
pass out of dirty, evil, Jewish hands into the hands of a sober and
resolute ascetic with a keen outlook upon life?  All these dreams
of the future, all these conjectures, seem like a romance now, and
perhaps I am wasting time in recording them.  I might have kept
them to myself.  I know, too, that these lines will very likely be
read by no one, but if anyone were to read them, would he believe
that I should be unable to stand the test of the Rothschild
millions?  Not because they would crush me, quite the contrary. 
More than once in my dreams I have anticipated that moment in the
future, when my consciousness will be satiated, and power will not
seem enough for me.  Then, not from ennui, not from aimless
weariness, but because I have a boundless desire for what is great,
I shall give all my millions away, let society distribute all my
wealth, and I--I will mix with nothingness again!  Maybe I will
turn into a beggar like the one who died on the steamer, with the
only difference that they wouldn't find money sewn up in my shirt. 
The mere consciousness that I had had millions in my hands and had
flung them away into the dirt like trash would sustain me in my
solitude.  I am ready to think the same even now.  Yes, my "idea"
is a fortress in which I can always, at every turn, take refuge
from every one, even if I were a beggar dying on a steamer.  It is
my poem!  And let me tell you I must have the WHOLE of my vicious
will, simply to prove TO MYSELF that I can renounce it.

No doubt I shall be told that this is all romance, and that if I
got my millions I should not give them up and become a beggar. 
Perhaps I should not.  I have simply sketched the ideal in my mind.

But I will add seriously that if I did succeed in piling up as much
money as Rothschild, that it really might end in my giving it all
up to the public (though it would be difficult to do so before I
reached that amount).  And I shouldn't give away half because that
would be simply vulgar: I should be only half as rich, that would
be all.  I should give away all, all to the last farthing, for on
becoming a beggar I should become twice as rich as Rothschild!  If
other people don't understand this it's not my fault; I'm not going
to explain it.

"The fanaticism, the romanticism of insignificance and impotence!"
people will pronounce, "the triumph of commonplaceness and
mediocrity!"  Yes, I admit that it is in a way the triumph of
commonplaceness and mediocrity, but surely not of impotence.  I
used to be awfully fond of imagining just such a creature,
commonplace and mediocre, facing the world and saying to it with a
smile, "You are Galileos, and Copernicuses, Charlemagnes and
Napoleons, you are Pushkins and Shakespeares, you are field-
marshals and generals, and I am incompetence and illegitimacy, and
yet I am higher than all of you, because you bow down to it
yourself."  I admit that I have pushed this fancy to such extremes
that I have struck out even my education.  It seemed to me more
picturesque if the man were sordidly ignorant.  This exaggerated
dream had a positive influence at the time on my success in the
seventh form of the grammar-school.  I gave up working simply from
fanaticism, feeling that lack of education would add a charm to my
ideal.  Now I've changed my views on that point; education does not
detract from it.

Gentlemen, can it be that even the smallest independence of mind is
so distasteful to you?  Blessed he who has an ideal of beauty, even
though it be a mistaken one!  But I believe in mine.  It is only
that I've explained it clumsily, crudely.  In ten years, of course,
I should explain it better, and I treasure that in my memory.


4


I've finished with my idea.  If my account of it has been
commonplace and superficial it is I that am to blame and not the
idea.  I have already pointed out that the simplest ideas are
always the most difficult to understand.

Now I will add that they are also the most difficult to explain;
moreover, I have described my "idea" in its earliest phase.  The
converse is the rule with ideas: commonplace and shallow ideas are
extraordinarily quickly understood, and are invariably understood
by the crowd, by the whole street.  What is more, they are regarded
as very great, and as the ideas of genius, but only for the day of
their appearance.  The cheap never wears.  For a thing to be
quickly understood is only a sign of its commonplaceness. 
Bismarck's idea was received as a stroke of genius instantly, and
Bismarck himself was looked on as a genius, but the very rapidity
of its reception was suspicious.  Wait for ten years, and then we
shall see what remains of the idea and of Bismarck himself.  I
introduce this extremely irrelevant observation, of course, not for
the sake of comparison, but also for the sake of remembering it. 
(An explanation for the too unmannerly reader.)

And now I will tell two anecdotes to wind up my account of the
"idea," that it may not hinder my story again.

In July, two months before I came to Petersburg, when my time was
all my own, Marie Ivanovna asked me to go to see an old maiden lady
who was staying in the Troitsky suburb to take her a message of no
interest for my story.  Returning the same day, I noticed in the
railway carriage an unattractive-looking young man, not very poorly
though grubbily dressed, with a pimply face and a muddy dark
complexion.  He distinguished himself by getting out at every
station, big and little, to have a drink.  Towards the end of the
journey he was surrounded by a merry throng of very low companions. 
One merchant, also a little drunk, was particularly delighted at
the young man's power of drinking incessantly without becoming
drunk.  Another person, who was awfully pleased with him, was a
very stupid young fellow who talked a great deal.  He was wearing
European dress and smelt most unsavoury--he was a footman as I
found out afterwards; this fellow got quite friendly with the young
man who was drinking, and, every time the train stopped, roused him
with the invitation:  "It's time for a drop of vodka," and they got
out with their arms round each other.  The young man who drank
scarcely said a word, but yet more and more companions joined him,
he only listened to their chatter, grinning incessantly with a
drivelling snigger, and only from time to time, always unexpectedly,
brought out a sound something like "Ture-lure-loo!" while he put his
finger up to his nose in a very comical way.  This diverted the
merchant, and the footman and all of them, and they burst into very
loud and free and easy laughter.  It is sometimes impossible to
understand why people laugh.  I joined them too, and, I don't know
why, the young man attracted me too, perhaps by his very open
disregard for the generally accepted conventions and proprieties.  I
didn't see, in fact, that he was simply a fool.  Anyway, I got on to
friendly terms with him at once, and, as I got out of the train, I
learnt from him that he would be in the Tverskoy Boulevard between
eight and nine.  It appeared that he had been a student.  I went to
the Boulevard, and this was the diversion he taught me: we walked
together up and down the boulevards, and a little later, as soon as
we noticed a respectable woman walking along the street, if there
were no one else near, we fastened upon her.  Without uttering a
word we walked one on each side of her, and with an air of perfect
composure as though we didn't see her, began to carry on a most
unseemly conversation.  We called things by their names, preserving
unruffled countenances as though it were the natural thing to do; we
entered into such subtleties in our description of all sorts of
filth and obscenity as the nastiest mind of the lewdest debauchee
could hardly have conceived.  (I had, of course, acquired all this
knowledge at the boarding school before I went to the grammar
school, though I knew only words, nothing of the reality.)  The
woman was dreadfully frightened, and made haste to try and get away,
but we quickened our pace too--and went on in the same way.  Our
victim, of course, could do nothing; it was no use to cry out, there
were no spectators; besides, it would be a strange thing to complain
of.  I repeated this diversion for eight days.  I can't think how I
can have liked doing it; though, indeed, I didn't like doing it--I
simply did it.  At first I thought it original, as something outside
everyday conventions and conditions, besides I couldn't endure
women.  I once told the student that in his "Confessions" Jean
Jacques Rousseau describes how, as a youth, he used to behave
indecently in the presence of women.  The student responded with his
"ture-lure-loo!"  I noticed that he was extraordinarily ignorant,
and that his interests were astonishingly limited.  There was no
trace in him of any latent idea such as I had hoped to find in him.
Instead of originality I found nothing in him but a wearisome
monotony.  I disliked him more and more.  The end came quite
unexpectedly.  One night when it was quite dark, we persecuted a
girl who was quickly and timidly walking along the boulevard.  She
was very young, perhaps sixteen or even less, very tidily and
modestly dressed; possibly a working girl hurrying home from work to
an old widowed mother with other children; there is no need to be
sentimental though.  The girl listened for some time, and hurried as
fast as she could with her head bowed and her veil drawn over her
face, frightened and trembling.  But suddenly she stood still, threw
back her veil, showing, as far as I remember, a thin but pretty
face, and cried with flashing eyes:

"Oh, what scoundrels you are!"

She may have been on the verge of tears, but something different
happened.  Lifting her thin little arm, she gave the student a slap
in the face which could not have been more dexterously delivered. 
It did come with a smack!  He would have rushed at her, swearing,
but I held him back, and the girl had time to run away.  We began
quarrelling at once.  I told him all I had been saving up against
him in those days.  I told him he was the paltriest commonplace
fool without the trace of an idea.  He swore at me. . . .  (I had
once explained to him that I was illegitimate), then we spat at
each other, and I've never seen him since.  I felt frightfully
vexed with myself that evening, but not so much the next day, and
by the day after I had quite forgotten it.  And though I sometimes
thought of that girl again, it was only casually, for a moment.  It
was only after I had been a fortnight in Petersburg, I suddenly
recalled the whole scene.  I remembered it, and I was suddenly so
ashamed that tears of shame literally ran down my cheeks.  I was
wretched the whole evening, and all that night, and I am rather
miserable about it now.  I could not understand at first how I
could have sunk to such a depth of degradation, and still less how
I could have forgotten it without feeling shame or remorse.  It is
only now that I understand what was at the root of it; it was all
due to my "idea."  Briefly, I conclude that, having something
fixed, permanent and overpowering in one's mind in which one is
terribly absorbed, one is, as it were, removed by it from the whole
world, and everything that happens, except the one great thing,
slips by one.  Even one's impressions are hardly formed correctly. 
And what matters most--one always has an excuse.  However much I
worried my mother at that time, however disgracefully I neglected
my sister, "Oh, I've my 'idea,' nothing else matters," was what I
said to myself, as it were.  If I were slighted and hurt, I
withdrew in my mortification and at once said to myself, "Ah, I'm
humiliated, but still I have my idea, and they know nothing about
that."  The "idea" comforted me in disgrace and insignificance. 
But all the nasty things I did took refuge, as it were, under the
"idea."  It, so to speak, smoothed over everything, but it also put
a mist before my eyes; and such a misty understanding of things and
events may, of course, be a great hindrance to the "idea" itself,
to say nothing of other things.

Now for another anecdote.

On the 1st of April last year, Marie Ivanovna was keeping her name-
day; some visitors, though only a few, came for the evening. 
Suddenly Agrafena rushed in, out of breath, announcing that a baby
was crying in the passage before the kitchen, and that she didn't
know what to do.  We were all excited at the news.  We went out and
saw a bark basket, and in the basket a three or four weeks old
child, crying.  I picked up the basket and took it into the
kitchen.  Then I immediately found a folded note:  "Gracious
benefactors, show kind charity to the girl christened Arina, and we
will join with her to send our tears to the Heavenly throne for you
for ever, and congratulate you on your name-day,
                                        Persons unknown to you."

Then Nikolay Semyonovitch, for whom I have such a respect, greatly
disappointed me.  He drew a very long face and decided to send the
child at once to the Foundling Home.  I felt very sad.  They lived
very frugally but had no children, and Nikolay Semyonovitch was
always glad of it.  I carefully took little Arina out of the basket
and held her up under the arms.  The basket had that sour, pungent
odour characteristic of a small child which has not been washed for
a long time.  I opposed Nikolay Semyonovitch, and suddenly
announced that I would keep the child at my expense.  In spite of
his gentleness he protested with some severity, and, though he
ended by joking, he adhered to his intention in regard to the
foundling.  I got my way, however.  In the same block of buildings,
but in a different wing, there lived a very poor carpenter, an
elderly man, given to drink, but his wife, a very healthy and still
youngish peasant woman, had only just lost a baby, and, what is
more, the only child she had had in eight years of marriage, also a
girl, and by a strange piece of luck also called Arina.  I call it
good luck, because while we were arguing in the kitchen, the woman,
hearing of what had happened, ran in to look at the child, and when
she learned that it was called Arina, she was greatly touched.  She
still had milk, and unfastening her dress she put the baby to her
breast.  I began persuading her to take the child home with her,
saying I would pay for it every month.  She was afraid her husband
would not allow it, but she took it for the night.  Next morning,
her husband consented to her keeping it for eight roubles a month,
and I immediately paid him for the first month in advance.  He at
once spent the money on drink.  Nikolay Semyonovitch, still with a
strange smile, agreed to guarantee that the money should be paid
regularly every month.  I would have given my sixty roubles into
Nikolay Semyonovitch's keeping as security, but he would not take
it.  He knew, however, that I had the money, and trusted me.  Our
momentary quarrel was smoothed over by this delicacy on his part. 
Marie Ivanovna said nothing, but wondered at my undertaking such a
responsibility.  I particularly appreciated their delicacy in
refraining from the slightest jest at my expense, but, on the
contrary, taking the matter with proper seriousness.  I used to run
over to the carpenter's wife three times a day, and at the end of a
week I slipped an extra three roubles into her hand without her
husband's knowledge.  For another three I bought a little quilt and
swaddling clothes.  But ten days later little Arina fell ill.  I
called in a doctor at once, he wrote a prescription, and we were up
all night, tormenting the mite with horrid medicine.  Next day he
declared that he had been sent for too late, and answered my
entreaties--which I fancy were more like reproaches--by saying with
majestic evasiveness:  "I am not God."  The baby's little tongue and
lips and whole mouth were covered with a minute white rash, and
towards evening she died, gazing at me with her big black eyes, as
though she understood already.  I don't know why I never thought to
take a photograph of the dead baby.  But will it be believed, that
I cried that evening, and, in fact, I howled as I had never let
myself do before, and Marie Ivanovna had to try to comfort me,
again without the least mockery either on her part or on Nikolay
Semyonovitch's.  The carpenter made a little coffin, and Marie
Ivanovna finished it with a frill and a pretty little pillow, while
I bought flowers and strewed them on the baby.  So they carried
away my poor little blossom, whom it will hardly be believed I
can't forget even now.  A little afterwards, however, this sudden
adventure made me reflect seriously.  Little Arina had not cost me
much, of course; the coffin, the burial, the doctor, the flowers,
and the payment to the carpenter's wife came altogether to thirty
roubles.  As I was going to Petersburg I made up this sum from the
forty roubles sent me by Versilov for the journey, and from the
sale of various articles before my departure, so that my capital
remained intact.  But I thought:  "If I am going to be turned aside
like this I shan't get far."  The affair with the student showed
that the "idea" might absorb me till it blurred my impressions and
drew me away from the realities of life.  The incident with little
Arina proved, on the contrary, that no "idea" was strong enough to
absorb me, at least so completely that I should not stop short in
the face of an overwhelming fact and sacrifice to it at once all
that I had done for the "idea" by years of labour.  Both
conclusions were nevertheless true.



CHAPTER VI


1


My hopes were not fully realized.  I did not find them alone though
Versilov was not at home, Tatyana Pavlovna was sitting with my
mother, and she was, after all, not one of the family.  Fully half
of my magnanimous feelings disappeared instantly.  It is wonderful
how hasty and changeable I am; in such cases a straw, a grain of
sand is enough to dissipate my good mood and replace it by a bad
one.  My bad impressions, I regret to say, are not so quickly
dispelled, though I am not resentful. . . . When I went in, I had a
feeling that my mother immediately and hastily broke off what she
was saying to Tatyana Pavlovna; I fancied they were talking very
eagerly.  My sister turned from her work only for a moment to look
at me and did not come out of her little alcove again.  The flat
consisted of three rooms.  The room in which we usually sat, the
middle room or drawing-room, was fairly large and almost
presentable.  In it were soft, red armchairs and a sofa, very much
the worse for wear, however (Versilov could not endure covers on
furniture); there were rugs of a sort and several tables, including
some useless little ones.  On the right was Versilov's room,
cramped and narrow with one window; it was furnished with a
wretched-looking writing-table covered with unused books and
crumpled papers, and an equally wretched-looking easy chair with a
broken spring that stuck up in one corner and often made Versilov
groan and swear.  On an equally threadbare sofa in this room he
used to sleep.  He hated this study of his, and I believe he never
did anything in it; he preferred sitting idle for hours together in
the drawing-room.  On the left of the drawing-room there was
another room of the same sort in which my mother and sister slept. 
The drawing-room was entered from the passage at the end of which
was the kitchen, where the cook, Lukerya, lived, and when she
cooked, she ruthlessly filled the whole flat with the smell of
burnt fat.  There were moments when Versilov cursed his life and
fate aloud on account of the smell from the kitchen, and in that
one matter I sympathized with him fully; I hated that smell, too,
though it did not penetrate to my room: I lived upstairs in an
attic under the roof, to which I climbed by a very steep and shaky
ladder.  The only things worth mentioning in it were a semicircular
window, a low-pitched ceiling, a sofa covered with American leather
on which at night Lukerya spread sheets and put a pillow for me. 
The rest of the furniture consisted of two articles, a perfectly
plain deal table and a wooden rush-bottomed chair.  We still
preserved, however, some relics of former comfort.  In the drawing-
room, for instance, we had a fairly decent china lamp, and on the
wall hung a large and splendid engraving of the Sistine Madonna;
facing it on the other wall was an immense and expensive photograph
of the cast-bronze gates of the cathedral of Florence.  In the
corner of the same room was a shrine of old-fashioned family ikons,
one of which had a gilt-silver setting--the one they had meant to
pawn, while another (the image of Our Lady) had a velvet setting
embroidered in pearls.  Under the ikons hung a little lamp which
was lighted on every holiday. Versilov evidently had no feeling for
the ikons in their inner meaning and religious significance, but he
restrained himself.  He merely screwed up his eyes, sometimes
complaining that the lamplight reflected in the gilt setting hurt
them, but he did not hinder my mother from lighting the lamp.

I usually entered in gloomy silence, looking away into some corner,
and sometimes without even greeting anyone.  As a rule I returned
earlier than to-day, and they used to send my dinner to me
upstairs.  Going into the room I said, "Good evening, mother," a
thing I had never done before.  Though even this time I was unable
from a sort of bashfulness to make myself look at her, and I sat
down in the opposite corner of the room.  I was awfully tired, but
I did not think of that.

"That lout of yours still walks in as rudely as ever," Tatyana
Pavlovna hissed at me.  She had been in the habit in old days of
using abusive epithets to me and it had become an established
tradition between us.

My mother faltered "Good evening" to me, using the formal mode of
address, and evidently embarrassed at my greeting her.  "Your
dinner has been ready a long while," she added, almost overcome by
confusion:  "I hope the soup is not cold, I will order the cutlets
at once. . . ."  She was hastily jumping up to go to the kitchen
and, for the first time perhaps during that whole month, I felt
ashamed that she should run about to wait on me so humbly, though
till that moment I had expected it of her.

"Thank you very much, mother, I have had dinner already.  May I
stay and rest here if I am not in the way?"

"Oh . . . of course. . . . how can you ask, pray sit down. . . ."


"Don't worry yourself, mother, I won't be rude to Andrey Petrovitch
again," I rapped out all at once.

"Good heavens! how noble of him," cried Tatyana Pavlovna.  "Sonia
darling, you don't mean to say you still stand on ceremony with
him?  Who is he to be treated with such deference, and by his own
mother, too!  Look at you, why you behave as though you were afraid
of him, it is disgraceful."

"I should like it very much, mother, if you would call me Arkasha."

"Oh . . . yes . . . certainly, yes I will," my mother said
hurriedly.  I . . . don't always . . . henceforward I will."

She blushed all over.  Certainly her face had at times a great
charm. . . .  It had a look of simplicity, but by no means of
stupidity.  It was rather pale and anaemic, her cheeks were very
thin, even hollow; her forehead was already lined by many wrinkles,
but there were none round her eyes, and her eyes were rather large
and wide open, and shone with a gentle and serene light which had
drawn me to her from the very first day.  I liked her face, too,
because it did not look particularly depressed or drawn; on the
contrary, her expression would have been positively cheerful, if
she had not been so often agitated, sometimes almost panic-stricken
over trifles, starting up from her seat for nothing at all, or
listening in alarm to anything new that was said, till she was sure
that all was well and as before.  What mattered to her was just
that all should be as before; that there should be no change, that
nothing new should happen, not even new happiness. . . .  It might
have been thought that she had been frightened as a child.  Besides
her eyes, I liked the oval of her rather long face, and I believe
if it had been a shade less broad across the cheekbones she might
have been called beautiful, not only in her youth but even now. 
She was not more than thirty-nine, but grey hairs were already
visible in her chestnut hair.

Tatyana Pavlovna glanced at her in genuine indignation.

"A booby like him!  And you tremble before him, you are ridiculous,
Sofia, you make me angry, I tell you!"

"Ah, Tatyana Pavlovna, why should you attack him now?  But you are
joking perhaps, eh?" my mother added, detecting something like a
smile on Tatyana Pavlovna's face.  Her scoldings could not indeed
be always taken seriously.  But she smiled (if she did smile) only
at my mother, of course, because she loved her devotedly, and no
doubt noticed how happy she was at that moment at my meekness.

"Of course, I can't help feeling hurt, if you will attack people
unprovoked, Tatyana Pavlovna, and just when I've come in saying
'Good evening, mother,' a thing I've never done before," I thought
it necessary to observe at last.

"Only fancy," she boiled over at once:  "He considers it as
something to be proud of.  Am I to go down on my knees to you,
pray, because for once in your life you've been polite?  and as
though it were politeness!  Why do you stare into the corner when
you come in?  I know how you tear and fling about before her!  You
might have said 'Good evening' to me, too, I wrapped you in your
swaddling clothes, I am your godmother."

I need not say I did not deign to answer.  At that moment my sister
came in and I made haste to turn to her.

"Liza, I saw Vassin to-day and he inquired after you.  You have met
him?"

"Yes, last year in Luga," she answered quite simply, sitting down
beside me and looking at me affectionately.  I don't know why, but
I had fancied she would flush when I spoke of Vassin.  My sister
was a blonde; very fair with flaxen hair, quite unlike both her
parents.  But her eyes and the oval of her face were like our
mother's.  Her nose was very straight, small, and regular; there
were tiny freckles in her face, however, of which there was no sign
in my mother's.  There was very little resemblance to Versilov,
nothing but the slenderness of figure, perhaps, her tallness and
something charming in her carriage.  There was not the slightest
likeness between us--we were the opposite poles.

"I knew his honour for three months," Liza added.

"Is it Vassin you call 'his honour,' Liza?  You should call him by
his name.  Excuse my correcting you, sister, but it grieves me that
they seem to have neglected your education."

"But it's shameful of you to remark upon it before your mother,"
cried Tatyana Pavlovna, firing up; "and you are talking nonsense,
it has not been neglected at all."

"I am not saying anything about my mother," I said sharply,
defending myself.  "Do you know, mother, that when I look at Liza
it's as though it were you over again; you have given her the same
charm of goodness, which you must have had yourself, and you have
it to this day and always will have it. . . .  I was only talking
of the surface polish, of the silly rules of etiquette, which are
necessary, however.  I am only indignant at the thought that when
Versilov has heard you call Vassin 'his honour' he has not troubled
to correct you at all--his disdain and his indifference to us are
so complete.  That's what makes me furious."

"He is a perfect bear himself, and he is giving us lessons in good
manners!  Don't you dare talk of Versilov before your mother, sir,
or before me either, I won't stand it!" Tatyana Pavlovna flashed
out.

"I got my salary to-day, mother, fifty roubles; take it, please;
here!"

I went up to her and gave her the money; she was in a tremor of
anxiety at once.

"Oh, I don't know about taking it," she brought out, as though
afraid to touch the money.  I did not understand.

"For goodness' sake, mother, if you both think of me as one of the
family, as a son and a brother. . . ."

"Oh, I've been to blame, Arkady: I ought to have confessed
something to you, but I am afraid of you. . . ."

She said this with a timid and deprecating smile; again I did not
understand and interrupted.

"By the way, did you know, mother, that Andrey Petrovitch's case
against the Sokolskys is being decided to-day?"

"Ah! I knew," she cried, clasping her hands before her (her
favourite gesture) in alarm.

"To-day?" cried Tatyana Pavlovna startled, "but it's impossible, he
would have told us.  Did he tell you?" she turned to my mother.

"Oh! no . . . that it was to-day . . . he didn't.  But I have been
fearing it all the week.  I would have prayed for him to lose it
even, only to have it over and off one's mind, and to have things
as they used to be again."

"What! hasn't he even told you, mother?" I exclaimed.  "What a man! 
There's an example of the indifference and contempt I spoke of just
now."

"It's being decided, how is it being decided?  And who told you?"
cried Tatyana Pavlovna, pouncing upon me.  "Speak, do."

"Why, here he is himself!  Perhaps he will tell you," I announced,
catching the sound of his step in the passage and hastily sitting
down again beside Liza.

"Brother, for God's sake, spare mother, and be patient with Andrey
Petrovitch . . ." she whispered to me.

"I will, I will," with that I turned to her and pressed her hand.

Liza looked at me very mistrustfully, and she was right.


2


He came in very much pleased with himself, so pleased that he did
not feel it necessary to conceal his state of mind.  And, indeed,
he had become accustomed of late to displaying himself before us
without the slightest ceremony, not only in his bad points but even
where he was ridiculous, a thing which most people are afraid to
do; at the same time, he fully recognized that we should understand
to the smallest detail.  In the course of the last year, so Tatyana
Pavlovna observed, he had become slovenly in his dress: his clothes
though old were always well cut and free from foppishness.  It is
true that he was prepared to put on clean linen only on every
alternate day, instead of every day, which was a real distress to
my mother; it was regarded by them as a sacrifice, and the whole
group of devoted women looked upon it as an act of heroism.  He
always wore soft wide-brimmed black hats.  When he took off his hat
his very thick but silvery locks stood up in a shock on his head; I
liked looking at his hair when he took off his hat.

"Good evening; still disputing; and is he actually one of the
party?  I heard his voice from outside in the passage; he has been
attacking me I suppose?"

It was one of the signs of his being in a good humour for him to be
witty at my expense; I did not answer, of course.  Lukerya came in
with a regular sackful of parcels and put them on the table.

"Victory!  Tatyana Pavlovna! the case is won, and the Sokolskys
certainly won't venture to appeal.  I've won the day!  I was able
to borrow a thousand roubles at once.  Sonia, put down your work,
don't try your eyes.  Back from work, Liza?"

"Yes, father," answered Liza, looking at him affectionately; she
used to call him father; nothing would have induced me to submit to
doing the same.

"Tired?"

"Yes."

"Give up your work, don't go to-morrow, and drop it altogether."

"Father, that will be worse for me."

"I beg you will . . . I greatly dislike to see women working,
Tatyana Pavlovna."

"How can they get on without work? a woman's not to work?"

"I know, I know; that's excellent and very true, and I agree with
it beforehand, but--I mean needlework particularly.  Only imagine,
I believe that's one of the morbid anomalous impressions of my
childhood.  In my dim memories of the time when I was five or six
years old I remember more often than anything--with loathing, of
course--a solemn council of wise women, stern and forbidding,
sitting at a round table with scissors, material, patterns, and a
fashion-plate.  They thought they knew all about it, and shook
their heads slowly and majestically, measuring, calculating, and
preparing to cut out.  All those kind people who were so fond of me
had suddenly become unapproachable, and if I began to play I was
carried out of the room at once.  Even my poor nurse, who held me
by the hand and took no notice of my shouting and pulling at her,
was listening and gazing enraptured, as though at a kind of
paradise.  The sternness of those sensible faces and the solemnity
with which they faced the task of cutting out is for some reason
distressing for me to picture even now.  Tatyana Pavlovna, you are
awfully fond of cutting out.  Although it may be aristocratic, yet
I do prefer a woman who does not work at all.  Don't take that as
meant for you, Sonia. . . . How could you, indeed!  Woman is an
immense power without working.  You know that, though, Sonia. 
What's your opinion, Arkady Makarovitch?  No doubt you disagree?"

"No, not at all," I answered--"that's a particularly good saying
that woman is an immense power, though I don't understand why you
say that about work.  And she can't help working if she has no
money--as you know yourself."

"Well, that's enough," and he turned to my mother, who positively
beamed all over (when he addressed me she was all of a tremor); "at
least, to begin with, I beg you not to let me see you doing
needlework for me.  No doubt, Arkady, as a young man of the period
you are something of a socialist; well, would you believe it, my
dear fellow, none are so fond of idleness as the toiling masses."

"Rest perhaps, not idleness."

"No, idleness, doing nothing; that's their ideal!  I knew a man who
was for ever at work, though he was not one of the common people,
he was rather intellectual and capable of generalizing.  Every day
of his life, perhaps, he brooded with blissful emotion on visions
of utter idleness, raising the ideal to infinity, so to speak, to
unlimited independence, to everlasting freedom, dreaming, and idle
contemplation.  So it went on till he broke down altogether from
overwork.  There was no mending him, he died in a hospital.  I am
sometimes seriously disposed to believe that the delights of labour
have been invented by the idle, from virtuous motives, of course. 
It is one of the 'Geneva ideas' of the end of last century. 
Tatyana Pavlovna, I cut an advertisement out of the newspaper the
day before yesterday, here it is"; he took a scrap of paper out of
his waist-coat pocket.  "It is one of those everlasting students,
proficient in classics and mathematics and prepared to travel, to
sleep in a garret or anywhere.  Here, listen:  'A teacher (lady)
prepares for all the scholastic establishments (do you hear, for
all) and gives lessons in arithmetic!'  Prepares for all the
scholastic establishments--in arithmetic, therefore, may we assume? 
No, arithmetic is something apart for her.  It is a case of simple
hunger, the last extremity of want.  It is just the ineptitude of
it that's so touching: it's evident that the lady has never
prepared anyone for any school, and it is doubtful whether she is
fit to teach anything.  Yet at her last gasp she wastes her one
remaining rouble and prints in the paper that she prepares for all
the scholastic establishments, and what's more, gives lessons in
arithmetic.  Per tutto mundo e in altri siti."

"Oh, Andrey Petrovitch, she ought to be helped!  Where does she
live?" cried Tatyana Pavlovna.

"Oh, there are lots of them!"  He put the advertisement in his
pocket.  "That bag's full of treats for you, Liza, and you, Tatyana
Pavlovna; Sonia and I don't care for sweet things.  And perhaps for
you, young man.  I bought the things myself at Eliseyev's and at
Ballé's.  Too long we've gone hungry, as Lukerya said.  (NB--None
of us had ever gone hungry.)  Here are grapes, sweets, duchesses
and strawberry tarts; I've even brought some excellent liqueur;
nuts, too.  It's curious that to this day I'm fond of nuts as I
have been from a child, Tatyana Pavlovna, and of the commonest
nuts, do you know.  Liza takes after me; she is fond of cracking
nuts like a squirrel.  But there's nothing more charming, Tatyana
Pavlovna, than sometimes when recalling one's childhood to imagine
oneself in a wood, in a copse, gathering nuts. . . .  The days are
almost autumnal, but bright; at times it's so fresh, one hides in
the bushes, one wanders in the wood, there's a scent of leaves. . . .
I seem to see something sympathetic in your face, Arkady
Makarovitch?"

"The early years of my childhood, too, were spent in the country."

"But I thought you were brought up in Moscow, if I am not
mistaken."

"He was living in Moscow at the Andronikovs' when you went there;
but till then he used to live in the country with your aunt,
Varvara Stepanovna," Tatyana Pavlovna put in.

"Sonia, here's some money, put it away.  I promise you, in a few
days, five thousand."

"So there's no hope then for the Sokolskys?" asked Tatyana
Pavlovna.

"Absolutely none, Tatyana Pavlovna."

"I have always sympathized with you and all of yours, Andrey
Petrovitch, and I have always been a friend of the family, but
though the Sokolskys are strangers, yet, upon my word, I am sorry
for them.  Don't be angry, Andrey Petrovitch."

"I have no intention of going shares with them, Tatyana Pavlovna!"

"You know my idea, of course, Andrey Petrovitch; they would have
settled the case out of court, if at the very beginning you had
offered to go halves with them; now, of course, it is too late. 
Not that I venture to criticize. . . .  I say so because I don't
think the deceased would have left them out of his will altogether."

"Not only he wouldn't have left them out, he'd have certainly left
them everything, and would have left none out but me, if he'd known
how to do things and to write a will properly; but as it is, the
law's on my side, and it's settled.  I can't go shares, and I don't
want to, Tatyana Pavlovna, and that is the end of the matter."

He spoke with real exasperation, a thing he rarely allowed himself
to do.  Tatyana Pavlovna subsided.  My mother looked down
mournfully.  Versilov knew that she shared Tatyana Pavlovna's
views.

"He has not forgotten that slap in the face at Ems," I thought to
myself.  The document given me by Kraft and at that moment in my
pocket would have a poor chance if it had fallen into his hands.  I
suddenly felt that the whole responsibility was still weighing upon
me, and this idea, together with all the rest, had, of course, an
irritating effect upon me.

"Arkady, I should like you to be better dressed, my dear fellow;
your suit is all right, but for future contingencies I might
recommend you to an excellent Frenchman, most conscientious and
possessed of taste."

"I beg you never to make such suggestions again," I burst out
suddenly.

"What's that?"

"It is not that I consider it humiliating, of course, but we are
not agreed about anything; on the contrary, our views are entirely
opposed, for in a day or two--to-morrow--I shall give up going to
the prince's, as I find there is absolutely no work for me to do
there."

"But you are going and sitting there with him--that is the work."

"Such ideas are degrading."

"I don't understand; but if you are so squeamish, don't take money
from him, but simply go.  You will distress him horribly, he has
already become attached to you, I assure you. . . .  However, as
you please. . . ."  He was evidently put out.

"You say, don't ask for money, but thanks to you I did a mean thing
to-day: you did not warn me, and I demanded my month's salary from
him to-day."

"So you have seen to that already; I confess I did not expect you
to ask for it; but how sharp you all are nowadays!  There are no
young people in these days, Tatyana Pavlovna."  He was very
spiteful: I was awfully angry too.

"I ought to have had things out with you . . . you made me do it, I
don't know now how it's to be."

"By the way, Sonia, give Arkady back his sixty roubles at once; and
you, my dear fellow, don't be angry at our repaying it so quickly. 
I can guess from your face that you have some enterprise in your
mind and that you need it. . . .  So invest it . . . or something
of the sort."

"I don't know what my face expresses, but I did not expect mother
would have told you of that money when I so particularly asked
her. . . ."  I looked at my mother with flashing eyes, I cannot
express how wounded I felt.

"Arkasha, darling, for God's sake forgive me, I couldn't possibly
help speaking of it. . . ."

"My dear fellow, don't make a grievance of her telling me your
secrets: besides, she did it with the best intentions--it was
simply a mother's longing to boast of her son's feeling for her. 
But I assure you I should have guessed without that you were a
capitalist.  All your secrets are written on your honest
countenance.  He has 'his idea,' Tatyana Pavlovna, as I told you."

"Let's drop my honest countenance," I burst out again.  "I know
that you often see right through things, but in some cases you see
no further than your own nose, and I have marvelled at your powers
of penetration.  Well then, I have 'my idea.'  That you should use
that expression, of course, was an accident, but I am not afraid to
admit it; I have 'an idea' of my own, I am not afraid and I am not
ashamed of it."

"Don't be ashamed, that's the chief thing."

"And all the same I shall never tell it you."

"That's to say you won't condescend to; no need to, my dear fellow,
I know the nature of your idea as it is; in any case it implies:


         Into the wilderness I flee.


Tatyana Pavlovna, my notion is that he wants . . . to become a
Rothschild, or something of the kind, and shut himself up in his
grandeur. . . .  No doubt he'll magnanimously allow us a pension,
though perhaps he won't allow me one--but in any case he will
vanish from our sight.  Like the new moon he has risen, only to set
again."

I shuddered in my inmost being; of course, it was all chance; he
knew nothing of my idea and was not speaking about it, though he
did mention Rothschild; but how could he define my feelings so
precisely, my impulse to break with them and go away?  He divined
everything and wanted to defile beforehand with his cynicism the
tragedy of fact.  That he was horribly angry, of that there could
be no doubt.

"Mother, forgive my hastiness, for I see that there's no hiding
things from Andrey Petrovitch in any case," I said, affecting to
laugh and trying if only for a moment to turn it into a joke.

"That's the very best thing you can do, my dear fellow, to laugh. 
It is difficult to realize how much every one gains by laughing
even in appearance; I am speaking most seriously.  He always has an
air, Tatyana Pavlovna, of having something so important on his
mind, that he is quite abashed at the circumstance himself."

"I must ask you in earnest, Andrey Petrovitch, to be more careful
what you say."

"You are right, my dear boy; but one must speak out once for all,
so as never to touch upon the matter again.  You have come to us
from Moscow, to begin making trouble at once.  That's all we know
as yet of your object in coming.  I say nothing, of course, of your
having come to surprise us in some way.  And all this month you
have been snorting and sneering at us.  Yet you are obviously an
intelligent person, and as such you might leave such snorting and
sneering to those who have no other means of avenging themselves on
others for their own insignificance.  You are always shutting
yourself up, though your honest countenance and your rosy cheeks
bear witness that you might look every one straight in the face
with perfect innocence.  He's a neurotic; I can't make out, Tatyana
Pavlovna, why they are all neurotic nowadays. . . ?"

"If you did not even know where I was brought up, you are not
likely to know why a man's neurotic."

"Oh, so that's the key to it!  You are offended at my being capable
of forgetting where you were brought up!"

"Not in the least.  Don't attribute such silly ideas to me. 
Mother!  Andrey Petrovitch praised me just now for laughing; let us
laugh--why sit like this!  Shall I tell you a little anecdote about
myself?  Especially as Andrey Petrovitch knows nothing of my
adventures."

I was boiling.  I knew this was the last time we should be sitting
together like this, that when I left that house I should never
enter it again, and so on the eve of it all I could not restrain
myself.  He had challenged me to such a parting scene himself.

"That will be delightful, of course, if it is really amusing," he
observed, looking at me searchingly.  "Your manners were rather
neglected where you were brought up, my dear fellow, though they
are pretty passable.  He is charming to-day, Tatyana Pavlovna, and
it's a good thing you have undone that bag at last."

But Tatyana Pavlovna frowned; she did not even turn round at his
words, but went on untying the parcels and laying out the good
things on some plates which had been brought in.  My mother, too,
was sitting in complete bewilderment, though she had misgivings, of
course, and realized that there would be trouble between us.  My
sister touched my elbow again.


3


"I simply want to tell you all," I began, with a very free-and-easy
air, "how a father met for the first time a dearly loved son: it
happened 'wherever you were brought up' . . ."

"My dear fellow, won't it be . . . a dull story?  You know, tous
les genres. . . ."

"Don't frown, Andrey Petrovitch, I am not speaking at all with the
object you imagine.  All I want is to make every one laugh."

"Well, God hears you, my dear boy.  I know that you love us
all . . . and don't want to spoil our evening," he mumbled with
a sort of affected carelessness.

"Of course, you have guessed by my face that I love you?"

"Yes, partly by your face, too."

"Just as I guessed from her face that Tatyana Pavlovna's in love
with me.  Don't look at me so ferociously, Tatyana Pavlovna, it is
better to laugh! it is better to laugh!"

She turned quickly to me, and gave me a searching look which lasted
half a minute.

"Mind now," she said, holding up her finger at me, but so earnestly
that her words could not have referred to my stupid joke, but must
have been meant as a warning in case I might be up to some mischief.

"Andrey Petrovitch, is it possible you don't remember how we met
for the first time in our lives?"

"Upon my word I've forgotten, my dear fellow, and I am really very
sorry.  All that I remember is that it was a long time ago . . .
and took place somewhere. . . ."

"Mother, and don't you remember how you were in the country, where
I was brought up, till I was six or seven I believe, or rather were
you really there once, or is it simply a dream that I saw you there
for the first time?  I have been wanting to ask you about it for a
long time, but I've kept putting it off; now the time has come."

"To be sure, Arkasha, to be sure I stayed with Varvara Stepanovna
three times; my first visit was when you were only a year old, I
came a second time when you were nearly four, and afterwards again
when you were six."

"Ah, you did then; I have been wanting to ask you about it all this
month."

My mother seemed overwhelmed by a rush of memories, and she asked
me with feeling:

"Do you really mean, Arkasha, that you remembered me there?"

"I don't know or remember anything, only something of your face
remained in my heart for the rest of my life, and the fact, too,
that you were my mother.  I recall everything there as though it
were a dream, I've even forgotten my nurse.  I have a faint
recollection of Varvara Stepanovna, simply that her face was tied
up for toothache.  I remember huge trees near the house--lime-trees
I think they were--then sometimes the brilliant sunshine at the
open windows, the little flower garden, the little paths and you,
mother, I remember clearly only at one moment when I was taken to
the church there, and you held me up to receive the sacrament and
to kiss the chalice; it was in the summer, and a dove flew through
the cupola, in at one window and out at another. . . ."

"Mercy on us, that's just how it was," cried my mother, throwing up
her hands, "and the dear dove I remember, too, now.  With the
chalice just before you, you started, and cried out, 'a dove, a
dove.'"

"Your face or something of the expression remained in my memory so
distinctly that I recognized you five years after in Moscow, though
nobody there told me you were my mother.  But when I met Andrey
Petrovitch for the first time, I was brought from the Andronikovs';
I had been vegetating quietly and happily with them for five years
on end.  I remember their flat down to the smallest detail, and all
those ladies who have all grown so much older here; and the whole
household, and how Andronikov himself used to bring the provisions,
poultry, fish, and sucking-pigs from the town in a fish-basket. 
And how at dinner instead of his wife, who always gave herself such
airs, he used to help the soup, and how we all laughed at his doing
it, he most of all.  The young ladies there used to teach me
French.  But what I liked best of all was Krylov's Fables.  I
learned a number of them by heart and every day I used to recite
one to Andronikov . . . going straight into his tiny study to do so
without considering whether he were busy or not.  Well, it was
through a fable of Krylov's that I got to know you, Andrey
Petrovitch.  I see you are beginning to remember."

"I do recall something, my dear fellow, that you repeated something
to me . . . a fable or a passage from 'Woe from Wit,' I fancy. 
What a memory you have, though!"

"A memory!  I should think so! it's the one thing I've remembered
all my life."

"That's all right, that's all right, my dear fellow, you are quite
waking me up."

He actually smiled; as soon as he smiled, my mother and sister
smiled after him, confidence was restored; but Tatyana Pavlovna,
who had finished laying out the good things on the table and
settled herself in a corner, still bent upon me a keen and
disapproving eye.  "This is how it happened," I went on: "one fine
morning there suddenly appeared the friend of my childhood, Tatyana
Pavlovna, who always made her entrance on the stage of my existence
with dramatic suddenness.  She took me away in a carriage to a
grand house, to sumptuous apartments.  You were staying at Madame
Fanariotov's, Andrey Petrovitch, in her empty house, which she had
bought from you; she was abroad at that time.  I always used to
wear short jackets; now all of a sudden I was put into a pretty
little blue greatcoat, and a very fine shirt.  Tatyana Pavlovna was
busy with me all day and bought me lots of things; I kept walking
through all the empty rooms, looking at myself in all the looking-
glasses.  And wandering about in the same way the next morning, at
ten o clock, I walked quite by chance into your study.  I had seen
you already the evening before, as soon as I was brought into the
house, but only for an instant on the stairs.  You were coming
downstairs to get into your carriage and drive off somewhere; you
were staying alone in Moscow then, for a short time after a very
long absence, so that you had engagements in all directions and
were scarcely ever at home.  When you met Tatyana Pavlovna and me
you only drawled 'Ah!' and did not even stop."

"He describes it with a special love," observed Versilov,
addressing Tatyana Pavlovna; she turned away and did not answer.

"I can see you now as you were then, handsome and flourishing.  It
is wonderful how much older and less good-looking you have grown in
these years; please forgive this candour, you were thirty-seven
even then, though.  I gazed at you with admiration; what wonderful
hair you had, almost jet black, with a brilliant lustre without a
trace of grey; moustaches and whiskers, like the setting of a
jewel: I can find no other expression for it; your face of an even
pallor; not like its sickly pallor to-day, but like your daughter,
Anna Andreyevna, whom I had the honour of seeing this morning;
dark, glowing eyes, and gleaming teeth, especially when you
laughed.  And you did laugh, when you looked round as I came in; I
was not very discriminating at that time, and your smile rejoiced
my heart.  That morning you were wearing a dark blue velvet jacket,
a sulphur coloured necktie, and a magnificent shirt with Alençon
lace on it; you were standing before the looking-glass with a
manuscript in your hand, and were busy declaiming Tchatsky's
monologue, and especially his last exclamation:  'A coach, I want a
coach.'"

"Good heavens!" cried Versilov.  "Why, he's right!  Though I was
only in Moscow for so short a time, I undertook to play Tchatsky in
an amateur performance at Alexandra Petrovna Vitovtov's in place of
Zhileyko, who was ill!"

"Do you mean to say you had forgotten it?" laughed Tatyana
Pavlovna.

"He has brought it back to my mind!  And I own that those few days
in Moscow were perhaps the happiest in my life!  We were still so
young then . . . and all so fervently expecting something. . . . 
It was then in Moscow I unexpectedly met so much. . . .  But go on,
my dear fellow: this time you've done well to remember it all so
exactly. . . ."

"I stood still to look at you and suddenly cried out, 'Ah, how
good, the real Tchatsky'  You turned round at once and asked:
'Why, do you know Tchatsky already?' and you sat down on a sofa,
and began drinking your coffee in the most charming humour--I could
have kissed you.  Then I informed you that at the Andronikovs'
every one read a great deal, and that the young ladies knew a great
deal of poetry by heart, and used to act scenes out of 'Woe from
Wit' among themselves, and that all last week we had been reading
aloud in the evening 'A Sportsman's Sketches,' but what I liked
best of all was Krylov's Fables, and that I knew them by heart. 
You told me to repeat one, and I repeated 'The Girl who was Hard to
Please.'"


          A maid her suitor shrewdly scanned.


"Yes!  Yes!  I remember it all now," cried Versilov again; "but, my
dear fellow, I remember you, too, clearly now; you were such a
charming boy then, a thoughtful boy even, and, I assure you, you,
too, have changed for the worse in the course of these nine years."

At this point all of them, even Tatyana Pavlovna, laughed.  It was
evident that Andrey Petrovitch had deigned to jest, and had paid me
out in the same coin for my biting remark about his having grown
old.  Every one was amused, and indeed, it was well said.

"As I recited, you smiled, but before I was half-way through the
fable you rang the bell and told the footman who answered it to ask
Tatyana Pavlovna to come, and she ran in with such a delighted
face, that though I had seen her the evening before I scarcely knew
her.  For Tatyana Pavlovna, I began the fable again, I finished it
brilliantly, even Tatyana Pavlovna smiled, and you, Andrey
Petrovitch cried 'Bravo!' and observed with warmth that if it had
been 'The Ant and the Grasshopper' it would not be wonderful that a
sensible boy of my age should recite it sensibly, but this fable


          A maid her suitor shrewdly scanned.
          Indeed, that's not a crime.


was different.  "Listen how he brings out 'Indeed, that's not a
crime,'" you said; in fact, you were enthusiastic.  Then you said
something in French to Tatyana Pavlovna, and she instantly frowned
and began to protest, and grew very hot, in fact; but as it was
impossible to oppose Andrey Petrovitch if he once took an idea into
his head, she hurriedly carried me off to her room, there my hands
and face were washed again, my shirt was changed, my hair was
pomaded and even curled.

"Then towards evening Tatyana Pavlovna dressed herself up rather
grandly as I had never expected to see her, and she took me with
her in the carriage.  It was the first time in my life I had been
to a play; it was at a private performance at Mme. Vitovtov's.  The
lights, the chandeliers, the ladies, the officers, the generals,
the young ladies, the curtain, the rows of chairs, were utterly
unlike anything I had seen before.  Tatyana Pavlovna took a very
modest seat in one of the back rows, and made me sit down beside
her.  There were, of course, other children like me in the room,
but I had no eyes for anything, I simply waited with a sinking of
my heart for the performance.  When you came on, Andrey Petrovitch,
I was ecstatic to the point of tears.  What for and why, I don't
understand.  Why those tears of rapture?  It has been a strange
recollection for me ever since, for these last nine years!  I
followed the drama with a throbbing heart; all I understood of it,
of course, was that SHE was deceiving HIM, and that he was
ridiculed by stupid people who were not worth his little finger. 
When he was reciting at the ball I understood that he was
humiliated and insulted, that he was reproaching all these
miserable people, but that he was--great, great!  No doubt my
training at the Andronikovs' helped me to understand, and your
acting, Andrey Petrovitch!  It was the first time I had seen a
play!  When you went off shouting 'A coach, a coach!' (and you did
that shout wonderfully) I jumped up from my seat, and while the
whole audience burst into applause, I, too, clapped my hands and
cried 'bravo' at the top of my voice.  I vividly recall how at that
instant I felt as though I had been pierced by a pin in my back 'a
little below the waist'; Tatyana Pavlovna had given me a ferocious
pinch; but I took no notice of it.  As soon as 'Woe from Wit' was
over, Tatyana Pavlovna took me home, of course.  'You can't stay
for the dancing, and it's only on your account I am not staying!'
you hissed at me all the way home in the carriage, Tatyana
Pavlovna.  All night I was delirious, and by ten o'clock the next
morning I was standing at the study door, but it was shut; there
were people with you and you were engaged in some business with
them; then you drove off and were away the whole day till late at
night--so I did not see you again!  What I meant to say to you, I
have forgotten, of course, and indeed I did not know then, but I
longed passionately to see you as soon as possible.  And at eight
o'clock next morning you were graciously pleased to set off for
Serpuhov; at that time you had just sold your Tula estate to settle
with your creditors, but there was still left in your hands a
tempting stake; that was why you had come at that time to Moscow,
where you had not been able to show yourself till then for fear of
your creditors, and this Serpuhov ruffian was the only one of them
who had not agreed to take half of what you owed him instead of the
whole.  When I questioned Tatyana Pavlovna, she did not even answer
me.  'It's no business of yours, but the day after to-morrow I
shall take you to your boarding school: get your exercise-books
ready, take your lesson books, put them all in order, and you must
learn to pack your little box yourself, you can't expect to be
waited on, sir.'  You were drumming this and that into my ears all
those three days, Tatyana Pavlovna.  It ended in my being taken in
my innocence to school at Touchard's, adoring you, Andrey
Petrovitch; our whole meeting was a trivial incident, perhaps, but
would you believe it, six months afterwards I longed to run away
from Touchard's to you!"

"You describe it capitally, you have brought it all back so
vividly," Versilov pronounced incisively; "but what strikes me most
in your story is the wealth of certain strange details, concerning
my debts, for instance.  Apart from the fact that these details are
hardly a suitable subject for you to discuss, I can't imagine how
you managed to get hold of them."

"Details? how I got hold of them?  Why I repeat, for the last nine
years I have been doing nothing but getting hold of facts about
you."

"A strange confession, and a strange way of spending your time."

He turned half-reclining in his easy chair, and even yawned
slightly, whether intentionally or not I could not say.

"Well, shall I go on telling you how I wanted to run to you from
Touchard's?"

"Forbid him, Andrey Petrovitch; suppress him and send him away,"
Tatyana Pavlovna burst out.

"That won't do, Tatyana Pavlovna," Versilov answered her
impressively.  "Arkasha has evidently something on his mind, and so
he must be allowed to finish.  Well, let him speak!  When he's said
what he's got to say, it will be off his mind, and what matters
most to him is that he should get it off his mind.  Begin your new
story, my dear fellow; I call it new, but you may rest assured that
I know how it ends."


4


"I ran away, that is, I tried to run away to you, very simply. 
Tatyana Pavlovna, do you remember after I had been there a
fortnight Touchard wrote you a letter--didn't he?  Marie Ivanovna
showed me the letter afterwards; that turned up among Andronikov's
papers, too.  Touchard suddenly discovered that the fees he had
asked were too small, and with 'dignity' announced in his letter to
you that little princes and senator's children were educated in
his establishment, and that it was lowering its tone to keep a
pupil of such humble origin as me unless the remuneration were
increased."

"Mon cher, you really might. . . ."

"Oh that's nothing, that's nothing," I interrupted, "I am only
going to say a little about Touchard.  You wrote from the provinces
a fortnight later, Tatyana Pavlovna, and answered with a flat
refusal.  I remember how he walked into our classroom, flushing
crimson.  He was a very short thick-set little Frenchman of five-
and-forty, a Parisian cobbler by origin, though he had from time
immemorial held a position in Moscow as an instructor in the French
language, and even had an official rank, of which he was extremely
proud; he was a man of crass ignorance.  There were only six of us
pupils; among them there actually was a nephew of a Moscow senator;
and we all lived like one family under the supervision of his wife,
a very affected lady, who was the daughter of a Russian government
clerk.  During that fortnight I had given myself great airs before
my schoolfellows.  I boasted of my blue overcoat, and my papa,
Andrey Petrovitch, and their questions: why I was called Dolgoruky
and not Versilov did not embarrass me in the least, since I did not
know why."

"Andrey Petrovitch!" cried Tatyana Pavlovna, in a voice almost
menacing.  My mother, on the contrary, was watching me intently,
and evidently wished me to go on.

"Ce Touchard . . . I actually recall him now . . . he was a fussy
little man," Versilov admitted; "but he was recommended to me by
the very best people. . . ."

"Ce Touchard walked in with the letter in his hand, went up to the
big oak table, at which all six of us were seated learning
something by heart; he seized me firmly by the shoulder, picked me
up from the chair, and ordered me to collect my exercise-books. 
'Your place is not here but there,' he said, pointing to a tiny
room on the left of the passage, where there was nothing but a
plain deal table, a rush-bottom chair, and an American leather
sofa--exactly like what I have upstairs in the attic.  I went into
it in amazement, very much downcast; I had never been roughly
treated before.  Half an hour later when Touchard had gone out of
the schoolroom, I began to exchange glances and smiles with my
schoolfellows; they, of course, were laughing at me; but I had no
suspicion of it and thought we were laughing because we were merry. 
At that moment Touchard darted in, seized me by the forelock, and
dragged me about.

"'Don't you dare sit with gentlemanly boys, you are a child of low
origin and no better than a lackey.'

"And he gave me a stinging blow on my chubby, rosy cheek.  He must
have enjoyed doing so and he struck me a second time, and a third. 
I cried violently and was terribly astonished.  For a whole hour I
sat with my face hidden in my hands crying and crying.  Something
had happened which was utterly beyond my comprehension.  I don't
understand how a man, not of spiteful character, a foreigner like
Touchard, who rejoiced at the emancipation of the Russian peasants,
could have beaten a foolish child like me.  I was only amazed, not
resentful, however.  I had not yet learnt to resent an insult.  It
seemed to me that I had somehow been naughty, that when I was good
again I should be forgiven, and that we should all be merry again
at once, that we should go out to play in the yard and live happy
ever after."

"My dear fellow, if I had only known. . . ." Versilov drawled with
the careless smile of a rather weary man.  "What a scoundrel that
Touchard was, though!  I have not given up all hope, however, that
you may make an effort and forgive us for all that at last, and
that we may all live happy ever after."

He yawned decisively.

"But I am not blaming you at all, and believe me, I am not
complaining of Touchard," I cried, a little disconcerted.  "Though,
indeed, he beat me for ten months or so.  I remember I was always
trying to appease him in some way; I used to rush to kiss his
hands, I was always kissing them, and I was always crying and
crying.  My schoolfellows laughed at me and despised me, because
Touchard began to treat me sometimes like a servant, he used to
order me to bring him his clothes when he was dressing.  My menial
instincts were of use to me there; I did my very utmost to please
him, and was not in the least offended, because I did not at that
time understand it at all, and I am surprised to this day that I
could have been so stupid as not to realize that I was not on an
equal footing with the rest.  It's true my schoolfellows made many
things clear to me even then; it was a good school.  Touchard came
in the end to prefer giving me a kick to slapping me in the face,
and six months later he even began to be affectionate; only he
never failed to beat me once a month or so to remind me not to
forget myself.  He soon let me sit with the other boys, too, and
allowed me to play with them, but not once during those two and a
half years did Touchard forget the difference in our social
positions, and from time to time, though not very frequently, he
employed me in menial tasks, I verily believe, to remind me of it.

"I was running away; that's to say, I was on the point of running
away for five months after those first two months.  I have always
been slow in taking action.  When I got into bed and pulled the
quilt over me, I began thinking of you at once, Andrey Petrovitch,
only of you, of no one else; I don't in the least know why it was
so.  I dreamed about you too.  I used always to be passionately
imagining that you would walk in, and I would rush up to you and
you would take me out of that place, and bring me home with you to
the same study, and that we would go to the theatre again, and so
on.  Above all, that we should not part again--that was the chief
thing!  As soon as I had to wake up in the morning the jeers and
contempt of the boys began again; one of them actually began
beating me and making me put on his boots for him; he called me the
vilest names, particularly aiming at making my origin clear to me,
to the diversion of all who heard him.  When at last Touchard
himself became comprehensible, something unbearable began in my
soul.  I felt that I should never be forgiven here.  Oh, I was
beginning by degrees to understand what it was they would not
forgive me and of what I was guilty!  And so at last I resolved to
run away.  For two whole months I dreamed of it incessantly at
last--it was September--I made up my mind.  I waited for Saturday,
when my schoolfellows used to go home for the week-end, and
meanwhile I secretly and carefully got together a bundle of the
most necessary things; all the money I had was two roubles.  I
meant to wait till dusk; 'then I will go downstairs,' I thought,
'and I'll go out and walk away!'  Where?  I knew that Andronikov
had moved to Petersburg, and I resolved that I would look for Mme.
Fanariotov's house in Arbaty; 'I'll spend the night walking or
sitting somewhere, and in the morning I'll ask some one in the
courtyard of the house, where Andrey Petrovitch is now, and if not
in Moscow, in what town or country.  They will be sure to tell me. 
I'll walk away, and then ask some one, somewhere else, by which
gate to go out to reach such a town; and then I'll go and walk and
walk, I shall keep on walking; I shall sleep somewhere under the
bushes; I shall eat nothing but bread, and for two roubles I can
get bread enough for a long time.'

"I could not manage to run away on Saturday, however; I had to wait
till next day, Sunday, and as luck would have it, Touchard and his
wife were going away somewhere for the Sunday; there was no one
left in the house but Agafya and me.  I awaited the night in
terrible agitation, I remember.  I sat at the window in the
schoolroom, looking out at the dusty street, the little wooden
houses, and the few passers-by.  Touchard lived in an out-of-the-
way street; from the windows I could see one of the city gates;
'Isn't it the one?' I kept wondering.  The sun set in a red glow,
the sky was so cold-looking, and a piercing wind was stirring up
the dust, just as it is to-day.  It was quite dark at last; I stood
before the ikon and began to pray, only very, very quickly, I was
in haste; I caught up my bundle, and went on tip-toe down the
creaking stairs, horribly afraid that Agafya would hear me from the
kitchen.  The door was locked, I turned the key, and at once a
dark, dark night loomed black before me like a boundless perilous
unknown land, and the wind snatched off my cap.  I was just going
out on the same side of the pavement; I heard a hoarse volley of
oaths from a drunken man in the street.  I stood, looked, and
slowly turned, slowly went upstairs, slowly took off my things, put
down my little bundle and lay down flat, without tears, and without
thoughts, and it was from that moment, Andrey Petrovitch, that I
began to think.  It was from that moment that I realized that
besides being a lackey, I was a coward, too, and my real
development began!"

"Well, I see through you once and for all from this minute," cried
Tatyana Pavlovna, jumping up from her seat, and so suddenly, that I
was utterly unprepared for it; "yes, you were not only a lackey
then, you are a lackey now; you've the soul of a lackey!  Why
should not Andrey Petrovitch have apprenticed you to a shoemaker?
it would have been an act of charity to have taught you a trade! 
Who would have expected more than that of him?  Your father, Makar
Ivanovitch, asked--in fact, he insisted--that you, his children,
should not be brought up to be above your station.  Why, you think
nothing of his having educated you for the university, and that
through him you have received class rights.  The little rascals
teased him, to be sure, so he has sworn to avenge himself on
humanity. . . . You scoundrel!"

I must confess I was struck dumb by this outburst, I got up and
stood for some time staring and not knowing what to say.

"Well, certainly Tatyana Pavlovna has told me something new," I
said at last, turning resolutely to Versilov; "yes, certainly I am
such a lackey that I can't be satisfied with Versilov's not having
apprenticed me to a shoemaker; even 'rights' did not touch me.  I
wanted the whole of Versilov, I wanted a father . . . that's what I
asked for--like a regular lackey.  Mother, I've had it on my
conscience for eight years--when you came to Moscow alone to see me
at Touchard's, the way I received you then, but I have no time to
speak of it now.  Tatyana Pavlovna won't let me tell my story,
Good-bye till to-morrow, mother; we may see each other again. 
Tatyana Pavlovna! what if I am so utterly a lackey that I am quite
unable to admit the possibility of a man's marrying again when his
wife is alive?  Yet you know that all but happened to Andrey
Petrovitch at Ems!  Mother, if you don't want to stay with a
husband who may take another wife to-morrow, remember you have a
son who promises to be a dutiful son to you for ever; remember, and
let us go away, only on condition that it is 'either he, or I' will
you?  I don't ask you for an answer at once, of course: I know that
such questions can't be answered straight off."

But I could not go on, partly because I was excited and confused. 
My mother turned pale and her voice seemed to fail her: she could
not utter a word.  Tatyana Pavlovna said something in a very loud
voice and at great length which I could not make out, and twice she
pushed me on the shoulder with her fist.  I only remember that she
shouted that "my words were a sham, the broodings of a petty soul,
counted over and turned inside out."  Versilov sat motionless and
very serious, he was not smiling.  I went upstairs to my room.  The
last thing I saw as I went out was the reproach in my sister's
eyes; she shook her head at me sternly.



CHAPTER VII


1


I describe all these scenes without sparing myself, in order to
recall it clearly and revive the impression.  As I went up to my
attic, I did not know in the least whether I ought to be ashamed or
triumphant as though I had done my duty.  Had I been ever so little
more experienced, I should have had a misgiving that the least
doubt in such cases must be taken as a bad sign, but another fact
threw me out in my reckoning: I don't know what I was pleased
about, but I felt awfully pleased, in spite of my being uncertain,
and of my realizing distinctly that I had not come off with flying
colours downstairs.  Even Tatyana Pavlovna's spiteful abuse of me
struck me as funny and amusing and did not anger me at all. 
Probably all this was because I had anyway broken my chains and for
the first time felt myself free.

I felt, too, that I had weakened my position: how I was to act in
regard to the letter about the inheritance was more obscure than
ever.  Now it would be certainly taken for granted that I was
revenging myself on Versilov.  But while all this discussion was
going on downstairs I had made up my mind to submit the question of
the letter to an impartial outsider and to appeal to Vassin for his
decision, or, failing Vassin, to take it to some one else.  I had
already made up my mind to whom.  I would go to see Vassin once,
for that occasion only, I thought to myself, and then--then I would
vanish for a long while, for some months, from the sight of all,
especially of Vassin.  Only my mother and sister I might see
occasionally.  It was all inconsistent and confused; I felt that I
had done something, though not in the right way, and I was
satisfied: I repeat, I was awfully pleased anyway.

I meant to go to bed rather early, foreseeing I should have a lot
to do next day.  Besides finding a lodging and moving, I had
another project which in one way or another I meant to carry out. 
But the evening was not destined to end without surprises, and
Versilov succeeded in astonishing me extremely.  He had certainly
never been into my attic, and lo and behold, before I had been an
hour in my room I heard his footsteps on the ladder: he called to
me to show a light.  I took a candle, and stretching out my hand,
which he caught hold of, I helped him up.

"Merci, my dear fellow; I've never climbed up here before, not even
when I took the lodgings.  I imagined what sort of place it was,
but I never supposed it was quite such a hole as this."  He stood
in the middle of my attic, looking around with curiosity.  "Why,
this is a coffin, a regular coffin."

It really had a resemblance to the inside of a coffin, and I
positively admired the way he had described it in one word.  It was
a long narrow box of a room, the ceiling sloped away from the wall
at the height of my shoulder, and the top of it was within easy
reach of my hand.  Versilov unconsciously stood stooping, afraid of
hitting his head against the ceiling; he did not knock it, however,
and, finally more or less reassured, he seated himself on the sofa,
where my bed had already been made up.  But I did not sit down, I
looked at him in the greatest amazement.

"Your mother says she does not know whether to take the money you
gave her this evening for your board for the month.  But for a
coffin like this, instead of taking your money, we ought rather to
offer you compensation!  I have never been up and . . . I can't
conceive how you can exist here!"

"I am used to it.  But what I can't get used to is seeing you in my
room after what has just happened downstairs."

"O, yes, you were distinctly rude downstairs, but . . . I, too,
have a special object which I will explain to you, though indeed
there is nothing extraordinary in my coming; even the scene
downstairs is in the regular order of things; but for mercy's sake
do explain this: what you told us downstairs after preparing us and
approaching the subject so solemnly was surely not all you meant to
disclose or communicate?  Was there really nothing else?"

"That was all, or we'll assume it was all."

"It's not much, my dear fellow: I must own that from your beginning
and the way you urged us to laugh, in fact from your eagerness to
talk, I expected more."

"But that does not matter to you, surely?"

"But I speak simply from a sense of proportion; it was not worth
making such a fuss about, it was quite disproportionate; you've
been sitting mute a whole month, preparing to speak, and when it
comes--it's nothing."

"I meant to say more, but I am ashamed of having said even that. 
Not everything can be put into words, there are things it's
better never to say at all; I said a good deal, but you did not
understand."

"Why, so you, too, are sometimes distressed at the impossibility of
putting thought into words!  That's a noble sorrow, my dear fellow,
and it's only vouchsafed to the elect: the fool is always satisfied
with what he has said, and always, too, says more than he need;
they love to have something to spare."

"As I see I did, for instance; I said more than I need: I asked for
the 'whole of Versilov,' that was a great deal too much; I don't
need Versilov at all."

"My dear fellow, I see you want to retrieve your failure downstairs.
It is very evident you repent it, and as repentance among us always
involves immediately attacking some one, you are very anxious to hit
hard this time.  I have come too soon, and you have not yet cooled
down, and besides you are not very good at standing criticism.  But
sit down, for mercy's sake; I have come to tell you something; thank
you, that's right.  From what you said to your mother, as you went
out, it's quite clear that it is better for us to separate.  I have
come to persuade you to do so as gently and with as little fuss as
possible, to avoid grieving and alarming your mother any further.
My coming up here even has cheered her.  She believes in a way that
we may still be reconciled and that everything will go on as before.
I imagine that if we were to laugh heartily once or twice we should
fill their timid hearts with delight.  They may be simple souls, but
they are sincere and true- hearted in their love.  Why not humour
them on occasion?  Well, that's one thing.  Another thing: why
should we necessarily part thirsting for revenge, gnashing our
teeth, vowing vengeance, etc.  Of course there is no manner of need
to fall on each other's necks, but we might part, so to say, with
mutual respect, mightn't we?"

"That's all nonsense!  I promise to go away without a fuss--and
that's enough.  And is it for my mother's sake you are anxious? 
But it strikes me that my mother's peace of mind has absolutely
nothing to do with it, and you are simply saying that."

"You don't believe it?"

"You talk to me just as though I were a baby."

"I am ready to beg your pardon a thousand times over for that, in
fact for everything you bring up against me, for those years of
your childhood and the rest of it, but, cher enfant, what will be
the use of it?  You are too clever to want to be put into such a
stupid position.  To say nothing of my not understanding, so far,
the exact nature of your accusations.  What is it you blame me for
in reality?  For your not having been born a Versilov?  Bah!  You
laugh contemptuously and wave your hands, so that's not it?"

"No, I assure you.  I assure you I don't think it an honour to be
called Versilov."

"Let's leave honour out of the question; and, besides, your answer
was bound to be democratic; but if so, what are you blaming me
for?"

"Tatyana Pavlovna told me just now all I needed to know, and had
always failed to grasp, till she spoke.  That is, that you did not
apprentice me to a shoemaker, and that consequently I had to be
grateful, too.  I can't understand why it is I am not grateful,
even now, even after I have been taught my lesson.  Isn't it the
pride of your race showing itself in me, Andrey Petrovitch?"

"Probably not, and apart from that, you must admit that by your
sallies downstairs you've only bullied and tormented your mother
instead of crushing me, as you intended.  Yet I should have thought
it was not for you to judge her.  Besides, what wrong has she done
you?  Explain to me, too, by the way, my dear fellow: for what
reason and with what object did you spread abroad that you were
illegitimate, at your boarding school and at the grammar school,
and everywhere you have been, to every casual stranger, as I hear
you have?  I hear that you did this with a peculiar relish.  And
yet that's all nonsense, and a revolting calumny: you are
legitimate, a Dolgoruky, the son of Makar Ivanovitch Dolgoruky, a
respectable man, remarkable for his intelligence and character. 
That you have received a superior education is entirely owing to
your former master, Versilov, and what's the upshot of it?  By
proclaiming your illegitimacy, which is a calumny in itself, you
first and foremost gave away your mother's secret, and from a false
pride exposed your mother to the criticism of every dirty stranger. 
My dear fellow, that was very discreditable, especially as your
mother is in no way to blame: she has a nature of the greatest
purity, and that her name is not Versilov is simply because her
husband is still living."

"Enough, I entirely agree with you, and I have enough faith in your
intelligence to hope that you won't go on rating at me too long for
it.  You are so fond of moderation; and yet there's a moderation in
all things, even in your sudden love for my mother.  I'll tell you
what would be better: since you have gone so far as to come up and
see me and mean to spend a quarter of an hour or half an hour with
me (I still don't know what for, we'll assume for my mother's peace
of mind), and what's more, in spite of the scene downstairs, seem
so eager to talk to me, you had better tell me about my father--
tell me about Makar Ivanovitch the pilgrim.  I want to hear from
you about him: I have been intending to ask you for some time past. 
Now that we are parting perhaps for a long time, I should very much
like to get from you an answer to another question: has it really
been impossible for you during these twenty years to affect my
mother's traditional ideas--and now my sister's, too--so as to
dissipate by your civilizing influence the primitive darkness of
her environment?  Oh, I am not speaking of the purity of her
nature.  She's infinitely nobler than you, morally anyway, excuse
my saying so . . . but she's only an infinitely noble corpse. 
Versilov is the only one living, everything else about him and
everything connected with him exists only on the express condition
of having the honour to nourish him with its force, its living sap. 
But I suppose she, too, was once alive, wasn't she?  I suppose you
loved something in her, didn't you?  I suppose she was once a
woman?"

"My dear fellow, she never was, if you will have it," he assured
me, at once dropping into his habitual manner with me, with which I
was so familiar, and by which I was so enraged, that is he was
apparently all sincerity and open-heartedness, but if one looked
more closely there was nothing in him but the deepest irony: "she
never was.  The Russian woman never is a woman."

"Is the Polish woman, the French woman?  Or the Italian, the
passionate Italian, that's the sort to fascinate the civilized
upper-class Russian of the type of Versilov?"

"Well, I certainly did not expect to meet a Slavophil," laughed
Versilov.

I remember his story, word for word: he began talking with great
readiness indeed, and with evident pleasure.  It was quite clear to
me, that he had come up not to have a gossip with me, and not to
pacify my mother either, but with some other object.


2


"Your mother and I have spent these twenty years together in
silence," he began, prattling on (it was utterly affected and
unnatural), "and all that passed between us took place in silence. 
The chief characteristic of our twenty years' connection has been
its--dumbness.  I believe we have never once quarrelled.  It is
true I have often gone away and left her alone, but it has always
ended in my coming back.  Nous revenons toujours; indeed, it's a
fundamental characteristic of men; it's due to their magnanimity. 
If marriage depended on women alone, not a single marriage would
last.  Meekness, submissiveness, self-abasement, and at the same
time firmness, strength, real strength, that's your mother's
character.  Take note, that she's the best of all the women I've
met in my life.  And that she has strength I can bear witness: I
have seen how that strength has supported her.  When it's a matter,
I won't say of convictions--convictions are out of the question--
but what they look upon as convictions, and so, to their thinking,
sacred, she is ready to face torture.  Well, I leave you to judge,
whether I am much like a torturer.  That's why I have preferred to
remain silent about almost everything, and not simply because it
was more convenient, and I confess I don't regret it.  In this way
our life has gone on of itself on broad and humane lines, so that
indeed I take no credit to myself for it.  I must say by the way in
parenthesis, that for some reason she never believed in my
humanity, and so was always in a tremor; but, though she has
trembled, she has never given in to any advanced ideas.  They are
so good at that, while we never understand that sort of thing, and
in fact they are much better at managing things for themselves than
we are.  They are able to go on living their own lives in positions
most unnatural to them, and in positions most strange to them they
remain always the same.  But we can't do that."

"Who are 'they'?  I don't quite understand you."

"The people, my dear fellow, I'm speaking of the common people. 
They have shown their great living force, and their historical
breadth both morally and politically.  But, to come back to
ourselves, I may remark about your mother, that she is not always
dumb; your mother sometimes speaks, but she speaks in such a way
that you see at once that you simply waste time in talking to her,
even though you might have been preparing her for five years
beforehand.  Moreover, she makes the most unexpected objections. 
Note again, that I am far from calling her a fool; on the contrary,
she has intelligence of a sort, and even remarkable intelligence;
though perhaps you will not believe in her intelligence. . . ."

"Why not?  What I don't believe is that you really believe in her
intelligence yourself, and are not pretending."

"Yes?  You look upon me as such a chameleon?  My dear fellow,
I am allowing you a little too much licence . . . like a spoilt
son. . . .  So be it for the time."

"Tell me if you can the truth about my father."

"About Makar Ivanovitch?  Makar Ivanovitch was, as you are aware,
a house-serf, who, so to speak, had a yearning for glory of a
sort. . . ."

"I bet that at this minute you feel envious of him!"

"On the contrary, my dear fellow, on the contrary, and if you like
I am very glad to see you in such a flippant mood; I swear that I
am in a penitent frame of mind, and just now, at this moment, I
regret a thousand times over all that happened twenty years ago. 
And besides, God knows, it all happened quite accidentally . . .
well, and, so far as in me lay, humanely too;--as I conceived of an
act of humanity in those days anyway.  Oh, in those days we were
all boiling over with zeal for doing good, for serving the public
weal, for a higher ideal; we disapproved of class distinctions, of
the privileges of our rank, of our property and even of usury, at
least some of us did. . . .  I declare we did.  There were not many
of us, but we said good things, and sometimes, I assure you, did
good things, too."

"That was when you sobbed on his shoulder."

"I am ready to agree with you on every point beforehand.  By the
way, you heard of that shoulder from me, and so, at this moment,
you are making spiteful use of my frankness and confidence in you;
but you must admit that there was not so much harm in that episode
as might seem at the first glance, especially for that period.  To
be sure we were only making a beginning then.  Of course it was a
pose, but I did not know at the time that it was a pose.  Have you,
for instance, never posed in practical affairs?"

"I was rather sentimental downstairs, just now, and as I came up
here I felt horribly ashamed at the thought that you might imagine
I had been posing.  It is true in some cases, though one's feelings
are sincere, one makes a display of one's feelings.  I swear that
everything I said downstairs was absolutely genuine."

"That's exactly it; you have very successfully defined it in a
phrase, 'though one's feelings are sincere one makes a display of
one's self'; but do you know it was just the same with me.  Though
I was making a display of them, my sobs were perfectly genuine.  I
don't deny that Makar Ivanovitch might, if he had been wittily
disposed, have looked upon my sobs as the climax of mockery, but in
those days he was too honest to be so clear-sighted.  I don't know
whether he felt sorry for me or not.  I remember that I had a great
desire that he should."

"Do you know," I interrupted him, "you're jeering now when you say
that?  And in fact, all this last month whenever you have talked to
me, you have been jeering.  Why have you done so, whenever you have
talked with me?"

"You think so?" he answered mildly; "you are very suspicious;
however, if I do laugh it's not at you, or, at least not only at
you, don't be uneasy.  But I am not laughing now, and then--in
short I did everything I could then, and, believe me, not for my
personal advantage.  We, that is, superior people, unlike the
common people, do not know how to act for our personal advantage:
on the contrary, we made a mess of it as far as we possibly could,
and I suspect that that was considered among us in those days 'our
higher advantage,' in an exalted sense of course.  The present
generation of advanced people are much keener on the main chance
than we were.  Even before our 'sin' I explained the whole position
to Makar Ivanovitch with extraordinary directness.  I am ready to
admit now, that a great deal need not have been explained at all,
especially with such directness; to say nothing of humanity it
would have been far more polite, but . . . but there's no pulling
up when you once begin dancing, and want to cut a fine caper.  And
perhaps our cravings for the fine and exalted only amount to that
in reality.  All my life I have never been able to make up my mind
about it.  However, that is too deep a subject for our superficial
conversation, but I assure you I am sometimes ready to die with
shame, when I recall it.  I offered him at the time three thousand
roubles, and I remember he did not say a word and I did all the
talking.  Only fancy, I imagined that he was afraid of me, that is
of my rights of ownership over him, and I remember I did my utmost
to reassure him; I kept trying to persuade him to have no
apprehension, but to tell me his wishes frankly and without sparing
me.  By way of guarantee I promised him, that if he did not accept
my terms, that is three thousand with freedom (for himself and his
wife, of course)--and a journey wherever he pleased (without his
wife, of course)--then let him say so straight out, and I would at
once give him his freedom, let his wife go, and compensate them
both with the same three thousand, I believe, and they should not
go away from me, but I would go away myself in solitude for three
years to Italy.  Mon ami, I should not have taken Mlle. Sapozhkov
with me to Italy, you may be sure of that.  I was extremely pure at
that epoch.  And, do you know, Makar Ivanovitch knew perfectly well
that I should do as I promised; but he still remained silent, and
only when I was about to throw myself on his neck, for the third
time, he drew back, waved his hand, and went out of the room with a
certain lack of ceremony, indeed, which I assure you surprised me
at the time.  I caught a glimpse of myself in the looking-glass and
I can't forget it.

"As a rule when they don't speak it's worst of all, and he was a
gloomy character, and I must confess that far from feeling sure of
him I was awfully afraid of him, when I summoned him to my study. 
In that class there are types, and many of them, who are, so to
speak, the very incarnation of all that's ill-bred, and one's more
afraid of that than a beating.  Sic.  And what a risk I was
running, what a risk!  Why, what if he had begun shouting for all
the servants to hear, had howled, this village Uriah, what would
have become of me, such a juvenile David, and what should I have
done then?  That's why I trotted out the three thousand first of
all, that was instinctive; but luckily I was mistaken: this Makar
Ivanovitch was something quite different."

"Tell me, had you 'sinned' then?  You said just now that you
summoned the husband beforehand."

"Well, do you see . . . that is . . . as one understands it. . . ."

"Oh, you had then.  You said just now you were mistaken in him,
that he was something different; how different?"

"Well, how exactly I don't know to this day, but somehow different,
and, do you know, positively very decent.  I think so because in
the end I felt more than ever ashamed to face him.  Next day he
agreed to the journey, without any words, but without, of course,
forgetting one of the inducements I had offered him."

"He took the money?"

"I should think so!  And you know, my dear fellow, in that point he
surprised me too.  I had not, of course, three thousand at the time
in my pocket, but I procured seven hundred and handed it over to
him as the first instalment; and what do you think?  He demanded
the remaining two thousand three hundred from me in the form of a
credit note made payable to a certain merchant for security.  And
two years later, by means of that credit note, he got the money out
of me before a court, and with interest too, so that he surprised
me again, especially as he had literally gone collecting funds for
building a church, and has been a pilgrim ever since, that is, for
the last twenty years.  I don't understand what a pilgrim should
want money of his own for . . . money which is such a worldly
thing. . . .  I offered the money at the minute of course with
perfect sincerity, and, so to speak, in the first flush of feeling,
but afterwards, after the lapse of so many minutes, I might
naturally have thought better of it . . . and might have reckoned
that he would spare me . . . or, so to say, spare US, me and her,
and would have waited for a time at least.  But he lost no time
however. . . ."

Here I must make a necessary note.  If my mother were to outlive M.
Versilov, she would have been left literally without a farthing in
her old age, had it not been for Makar Ivanovitch's three thousand,
which had been doubled long ago by the accumulation of interest,
and which he had the previous year left her intact in his will.  He
had seen through Versilov even in those days.

"You told me once that Makar Ivanovitch had come several times on a
visit to you, and always stayed at mother's lodgings?"

"Yes, my dear boy: and I must confess at first I was awfully
frightened of these visits.  He has come six or seven times
altogether during this period, that is, the last twenty years, and
on the first occasions I used to hide myself if I were in the house
when he arrived.  At first I could not make out what it meant, and
why he had turned up.  But afterwards I thought that from certain
points of view it was by no means so stupid on his part. 
Afterwards it somehow occurred to me to feel curious about him; I
came out to have a look at him, and formed, I assure you, a very
original impression of him.  This was on his third or fourth visit,
at the time when I had just been appointed a mediator, and when, of
course, I was getting all my energies to work to study Russia.  I
heard from him a very great deal that was new to me.  I found in
him, besides, what I had never expected to find: a sort of benign
serenity, an evenness of temper, and what was more surprising than
anything, something almost like gaiety.  Not the faintest allusion
to THAT (tu comprends) and a very great capacity for talking sense,
and talking extremely well, that is, with none of that silly
servantish profundity, which I confess to you I can't endure,
democratic as I am, and with none of those far-fetched Russian
expressions which 'the genuine Russian peasant' makes use of in
novels and on the stage.  At the same time very little about
religion, unless one begins upon the subject, and most charming
descriptions of the monastery and monastic life, if one asks
questions about it.  And above all--respectfulness, that modest
courtesy, just that courtesy which is essential for the truest
equality, and without which, indeed, in my opinion, one cannot be
really superior.  The truest good-breeding is in such cases
attained through the complete absence of conceit, and the man shows
himself secure in his self-respect in his own station of life
whatever that may be, and whatever fate may befall him.  This power
of respecting one's self in one's own position is extremely rare,
as rare, anyway, as real personal dignity. . . .  You will see that
for yourself if you live long enough.  But what struck me most of
all, especially later on, and not at the beginning," added
Versilov, "was the fact that this Makar had an extraordinary
stateliness, and was, I assure you, very handsome.  It is true he
was old, but--


          Dark visaged, tall, erect,


simple and dignified; I actually wondered how my poor Sonia could
have preferred me THEN; at that time he was fifty, but he was still
a fine fellow, and compared with him I was such a.  featherhead.  I
remember, however, that he was unpardonably grey even then; so he
must have been just as grey-headed when he married her. . . . 
Perhaps that had an influence."

Versilov had a very nasty aristocratic trick: after saying (when he
could not help it) some particularly clever and fine things, he
would all at once intentionally cap them with some stupid saying
such as this remark about Makar Ivanovitch's grey hair, and the
influence it had on my mother.  He did this on purpose, probably
without knowing why he did it, from a silly snobbish habit.  To
hear him, one would suppose he was speaking quite seriously, and
all the while he was posing to himself, or laughing.


3


I don't know why but I was suddenly overcome by an intense
exasperation.  In fact, I recall with extreme dissatisfaction some
of my behaviour during those minutes; I suddenly got up from my
seat.

"I tell you what," I said: "you say you came up chiefly that my
mother might imagine we were reconciled.  Time enough has passed
for her to imagine it; will you be so good as to leave me alone?"

He flushed slightly and got up from his place.

"My dear boy, you are extremely unceremonious with me.  However,
good-bye; there is no winning love by force.  I will only venture
upon one question: do you really want to leave the prince?"

"Aha!  I knew you had some object in your mind. . . ."

"That is, you suspect I came up to induce you to stay with the
prince, for some purpose of my own.  But do you suppose, my dear
fellow, that I sent for you from Moscow for some purpose of my own? 
Oh! how suspicious you are.  On the contrary, I was anxious for
your good in every way.  And even now, since my position has so
improved, I should have liked you to let me and your mother help
you sometimes."

"I don't like you, Versilov."

"And 'Versilov' too!  By the way, I greatly regret that I can't
transmit you the name, seeing that in reality constitutes my whole
offence, if offence there is, doesn't it? but again I couldn't
marry a married woman, could I?"

"That was why, I suppose, you wanted to marry an unmarried one?"

A slight spasm passed over his face.

"You are thinking of Ems.  Listen, Arkady, you went so far as to
allude to that downstairs, pouring contempt upon me before your
mother.  You must know that that's where you make your greatest
mistake.  You know nothing whatever of what happened with Lidya
Ahmakov.  You don't know how much your mother had to do with it
all, although she was not with me at the time, and if I have ever
seen a good woman it was when I looked at your mother then.  But
that's enough; all that is a secret still, and you--you talk of
what you don't know, and have heard about from outsiders."

"Only to-day the prince told me that you have a special fancy for
unfledged girls."

"The prince said that?"

"Yes, listen, would you like me to tell you exactly what you have
come up to me for?  I have been sitting here all this time
wondering what was the secret object of this visit, and now I
believe I've guessed it."

He was just going out, but he stopped and turned to me in
expectation.

"I blurted out just now that Touchard's letter to Tatyana Pavlovna
was among Andronikov's papers, and at his death came into the hands
of Marie Ivanovna.  I saw how your face suddenly twitched, and I
only guessed why just now, when your face twitched again in the
same way.  The idea suddenly occurred to you that if one letter in
Andronikov's keeping had come into Marie Ivanovna's hands, why
shouldn't another?  And Andronikov might have left very important
letters, mightn't he?"

"So I came up here hoping to make you talk about it?"

"You know that yourself."

He turned very pale.

"You did not imagine that of yourself; there's a woman's influence
in it; and what hatred there is in your words--in your coarse
supposition!"

"A woman?  I have seen that woman for the first time today! 
Perhaps it's just to spy on her you want me to stay on with the old
prince."

"I see, though, that you will do well in your new line.  Isn't
that perhaps 'your idea'?  Go on, my dear fellow, you have an
unmistakable gift for detective work.  Given talent, one must
perfect it."

He paused to take breath.

"Take care, Versilov, don't make me your enemy!"

"My dear fellow, in such cases no one gives utterance to his last
thoughts, but keeps them to himself.  And with that, show me a
light, if you please; though you are my enemy you are not so much
so as to want me to break my neck, I suppose.  Tiens, mon ami, only
fancy," he went on, as he descended the ladder, "all this month I
have been taking you for a good-natured fellow.  You so want to
live and are so thirsting for life that I do believe three lives
would not be enough for you: one can see that in your face, and
people like that are generally good-natured.  And how mistaken I've
been!"


4

I can't express how my heart ached when I was left alone; it was as
though I had cut off a piece of my own living flesh!  Why I had so
suddenly lost my temper, and why I had so insulted him--so
persistently and intentionally--I couldn't say now; nor could I at
the time, of course.  And how pale he had turned!  And who knows,
perhaps that paleness was the expression of the truest and purest
feeling and the deepest sorrow, and not of anger or of offence.  I
always fancied that there had been a moment when he really loved
me.  Why, why could I not believe that now, especially when so much
had been made clear?

I had flown into a sudden fury and actually driven him away, partly
perhaps by my sudden guess that he had come to find out whether
there were not another letter left by Andronikov in Marie
Ivanovna's possession.  That he must have been on the lookout for
those letters, and that he was on the look-out for them I knew. 
But who knows, perhaps at that minute I had made a horrible
blunder!  And who knows, perhaps, by that blunder I had led him to
think of Marie Ivanovna and the possibility of her having letters.

And finally, there was something else that was strange: again he
had repeated word for word my own thought (about three lives),
which I had expressed to Kraft that evening, and, what is more, in
my very words.  The coincidence was of course a chance again, but
how he knew the inmost core of my nature; what insight, what
penetration!  But if he so well understood one thing, why was it he
utterly failed to understand something else?  Was it possible he
was not pretending, could he really be incapable of divining that
it was not the noble rank of a Versilov I wanted, that it was not
my birth I could not forgive him, but that all my life I had wanted
Versilov himself, the whole man, the father, and that this idea had
become part of myself.  Was it possible that so subtle a man could
be so crude and so stupid?  And if not, why did he drive me to
fury, why did he pretend?



CHAPTER VIII


1


I tried to get up as early as possible in the morning.  As a rule
we, that is my mother, my sister and I, used to get up about eight
o'clock.  Versilov used to lie comfortably in bed till half-past
nine.  Punctually at half-past eight my mother used to bring me up
my coffee.  But this time I slipped out of the house at eight
o'clock without waiting for it.  I had the day before mapped out
roughly my plan of action for the whole of this day.  In spite of
my passionate resolve to carry out this plan I felt that there was
a very great deal of it that was uncertain and indefinite in its
most essential points.  That was why I lay all night in a sort of
half-waking state; I had an immense number of dreams, as though I
were light-headed, and I hardly fell asleep properly all night.  In
spite of that I got up feeling fresher and more confident than
usual.  I was particularly anxious not to meet my mother.  I could
not have avoided speaking to her on a certain subject, and I was
afraid of being distracted from the objects I was pursuing by some
new and unexpected impression.

It was a cold morning and a damp, milky mist hovered over
everything.  I don't know why, but I always like the early workaday
morning in Petersburg in spite of its squalid air; and the self-
centred people, always absorbed in thought, and hurrying on their
affairs, have a special attraction for me at eight o'clock in the
morning.  As I hasten on my road I particularly like either asking
some one a practical question, or being asked one by some passer-
by: both question and answer are always brief, clear, and to the
point; they are spoken without stopping and almost always in a
friendly manner, and there is a greater readiness to answer than at
any other hour.  In the middle of the day, or in the evening, the
Petersburger is far more apt to be abusive or jeering.  It is quite
different early in the morning, before work has begun, at the
soberest and most serious hour of the day.  I have noticed that.

I set off again for the Petersburg Side.  As I had to be back in
Fontanka by twelve o'clock to see Vassin (who was always more
likely to be at home at midday), I hurried on without stopping,
though I had a great longing to have a cup of coffee.  It was
absolutely necessary to find Efim Zvyerev at home too; I went to
him and almost missed him; he had finished his coffee and was just
ready to go out.

"What brings you here so often?" was how he greeted me without
getting up from his seat.

"I will explain that directly."

The early morning everywhere, including Petersburg, has a sobering
effect on a man's nature.  Some of the passionate dreams of night
evaporate completely with the light and chill of morning, and it
has happened to me myself sometimes to recall in the morning my
dreams and even my actions of the previous night, with shame and
self-reproach.  But I will remark, however, in passing, I consider
a Petersburg morning--which might be thought the most prosaic on
the terrestrial globe--almost the most fantastic in the world. 
That is my personal view, or rather impression, but I am prepared
to defend it.  On such a Petersburg morning, foul, damp and foggy,
the wild dream of some Herman out of Pushkin's "Queen of Spades" (a
colossal figure, an extraordinary and regular Petersburg type--the
type of the Petersburg period!) would, I believe, be more like
solid reality.  A hundred times over, in such a fog, I have been
haunted by a strange but persistent fancy:  "What if this fog should
part and float away, would not all this rotten and slimy town go
with it, rise up with the fog, and vanish like smoke, and the old
Finnish marsh be left as before, and in the midst of it, perhaps,
to complete the picture, a bronze horseman on a panting, overdriven
steed."  In fact I cannot find words for my sensations, for all
this is fantastic after all--poetic, and therefore nonsensical;
nevertheless I have often been and often am haunted by an utterly
senseless question:  "Here they are all flitting to and fro, but how
can one tell, perhaps all this is some one's dream, and there is
not one real person here, nor one real action.  Some one who is
dreaming all this will suddenly wake up--and everything will
suddenly disappear."  But I am digressing.

I must say by way of preface that there are projects and dreams in
every one's experience so eccentric that they might well be taken
at first sight for madness.  It was with such a phantasy in my mind
that I arrived that morning at Efim's,--I went to Efim because I
had no one else in Petersburg to whom I could apply on this
occasion.  Yet Efim was the last person to whom I should have gone
with such a proposition if I had had any choice.  When I was
sitting opposite him, I was actually struck myself with the thought
that I was the incarnation of fever and delirium, sitting opposite
the incarnation of prose and the golden mean.  Yet on my side there
was an idea and true feeling, while on his there was nothing but
the practical conviction, that things were not done like that.  In
short I explained to him briefly and clearly that I had absolutely
no one else in Petersburg whom I could send by way of a second in
matter vitally affecting my honour; that he, Efim, was an old
comrade, and therefore had no right to refuse, and that I wanted to
challenge a lieutenant in the Guards, Prince Sokolsky, because more
than a year ago he had given my father a slap in the face at Ems. 
I may mention by the way that Efim knew all the details of my
family circumstances, my relations with Versilov, and almost all
that I knew myself of Versilov's career; I had on various occasions
talked to him of my private affairs, except, of course, of certain
secrets.  He sat and listened as his habit was, all ruffling up his
feathers like a sparrow in a cage, silent and serious, with his
puffy face and his untidy, flaxen-white hair.  A set smile of
mockery never left his lips.  This smile was all the nastier for
being quite unintentional and unconscious; it was evident that he
genuinely and sincerely considered himself at that moment vastly
superior to me in intellect and character.  I suspected, too, that
he despised me for the scene the evening before at Dergatchev's;
that was bound to be so.  Efim was the crowd, Efim was the man in
the street, and the man in the street has no reverence for anything
but success.

"And Versilov knows nothing of this?" he asked.

"Of course not."

"Then what right have you to meddle in his affairs?  That's the
first question.  And the second one is, what do you want to show by
it?"

I was prepared for the objection, and at once explained to him that
it was not so stupid as he supposed.  To begin with, the insolent
prince would be shown that there are people, even in our class, who
know what is meant by honour; and secondly, Versilov would be put
to shame and learn a lesson.  And in the third place, what mattered
most of all, even if Versilov had been right in refusing to
challenge him in accordance with his convictions at the time, he
would see that there was some one who was capable of feeling the
insult to him so keenly that he accepted it as an insult to
himself, and was prepared to lay down his life for his, Versilov's,
interests . . . although he was leaving him for ever. . . .

"Wait a minute, don't shout, my aunt does not like it.  Tell me, is
it this same Prince Sokolsky that Versilov is at law with about a
will?  If so, this will be quite a new and original way of winning
a lawsuit--to kill your opponent in a duel."

I explained to him en toutes lettres, that he was simply silly and
impertinent, and that if his sarcastic grin was growing broader and
broader, it only showed his conceit and commonplaceness, and that
he was incapable of imagining that I had had the lawsuit in my mind
from the very beginning, and that reflection on that subject was
not confined to his sagacity.  Then I informed him that the case
was already decided, and, moreover, it had not been brought by
Prince Sokolsky but by the Princes Sokolsky, so that if a Prince
Sokolsky were killed the others would be left, but that no doubt it
would be necessary to put off the challenge till the end of the
time within which an appeal was possible, not that the Solkoskys
would as a fact appeal, but simply as a matter of good form.  When
the latest possible date for an appeal had passed, the challenge
would follow; that I had come about it now, not that the duel would
take place immediately, but that I must be prepared at any rate in
time to find a second, if he, Efim, refused, as I knew no one. 
That was why, I said, I had come.

"Well, come and talk about it then, or else you'll be leading us a
wild-goose chase."

He stood up and took his cap.

"So you'll go then?"

"No, of course I won't."

"Why not?"

"Well, for one reason if I agreed now that I would go then, you
would begin hanging about here every evening till the time for the
appeal was over.  And besides, it's simply nonsense, and that's all
about it.  And am I going to mess up my career for you?  Why,
Prince Sokolsky will ask me at once:  'Who sent you?'--'Dolgoruky'--
'And what's Dolgoruky got to do with Versilov?'  And am I to
explain your pedigree to him, pray?  Why, he'd burst out laughing!"

"Then you give him a punch in the face!"

"But it's all gibberish."

"You're afraid!  You so tall and the strongest at the grammar
school!"

"I'm afraid, of course, I am afraid.  Besides, the prince won't
fight, for they only fight their equals."

"I am a gentleman, too, by education.  I have rights, I am his
equal . . . on the contrary, he is not my equal."

"You are a small boy."

"How a small boy?"

"Just a small boy; we are both boys but he is grown up."

"You fool!  But I might have been married a year ago by the law."

"Well, get married then, but anyway you are a ----! you will grow
up one day!"

I saw, of course, that he thought fit to jeer at me.  I might not
indeed have told all this foolish episode, and it would have been
better in fact for it to have perished in obscurity; besides, it's
revolting in its pettiness and gratuitousness, though it had rather
serious consequences.

But to punish myself still further I will describe it fully. 
Realizing that Efim was jeering at me, I permitted myself to push
him on the shoulder with my right hand, or rather my right fist. 
Then he took me by the shoulder, turned me upside down and--proved
to me conclusively that he was the strongest of us at the grammar
school.


2


The reader will doubtless imagine that I was in a terrible state of
mind when I came out from Efim's; he will be mistaken, however.  I
quite realized that what had happened was only schoolboyishness,
but the gravity of my purpose remained unchanged.  I got some
coffee at Vassilyevsky Island, purposely avoiding the restaurant I
had been at the evening before on the Petersburg Side; the
restaurant and its nightingale were doubly hateful to me.  It is a
strange characteristic of mine that I am capable of hating places
and things as though they were people.  On the other hand I have
happy places in Petersburg, that is places where I have at some
time or other been happy.  And I am careful of those places, and
purposely avoid visiting them as far as possible, that later on
when I am alone and unhappy I may go back to them to brood over my
griefs and my memories.  Over my coffee I did full justice to Efim
and his common sense.  Yes, he was more practical than I was, but I
doubt whether he was in closer touch with reality.  A realism that
refuses to look beyond the end of its nose is more dangerous than
the maddest romanticism, because it is blind.  But while I did
justice to Efim (who probably at that moment imagined that I was
wandering about the streets swearing)--I did not give up one point
in my convictions, and I have not to this day.  I have seen people
who at the first bucket of cold water have abandoned their course
of action, and even their idea, and begun laughing themselves at
what an hour before they looked upon as sacred.  Oh, how easily
that is done!  Even if Efim were more right than I in the main, and
I were foolish beyond all foolishness and giving myself airs, yet
at the very bottom of it all there was a point of view upon which I
was right: there was something to be said on my side also, and what
is more, too, it was something they could never understand.

I reached Vassin's in Fontanka, near the Semyonovsky bridge, at
twelve o'clock punctually, but I did not find him at home.  His
work was in Vassilyevsky Island, and he was only at home at certain
fixed hours, almost always at midday.  And as it was a holiday I
made sure of finding him; not finding him I decided to wait,
although it was my first visit.

I reasoned that the matter of the letter was a question of
conscience, and in choosing Vassin to decide it I was showing him
the deepest respect, which no doubt must be flattering to him.  Of
course, I was really worried by this letter and was genuinely
persuaded of the necessity of an outside opinion; but I suspect
that I could have got out of my difficulty without any outside
help.  And what is more I was aware of that myself; I had only to
give the letter to Versilov, to put it into his hands and then let
him do what he liked with it--that would have settled it.  To set
myself up as judge, as arbitrator in a matter of this sort was
indeed utterly irregular.  By confining myself to handing over the
letter, especially in silence, I should have scored at once,
putting myself into a position of superiority over Versilov.  For
renouncing all the advantages of the inheritance as far as I was
concerned (for some part of it would have been sure, sooner or
later, to have fallen to me as Versilov's son), I should have
secured for ever a superior moral attitude in regard to Versilov's
future action.  Nobody, on the other hand, could reproach me for
ruining the Sokolskys, since the document had no decisive legal
value.  All this I thought over and made perfectly clear to myself,
sitting in Vassin's empty room, and it even occurred to me suddenly
that I had come to Vassin's, so thirsting for his advice how to
act, simply to show him what a generous and irreproachable person I
was, and so to avenge myself for my humiliation before him the
previous evening.

As I recognized all this, I felt great vexation; nevertheless I did
not go away, but sat on, though I knew for certain that my vexation
would only grow greater every five minutes.

First of all, I began to feel an intense dislike for Vassin's room. 
"Show me your room and I will tell you your character," one really
may say that.  Vassin had a furnished room in a flat belonging to
people evidently poor, who let lodgings for their living and had
other lodgers besides Vassin.  I was familiar with poky apartments
of this sort, scarcely furnished, yet with pretensions to comfort:
there is invariably a soft sofa from the second-hand market, which
is dangerous to move; a washing-stand and an iron bed shut off by a
screen.  Vassin was evidently the best and the most to be depended
on of the lodgers.  Lodging-house keepers always have one such best
lodger, and particularly try to please him.  They sweep and tidy
his room more carefully, and hang lithographs over his sofa; under
the table they lay an emaciated-looking rug.  People who are fond
of stuffy tidiness and, still more, of obsequious deference in
their landladies are to be suspected.  I felt convinced that Vassin
himself was flattered by his position as best lodger.  I don't know
why, but the sight of those two tables piled up with books
gradually enraged me.  The books, the papers, the inkstand, all
were arrayed with a revolting tidiness, the ideal of which would
have coincided with the loftiest conceptions of a German landlady
and her maidservant.  There were a good many books, not merely
magazines and reviews, but real books, and he evidently read them,
and he probably sat down to read or to write with an extremely
important and precise expression.  I don't know why, but I prefer
to see books lying about in disorder.  Then, at any rate, work is
not made into a sacred rite.  No doubt Vassin was extremely polite
to his visitors, but probably every gesture he made told them
plainly, "I will spend an hour and a half with you, and afterwards,
when you go away, I'll set to work."  No doubt one might have a
very interesting conversation with him and hear something new from
him, but he would be thinking, "Here we are talking now, and I am
interesting you very much, but when you go away, I shall proceed to
something more interesting. . . ."  Yet I did not go away, but went
on sitting there.  That I had absolutely no need of his advice I
was by now thoroughly convinced.

I stayed for over an hour sitting on one of the two rush-bottom
chairs which had been placed by the window.  It enraged me, too,
that time was passing and that before evening I had to find a
lodging.  I was so bored that I felt inclined to take up a book,
but I did not.  At the very thought of distracting my mind I felt
more disgusted than ever.  For more than an hour there had been an
extraordinary silence, when I began gradually and unconsciously to
distinguish the sound of whispering, which kept growing louder, and
came from somewhere close by, the other side of a door that was
blocked up by the sofa.  There were two voices, evidently women's,
so much I could hear, but I could not distinguish the words.  And
yet I was so bored that I began to listen.  It was obvious that
they were talking earnestly and passionately, and that they were
not talking about patterns.  They were discussing or disputing
about something, or one voice was persuading, or entreating, while
the other was refusing or protesting.  They must have been other
lodgers.  I soon got tired, and my ear became accustomed to the
sound, so that though I went on listening, it was only mechanically,
and sometimes quite without remembering that I was listening, when
suddenly something extraordinary happened, as though some one had
jumped down off a chair on to both feet, or had suddenly leapt up
and stamped; then I heard a moan, then suddenly a shriek, or rather
not a shriek but an infuriated animal squeal, reckless whether it
could be overheard or not.

I rushed to the door and opened it; another door at the end of the
corridor was opened simultaneously, the door of the landlady's room
as I learned later, and from it two inquisitive faces peeped out. 
The shriek, however, ceased at once, and suddenly the door next to
mine opened, and a young woman--so at least she seemed to me--
dashed out, and rushed downstairs.  The other woman, who was
elderly, tried to stop her, but did not succeed, and could only
moan after her:

"Olya, Olya, where are you going?  Och!"  But noticing our two open
doors, she promptly closed hers, leaving a crack through which she
listened till Olya's footsteps had died away completely on the
stairs.  I turned to my window.  All was silence.  It was a trivial
and perhaps ridiculous incident, and I left off thinking of it.

About a quarter of an hour later I heard in the corridor at
Vassin's door a loud and free-and-easy masculine voice.  Some one
took hold of the door-handle, and opened the door far enough for me
to see in the passage a tall man who had already obviously seen and
indeed had carefully scrutinized me, although he had not yet
entered the room, but still holding the door-handle went on talking
to the landlady at the other end of the passage.  The landlady
called back to him in a thin, piping little voice which betrayed
that he was an old acquaintance, respected and valued by her as a
visitor of consequence, and a gentleman of a merry disposition. 
The merry gentleman shouted witticisms, but his theme was only the
impossibility of finding Vassin at home.  He declared that this was
his destiny from his birth up, that he would wait again as before. 
And all this, no doubt, seemed the height of wit to the landlady. 
Finally the visitor flung the door wide open and came in.

He was a well-dressed gentleman, evidently turned out by a good
tailor, as they say, "like a real gentleman," though there was
nothing of "the real gentleman" about him, in spite, I fancy, of
his desire to appear one.  He was not exactly free and easy, but
somehow naturally insolent, which is anyway less offensive than an
insolence practised before the looking-glass.  His brown, slightly
grizzled hair, his black eyebrows, big beard and large eyes instead
of helping to define his character, actually gave him something
universal, like every one else.  This sort of man laughs and is
ready to laugh, but for some reason one is never cheerful in his
company.  He quickly passes from a jocular to a dignified air, from
dignity to playfulness or winking, but all this seems somehow put
on and causeless. . . .  However, there is no need to describe him
further.  I came later on to know this gentleman more intimately,
and therefore I have a more definite impression of him now than
when he opened the door and came into the room.  However, even now
I should find it difficult to say anything exact or definite about
him, because the chief characteristic of such people is just their
incompleteness, their artificiality and their indefiniteness.

He had scarcely sat down when it dawned upon me that he must be
Vassin's stepfather, one M. Stebelkov, of whom I had already heard
something, but so casually that I couldn't tell what it was: I
could only remember that it was not to his advantage.  I knew that
Yassin had long ago been left an orphan under this gentleman's
control, but that for some years past he had not been under his
influence, that their aims and interests were different, and that
they lived entirely separated in all respects.  It came back to my
mind, too, that this Stebelkov had some money, that he was, indeed,
something of a speculator and spendthrift; in fact I had probably
heard something more definite about him, but I have forgotten.  He
looked me up and down, without bowing to me, however, put his top
hat down on a table in front of the sofa, kicked away the table
with an air of authority, and instead of quietly sitting down,
flung himself full length on the sofa (on which I had not ventured
to sit) so that it positively creaked, and dangling his legs held
his right foot up in the air and began admiring the tip of his
patent-leather boot.  Of course he turned at once to me and stared
at me with his big and rather fixed-looking eyes.

"I don't find him in," he gave me a slight nod.

I did not speak.

"Not punctual!  He has his own ideas.  From the Petersburg Side?"

"You mean you've come from the Petersburg Side?" I asked him in my
turn.

"No, I asked whether you had."

"I . . . yes, I have . . . but how did you know?"

"How did I know?  H'm!"  He winked, but did not deign to explain.

"I don't live on the Petersburg Side, but I've just been there and
have come from there."

He remained silent, still with the same significant smile, which I
disliked extremely.  There was something stupid in his winking.

"From M. Dergatchev's?" he said at last.

"From Dergatchev's?"  I opened my eyes.  He gazed at me
triumphantly.  "I don't know him."

"H'm!"

"Well, as you please," I answered.  I began to loathe him.

"H'm. . . .  To be sure.  No, excuse me: you buy a thing at a shop,
at another shop next door another man buys something else, and
what, do you suppose?  Money from a tradesman who is called a
money-lender . . . for money too is an article of sale, and a
money-lender is a tradesman too. . . .  You follow me?"

"Certainly I follow."

"A third purchaser comes along, and pointing to one shop, he says,
'This is sound.'  Then he points to the other shop and says, 'This
is unsound.'  What am I to conclude about this purchaser?"

"How can I tell."

"No, excuse me.  I'll take an example, man lives by good example. 
I walk along the Nevsky Prospect, and observe on the other side of
the street a gentleman whose character I should like to investigate
more closely.  We walk, one each side of the street as far as the
gate leading to Morskaya, and there, just where the English shop
is, we observe a third gentleman, who has just been run over.  Now
mark: a fourth gentleman walks up, and wishes to investigate the
character of all three of us, including the man who has been run
over, from the point of view of practicability and soundness. . . . 
Do you follow?"

"Excuse me, with great difficulty."

"Quite so; just what I thought.  I'll change the subject.  I was at
the springs in Germany, the mineral springs, as I had frequently
been before, no matter which springs.  I go to drink the waters and
see an Englishman.  It is difficult as you know to make acquaintance
with an Englishman; two months later, having finished my cure, we
were walking, a whole party of us, with alpenstocks on the mountain,
no matter what mountain.  At a pass there is an étape, the one where
the monks make Chartreuse, note that.  I meet a native standing
in solitude looking about him in silence.  I wish to form my
conclusions in regard to his soundness: what do you think, can I
apply for conclusions to the crowd of Englishmen with whom I am
travelling solely because I was unable to talk to them at the
springs?"

"How can I tell?  Excuse me, it's very difficult to follow you."

"Difficult, is it?"

"Yes, you weary me."

"H'm."  He winked and made a gesture, probably intended to suggest
victory and triumph; then with stolid composure he took out of his
pocket a newspaper which he had evidently only just bought,
unfolded it and began reading the last page, apparently intending
to leave me undisturbed.  For five minutes he did not look at me.

"Brestograevskies haven't gone smash, eh!  Once they've started,
they go on!  I know a lot that have gone smash."

He looked at me with intense earnestness.

"I don't know much about the Stock Exchange so far," I answered.

"You disapprove of it."

"What?"

"Money."

"I don't disapprove of money but . . . but I think ideas come first
and money second."

"That is, allow me to say. . . .  Here you have a man, so to say,
with his own capital. . . ."

"A lofty idea comes before money, and a society with money but
without a lofty idea comes to grief."

I don't know why, but I began to grow hot.  He looked at me rather
blankly, as though he were perplexed, but suddenly his whole face
relaxed in a gleeful and cunning smile.

"Versilov, hey?  He's fairly scored, he has!  Judgment given
yesterday, eh?"

I suddenly perceived to my surprise that he knew who I was, and
perhaps knew a great deal more.  But I don't understand why I
flushed and stared in a most idiotic way without taking my eyes off
him.  He was evidently triumphant.  He looked at me in high glee,
as though he had found me out and caught me in the cleverest way.

"No," he said, raising both his eyebrows; "you ask me about M.
Versilov.  What did I say to you just now about soundness?  A year
and a half ago over that baby he might have made a very perfect
little job, but he came to grief."

"Over what baby?"

"The baby who is being brought up now out of the way, but he won't
gain anything by it . . . because. . . ."

"What baby?  What do you mean?"

"His baby, of course, his own by Mlle. Lidya Ahmakov. . . .  'A
charming girl very fond of me. . . .' phosphorus matches--eh?"

"What nonsense, what a wild story!  He never had a baby by Mlle.
Ahmakov!"

"Go on!  I've been here and there, I've been a doctor and I've been
an accoucheur.  My name's Stebelkov, haven't you heard of me?  It's
true I haven't practised for a long time, but practical advice on a
practical matter I could give."

"You're an accoucheur . . . did you attend Mlle. Ahmakov?"

"No, I did not attend her.  In a suburb there was a doctor Granz,
burdened with a family; he was paid half a thaler, such is the
position of doctors out there, and no one knew him either, so he
was there instead of me. . . .  I recommended him, indeed, because
he was so obscure and unknown.  You follow?  I only gave practical
advice when Versilov, Andrey Petrovitch, asked for it; but he asked
me in dead secret, tête-à-tête.  But Andrey Petrovitch wanted to
catch two hares at once."

I listened in profound astonishment.

"'Chase two hares, catch neither,' according to the popular, or
rather peasant, proverb.  What I say is: exceptions continually
repeated become a general rule.  He went after another hare, or, to
speak plain Russian, after another lady, and with no results.  Hold
tight what you've got.  When he ought to be hastening a thing on,
he potters about: Versilov, that 'petticoat prophet,' as young
Prince Sokolsky well described him before me at the time.  Yes, you
had better come to me!  If there is anything you want to know about
Versilov, you had better come to me!"

He was evidently delighted at my open-mouthed astonishment.  I had
never heard anything before about a baby.  And at that moment the
door of the next room slammed as some one walked rapidly in.

"Versilov lives in Mozhaisky Street, at Litvinov's house, No. 17; I
have been to the address bureau myself!" a woman's voice cried
aloud in an irritable tone; we could hear every word.  Stebelkov
raised his eyebrows and held up his finger.  "We talk of him here,
and there already he's. . . .  Here you have exceptions continually
occurring!  Quand on parle d'une corde. . . ."

He jumped up quickly and sitting down on the sofa, began listening
at the door in front of which the sofa stood.  I too was
tremendously struck.  I reflected that the speaker was probably the
same young girl who had run down the stairs in such excitement. 
But how did Versilov come to be mixed up in this too?  Suddenly
there came again the same shriek, the furious shriek of some one
savage with anger, who has been prevented from getting or doing
something.  The only difference was that the cries and shrieks were
more prolonged than before.  There were sounds of a struggle, a
torrent of words, "I won't, I won't," "Give it up, give it up at
once!" or something of the sort, I don't remember exactly.  Then,
just as before, some one rushed to the door and opened it.  Both
the people in the room rushed out into the passage, one just as
before, trying to restrain the other.  Stebelkov, who had leapt up
from the sofa, and been listening with relish, fairly flew to the
door, and with extreme lack of ceremony dashed into the passage
straight upon the two.  I too, of course, ran to the door.  But his
appearance in the passage acted like a pail of cold water.  The two
women vanished instantly, and shut the door with a slam.

Stebelkov was on the point of dashing after them, but he stopped
short, held up his finger with a smile, and stood considering. 
This time I detected in his smile something nasty, evil and
malignant.  Seeing the landlady, who was again standing in her
doorway, he ran quickly across the passage to her on tiptoe; after
whispering to her for a minute or two, and no doubt receiving
information, he came back to the room, resuming his air of
ponderous dignity, picked up his top-hat from the table, looked at
himself in the looking-glass as he passed, ruffled up his hair, and
with self-complacent dignity went to the next door without even a
glance in my direction.  For an instant he held his ear to the
door, listening, then winked triumphantly across the passage to the
landlady, who shook her finger and wagged her head at him, as
though to say, "Och, naughty man, naughty man!"  Finally with an
air of resolute, even of shrinking delicacy, he knocked with his
knuckles at the door.  A voice asked:

"Who's there?"

"Will you allow me to enter on urgent business?" Stebelkov
pronounced in a loud and dignified voice.

There was a brief delay, yet they did open the door, first only a
little way; but Stebelkov at once clutched the door-handle and
would not let them close it again.  A conversation followed,
Stebelkov began talking loudly, still pushing his way into the
room.  I don't remember the words, but he was speaking about
Versilov, saying that he could tell them, could explain everything--
"Yes, I can tell you," "Yes, you come to me"--or something to that
effect.  They quickly let him in, I went back to the sofa and began
to listen, but I could not catch it all, I could only hear that
Versilov's name was frequently mentioned.  From the intonations of
his voice I guessed that Stebelkov by now had control of the
conversation, that he no longer spoke insinuatingly but
authoritatively, in the same style as he had talked to me--"you
follow?" "kindly note that," and so on.  With women, though, he
must have been extraordinarily affable.  Already I had twice heard
his loud laugh, probably most inappropriate, because accompanying
his voice, and sometimes rising above it, could be heard the voices
of the women, and they sounded anything but cheerful, and
especially that of the young woman, the one who had shrieked: she
talked a great deal, rapidly and nervously, making apparently some
accusation or complaint, and seeking judgment or redress.  But
Stebelkov did not give way, he raised his voice higher and higher,
and laughed more and more often; such men are unable to listen to
other people.  I soon jumped up from the sofa, for it seemed to me
shameful to be eavesdropping, and went back again to the rush-
bottom chair by the window.  I felt convinced that Vassin did not
think much of this gentleman, but that, if anyone else had
expressed the same opinion, he would have at once defended him with
grave dignity, and have observed that, "he was a practical man, and
one of those modern business people who were not to be judged from
our theoretical and abstract standpoints."  At that instant,
however, I felt somehow morally shattered, my heart was throbbing
and I was unmistakably expecting something.

About ten minutes passed; suddenly in the midst of a resounding
peal of laughter some one leapt up from a chair with just the same
noise as before, then I heard shrieks from both the women.  I heard
Stebelkov jump up too and say something in quite a different tone
of voice, as though he were justifying himself and begging them to
listen. . . .  But they did not listen to him; I heard cries of
anger:  "Go away!  You're a scoundrel, you're a shameless villain!" 
In fact it was clear that he was being turned out of the room.  I
opened the door at the very minute when he skipped into the
passage, as it seemed literally thrust out by their hands.  Seeing
me he cried out at once, pointing at me:  "This is Versilov's son! 
If you don't believe me, here is his son, his own son!  I assure
you!"  And he seized me by the arm as though I belonged to him. 
"This is his son, his own son!" he repeated, though he added
nothing by way of explanation, as he led me to the ladies.

The young woman was standing in the passage, the elderly one a step
behind her, in the doorway.  I only remember that this poor girl
was about twenty, and pretty, though thin and sickly looking; she
had red hair, and was somehow a little like my sister; this
likeness flashed upon me at the time, and remained in my memory;
but Liza never had been, and never could have been in the wrathful
frenzy by which the girl standing before me was possessed: her lips
were white, her light grey eyes were flashing, she was trembling
all over with indignation.  I remember, too, that I was in an
exceedingly foolish and undignified position, for, thanks to this
insolent scoundrel, I was at a complete loss what to say.

"What do you mean, his son!  If he's with you he's a scoundrel too. 
If you are Versilov's son," she turned suddenly to me, "tell your
father from me that he is a scoundrel, that he's a mean, shameless
wretch, that I don't want his money. . . .  There, there, there,
give him this money at once!"

She hurriedly took out of her pocket several notes, but the older
lady (her mother, as it appeared later) clutched her hand:

"Olya, but you know . . . perhaps it's not true . . . perhaps it's
not his son!"

Olya looked at her quickly, reflected, looked at me contemptuously
and went back into the room; but before she slammed the door she
stood still in the doorway and shouted to Stebelkov once more:

"Go away!"

And she even stamped her foot at him.  Then the door was slammed
and locked.  Stebelkov, still holding me by the shoulder, with his
finger raised and his mouth relaxed in a slow doubtful grin, bent a
look of inquiry on me.

"I consider the way you've behaved with me ridiculous and
disgraceful," I muttered indignantly.  But he did not hear what
I said, though he was still staring at me.

"This ought to be looked into," he pronounced, pondering.

"But how dare you drag me in?  Who is this?  What is this woman? 
You took me by the shoulder, and brought me in--what does it mean?"

"Yes, by Jove!  A young person who has lost her fair fame . . . a
frequently recurring exception--you follow?"  And he poked me in
the chest with his finger.

"Ech, damnation!"  I pushed away his finger.  But he suddenly and
quite unexpectedly went off into a low, noiseless, prolonged
chuckle of merriment.  Finally he put on his hat and, with a rapid
change to an expression of gloom, he observed, frowning:

"The landlady must be informed . . . they must be turned out of the
lodgings, to be sure, and without loss of time too, or they'll
be . . . you will see!  Mark my words, you will see!  Yes, by Jove!"
he was gleeful again all at once.  "You'll wait for Grisha, I
suppose?"

"No, I shan't wait," I answered resolutely.

"Well, it's all one to me. . . ."

And without adding another syllable he turned, went out, and walked
downstairs, without vouchsafing a glance in the landlady's
direction, though she was evidently expecting news and explanations.
I, too, took up my hat, and asking the landlady to tell Vassin that
I, Dolgoruky, had called, I ran downstairs.


3


I had merely wasted my time.  On coming out I set to work at once
to look for lodgings; but I was preoccupied.  I wandered about the
streets for several hours, and, though I went into five or six
flats with rooms to let, I am sure I passed by twenty without
noticing them.  To increase my vexation I found it far more
difficult to get a lodging than I had imagined.  Everywhere there
were rooms like Vassin's, or a great deal worse, while the rent was
enormous, that is, not what I had reckoned upon.  I asked for
nothing more than a "corner" where I could turn round, and I was
informed contemptuously that if that was what I wanted, I must go
where rooms were let "in corners."  Moreover, I found everywhere
numbers of strange lodgers, in whose proximity I could not have
lived; in fact, I would have paid anything not to have to live in
their proximity.  There were queer gentlemen in their waistcoats
without their coats, who had dishevelled beards, and were
inquisitive and free-and-easy in their manners.  In one tiny room
there were about a dozen such sitting over cards and beer, and I
was offered the next room.  In another place I answered the
landlady's inquiries so absurdly that they looked at me in
surprise, and in one flat I actually began quarrelling with the
people.  However, I won't describe these dismal details; I only
felt that I was awfully tired.  I had something to eat in a
cookshop when it was almost dark.  I finally decided that I would
go and give Versilov the letter concerning the will, with no one
else present (making no explanation), that I would go upstairs,
pack my things in my trunk and bag, and go for the night, if need
be, to an hotel.  At the end of the Obuhovsky Prospect, at the Gate
of Triumph, I knew there was an inn where one could get a room to
oneself for thirty kopecks; I resolved for one night to sacrifice
that sum, rather than sleep at Versilov's.  And as I was passing
the Institute of Technology, the notion suddenly struck me to call
on Tatyana Pavlovna, who lived just opposite the institute.  My
pretext for going in was this same letter about the will, but my
overwhelming impulse to go in was due to some other cause, which I
cannot to this day explain.  My mind was in a turmoil, brooding
over "the baby," the "exceptions that pass into rules."  I had a
longing to tell some one, or to make a scene, or to fight, or even
to have a cry--I can't tell which, but I went up to Tatyana
Pavlovna's.  I had only been there once before, with some message
from my mother, soon after I came from Moscow, and I remember I
went in, gave my message, and went out a minute later, without
sitting down, and indeed she did not ask me to.

I rang the bell, and the cook at once opened the door to me, and
showed me into the room without speaking.  All these details are
necessary that the reader may understand how the mad adventure,
which had so vast an influence on all that followed, was rendered
possible.  And to begin with, as regards the cook.  She was an ill-
tempered, snub-nosed Finnish woman, and I believe hated her
mistress Tatyana Pavlovna, while the latter, on the contrary, could
not bring herself to part with her from a peculiar sort of
infatuation, such as old maids sometimes show for damp-nosed pug
dogs, or somnolent cats.  The Finnish woman was either spiteful and
rude or, after a quarrel, would be silent for weeks together to
punish her mistress.  I must have chanced upon one of these dumb
days, for even when I asked her, as I remember doing, whether her
mistress were at home, she made no answer, but walked off to the
kitchen in silence.  Feeling sure after this that Tatyana Pavlovna
was at home, I walked into the room, and finding no one there,
waited expecting that she would come out of her bedroom before
long; otherwise, why should the cook have shown me in?  Without
sitting down, I waited two minutes, three; it was dusk and Tatyana
Pavlovna's dark flat seemed even less hospitable from the endless
yards of cretonne hanging about.  A couple of words about that
horrid little flat, to explain the surroundings of what followed. 
With her obstinate and peremptory character, and the tastes she had
formed from living in the country in the past, Tatyana Pavlovna
could not put up with furnished lodgings, and had taken this parody
of a flat simply in order to live apart and be her own mistress. 
The two rooms were exactly like two bird-cages, set side by side,
one smaller than the other; the flat was on the third storey, and
the windows looked into the courtyard.  Coming into the flat, one
stepped straight into a tiny passage, a yard and a half wide; on
the left, the two afore-mentioned bird-cages, and at the end of the
passage the tiny kitchen.  The five hundred cubic feet of air
required to last a human being twelve hours were perhaps provided
in this room, but hardly more.  The rooms were hideously low-
pitched, and, what was stupider than anything, the windows, the
doors, the furniture, all were hung or draped with cretonne, good
French cretonne, and decorated with festoons; but this made the
room twice as dark and more than ever like the inside of a
travelling-coach.  In the room where I was waiting it was possible
to turn round, though it was cumbered up with furniture, and the
furniture, by the way, was not at all bad: there were all sorts of
little inlaid tables, with bronze fittings, boxes, an elegant and
even sumptuous toilet table.  But the next room, from which I
expected her to come in, the bedroom, screened off by a thick
curtain, consisted literally of a bedstead, as appeared afterwards. 
All these details are necessary to explain the foolishness of which
I was guilty.

So I had no doubts and was waiting, when there came a ring at the
bell.  I heard the cook cross the little passage with lagging
footsteps, and admit the visitors, still in silence, just as she
had me.  They were two ladies and both were talking loudly, but
what was my amazement when from their voices I recognized one as
Tatyana Pavlovna, and the other as the woman I was least prepared
to meet now, above all in such circumstances!  I could not be
mistaken: I had heard that powerful, mellow, ringing voice the day
before, only for three minutes it is true, but it still resounded
in my heart.  Yes, it was "yesterday's woman."  What was I to do? 
I am not asking the reader this question, I am only picturing that
moment to myself, and I am utterly unable to imagine even now how
it came to pass that I suddenly rushed behind the curtain, and
found myself in Tatyana Pavlovna's bedroom.  In short, I hid
myself, and had scarcely time to do so when they walked in.  Why I
hid and did not come forward to meet them, I don't know.  It all
happened accidentally and absolutely without premeditation.

After rushing into the bedroom and knocking against the bed, I
noticed at once that there was a door leading from the bedroom into
the kitchen, and so there was a way out of my horrible position,
and I could make my escape but--oh, horror! the door was locked,
and there was no key in it.  I sank on the bed in despair; I
realized that I should overhear their talk, and from the first
sentence, from the first sound of their conversation, I guessed
that they were discussing delicate and private matters.  Oh, of
course, a straightforward and honourable man should even then have
got up, come out, said aloud, "I'm here, stop!" and, in spite of
his ridiculous position, walked past them; but I did not get up,
and did not come out; I didn't dare, I was in a most despicable
funk.

"My darling Katerina Nikolaevna, you distress me very much,"
Tatyana Pavlovna was saying in an imploring voice.  "Set your mind
at rest once for all, it's not like you.  You bring joy with you
wherever you go, and now suddenly . . . I suppose you do still
believe in me?  Why, you know how devoted I am to you.  As much so
as to Andrey Petrovitch, and I make no secret of my undying
devotion to him. . . .  But do believe me, I swear on my honour he
has no such document in his possession, and perhaps no one else has
either; and he is not capable of anything so underhand, it's wicked
of you to suspect him.  This hostility between you two is simply
the work of your own imaginations. . . ."

"There is such a document, and he is capable of anything.  And
there, as soon as I go in yesterday, the first person I meet is
ce petit espion, whom he has foisted on my father."

"Ach, ce petit espion!  To begin with he is not an espion at all,
for it was I, I insisted on his going to the prince, or else he
would have gone mad, or died of hunger in Moscow--that was the
account they sent us of him; and what's more, that unmannerly
urchin is a perfect little fool, how could he be a spy?"

"Yes, he is a fool, but that does not prevent his being a
scoundrel.  If I hadn't been so angry, I should have died of
laughing yesterday: he turned pale, he ran about, made bows and
talked French.  And Marie Ivanovna talked of him in Moscow as a
genius.  That that unlucky letter is still in existence and is in
dangerous hands somewhere, I gathered chiefly from Marie Ivanovna's
face."

"My beauty! why you say yourself she has nothing!"

"That's just it, that she has; she does nothing but tell lies, and
she is a good hand at it, I can tell you!  Before I went to Moscow,
I still had hopes that no papers of any sort were left, but then,
then. . . ."

"Oh, it's quite the contrary, my dear, I am told she is a good-
natured and sensible creature; Andronikov thought more of her than
of any of his other nieces.  It's true I don't know her well--but
you should have won her over, my beauty!  It's no trouble to you to
win hearts--why, I'm an old woman, but here I'm quite in love with
you already, and can't resist kissing you. . . .  But it would have
been nothing to you to win her heart."

"I did, Tatyana Pavlovna, I tried; she was enchanted with me, but
she's very sly too. . . .  Yes, she's a regular type, and a
peculiar Moscow type. . . .  And would you believe it, she advised
me to apply to a man here called Kraft, who had been Andronikov's
assistant.  'Maybe he knows something,' she said.  I had some idea
of what Kraft was like, and in fact, I had a faint recollection of
him; but as she talked about Kraft, I suddenly felt certain that it
was not that she simply knew nothing but that she knew all about it
and was lying."

"But why, why?  Well, perhaps you might find out from him!  That
German, Kraft, isn't a chatterbox, and I remember him as very
honest--you really ought to question him!  Only I fancy he is not
in Petersburg now. . . ."

"Oh, he came back yesterday evening, I have just been to see
him. . . .  I have come to you in such a state, I'm shaking all
over.  I wanted to ask you, Tatyana Pavlovna, my angel, for you
know every one, wouldn't it be possible to find out from his papers,
for he must have left papers, to whom they will come now?  They may
come into dangerous hands again!  I wanted to ask your advice."

"But what papers are you talking about?" said Tatyana Pavlovna, not
understanding.  "Why, you say you have just been at Kraft's?"

"Yes, I have been, I have, I have just been there, but he's shot
himself! Yesterday evening."

I jumped up from the bed.  I was able to sit through being called a
spy and an idiot, and the longer the conversation went on the more
impossible it seemed to show myself.  It was impossible to
contemplate!  I inwardly determined with a sinking heart to stay
where I was till Tatyana Pavlovna went to the door with her visitor
(if, that is, I were lucky, and she did not before then come to
fetch something from the bedroom), and afterwards, when Mme. Ahmakov
had gone out, then, if need be, I'd fight it out with Tatyana
Pavlovna. . . .  But when, now, suddenly hearing about Kraft, I
jumped up from the bed, I shuddered all over.  Without thinking,
without reflecting, or realizing what I was doing, I took a step,
lifted the curtain, and appeared before the two of them.  It was
still light enough for them to see me, pale and trembling. . . .
They both cried out, and indeed they well might.

"Kraft?" I muttered, turning to Mme. Ahmakov--"he has shot himself? 
Yesterday?  At sunset?"

"Where were you?  Where have you come from?" screamed Tatyana
Pavlovna, and she literally clawed my shoulder.  "You've been
spying?  You have been eavesdropping?"

"What did I tell you just now?" said Katerina Nikolaevna, getting
up from the sofa and pointing at me.

I was beside myself.

"It's a lie, it's nonsense!" I broke in furiously.  "You called me
a spy just now, my God!  You are not worth spying on, life's not
worth living in the same world with such people as you, in fact!  A
great-hearted man has killed himself, Kraft has shot himself--for
the sake of an idea, for the sake of Hecuba. . . . But how should
you know about Hecuba? . . .  And here--one's to live among your
intrigues, to linger in the midst of your lying, your deceptions
and underhand plots. . . .  Enough!"

"Slap him in the face!  Slap him in the face!" cried Tatyana
Pavlovna, and as Katerina Nikolaevna did not move, though she
stared fixedly at me (I remember it all minutely), Tatyana Pavlovna
would certainly have done so herself without loss of time, so that
I instinctively raised my hand to protect my face; and this gesture
led her to imagine that I meant to strike her.

"Well, strike me, strike me, show me that you are a low cur from
your birth up: you are stronger than women, why stand on ceremony
with them!"

"That's enough of your slander!" I cried.  "I have never raised my
hand against a woman!  You are shameless, Tatyana Pavlovna, you've
always treated me with contempt.  Oh, servants must be treated
without respect!  You laugh, Katerina Nikolaevna, at my appearance
I suppose; yes, God has not blessed me with the elegance of your
young officers.  And, yet I don't feel humbled before you, on the
contrary I feel exalted. . . .  I don't care how I express myself,
only I'm not to blame!  I got here by accident, Tatyana Pavlovna,
it's all the fault of your cook, or rather of your devotion to her:
why did she bring me in here without answering my question?  And
afterwards to dash out of a woman's bedroom seemed so monstrous,
that I made up my mind not to show myself, but to sit and put up
with your insults. . . .  You are laughing again, Katerina
Nikolaevna!"

"Leave the room, leave the room, go away!" screamed Tatyana
Pavlovna, almost pushing me out.  "Don't think anything of his
abuse, Katerina Nikolaevna: I've told you that they sent us word
that he was mad!"

"Mad?  They sent word?  Who sent you word?  No matter, enough of
this, Katerina Nikolaevna!  I swear to you by all that's sacred,
this conversation and all that I've heard shall remain hidden. . . .
Am I to blame for having learned your secrets?  Especially as I
am leaving your father's service to-morrow, so as regards the
letter you are looking for, you need not worry yourself!"

"What's that. . . .  What letter are you talking about?" asked
Katerina Nikolaevna in such confusion that she turned pale, or
perhaps I fancied it.  I realized that I had said too much.

I walked quickly out; they watched me go without a word, with looks
of intense amazement.  I had in fact set them a riddle.



CHAPTER IX


1


I hurried home and--marvellous to relate--I was very well satisfied
with myself.  That's not the way one talks to women, of course, and
to such women too--it would be truer to say such a woman, for I was
not considering Tatyana Pavlovna.  Perhaps it's out of the question
to say to a woman of that class that one spits on her intrigues,
but I had said that, and it was just that that I was pleased with. 
Apart from anything else, I was convinced that by taking this tone
I had effaced all that was ridiculous in my position.  But I had
not time to think much about that: my mind was full of Kraft.  Not
that the thought of him distressed me very greatly, but yet I was
shaken to my inmost depths, and so much so that the ordinary human
feeling of pleasure at another man's misfortune--at his breaking
his leg or covering himself with disgrace, at his losing some one
dear to him, and so on--even this ordinary feeling of mean
satisfaction was completely eclipsed by another absolutely single-
hearted feeling, a feeling of sorrow, of compassion for Kraft--at
least I don't know whether it was compassion, but it was a strong
and warm-hearted feeling.  And I was glad of this too.  It's
marvellous how many irrelevant ideas can flash through the mind at
the very time when one is shattered by some tremendous piece of
news, which one would have thought must overpower all other
feelings and banish all extraneous thoughts, especially petty ones;
yet petty ones, on the contrary, obtrude themselves.  I remember,
too, that I was gradually overcome by a quite perceptible nervous
shudder, which lasted several minutes, in fact all the time I was
at home and talking to Versilov.

This interview followed under strange and exceptional circumstances.
I had mentioned already that we lived in a separate lodge in the
courtyard; this lodging was marked "No. 13."  Before I had entered
the gate I heard a woman's voice asking loudly, with impatience and
irritation, "Where is No. 13?"  The question was asked by a lady who
was standing close to the gate and had opened the door of the little
shop; but apparently she got no answer there, or was even repulsed,
for she came down the steps, resentful and angry.

"But where is the porter?" she cried, stamping her foot.  I had
already recognized the voice.

"I am going to No. 13," I said, approaching her.  "Whom do you
want?"

"I have been looking for the porter for the last hour.  I keep
asking every one; I have been up all the staircases."

"It's in the yard.  Don't you recognize me?"

But by now she had recognized me.

"You want Versilov; you want to see him about something, and so do
I," I went on.  "I have come to take leave of him for ever.  Come
along."

"You are his son?"

"That means nothing.  Granted, though, that I am his son, yet my
name's Dolgoruky; I am illegitimate.  This gentleman has an endless
supply of illegitimate children.  When conscience and honour
require it a son will leave his father's house.  That's in the
Bible.  He has come into a fortune too, and I don't wish to share
it, and I go to live by the work of my hands.  A noble-hearted man
will sacrifice life itself, if need be; Kraft has shot himself,
Kraft for the sake of an idea, imagine, a young man, yet he
overcame hope. . . .  This way, this way!  We live in a lodge
apart.  But that's in the Bible; children leave their parents and
make homes for themselves. . . .  If the idea draws one on . . . if
there is an idea!  The idea is what matters, the idea is
everything. . . ."

I babbled on like this while we were making our way to the lodge. 
The reader will, no doubt, observe that I don't spare myself much,
though I give myself a good character on occasion; I want to train
myself to tell the truth.  Versilov was at home.  I went in without
taking off my overcoat; she did the same.  Her clothes were
dreadfully thin: over a wretched gown of some dark colour was hung
a rag that did duty for a cloak or mantle; on her head she wore an
old and frayed sailor-hat, which was very unbecoming.  When we went
into the room my mother was sitting at her usual place at work, and
my sister came out of her room to see who it was, and was standing
in the doorway.  Versilov, as usual, was doing nothing, and he got
up to meet us.  He looked at me intently with a stern and inquiring
gaze.

"It's nothing to do with me," I hastened to explain, and I stood on
one side.  "I only met this person at the gate; she was trying to
find you and no one could direct her.  I have come about my own
business, which I shall be delighted to explain afterwards. . . ."

Versilov nevertheless still scrutinized me curiously.

"Excuse me," the girl began impatiently.  Versilov turned towards
her.

"I have been wondering a long while what induced you to leave money
for me yesterday. . . .  I . . . in short . . . here's your money!"
she almost shrieked, as she had before, and flung a bundle of notes
on the table.  "I've had to hunt for you through the address
bureau, or I should have brought it before.  Listen, you!"  She
suddenly addressed my mother, who had turned quite pale.  "I don't
want to insult you; you look honest, and perhaps this is actually
your daughter.  I don't know whether you are his wife, but let me
tell you that this gentleman gets hold of the advertisements on
which teachers and governesses have spent their last farthing and
visits these luckless wretches with dishonourable motives, trying
to lure them to ruin by money.  I don't understand how I could have
taken his money yesterday: he looked so honest. . . .  Get away,
don't say a word!  You are a villain, sir!  Even if you had
honourable intentions I don't want your charity.  Not a word, not a
word!  Oh, how glad I am that I have unmasked you now before your
women!  Curse you!"

She ran to the door, but turned for one instant in the doorway to
shout.

"You've come into a fortune, I'm told."

With that she vanished like a shadow.  I repeat again, it was
frenzy.  Versilov was greatly astonished; he stood as though
pondering and reflecting on something.  At last he turned suddenly
to me:

"You don't know her at all?"

"I happened to see her this morning when she was raging in the
passage at Vassin's; she was screaming and cursing you.  But I did
not speak to her and I know nothing about it, and just now I met
her at the gate.  No doubt she is that teacher you spoke of
yesterday, who also gives lessons in arithmetic."

"Yes, she is.  For once in my life I did a good deed and. . . . 
But what's the matter with you?"

"Here is this letter," I answered.  "I don't think explanation
necessary: it comes from Kraft, and he got it from Andronikov.  You
will understand what's in it.  I will add that no one but me in the
whole world knows about that letter, for Kraft, who gave me that
letter yesterday just as I was leaving him, has shot himself."

While I was speaking with breathless haste he took the letter and,
holding it lightly poised in his left hand, watched me attentively. 
When I told him of Kraft's suicide I looked at him with particular
attention to see the effect.  And what did I see?  The news did not
make the slightest impression on him.  If he had even raised an
eyebrow!  On the contrary, seeing that I had paused, he drew out
his eyeglasses, which he always had about him hanging on a black
ribbon, carried the letter to the candle and, glancing at the
signature, began carefully examining it.  I can't express how
mortified I was at this supercilious callousness.  He must have
known Kraft very well: it was, in any case, such an extraordinary
piece of news!  Besides, I naturally desired it to produce an
effect.  Knowing that the letter was long, I turned, after waiting,
and went out.  My trunk had been packed long ago, I had only to
stuff a few things into my bag.  I thought of my mother and that I
had not gone up to speak to her.  Ten minutes later, when I had
finished my preparations and was meaning to go for a cab, my sister
walked into my attic.

"Here are your sixty roubles; mother sends it and begs you again to
forgive her for having mentioned it to Andrey Petrovitch.  And
here's twenty roubles besides.  You gave her fifty yesterday for
your board; mother says she can't take more than thirty from you
because you haven't cost fifty, and she sends you twenty roubles
back."

"Well, thanks, if she is telling the truth.  Good-bye, sister, I'm
going."

"Where are you going now?"

"For the time being to an hotel, to escape spending the night in
this house.  Tell mother that I love her."

"She knows that.  She knows that you love Andrey Petrovitch too.  I
wonder you are not ashamed of having brought that wretched girl
here!"

"I swear I did not; I met her at the gate."

"No, it was your doing."

"I assure you. . . ."

"Think a little, ask yourself, and you will see that you were the
cause."

"I was only very pleased that Versilov should be put to shame. 
Imagine, he had a baby by Lidya Ahmakov . . . but what am I telling
you!"

"He?  A baby?  But it is not his child!  From whom have you heard
such a falsehood?"

"Why, you can know nothing about it."

"Me know nothing about it?  But I used to nurse the baby in Luga. 
Listen, brother: I've seen for a long time past that you know
nothing about anything, and meanwhile you wound Andrey Petrovitch--
and . . . mother too."

"If he is right, then I shall be to blame.  That's all, and I love
you no less for it.  What makes you flush like that, sister?  And
more still now!  Well, never mind, anyway, I shall challenge that
little prince for the slap he gave Versilov at Ems.  If Versilov
was in the right as regards Mlle. Ahmakov, so much the better."

"Brother, what are you thinking of?"

"Luckily, the lawsuit's over now. . . .  Well, now she has turned
white!"

"But the prince won't fight you," said Liza, looking at me with a
wan smile in spite of her alarm.

"Then I will put him to shame in public.  What's the matter with
you, Liza?"

She had turned so pale that she could not stand, and sank on to my
sofa.

"Liza," my mother's voice called from below.

She recovered herself and stood up; she smiled at me affectionately.

"Brother, drop this foolishness, or put it off for a time till
you know about ever so many things: it's awful how little you
understand."

"I shall remember, Liza, that you turned pale when you heard I was
going to fight a duel."

"Yes, yes, remember that too!" she said, smiling once more at
parting, and she went downstairs.

I called a cab, and with the help of the man I hauled my things out
of the lodge.  No one in the house stopped me or opposed my going. 
I did not go in to say good-bye to my mother as I did not want to
meet Versilov again.  When I was sitting in the cab a thought
flashed upon me:

"To Fontanka by Semyonovsky Bridge," I told the man, and went back
to Vassin's.


2


It suddenly struck me that Vassin would know already about Kraft,
and perhaps know a hundred times more than I did; and so it proved
to be.  Vassin immediately informed me of all the facts with great
precision but with no great warmth; I concluded that he was very
tired, and so indeed he was.  He had been at Kraft's himself in the
morning.  Kraft had shot himself with a revolver (that same
revolver) after dark, as was shown by his diary.  The last entry in
the diary was made just before the fatal shot, and in it he
mentioned that he was writing almost in the dark and hardly able to
distinguish the letters, that he did not want to light a candle for
fear that it should set fire to something when he was dead.  "And I
don't want to light it and then, before shooting, put it out like
my life," he added strangely, almost the last words.  This diary he
had begun three days before his death, immediately on his return to
Petersburg, before his visit to Dergatchev's.  After I had gone
away he had written something in it every quarter of an hour; the
last three or four entries were made at intervals of five minutes. 
I expressed aloud my surprise that though Vassin had had this diary
so long in his hands (it had been given him to read), he had not
made a copy of it, especially as it was not more than a sheet or so
and all the entries were short.  "You might at least have copied
the last page!"  Vassin observed with a smile that he remembered it
as it was; moreover, that the entries were quite disconnected,
about anything that came into his mind.  I was about to protest
that this was just what was precious in this case, but without
going into that I began instead to insist on his recalling some of
it, and he did recall a few sentences--for instance, an hour before
he shot himself, "That he was chilly," "That he thought of drinking
a glass of wine to warm himself, but had been deterred by the idea
that it might cause an increase in the flow of blood."  "It was
almost all that sort of thing," Vassin remarked in conclusion.

"And you call that nonsense!" I cried.

"And when did I call it nonsense?  I simply did not copy it.  But
though it's not nonsense, the diary certainly is somewhat ordinary,
or rather, natural--that is, it's just what it's bound to be in
such circumstances. . . ."

"But the last thoughts, the last thoughts!"

"The last thoughts sometimes are extremely insignificant.  One such
suicide complained, in fact, in a similar diary that not one lofty
idea visited him at that important hour, nothing but futile and
petty thoughts."

"And that he was chilly, was that too a futile thought?"

"Do you mean his being chilly, or the thought about the blood?
Besides, it's a well-known fact that very many people who are
capable of contemplating their approaching death, whether it's by
their own hand or not, frequently show a tendency to worry
themselves about leaving their body in a presentable condition.  It
was from that point of view that Kraft was anxious about the blood."

"I don't know whether that is a well-known fact . . . or whether
that is so," I muttered; "but I am surprised that you consider all
that natural, and yet it's not long since Kraft was speaking,
feeling, sitting among us.  Surely you must feel sorry for him?"

"Oh, of course, I'm sorry, and that's quite a different thing; but,
in any case, Kraft himself conceived of his death as a logical
deduction.  It turns out that all that was said about him yesterday
at Dergatchev's was true.  He left behind him a manuscript book
full of abtruse theories, proving by phrenology, by craniology, and
even by mathematics, that the Russians are a second-rate race, and
that therefore, since he was a Russian, life was not worth living
for him.  What is more striking about it, if you like, is that it
shows one can make any logical deduction one pleases; but to shoot
oneself in consequence of a deduction does not always follow."

"At least one must do credit to his strength of will."

"Possibly not that only," Vassin observed evasively; it was clear
that he assumed stupidity or weakness of intellect.  All this
irritated me.

"You talked of feeling yourself yesterday, Vassin."

"I don't gainsay it now; but what has happened betrays something in
him so crudely mistaken that, if one looks at it critically, it
checks one's compassion in spite of oneself."

"Do you know that I guessed yesterday from your eyes that you would
disapprove of Kraft, and I resolved not to ask your opinion, that I
might not hear evil of him; but you have given it of yourself, and
I am forced to agree with you in spite of myself; and yet I am
annoyed with you!  I am sorry for Kraft."

"Do you know we are going rather far. . . ."

"Yes, yes," I interrupted, "but it's a comfort, anyway, that in
such cases those who are left alive, the critics of the dead, can
say of themselves:  'Though a man has shot himself who was worthy
of all compassion and indulgence, we are left, at any rate, and so
there's no great need to grieve.'"

"Yes, of course, from that point of view. . . .  Oh, but I believe
you are joking, and very cleverly!  I always drink tea at this
time, and am just going to ask for it: you will join me, perhaps."

And he went out, with a glance at my trunk and bag.

I had wanted to say something rather spiteful, to retaliate for his
judgment of Kraft, and I had succeeded in saying it, but it was
curious that he had taken my consoling reflection that "such as we
are left" as meant seriously.  But, be that as it may, he was,
anyway, more right than I was in everything, even in his feelings. 
I recognized this without the slightest dissatisfaction, but I felt
distinctly that I did not like him.

When they had brought in the tea I announced that I was going to
ask for his hospitality for one night only, and if this were
impossible I hoped he would say so, and I would go to an hotel. 
Then I briefly explained my reasons, simply and frankly stating
that I had finally quarrelled with Versilov, without, however,
going into details.  Vassin listened attentively but without the
slightest excitement.  As a rule he only spoke in reply to
questions, though he always answered with ready courtesy and
sufficient detail.  I said nothing at all about the letter
concerning which I had come to ask his advice in the morning, and I
explained that I had looked in then simply to call on him.  Having
given Versilov my word that no one else should know of the letter,
I considered I had no right to speak of it to anyone.  I felt it
for some reason peculiarly repugnant to speak of certain things to
Vassin--of some things and not of others; I succeeded, for
instance, in interesting him in my description of the scenes that
had taken place that morning in the passage, in the next room, and
finally at Versilov's.  He listened with extreme attention,
especially to what I told him of Stebelkov.  When I told him how
Stebelkov asked about Dergatchev he made me repeat the question
again, and seemed to ponder gravely over it, though he did laugh in
the end.  It suddenly occurred to me at that moment that nothing
could ever have disconcerted Vassin; I remember, however, that this
idea presented itself at first in a form most complimentary to him.

"In fact, I could not gather much from what M. Stebelkov said," I
added finally; "he talks in a sort of muddle . . . and there is
something, as it were, feather-headed about him. . . ."

Vassin at once assumed a serious air.

"He certainly has no gift for language, but he sometimes manages to
make very acute observations at first sight, and in fact he belongs
to the class of business men, men of practical affairs, rather than
of theoretical ideas; one must judge them from that point of
view. . . ."

It was exactly what I had imagined him saying that morning.  "He
made an awful row next door, though, and goodness knows how it
might have ended."

Of the inmates of the next room, Vassin told me that they had been
living there about three weeks and had come from somewhere in the
provinces; that their room was very small, and that to all
appearance they were very poor; that they stayed in and seemed to
be expecting something.  He did not know the young woman had
advertised for lessons, but he had heard that Versilov had been to
see them; it had happened in his absence, but the landlady had told
him of it.  The two ladies had held themselves aloof from every
one, even from the landlady.  During the last few days he had
indeed become aware that something was wrong with them, but there
had been no other scenes like the one that morning.  I recall all
that was said about the people next door because of what followed. 
All this time there was a dead silence in the next room.  Vassin
listened with marked interest when I told him that Stebelkov had
said he must talk to the landlady about our neighbours and that he
had twice repeated, "Ah! you will see! you will see!"

"And you will see," added Vassin, "that that notion of his stands
for something; he has an extraordinarily keen eye for such things."

"Why, do you think the landlady ought to be advised to turn them
out?"

"No, I did not mean that they should be turned out . . . simply
that there might be a scandal . . . but all such cases end one way
or another. . . .  Let's drop the subject."

As for Versilov's visit next door, he absolutely refused to give
any opinion.

"Anything is possible: a man feels that he has money in his
pocket . . . but he may very likely have given the money from
charity; that would perhaps be in accordance with his traditions
and his inclinations."

I told him that Stebelkov had chattered that morning about "a
baby."

"Stebelkov is absolutely mistaken about that," Vassin brought out
with peculiar emphasis and gravity (I remembered this particularly).
"Stebelkov sometimes puts too much faith in his practical common
sense, and so is in too great a hurry to draw conclusions to fit in
with his logic, which is often very penetrating; and all the while
the actual fact may be far more fantastic and surprising when one
considers the character of the persons concerned in it.  So it has
been in this case; having a partial knowledge of the affair, he
concluded the child belonged to Versilov; and yet the child is not
Versilov's."

I pressed him, and, to my great amazement, learned from him that
the infant in question was the child of Prince Sergay Sokolsky. 
Lidya Ahmakov, either owing to her illness or to some fantastic
streak in her character, used at times to behave like a lunatic. 
She had been fascinated by the prince before she met Versilov,
"and he had not scrupled to accept her love," to use Vassin's
expression.  The liaison had lasted but for a moment; they had
quarrelled, as we know already, and Lidya had dismissed the prince,
"at which the latter seems to have been relieved."  "She was a very
strange girl," added Vassin; "it is quite possible that she was not
always in her right mind.  But when he went away to Paris, Prince
Sokolsky had no idea of the condition in which he had left his
victim, he did not know until the end, until his return.  Versilov,
who had become a friend of the young lady's, offered her his hand,
in view of her situation (of which it appears her parents had no
suspicion up to the end).  The lovesick damsel was overjoyed, and
saw in Versilov's offer "something more than self-sacrifice,"
though that too she appreciated.  "Of course, though, he knew how
to carry it through," Vassin added.  "The baby (a girl) was born a
month or six weeks before the proper time; it was placed out
somewhere in Germany but afterwards taken back by Versilov and is
now somewhere in Russia--perhaps in Petersburg."

"And the phosphorus matches?"

"I know nothing about that," Vassin said in conclusion.  "Lidya
Ahmakov died a fortnight after her confinement: what had happened I
don't know.  Prince Sokolsky, who had only just returned from
Paris, learned there was a child, and seems not to have believed at
first that it was his child. . . .  The whole affair has, in fact,
been kept secret by all parties up till now."

"But what a wretch this prince must be," I cried indignantly. 
"What a way to treat an invalid girl!"

"She was not so much of an invalid then. . . .  Besides, she sent
him away herself. . . .  It is true, perhaps, that he was in too
great a hurry to take advantage of his dismissal."

"You justify a villain like that!"

"No, only I don't call him a villain.  There is a great deal in it
besides simple villainy.  In fact, it's quite an ordinary thing."

"Tell me, Vassin, did you know him intimately?  I should
particularly value your opinion, owing to a circumstance that
touches me very nearly."

But to this Vassin replied with excessive reserve.  He knew the
prince, but he was, with obvious intention, reticent in regard to
the circumstances under which he had made his acquaintance.  He
added further that one had to make allowances for Prince Sokolsky's
character.  "He is impressionable and full of honourable impulses,
but has neither good sense nor strength of will enough to control
his desires.  He is not a well-educated man; many ideas and
situations are beyond his power to deal with, and yet he rushes
upon them.  He will, for example, persist in declaring, 'I am a
prince and descended from Rurik; but there's no reason why I
shouldn't be a shoemaker if I have to earn my living; I am not fit
for any other calling.  Above the shop there shall be, "Prince So-
and-so, Bootmaker"--it would really be a credit.'  He would say
that and act upon it, too, that's what matters," added Vassin; "and
yet it's not the result of strong conviction, but only the most
shallow impressionability.  Afterwards repentance invariably
follows, and then he is always ready to rush to an opposite
extreme; his whole life is passed like that.  Many people come to
grief in that way nowadays," Vassin ended, "just because they are
born in this age."

I could not help pondering on his words.

"Is it true that he was turned out of his regiment?" I asked.

"I don't know whether he was turned out, but he certainly did leave
the regiment through some unpleasant scandal.  I suppose you know
that he spent two or three months last autumn at Luga."

"I . . . I know that you were staying at Luga at that time."

"Yes, I was there too for a time.  Prince Sokolsky knew Lizaveta
Makarovna too."

"Oh!  I didn't know.  I must confess I've had so little talk with
my sister. . . .  But surely he was not received in my mother's
house?" I cried.

"Oh, no; he was only slightly acquainted with them through other
friends."

"Ah, to be sure, what did my sister tell me about that child?  Was
the baby at Luga?"

"For a while."

"And where is it now."

"No doubt in Petersburg."

"I never will believe," I cried in great emotion, "that my mother
took any part whatever in this scandal with this Lidya!"

"Apart from these intrigues, of which I can't undertake to give the
details, there was nothing particularly reprehensible in Versilov's
part of the affair," observed Vassin, with a condescending smile. 
I fancy he began to feel it difficult to talk to me, but he tried
not to betray it.

"I will never, never believe," I cried again, "that a woman could
give up her husband to another woman; that I won't believe! . . . 
I swear my mother had no hand in it!"

"It seems, though, she did not oppose it."

"In her place, from pride I should not have opposed it."

"For my part, I absolutely refuse to judge in such a matter," was
Vassin's final comment.

Perhaps, for all his intelligence, Vassin really knew nothing about
women, so that a whole cycle of ideas and phenomena remained
unknown to him.  I sank into silence.  Vassin had a temporary berth
in some company's office, and I knew that he used to bring work
home with him.  When I pressed him, he admitted that he had work to
do now, accounts to make up, and I begged him warmly not to stand
on ceremony with me.  I believe this pleased him; but before
bringing out his papers he made up a bed for me on the sofa.  At
first he offered me his bed, but when I refused it I think that too
gratified him.  He got pillows and a quilt from the landlady. 
Vassin was extremely polite and amiable, but it made me feel
uncomfortable, seeing him take so much trouble on my account.  I
had liked it better when, three weeks before, I had spent a night
at Efim's.  I remember how he concocted a bed for me, also on a
sofa, and without the knowledge of his aunt, who would, he thought,
for some reason, have been vexed if she had known he had a
schoolfellow staying the night with him.  We laughed a great deal. 
A shirt did duty for a sheet and an overcoat for a pillow.  I
remember how Efim, when he had completed the work, patted the sofa
tenderly and said to me:

"Vous dormirez comme un petit roi."

And his foolish mirth and the French phrase, as incongruous in his
mouth as a saddle on a cow, made me enjoy sleeping at that jocose
youth's.  As for Vassin, I felt greatly relieved when he sat down
to work with his back to me.  I stretched myself on the sofa and,
looking at his back, pondered deeply on many things.



3


And indeed I had plenty to think about.  Everything seemed split up
and in confusion in my soul, but certain sensations stood out very
definitely, though from their very abundance I was not dominated by
any one of them.  They all came, as it were, in disconnected
flashes, one after another, and I had no inclination, I remember,
to dwell on any one of my impressions or to establish any sequence
among them.  Even the idea of Kraft had imperceptibly passed into
the background.  What troubled me most of all was my own position,
that here I had "broken off," and that my trunk was with me, and I
was not at home, and was beginning everything new.  It was as
though all my previous intentions and preparations had been in
play, "and only now--and above all so SUDDENLY--everything was
beginning in reality."  This idea gave me courage and cheered me
up, in spite of the confusion within me over many things.

But . . . but I had other sensations; one of them was trying to
dominate the others and to take possession of my soul, and, strange
to say, this sensation too gave me courage and seemed to hold out
prospects of something very gay.  Yet this feeling had begun with
fear: I had been afraid for a long time, from the very hour that in
my heat I had, unawares, said too much to Mme. Ahmakov about the
"document."  "Yes, I said too much," I thought, "and maybe they
will guess something . . . it's a pity!  No doubt they will give me
no peace if they begin to suspect, but . . . let them!  Very likely
they won't find me, I'll hide!  And what if they really do run
after me . . . ?"  And then I began recalling minutely in every
point, and with growing satisfaction, how I had stood up before
Katerina Nikolaevna and how her insolent but extremely astonished
eyes had gazed at me obstinately.  Going away, I had left her in
the same amazement, I remembered; "her eyes are not quite black,
though . . . it's only her eyelashes that are so black, and that's
what makes her eyes look so dark. . . ."

And suddenly, I remember, I felt horribly disgusted at the
recollection . . . and sick and angry both at them and at myself. 
I reproached myself and tried to think of something else.  "Why did
I not feel the slightest indignation with Versilov for the incident
with the girl in the next room?" it suddenly occurred to me to
wonder.  For my part, I was firmly convinced that he had had
amorous designs and had come to amuse himself, but I was not
particularly indignant at this.  It seemed to me, indeed, that one
could not have conceived of his behaving differently, and although
I really was glad he had been put to shame, yet I did not blame
him.  It was not that which seemed important to me; what was
important was the exasperation with which he had looked at me when
I came in with the girl, the way he had looked at me as he had
never done before.

"At last he has looked at me SERIOUSLY," I thought, with a flutter
at my heart.  Ah, if I had not loved him I should not have been so
overjoyed at his hatred!

At last I began to doze and fell asleep.  I can just remember being
aware of Vassin's finishing his work, tidying away his things,
looking carefully towards my sofa, undressing and putting out the
light.

It was one o'clock at night.


4


Almost exactly two hours later I woke up with a start and, jumping
up as though I were frantic, sat on my sofa.  From the next room
there arose fearful lamentations, screams, and sounds of weeping. 
Our door was wide open, and people were shouting and running to and
fro in the lighted passage.  I was on the point of calling to
Vassin, but I realized that he was no longer in his bed.  I did not
know where to find the matches; I fumbled for my clothes and began
hurriedly dressing in the dark.  Evidently the landlady, and
perhaps the lodgers, had run into the next room.  Only one voice
was wailing, however, that of the older woman: the youthful voice I
had heard the day before, and so well remembered, was quite silent;
I remember that this was the first thought that came into my mind. 
Before I had finished dressing Vassin came in hurriedly.  He laid
his hand on the matches instantly and lighted up the room.  He was
in his dressing-gown and slippers, and he immediately proceeded to
dress.

"What's happened?" I cried.

"A most unpleasant and bothersome business," he answered almost
angrily; "that young girl you were telling me about has hanged
herself in the next room."

I could not help crying out.  I cannot describe the pang at my
heart!  We ran out into the passage.  I must own I did not dare go
into the room, and only saw the unhappy girl afterwards, when she
had been taken down, and even then, indeed, at some distance and
covered with a sheet, beyond which the two narrow soles of her
shoes stood out.  So I did not for some reason look into her face. 
The mother was in a fearful condition; our landlady was with her--
not, however, greatly alarmed.  All the lodgers in the flat had
gathered round.  There were only three of them: an elderly naval
man, always very peevish and exacting, though on this occasion he
was quite quiet, and an elderly couple, respectable people of the
small functionary class who came from the province of Tver.  I
won't attempt to describe the rest of that night, the general
commotion and afterwards the visit of the police.  Literally till
daylight I kept shuddering and felt it my duty to sit up, though I
did absolutely nothing.  And indeed every one had an extraordinarily
cheery air, as though they had been particularly cheered by
something.  Vassin went off somewhere.  The landlady turned out to
be rather a decent woman, much better than I had imagined her.  I
persuaded her (and I put it down to my credit) that the mother must
not be left alone with the daughter's corpse, and that she must, at
least until to-morrow, take her into her room.  The landlady at once
agreed, and though the mother struggled and shed tears, refusing to
leave her daughter, she did at last move into the landlady's room,
and the latter immediately ordered the samovar to be brought.  After
that the lodgers went back to their rooms and shut the doors, but
nothing would have induced me to go to bed, and I remained a long
time with the landlady, who was positively relieved at the presence
of a third person, and especially one who was able to give some
information bearing on the case.

The samovar was most welcome, and in fact the samovar is the most
essential thing in Russia, especially at times of particularly
awful, sudden, and eccentric catastrophes and misfortunes; even the
mother was induced to drink two cups--though, of course, only with
much urging and almost compulsion.  And yet I can honestly say that
I have never seen a bitterer and more genuine sorrow that that poor
mother's.

After the first paroxysms of sobbing and hysterics she was actually
eager to talk, and I listened greedily to her story.  There are
unhappy people, especially women, who must be allowed to talk as
freely as possible when they are in trouble.  Moreover, there are
characters too, blurred so to speak by sorrow, who all their life
long have suffered, have suffered terribly much both of great
sorrow and of continual worry about trifles, and who can never be
surprised by anything, by any sort of sudden calamity, and who,
above all, never, even beside the coffin of their dearest, can
forget the rules of behaviour for propitiating people, which they
have learnt by bitter experience.  And I don't criticize it: there
is neither the vulgarity of egoism nor the insolence of culture in
this; there is perhaps more genuine goodness to be found in these
simple hearts than in heroines of the loftiest demeanour, but the
long habit of humiliation, the instinct of self-preservation, the
years of timid anxiety and oppression, leave their mark at last. 
The poor girl who had died by her own hand was not like her mother
in this.  They were alike in face, however, though the dead girl
was decidedly good-looking.  The mother was not a very old woman,
fifty at the most; she, too, was fair, but her eyes were sunken,
her cheeks were hollow, and she had large yellow, uneven teeth. 
And indeed everything had a tinge of yellowness: the skin on her
hands and face was like parchment; her dark dress had grown yellow
with age, and the nail on the forefinger of her right hand* had
been, I don't know why, carefully and tidily plastered up with
yellow wax.

The poor woman's story was in parts quite disconnected.  I will
tell it as I understood it and as I remember it.


* This must be an error on Dostoevsky's part.  Russian women
sometimes plaster with wax the forefinger of the left hand to
protect it from being pricked in sewing.--Translator's Note.


5


They had come from Moscow.  She had long been a widow--"the widow
of an official, however."  Her husband had been in the government
service, but had left them practically nothing "except a pension of
two hundred roubles."  But what are two hundred roubles?  Olya grew
up, however, and went to the high school--"and how well she did,
how good she was at her lessons; she won the silver medal when she
left" (at this point, of course, prolonged weeping).  The deceased
husband had lost a fortune of nearly four thousand roubles,
invested with a merchant here in Petersburg.  This merchant had
suddenly grown rich again.  "I had papers, I asked advice; I was
told, 'Try, and you will certainly get it. . . .'  I wrote, the
merchant agreed:  'Go yourself,' I was told.  Olya and I set off,
and arrived a month ago.  Our means were small: we took this room
because it was the smallest of all and, as we could see ourselves,
in a respectable house, and that's what mattered most to us.  We
were inexperienced women; every one takes advantage of us.  Well,
we paid you for one month.  With one thing and another, Petersburg
is ruinous.  Our merchant gives us a flat refusal--'I don't know
you or anything about you'; and the paper I had was not regular, I
knew that.  Then I was advised to go to a celebrated lawyer; he was
a professor, not simply a lawyer but an expert, so he'd be sure to
tell me what to do.  I took him my last fifteen roubles.  The
lawyer came out to me, and he did not listen to me for three
minutes:  'I see,' says he, 'I know,' says he.  'If the merchant
wants to,' says he, 'he'll pay the money; if he doesn't want to, he
won't, and if you take proceedings you may have to pay yourself,
perhaps; you had far better come to terms.'  He made a joke, then,
out of the Gospel:  'Make peace,' said he, 'while your enemy is in
the way with you, lest you pay to the uttermost farthing.'  He
laughed as he saw me out.  My fifteen roubles were wasted!  I came
back to Olya; we sat facing one another.  I began crying.  Olya did
not cry; she sat there, proud and indignant.  She has always been
like that with me; all her life, even when she was tiny, she was
never one to moan, she was never one to cry, but she would sit and
look fierce; it used to make me creep to look at her.  And--would
you believe it?--I was afraid of her, I was really quite afraid of
her; I've been so for a long time past.  I often wanted to grieve,
but I did not dare before her.  I went to the merchant for the last
time.  I cried before him freely: he said it was all right, and
would not even listen.  Meanwhile I must confess that, not having
reckoned on being here for so long, we had been for some time
without a penny.  I began taking our clothes one by one to the
pawnbroker's; we have been living on what we have pawned.  I
stripped myself of everything; she gave me the last of her linen,
and I cried bitterly at taking it.  She stamped, then she jumped up
and ran off to the merchant herself.  He was a widower; he talked
to her.  'Come at five o'clock the day after to-morrow,' says he,
'perhaps I shall have something to say to you.'  She came home
quite gay:  'He says he may have something to say to me.'  Well, I
was pleased too, but yet I somehow felt a sort of chill at my
heart.  'Something will come of it,' I thought, but I did not dare
to question her.  Two days later she came back from the merchant's,
pale and trembling all over, and threw herself on her bed.  I saw
what it meant, and did not dare to question her.  And--would you
believe it?--the villain had offered her fifteen roubles.  'If I
find you pure and virtuous I'll hand you over another forty.'  He
said that to her face--he wasn't ashamed to.  At that she flew at
him, so she told me; he thrust her out, and even locked himself in
the next room.  And meanwhile I must confess, to tell the truth, we
had nothing to eat.  We brought out a jacket lined with hare-fur;
we sold it.  She went to a newspaper and put in an advertisement at
once: she offered lessons in all subjects and in arithmetic.  'If
they'll only pay thirty kopecks,' she said.  And in the end I began
to be really alarmed at her: she would sit for hours at the window
without saying a word, staring at the roof of the house opposite,
and then she would suddenly cry out, 'If I could only wash or dig!' 
She would say one sentence like that and stamp her foot.  And there
was no one we knew here, no one we could go to: I wondered what
would become of us.  And all the while I was afraid to talk to her. 
One day she fell asleep in the daytime.  She waked up, opened her
eyes, and looked at me; I was sitting on the box, and I was looking
at her too.  She got up, came to me without saying a word, and
threw her arms round me.  And we could not help crying, both of us;
we sat crying and clinging to each other.  It was the first time in
her life I had seen her like that.  And just as we were sitting
like that, your Nastasya came in and said, 'There's a lady
inquiring for you.'  This was only four days ago.  The lady came
in; we saw she was very well dressed, though she spoke Russian, it
seemed to me, with a German accent.  'You advertised that you give
lessons,' she said.  We were so delighted then, we made her sit
down.  She laughed in such a friendly way:  'It's not for me,' she
said, but my niece has small children; and if it suits you, come to
us, and we will make arrangements.'  She gave an address, a flat in
Voznessensky Street.  She went away.  Dear Olya set off the same
day; she flew there.  She came back two hours later; she was in
hysterics, in convulsions.  She told me afterwards:  'I asked the
porter where flat No. so-and-so was.'  The porter looked at her and
said, 'And what do you want to go to that flat for?'  He said that
so strangely that it might have made one suspicious, but she was so
self-willed, poor darling, so impatient, she could not bear
impertinent questions.  'Go along, then,' he said, and he pointed
up the stairs to her and went back himself to his little room.  And
what do you think!  She went in, asked for the lady, and on all
sides women ran up to her at once--horrid creatures, rouged; they
rushed at her, laughing.  'Please come in, please come in,' they
cried; they dragged her in.  Some one was playing the piano.  'I
tried to get away from them,' she said, 'but they would not let me
go.'  She was frightened, her legs gave way under her.  They simply
would not let her go; they talked to her coaxingly, they persuaded
her, they uncorked a bottle of porter, they pressed it on her.  She
jumped up trembling, screamed at the top of her voice 'Let me go,
let me go!'  She rushed to the door; they held the door, she
shrieked.  Then the one who had been to see us the day before ran
up and slapped my Olya twice in the face and pushed her out of the
door:  'You don't deserve to be in a respectable house, you skinny
slut!'  And another shouted after her on the stairs:  'You came of
yourself to beg of us because you have nothing to eat, but we won't
look at such an ugly fright!'  All that night she lay in a fever
and delirious and in the morning her eyes glittered; she got up and
walked about.  'Justice,' she cried, 'she must be brought to
justice!'  I said nothing, but I thought, 'If you brought her up
how could we prove it?'  She walked about with set lips, wringing
her hands and tears streaming down her face.  And her whole face
seemed darkened from that time up to the very end.  On the third
day she seemed better; she was quiet and seemed calmer.  And then
at four o'clock in the afternoon M. Versilov came to us.  And I
must say I can't understand, even now, how Olya, who was always so
mistrustful, was ready to listen to him almost at the first word. 
What attracted us both more than anything was that he had such a
grave, almost stern air; he spoke gently, impressively, and so
politely--more than politely, respectfully even--and yet at the
same time he showed no sign of trying to make up to us: it was
plain to see he had come with a pure heart.  'I read your
advertisement in the paper,' said he.  'You did not word it
suitably, madam, and you may damage your prospects by that.'  And
he began explaining--I must own I did not understand--something
about arithmetic, but I saw that Olya flushed and seemed to
brighten up altogether.  She listened and talked readily (and, to
be sure, he must be a clever man!); I heard her even thank him.  He
questioned her so minutely about everything, and it seemed that he
had lived a long time in Moscow, and it turned out that he knew the
head mistress of the high school.  'I will be sure to find you
lessons,' said he, 'for I know a great many people here, and I can,
in fact, apply to many influential people, so that if you would
prefer a permanent situation we might look out for that. . . . 
Meanwhile,' said he, 'forgive me one direct question: can I be of
some use to you at once?  It will be your doing me a favour, not my
doing you one,' said he, 'if you will allow me to be of use to you
in any way.  Let it be a loan,' said he, 'and as soon as you have a
situation, in a very short time, you will be able to repay me. 
Believe me, on my honour,' said he, 'if ever I were to come to
poverty and you had plenty of everything I would come straight to
you for some little help.  I would send my wife and daughter' . . .
at least, I don't remember all his words, only I was moved to
tears, for I saw that Olya's lips were trembling with gratitude
too.  'If I take it,' she answered him, 'it is because I trust an
honourable and humane man, who might have been my father. . . .' 
That was very well said by her, briefly and with dignity.  'A
humane man,' said she.  He stood up at once:  'I will get you
lessons and a situation without fail.  I will set to work this very
day, for you have quite a satisfactory diploma too. . . .'  I
forgot to say that he looked through all her school certificates
when he first came in; she showed them to him, and he examined her
in several subjects. . . .  'You see, he examined me, mamma,' Olya
said to me afterwards, 'and what a clever man he is,' she said;
'it is not often one speaks to such a well-educated, cultured
man. . . .'  And she was quite radiant.  The money--sixty roubles,
lay on the table:  'Take it, mamma,' said she; 'when I get a
situation we will pay it back as soon as possible.  We will show
that we are honest and that we have delicacy: he has seen that
already, though.'  Then she paused.  I saw her draw a deep breath.
'Do you know, mamma,' she said to me suddenly, 'if we had been
coarse we should perhaps have refused to take it through pride, but
by taking it now we only show our delicacy of feeling and that we
trust him completely, out of respect for his grey hair, don't we?'
At first I did not quite understand:  'But why, Olya, not accept the
benevolence a wealthy and honourable man if he has a good heart
too?'  She scowled at me.  'No, mamma,' she said, 'that's not it; I
don't want benevolence, but his humanity is precious.  And it would
have been better really not to have taken the money at all, since
he has promised to get me a situation; that's enough . . . though
we are in need.'  'Well, Olya,' said I, 'our need is so great that
we could not have refused it.'  I actually laughed.  Well, I was
pleased, but an hour later she turned to me:  'Don't spend that
money yet, mamma,' said she resolutely.  'What?' said I.  'I mean
it,' she said, and she broke off and said no more.  She was silent
all the evening, only at two o'clock in the night I waked up and
heard Olya tossing in her bed:  'Are you awake, mamma?'  'Yes, I am
awake.'  'Do you know, he meant to insult me.'  'What nonsense,
what nonsense,' I said.  'There is no doubt of it,' she said; 'he
is a vile man; don't dare to spend a farthing of his money.'  I
tried to talk to her.  I burst out crying, in bed as I was.  She
turned away to the wall.  'Be quiet,' she said, 'let me go to
sleep!'  In the morning I looked at her; she was not like herself. 
And you may believe it or not, before God I swear she was not in
her right mind then!  From the time that she was insulted in that
infamous place there was darkness and perplexity in her heart . . .
and in her brain.  Looking at her that morning, I had misgivings
about her; I was alarmed.  I made up my mind I would not say a word
to contradict her.  'He did not even leave his address, mamma,' she
said.  'For shame, Olya,' I said; 'you listened to him last night;
you praised him and were ready to shed tears of gratitude.'  That
was all I said, but she screamed and stamped.  'You are a woman of
low feelings,' she said, 'brought up in the old slavish ideas. . . .'
And then, without a word, she snatched up her hat, ran out.  I
called after her.  I wondered what was the matter with her, where
she had run.  She had run to the address bureau to find out where
Versilov lived.  'I'll take him back the money today and fling it
in his face; he meant to insult me,' she said, 'like Safronov (that
is the merchant), but Safronov insulted me like a coarse peasant,
but he like a cunning Jesuit.'  And just then, unhappily, that
gentleman knocked at the door:  'I hear the name of Versilov,' he
said; 'I can tell you about him.'  When she heard Versilov's name
she pounced on him.  She was in a perfect frenzy; she kept talking
away.  I gazed at her in amazement.  She was always a silent girl
and had never talked to anyone like that, and with a perfect
stranger too.  Her cheeks were burning, her eyes glittered. . . . 
And he said at once:  'You are perfectly right, madam.  Versilov,'
said he, 'is just like the generals here, described in the
newspapers; they dress themselves up with all their decorations and
go after all the governesses who advertise in the papers. 
Sometimes they find what they want, or, if they don't, they sit and
talk a little, make bushels of promises and go away, having got
diversion out of it, anyway.'  Olya actually laughed, but so
bitterly, and I saw the gentleman take her hand and press it to his
heart.  'I am a man of independent means, madam,' said he, 'and
might well make a proposal to a fair maiden, but I'd better,' said
he, 'kiss your little hand to begin with. . . .'  And he was trying
to kiss her hand.  How she started!  But I came to the rescue, and
together we turned him out of the room.  Then, towards evening,
Olya snatched the money from me and ran out.  When she came back
she said, 'I have revenged myself on that dishonourable man,
mamma.'  'Oh, Olya, Olya,' I said, 'perhaps we have thrown away our
happiness.  You have insulted a generous, benevolent man!' I cried--
I was so vexed with her I could not help it.  She shouted at me. 
'I won't have it, I won't have it!' she cried; 'if he were ever so
honest, I don't want his charity!  I don't want anyone to pity me!' 
I went to bed with no thought of anything.  How many times I had
looked on that nail in your wall where once there had been a
looking-glass--it never entered my head, never; I never thought of
it yesterday and I'd never thought of it before; I had no inkling
of it, and I did not expect it of Olya at all.  I usually sleep
heavily and snore; it's the blood going to my head, and sometimes
it goes to my heart.  I call out in my sleep so that Olya wakes me
up at night.  'What is the matter with you, mamma?' she would say;
'you sleep so heavily there's no waking you.'  'Oh, Olya,' I said,
'I do, I do.'  That's how I must have slept this night, so that,
after waiting a bit, she got up without fear of waking me.  The
strap, a long one from our trunk, had been lying about all that
month where we could see it; only yesterday morning I had been
thinking of tidying it away.  And the chair she must have kicked
away afterwards, and she had put her petticoat down beside it to
prevent its banging on the floor.  And it must have been a long
time afterwards, a whole hour or more afterwards, that I waked up
and called 'Olya, Olya'; all at once I felt something amiss, and
called her name.  Either because I did not hear her breathing in
her bed, or perhaps I made out in the dark that the bed was empty--
anyway, I got up suddenly and felt with my hand; there was no one
in the bed and the pillow was cold.  My heart sank; I stood still
as though I were stunned; my mind was a blank.  'She's gone out,' I
thought.  I took a step, and by the bed I seemed to see her
standing in the corner by the door.  I stood still and gazed at her
without speaking, and through the darkness she seemed to look at me
without stirring. . . .  'But why has she got on a chair,' I
wondered.  'Olya,' I whispered.  I was frightened.  'Olya, do you
hear?'  But suddenly, as it were, it all dawned upon me.  I went
forward, held out both arms and put them round her, and she swayed
in my arms; I swayed and she swayed with me.  I understood and
would not understand. . . .  I wanted to cry out, but no cry
came. . . .  Ach!  I fell on the floor and shrieked. . . ."

          *        *        *        *        *        *

"Vassin," I said at six o'clock in the morning, "if it had not been
for your Stebelkov this might not have happened."

"Who knows?--most likely it would have happened.  One can't draw
such a conclusion; everything was leading up to it, apart from
that. . . .  It is true that Stebelkov sometimes. . . ."

He broke off and frowned disagreeably.  At seven o'clock he went
out again; he still had a great deal to do.  I was left at last
entirely alone.  It was by now daylight.  I felt rather giddy.  I
was haunted by the figure of Versilov: this lady's story had
brought him out in quite a different light.  To think this over
better, I lay down on Vassin's bed just as I was, in my clothes and
my boots, just for a minute, with no intention of going to sleep--
and suddenly I fell asleep; I don't remember how it happened,
indeed.  I slept almost four hours; nobody waked me.



CHAPTER X


1


I woke about half-past ten, and for a long time I could not believe
my eyes: on the sofa on which I had slept the previous night was
sitting my mother, and beside her--the unhappy mother of the dead
girl.  They were holding each other's hands, they were talking in
whispers, I suppose, that they might not wake me, and both were
crying.  I got up from the bed, and flew straight to kiss my
mother.  She positively beamed all over, kissed me and make the
sign of the cross over me three times with the right hand.  Before
we had time to say a word the door opened, and Versilov and Vassin
came in.  My mother at once got up and led the bereaved woman away. 
Vassin gave me his hand, while Versilov sank into an armchair
without saying a word to me.  Mother and he had evidently been here
for some time.  His face looked overcast and careworn.

"What I regret most of all," he began saying slowly to Vassin,
evidently in continuation of what they had been discussing outside,
"is that I had no time to set it all right yesterday evening; then
probably this terrible thing would not have happened!  And indeed
there was time, it was hardly eight o'clock.  As soon as she ran
away from us last night, I inwardly resolved to follow her and to
reassure her, but this unforeseen and urgent business, though of
course I might quite well have put it off till to-day . . . or even
for a week--this vexatious turn of affairs has hindered and ruined
everything.  That's just how things do happen!"

"Perhaps you would not have succeeded in reassuring her; things had
gone too far already, apart from you," Vassin put in.

"No, I should have succeeded, I certainly should have succeeded.
And the idea did occur to me to send Sofia Andreyevna in my place.
It flashed across my mind, but nothing more.  Sofia Andreyevna alone
would have convinced her, and the unhappy girl would have been
alive.  No, never again will I meddle . . . in 'good works' . . .
and it is the only time in my life I have done it!  And I imagined
that I had kept up with the times and understood the younger
generation.  But we elders grow old almost before we grow ripe.
And, by the way, there are a terrible number of modern people who go
on considering themselves the younger generation from habit, because
only yesterday they were such, and meantime they don't notice that
they are no longer under the ban of the orthodox."

"There has been a misunderstanding, and the misunderstanding is
quite evident," Vassin observed reasonably.  "Her mother maintains
that after the cruel way she was insulted in that infamous house,
she seemed to lose her reason.  Add to that her circumstances, the
insult in the first place from the merchant . . . all this might
have happened in the past, and, to my mind, is in no way
particularly characteristic of the younger generation of to-day."

"It's impatient, the present generation, and has little
understanding of reality; and, although that's true of all young
people in all ages, it's particularly so in this . . . tell me,
what part had Mr. Stebelkov in the trouble?"

"Mr. Stebelkov," I put in suddenly, "was the cause of it all.  If
it hadn't been for him nothing would have happened.  He poured oil
on the flames."

Versilov listened, but he did not glance at me.  Vassin frowned.

"I blame myself for one ridiculous circumstance," Versilov went on
deliberately, dwelling on each syllable as before, "I believe that
in my usual stupid way I allowed myself to be lively after a
fashion--this frivolous little laugh--in fact, I was not
sufficiently abrupt, dry and gloomy, three characteristics which
seem to be greatly prized by the young generation.  In fact, I gave
her grounds for suspecting me of being a gay deceiver."

"Quite the opposite," I put in abruptly again, "the mother lays
particular stress on your having made the best possible impression
through your gravity, severity even, and sincerity--those were her
very words.  The dead girl herself praised you on the same grounds
directly after you'd gone."

"Y-yes?" Versilov mumbled with a cursory glance in my direction at
last.  "Take this scrap of paper, it's essential to the business"--
he held out a tiny sheet to Vassin.  Vassin took it, and seeing I
was looking at him with curiosity, gave it to me to read.  It was a
note of two straggling lines scrawled in pencil, and perhaps in the
dark:

"Mother darling, forgive me for cutting short my début into life. 
Your Olya who is causing you such grief."

"That was only found this morning," Vassin explained

"What a strange letter!" I cried in astonishment.

"Why strange?" asked Vassin.

"How can anyone use humorous expressions at such a minute?"

Vassin looked at me inquiringly.

"And the humour is strange too," I went on.  "It's the conventional
school jargon that schoolfellows use with one another.  Who could
write 'cut short my début into life' at such a moment, in such a
letter to her unhappy mother--and she seems to have loved her
mother too."

"Why not write it?" said Vassin, still not understanding.

"There's absolutely no humour about it," observed Versilov at last,
"the expression, of course, is inappropriate, and quite incongruous,
and may, as you say, have been picked up from some high-school slang
or from some journalistic stuff; but the dead girl used it in that
awful letter quite simply and earnestly"

"That's impossible; she had completed her studies and won the
silver medal."

"A silver medal has nothing to do with it.  Lots of them complete
their studies as brilliantly nowadays."

"The younger generation again," said Vassin, smiling.

"Not at all," said Versilov, getting up and taking his hat.  If the
present generation is deficient on the literary side there's no
doubt that it possesses other qualifications," he added with
unusual gravity.  "At the same time 'many' does not mean 'all':
you, for instance, I don't accuse of being badly educated on the
literary side, and you're a young man too."

"Vassin saw nothing wrong in the use of 'début' either," I could
not resist saying.

Versilov held out his hand to Vassin without speaking.  The latter
took up his cap to go with him, calling out to me:  "Goodbye for
now."  Versilov went out without noticing me.  I too had no time to
lose.  Come what might, I had to run and find a lodging--now more
necessary than ever.  My mother was not with the landlady.  She had
gone out, taking the bereaved woman with her.  I went out into the
street, feeling particularly cheerful and confident.  A new and
mighty feeling had sprung up in my soul.  As luck would have it,
everything helped to maintain this mood.  I was exceptionally
fortunate and quickly found a lodging in every way suitable.  Of
this lodging later, but for the moment I will continue with what is
more important.

It was past one when I went back to Vassin's to fetch my trunk, and
again found him at home.  When he saw me he cried with a sincere
and good-humoured air:

"How glad I am you've caught me!  I was just going out.  I can tell
you a piece of news that I think will interest you particularly."

"I'm sure of that," I cried.

"I say, you do look cheerful!  Tell me, did you know anything about
a letter that was preserved by Kraft, and came into Versilov's
hands yesterday, something concerning the lawsuit he has just won? 
In this letter, the testator declares intentions contrary to the
decision in the lawcourts yesterday.  The letter was written long
ago.  I know nothing definite about it in fact, but don't you know
something?"

"To be sure I do.  The day before yesterday Kraft took me home with
him from those people on purpose to give me the letter, and I gave
it to Versilov yesterday."

"Yes?  That's just what I thought.  Only fancy, that's just the
business Versilov was speaking of just now, that prevented him from
coming yesterday evening to see that girl---it was owing to that
letter.  Versilov went straight yesterday evening to Prince
Sokolsky's lawyer, handed in the letter, and refused to take the
fortune he had won.  By now this refusal has been put into legal
form.  Versilov is not making Prince Sokolsky a present of the
money, but declares that he acknowledges his claim to it."

I was dumbfoundered, but ecstatic.  I had in reality been convinced
that Versilov would destroy the letter, and, what is more, though I
had told Kraft that this would be dishonourable, and although I had
repeated this to myself in the restaurant, and had told myself that
"it was to find a true man, not a man like this that I had come"--
yet deeper down, that is, in my inmost soul, I felt that there was
nothing to be done but to destroy the letter, that is to say, I
looked upon this as quite a natural thing to do.  If I blamed
Versilov for it afterwards I simply blamed him on purpose, to keep
up appearances, and to maintain my moral superiority.  But hearing
now of Versilov's noble action I was moved to genuine and whole-
hearted enthusiasm, blaming myself with shame and remorse for my
cynicism and indifference to principle, and instantly exalting
Versilov to heights far above me.  I almost embraced Vassin.

"What a man!  What a man!" I exclaimed, rapturously.  "Who else
would have done it?"

"I quite agree with you that very many people would not have done
it . . . and that it was undoubtedly an extremely disinterested
action. . . ."

"But . . . ?  Finish, Vassin.  You have a 'but'?"

"Yes, of course there is a 'but'; Versilov's action, to my mind, is
a little too hasty, and not quite ingenuous," said Vassin with a
smile.

"Not ingenuous?"

"Yes.  There's too much of the 'hero on the pedestal' about it. 
For in any case he might have done the same thing without injuring
himself.  Some part of the inheritance, if not half of it, might
well have remained with him, even from the most scrupulous
standpoint, especially as the letter has no legal significance, and
he has already won the case.  The lawyer on the other side shares
my opinion.  I've just been talking to him.  His conduct would have
been no less handsome; but simply through a whim due to pride,
things have turned out differently.  What's more, Mr. Versilov let
himself be carried away by his feelings, and acted too precipitately.
He said himself yesterday that he might have put it off for a whole
week. . . ."

"Do you know, Vassin, I can't help agreeing with you, but . . . I
like it better so, it pleases me more!"

"However, it's a matter of taste!  You asked for my opinion or I
should have held my tongue."

"Even if there is something of the 'pedestal' about it, so much the
better," I said.  "A pedestal may be a pedestal but in itself it's
a very precious thing.  This 'pedestal' is, anyway, an 'ideal' of a
sort, and it's by no means an improvement that some modern souls
are without it: it's better to have it even in a slightly distorted
form!  And I'm sure you think so yourself, Vassin darling, Vassin,
my dear Vassin!  I am raving but of course you understand me. 
That's what you're for, Vassin.  In any case I embrace and kiss
you, Vassin!"

"So pleased?"

"Yes, awfully pleased.  For the man 'was dead and liveth, he was
lost and is found'!  Vassin, I'm a miserable wretch of a boy, I'm
not as good as you.  I recognize it just because at some moments
I'm different, deeper and loftier.  I say this because the day
before yesterday I flattered you to your face (and I did that
because I had been humiliated and crushed)--I hated you for it for
two whole days.  I swore the same night that I would never come and
see you, and I came to you yesterday morning simply from spite, do
you understand, FROM SPITE.  I sat here alone criticizing your room
and you, and every one of your books and your landlady.  I tried to
humble you and laugh at you."

"You shouldn't say that. . . ."

"Yesterday evening, when I concluded from some phrase of yours that
you did not understand women, I felt glad that I was able to detect
you in it.  This morning, when I scored off you over the 'début,' I
was awfully pleased again, and all because I had praised you up so
before."

"I should think so indeed!" Vassin cried at last (he still went on
smiling, not in the least surprised at me).  "Why, that happens
with almost every one, only no one admits it, and one ought not to
confess it at all, because in any case it passes, and leads to
nothing."

"Is it really the same with every one?  Is every one the same?  And
you say that quite calmly?  Why, one can't go on living with such
views!"

"You think then that:


          To me more dear the lie ennobling
          Than Truth's dark infamy revealed!"


"But that's true, you know," I cried.  "There's a sacred axiom in
those two lines!"

"I don't know.  I can't undertake to decide whether those lines are
true or not.  Perhaps, as always, the truth lies in the mean: that
is, that in one case truth is sacred and in another falsehood.  The
only thing I know for certain is that that idea will long remain
one of the questions most disputed among men.  In any case I
observe that at the moment you're longing to dance.  Well, dance
away then, exercise is wholesome; but I have a mass of work to get
through this morning . . . and I've lingered on with you till I'm
late!"

"I'm going!  I'm going!  I'm just off!  One word only," I cried,
after seizing my trunk, "my 'throwing myself on your neck' again;
it's simply because when I came in you told me this news with such
genuine pleasure and were 'so glad' I had found you, and after the
'début' incident this morning; that real gladness of yours turned
my 'youthful ardent soul' to you again.  Well, good-bye, good-bye,
I'll do my best not to come in the future, and I know that that
will please you very much, as I see from your eyes, and it will be
an advantage to both of us."

Chattering like this, and almost spluttering in my joyful babble,
I hauled up my trunk and set off with it to my lodging.  What
delighted me most of all was that Versilov had been so unmistakably
angry with me, and had been unwilling to speak to me or look at me. 
As soon as I had deposited my trunk, I at once flew off to my old
prince.  I must confess that I had rather felt not seeing him those
two days.  Besides, he would no doubt have heard already about
Versilov.


2


I knew he would be delighted to see me, and I protest that I should
have gone, apart from Versilov altogether.  What had alarmed me
yesterday and that morning was the thought that I might meet
Katerina Nikolaevna; but now I was afraid of nothing.

He embraced me joyfully.

"About Versilov!  Have you heard?" I began forthwith on the great
news.

"Cher enfant, my dear boy, it's so magnanimous, so noble--in fact
it made an overwhelming impression even on Kilyan" (this was the
clerk downstairs).  "It's injudicious on his part, but it's
magnificent, it's heroic!  One must cherish the ideal!"

"Yes, one must, mustn't one?  We were always agreed about that."

"My dear boy, we always have agreed.  Where have you been?  I
wanted very much to come and see you but I didn't know where to
find you . . . for I couldn't go to Versilov's anyway. . . . 
Though now, after all this . . . you know, my boy, I believe it's
by this he has always conquered the women's hearts, by these
qualities, no doubt of it. . . ."

"By the way, for fear I forget it, I've been saving this up for
you.  A very low fellow, a ridiculous fool, abusing Versilov to my
face yesterday, used the expression that he was a 'petticoat
prophet'; what an expression--was it his own expression?  I have
been treasuring it up for you. . . ."

"A 'petticoat prophet'?  Mais . . . c'est charmant!  Ha-ha!  But
that fits him so well, or rather it doesn't--foo! . . .  But it's
so apt . . . at least it's not apt at all but. . . ."

"Never mind, never mind, don't worry yourself, look upon it simply
as a bon mot!"

"It's a capital bon mot, and do you know, it has a deep
significance. . .  There's a perfectly true idea in it.  That is,
would you believe it. . . .  In fact, I'll tell you a tiny little
secret.  Have you noticed that girl Olympiada?  Would you believe
it, she's got a little heartache for Andrey Petrovitch; in fact it
goes so far as cherishing a . . ."

"Cherishing!  What doesn't she deserve?" I cried with a gesture of
contempt.

"Mon cher, don't shout, it's all nonsense, it may be you're right
from your point of view.  By the way, what was the matter with you
last time you were here and Katerina Nikolaevna arrived? . . .  You
staggered; I thought you were going to fall down, and was on the
point of rushing to support you."

"Never mind that now.  The fact is I was simply confused for a
special reason. . . ."

"You're blushing now."

"And you must rub it in of course.  You know that she's on bad
terms with Versilov . . . and then all this; so it upset me.  Ech,
leave that; later!"

"Yes, let's leave it!  I'm delighted to. . . .  In fact, I've been
very much to blame in regard to her and I remember I grumbled about
her to you. . . .  Forget it, my dear; she will change her opinion
of you, too.  I quite foresee that. . . .  Ah, here's Prince
Sergay!"

A handsome young officer walked in.  I looked at him eagerly, I had
never seen him before.  I call him handsome for every one called
him so, but there was something not altogether attractive in that
handsome young face.  I note this as the impression made the first
instant, my first view of him, which remained with me always.

He was thin and finely built, with brown hair, a fresh but somewhat
sallow skin and an expression of determination.  There was a rather
hard look in his beautiful dark eyes even when he was perfectly
calm.  But his resolute expression repelled one just because one
felt that its resoluteness cost him little.  But I cannot put it
into words. . . .  It is true that his face was able to change
suddenly from hardness to a wonderfully friendly, gentle and tender
expression, and, what is more, with unmistakable frankness.  It was
just that frankness which was attractive.  I will note another
characteristic: in spite of its friendliness and frankness his face
never looked gay; oven when he laughed with whole-hearted mirth
there was always a feeling that there was no trace in his heart of
genuine, serene, lighthearted gaiety. . . .  But it is extremely
difficult to describe a face like this.  I'm utterly incapable of
it.  In his usual stupid way the old prince hastened to introduce
us.

"This is my young friend Arkady Andreyevitch Dolgoruky" (again
"Andreyovitch!").

The young man turned to me with redoubled courtesy, but it was
evident that my name was quite unknown to him.

"He's . . . a relation of Andrey Petrovitch's," murmured my
vexatious old prince.  (How tiresome these old men sometimes are
with their little ways!)  The young man at once realized who I was.

"Ach!  I heard of you long ago. . . ." he said quickly.  "I had the
very great pleasure of making the acquaintance of your sister
Lizaveta Makarovna last year at Luga. . . .  She talked to me about
you too."

I was surprised; there was a glow of real pleasure in his face.

"Excuse me, prince," I answered, drawing back both my hands, "I
ought to tell you frankly, and I'm glad to be speaking in the
presence of our dear prince, that I was actually desirous of
meeting you, and quite recently, only yesterday, desired it with
very different motives.  I tell you this directly although it may
surprise you.  In short, I wanted to challenge you for the insult
you offered to Versilov a year and a half ago in Ems.  And though
perhaps you would not have accepted my challenge, as I'm only a
schoolboy, and not of age, yet I should have sent you the
challenge, however you might have taken it or whatever you might
have done, and I confess I have the same intention still."

The old prince told me afterwards that I succeeded in pronouncing
these words with great dignity.

There was a look of genuine distress on the young man's face.

"You didn't let me finish," he answered earnestly.  "The real
cordiality with which I greeted you is due to my present feeling
for Andrey Petrovitch.  I'm sorry I cannot at once tell you all the
circumstances.  But I assure you on my honour that I have long
regarded my unfortunate conduct at Ems with the greatest regret.  I
resolved on my return to Petersburg to make every reparation within
my power, that is, literally to make him an apology in any form he
might select.  The highest and weightiest considerations have
caused this change in my views.  The fact that we were at law with
one another would not have affected my determination in the least. 
His action in regard to me yesterday has, so to speak, moved me to
the depths of my soul, and even now, would you believe it, I can't
get over it.  And now, I must tell you, I've come to the prince to
inform him of an astounding circumstance.  Three hours ago, that
is, just at the time when he was drawing up the deed with the
lawyer, a friend of Andrey Petrovitch's came to me bringing a
challenge from him to a duel . . . a formal challenge for the
affair at Ems. . . ."

"He challenged you?" I cried, and I felt that my eyes glowed and
the blood rushed into my face.

"Yes, challenged me.  I at once accepted the challenge, but resolved
before our meeting to send him a letter in which I explain my view
of my conduct, and my deep regret for my horrible blunder . . . for
it was only a blunder, an unlucky, fatal blunder!  I may observe
that my position in the regiment forced me to run the risk of this
duel, and that by sending such a letter before our meeting I have
exposed myself to public censure . . . do you understand?  But in
spite of that, I made up my mind to send it, and I've only not done
so because an hour after the challenge I received another letter
from him in which he apologizes for having troubled me, asks me to
forget the challenge, and adds that he regrets his 'momentary
outburst of cowardice and egoism'--his own words.  So that he
relieves me from all obligation to send the letter.  I had not yet
dispatched it, but I have come to say something about this to the
prince. . . .  And I assure you I have suffered far more from the
reproaches of my conscience than anyone. . . .  Is this sufficient
explanation for you, Arkady Makarovitch, for the time at any rate?
Will you do me the honour to believe in my complete sincerity?"

I was completely conquered.  I found a perfect frankness, which was
the last thing I had expected.  Indeed, I had expected nothing of
this kind.  I muttered something in reply and forthwith held out
both hands.  He shook both of them in his delightedly.  Then he
drew the old prince away and talked to him for five minutes in the
latter's bedroom.

"If you want to do me particular pleasure," he said frankly in a
loud voice, addressing me as he came out of the prince's room,
"come back straight with me and I will show you the letter I am
just sending to Andrey Petrovitch and with it his letter to me."

I consented with the utmost readiness.  My old prince made a great
bustle at seeing us off and called me, too, apart into his room for
a minute.

"Mon ami, how glad I am, how glad I am. . . .  We'll talk of it all
later.  By the way, I've two letters here in my portfolio.  One has
to be delivered with a personal explanation and the other must go
to the bank--and there too. . . ."

And he at once gave me two commissions which he pretended were
urgent and required exceptional effort and attention.  I should
have to go, deliver them myself, give a receipt and so on.

"Ha, you are cunning!" I cried as I took the letters, "I swear all
this is nonsense and you've no work for me to do at all.  You've
invented these two jobs on purpose to make me believe that I am of
use and not taking money for nothing."

"Mon enfant, I protest that you are mistaken.  They are both urgent
matters.  Cher enfant!" he cried, suddenly overcome by a rush of
emotion, "my dear young friend" (he put both hands on my head), "I
bless you and your destiny.  Let us always be as true-hearted as
to-day . . . as kind-hearted and good as possible, let us love all
that is fair and good . . . in all its varied forms. . . .  Well,
enfin . . . enfin rendons grâce . . . et je te benis!"

He could not go on, but whimpered over my head.  I must confess I
was almost in tears too; anyway I embraced my queer old friend with
sincere and delighted feeling.  We kissed each other warmly.


3


Prince Sergay as I shall call him (that is Prince Sergay Petrovitch
Sokolsky) drove me in a smart victoria to his flat, and my first
impression was one of surprise at its magnificence.  Not that it
was really magnificent, but it was a flat such as "well-to-do
people" live in, light, large, lofty rooms (I saw two of them) and
the furniture well padded, comfortable, abundant and of the best--
though I've no idea whether it was in the Versailles or Renaissance
style.  There were rugs, carvings, and statuettes, though everybody
said that the Sokolskys were beggars, and had absolutely nothing. 
I had heard, however, that Prince Sergay had cut a dash wherever he
could, here, in Moscow, in his old regiment and in Paris, that he
was a gambler and that he had debts.  My coat was crumpled and
covered with fluff, too, because I had slept in it without
undressing, and this was the fourth day I had worn my shirt.  My
coat was not really shabby but when I went into Prince Sergay's, I
recalled Versilov's suggestion that I should have a new suit.

"Only fancy, owing to a case of suicide, I slept all night without
undressing," I observed with a casual air, and as he immediately
looked attentive I briefly told the story.  But what interested him
most was evidently his letter.  What seemed strangest to me was
that he had not smiled nor betrayed the slightest symptom of
amusement when I had told him I meant to challenge him to a duel. 
Though I should have been able to prevent his laughing, his gravity
was strange in a man of his class.  We sat opposite one another in
the middle of the room, at his immense writing table, and he handed
me for my inspection the fair copy of his letter to Versilov.  The
letter was very much like all that he had just told me at the old
prince's; it was written with warmth, indeed.  I really did not
know at first what to make of his evident frankness and his
apparent leaning towards what was good and right, but I was already
beginning to be conquered by it, for after all what reason had I
for disbelieving it?  Whatever he was like, and whatever stories
were told of him, he yet might have good impulses.  I looked, too,
at Versilov's second note, which consisted of seven lines--his
withdrawal of his challenge.  Though he did, it is true, speak of
his own cowardice and egoism, yet on the whole the note was
suggestive of a sort of disdain . . . or rather there was apparent
in the whole episode a superlative nonchalance.  I did not,
however, utter this thought aloud.

"What do you think of this withdrawal, though?" I asked, "you don't
suppose he acted from cowardice, do you?"

"Of course not," said Prince Sergay with a smile, though a very
grave one, and in fact he was becoming more and more preoccupied. 
"I know quite well how manly he is.  It's a special point of
view . . . his peculiar turn of ideas."

"No doubt," I broke in warmly.  "A fellow called Vassin says that
there's too much of the 'pedestal' about the line he has taken with
this letter and his refusing to take the fortune. . . .  But to my
mind things like that aren't done for effect but correspond with
something fundamental within."

"I know Mr. Vassin very well," observed Prince Sergay.

"Oh, yes, you must have seen him in Luga."

We suddenly glanced at one another, and, I remember, I flushed a
little.  Anyway he changed the subject.  I had a great longing to
talk, however.  The thought of one person I had met the day before
tempted me to ask him certain questions, but I did not know how to
approach the subject.  And altogether I felt ill at ease.  I was
impressed, too, by his perfect breeding, his courtesy, his manner,
his absence of constraint, in fact by the polish which these
aristocrats acquire almost from the cradle.  I saw two glaring
mistakes in grammar in his letter.  And as a rule, when I meet such
people I'm not at all overawed and only become more abrupt, which
is sometimes, perhaps, a mistake.  But on this occasion the thought
that I was covered with fluff contributed to my discomfiture so
that, in fact, I floundered a little and dropped into being over-
familar.  I caught Prince Sergay eyeing me very intently at times.

"Tell me, prince," I blurted out suddenly, "don't you secretly
think it absurd that a youngster like me should think of
challenging you, especially for an affront to some one else?"

"An affront to a father may well be resented.  No, I don't think
it's absurd."

"It seems to me that it's dreadfully absurd . . . from one point of
view, not of course from my own.  Especially as my name is
Dolgoruky and not Versilov.  And if you're telling me a falsehood,
or are trying to smooth things over simply from worldly politeness,
it stands to reason that you are deceiving me in everything else."

"No, I don't think it's absurd," he repeated with great seriousness.
"How could you help feeling like a son to your father?  It's true,
you're young . . . because . . . I don't know . . . I believe that a
youth not of age can't fight a duel . . . and a challenge can't be
accepted from him . . . by the rules. . . .  But there is, if you
like, one serious objection to be made: if you send a challenge
without the knowledge of the offended party on whose behalf you are
acting, you seem to be guilty of a certain lack of respect to him,
don't you? . . ."

Our conversation was interrupted by a footman who came in to make
some announcement.  Prince Sergay, who seemed to have been
expecting him, went at once to meet him without finishing what he
was saying.  So the announcement was made in an undertone and I did
not hear it.

"Excuse me," said Prince Sergay, turning to me, "I'll be back in a
moment."

And he went out.  I was left alone; I walked up and down the room,
thinking.  Strange to say, he attracted me and at the same time
repelled me intensely.  There was something in him for which I could
not find a name, though it was very repellent.  "If he isn't laughing
at me he certainly must be very guileless, but if he has been
laughing at me then . . . perhaps I should think him cleverer. . . ."
I thought rather oddly.  I went up to the table, and read the letter
to Versilov once more.  In my abstraction I didn't notice the time,
but when I roused myself I found that the prince's minute had lasted
at least a quarter of an hour.  This disturbed me a little; I walked
up and down once more, at last I took my hat and decided, I remember,
to go out to try and find some one to send to Prince Sergay, and
when he came, to say good-bye to him at once, declaring that I had
work to do and could stay no longer.  I fancied that that would be
the most suitable thing to do, for I was rather tormented by the
idea that he was treating me very casually in leaving me so long.

There were two doors in the room, both shut, and on the same side,
one at each end of it.  Forgetting which door I had come in by, or
rather lost in thought, I opened one of them, and suddenly, in a
long narrow room, I saw, sitting on the sofa, my sister Liza. 
There was no one else in the room and she was certainly waiting for
some one.  But before I had time even to feel surprised, I heard
the voice of Prince Sergay speaking loudly to some one, and
returning to the study.  I hurriedly closed the door and Prince
Sergay, coming in at the other, noticed nothing.  I remember he
began to apologize and said something about "Anna Fyodorovna."  But
I was so amazed and confused that I hardly took in what he said,
and could only mutter that I simply must go home, and stubbornly
persisting in this, I beat a hasty retreat.  The well-bred prince
must have looked with curiosity at my manners.  He came with me
right into the hall, still talking, and I neither answered nor
looked at him.


4


I turned to the left when I got into the street and walked away at
random.  There was nothing coherent in my mind.  I walked along
slowly and I believe I had walked a good way, some five hundred
paces, when I felt a light tap on my shoulder.  I turned and saw
Liza; she had overtaken me and tapped me on the shoulder with her
umbrella.  There was a wonderful gaiety and a touch of roguishness
in her beaming eyes.

"How glad I am you came this way, or I shouldn't have met you to-
day!"  She was a little out of breath from walking fast.

"How breathless you are."

"I've been running so as to catch you up."

"Liza, was it you I saw just now?"

"Where?"

"At the prince's. . . .  At Prince Sokolsky's."

"No, it wasn't me.  You didn't see me. . . ."

I made no answer and we walked on for ten paces.  Liza burst into a
fit of laughter.

"It was me, of course it was!  Why, you saw me yourself, you looked
into my eyes, and I looked into yours, so how can you ask whether
you saw me?  What a character!  And do you know I dreadfully wanted
to laugh when you looked at me then.  You looked so awfully funny."

She laughed violently.  I felt all the anguish in my heart fade
away at once.

"But tell me how did you come to be there?"

"To see Anna Fyodorovna."

"What Anna Fyodorovna?"

"Mme. Stolbyeev.  When we were staying in Luga I used to spend
whole days with her.  She used to receive mother, too, and used
even to come and see us, though she visited scarcely anyone else
there.  She is a distant relation of Andrey Petrovitch's, and a
relation of Prince Sokolsky's too: she's a sort of old aunt of
his."

"Then she lives at Prince Sokolsky's?"

"No, he lives with her."

"Then whose flat is it?"

"It's her flat.  The whole flat has been hers for the last year. 
Prince Sokolsky has only just arrived and is staying with her. 
Yes, and she's only been in Petersburg four days herself."

"I say, Liza, bother her flat and her too!"

"No, she's splendid."

"Well, let her be, that's her affair.  We're splendid too!  See
what a day it is, see how jolly!  How pretty you are to-day, Liza. 
But you're an awful baby though."

"Arkady, tell me, that girl, the one who came yesterday. . . ."

"Oh, the pity of it, Liza!  The pity of it!"

"Ach, what a pity!  What a fate!  Do you know it's a sin for us to
be walking here so happily while her soul is hovering somewhere in
darkness, in some unfathomable darkness, after her sin and the
wrong done her. . . .  Arkady, who was responsible for her suicide? 
Oh, how terrible it is!  Do you ever think of that outer darkness? 
Ach, how I fear death, and how sinful it is.  I don't like the
dark, what a glorious thing the sun is!  Mother says it's a sin to
be afraid. . . .  Arkady, do you know mother well?

"Very little, Liza.  Very little so far."

"Ah, what a wonderful person she is; and you ought to get to know
her!  She needs understanding. . . ."

"Yes, but you see, I didn't know you either; but I know you now,
thoroughly.  I've found you out altogether in one minute.  Though
you are afraid of death, Liza, you must be proud, bold, plucky. 
Better than I am, ever so much better!  I like you awfully, Liza. 
Ach, Liza! let death come when it must, but meantime let us live--
let us live!  Oh, let us pity that poor girl, but let us bless life
all the same!  Don't you think so?  I have an 'idea,' Liza.  Liza,
you know, of course, that Versilov has refused to take the fortune? 
You don't know my soul, Liza, you don't know what that man has
meant to me. . . ."

"Not know indeed!  I know all that."

"You know all about it?  But, of course, you would!  You're
clever, cleverer than Vassin.  Mother and you have eyes that are
penetrating and humane, I mean a point of view that is.  I'm
talking nonsense. . . .  Liza, I'm not good for much, in lots of
ways."

"You want taking in hand, that's all."

"Take me in hand, Liza.  How nice it is to look at you to-day.  Do
you know that you are very pretty?  I have never seen your eyes
before. . . .  I've only seen them for the first time to-day . . .
where did you get them to-day, Liza?  Where have you bought them? 
What price have you paid for them?  Liza, I've never had a friend,
and I've thought the idea of friendship nonsense; but it's not
nonsense with you. . . .  Shall we be friends!  You understand what
I mean?"

"I quite understand."

"And you know--we'll simply be friends, no conditions, no contract."

"Yes, simply, simply, with only one condition: that if we ever
blame one another, if we're displeased about anything, if we become
nasty and horrid, even if we forget all this,--we will never forget
this day, and this hour!  Let's vow that to ourselves.  Let us vow
that we will always remember this day and how we walked arm in arm
together, and how we laughed and were gay. . . .  Yes?  Shall we?"

"Yes, Liza, yes, I swear.  But, Liza, I feel as though I'm hearing
you talk for the first time. . . .  Liza, have you read much?"

"He has never asked till now!  Only yesterday for the first time,
when I said something, you deigned to notice me, honoured sir, Mr.
Wiseacre."

"But why didn't you begin to talk to me if I've been such a fool?"

"I kept expecting you'd grow wiser.  I've been watching you from
the very first, Arkady Makarovitch, and as I watched you I said to
myself 'he'll come to me, it's bound to end in his coming'--and I
made up my mind I'd better leave you the honour of taking the first
step.  'No,' I said to myself, 'you can run after me.'"

"Ah, you coquette!  Come, Liza, tell me honestly, have you been
laughing at me for the last month?"

"Oh, you are funny, you're awfully funny, Arkady!  And do you know,
what I've been loving you for most all this month is your being so
queer.  But in some ways you're a horrid boy too--I say that for
fear you should grow conceited.  And do you know who else has been
laughing at you?  Mother's been laughing at you, mother and I
together.  'Oh my,' we whispered, 'what a queer boy!  My goodness,
what a queer boy!'  And you sat all the while imagining that we
were trembling before you."

"Liza, what do you think about Versilov?"

"I think a great deal about him; but we won't talk about him just
now, you know.  There's no need to talk of him to-day, is there?"

"Quite so!  Yes, you're awfully clever, Liza!  You are certainly
cleverer than I am.  You wait a bit, Liza, I'll make an end of all
this, and then I shall have something to tell you. . . ."

"What are you frowning at?"

"I'm not frowning, Liza, it's nothing. . . .  You see, Liza, it's
best to be open: it's a peculiarity of mine that I don't like some
tender spots on my soul being touched upon . . . or rather, it's
shameful to be often displaying certain feelings for the admiration
of all, isn't it?  So that I sometimes prefer to frown and hold my
tongue.  You're clever, you must understand."

"Yes, and what's more, I'm the same myself; I understand you in
everything.  Do you know that mother's the same too?"

"Ah, Liza!  Oh, to live a long while on this earth!  Ah?  What did
you say?"

"I said nothing."

"You're looking?"

"Yes, and so are you.  I look at you and love you."

I went with her almost all the way home and gave her my address. 
As we parted, for the first time in my life I kissed her. . . .


5


And all this would have been very nice but there was one thing that
was not nice: one painful thought had been throbbing in my mind all
night and I could not shake it off.  This was, that when I had met
that unhappy girl at the gate I told her I was leaving the house
myself, leaving home, that one left bad people and made a home for
oneself, and that Versilov had a lot of illegitimate children. 
Such words from a son about his father must, of course, have
confirmed all her suspicions of Versilov's character and of his
having insulted her.  I had blamed Stebelkov, but perhaps I had
been the chief one to pour oil on the flames.  That thought was
awful, it is awful even now. . . .  But then, that morning, though
I'd begun to be uneasy, I told myself it was all nonsense.  "Oh,
'things had gone too far already' apart from me," I repeated from
time to time, "it's nothing; it will pass! I shall get over it.  I
shall make up for this somehow, I've fifty years before me!"

But yet the idea haunted me.



PART II



CHAPTER I


1


I pass over an interval of almost two months.  The reader need not
be uneasy, everything will be clear from the latter part of my
story.  I start again from the 15th of November, a day I remember
only too well for many reasons.  To begin with, no one who had
known me two months before would have recognized me, externally
anyway, that is to say, anyone would have known me but would not
have been able to make me out.  To begin with I was dressed like a
dandy.  The conscientious and tasteful Frenchman, whom Versilov had
once tried to recommend me, had not only made me a whole suit, but
had already been rejected as not good enough.  I already had suits
made by other, superior, tailors, of a better class, and I even ran
up bills with them.  I had an account, too, at a celebrated
restaurant, but I was still a little nervous there and paid on the
spot whenever I had money, though I knew it was mauvais ton, and
that I was compromising myself by doing so.  A French barber on the
Nevsky Prospect was on familiar terms with me, and told me
anecdotes as he dressed my hair.  And I must confess I practised my
French on him.  Though I know French, and fairly well indeed, yet
I'm afraid of beginning to speak it in grand society; and I dare
say my accent is far from Parisian.  I have a smart coachman,
Matvey, with a smart turn-out, and he is always at my service when
I send for him; he has a pale sorrel horse, a fast trotter (I don't
like greys).  Everything is not perfect, however: it's the 15th of
November and has been wintry weather for the last three days, and
my fur coat is an old one, lined with raccoon, that once was
Versilov's.  It wouldn't fetch more than twenty-five roubles.  I
must get a new one, and my pocket is empty, and I must, besides,
have money in reserve for this evening whatever happens--without
that I shall be ruined and miserable: that was how I put it to
myself at the time.  Oh, degradation!  Where had these thousands
come from, these fast trotters, these expensive restaurants?  How
could I all at once change like this and forget everything?  Shame! 
Reader, I am beginning now the story of my shame and disgrace, and
nothing in life can be more shameful to me than these
recollections.

I speak as a judge and I know that I was guilty.  Even in the whirl
in which I was caught up, and though I was alone without a guide or
counsellor, I was, I swear, conscious of my downfall, and so
there's no excuse for me.  And yet, for those two months I was
almost happy--why almost?  I was quite happy!  And so happy--would
it be believed--that the consciousness of my degradation, of which
I had glimpses at moments (frequent moments!) and which made me
shudder in my inmost soul, only intoxicated me the more.  "What do
I care if I'm fallen!  And I won't fall, I'll get out of it!  I
have a lucky star!"  I was crossing a precipice on a thin plank
without a rail, and I was pleased at my position, and even peeped
into the abyss.  It was risky and it was delightful.  And "my
idea?"  My "idea" later, the idea would wait.  Everything that
happened was simply "a temporary deviation."  "Why not enjoy
oneself?"  That's what was amiss with my idea, I repeat, it
admitted of all sorts of deviations; if it had not been so firm and
fundamental I might have been afraid of deviating.

And meanwhile I kept on the same humble lodging; I kept it on but I
didn't live in it; there I kept my trunk, my bag, and my various
properties.  But I really lived with Prince Sergay.  I spent my
days there and I slept there at night.  And this went on for
weeks. . . .  How this came to pass I'll tell in a minute, but
meanwhile I will describe my little lodging.  It was already dear to
me. Versilov had come to see me there of himself, first of all after
our quarrel, and often subsequently.  I repeat, this was a period of
shame but of great happiness. . . .  Yes, and everything at that
time was so successful and so smiling.  "And what was all that
depression in the past about?" I wondered in some ecstatic moments,
"why those old painful self-lacerations, my solitary and gloomy
childhood, my foolish dreams under my quilt, my vows, my
calculations, even my 'idea'?  I imagined and invented all that, and
it turns out that the world's not like that at all; see how happy
and gay I am: I have a father--Versilov; I have a friend-- Prince
Sergay; I have besides . . . but that 'besides' we'll leave."

Alas, it was all done in the name of love, magnanimity, honour, and
afterwards it turned out hideous, shameless and ignominious.

Enough.


2


He came to see me for the first time three days after our rupture. 
I was not at home, and he waited for me.  Though I had been
expecting him every day, when I went into my tiny cupboard of a
room there was a mist before my eyes, and my heart beat so
violently that I stopped short in the doorway.  Fortunately my
landlord was with him, having thought it necessary to introduce
himself at once, that the visitor might not be bored with waiting. 
He was eagerly describing something to Versilov.  He was a titular
counsellor, a man about forty, much disfigured by small-pox, very
poor, and burdened with a consumptive wife and an invalid child. 
He was of a very communicative and unassuming character, but not
without tact.  I was relieved at his presence, which was a positive
deliverance for me, for what could I have said to Versilov?  I had
known, known in earnest that Versilov would come of his own
prompting--exactly as I wanted him to, for nothing in the world
would have induced me to go to him first, and not from obstinacy,
but just from love of him; a sort of jealous love--I can't express
it.  Indeed, the reader won't find me eloquent at any time.  But
though I had been expecting him for those three days, and had been
continually picturing how he would come in, yet though I tried my
utmost, I could not imagine what we should say to one another at
first, after all that had happened.

"Ah, here you are!" he said to me affectionately, holding out his
hand and not getting up.  "Sit down with us; Pyotr Ippolitovitch is
telling me something very interesting about that stone near the
Pavlovsky barracks . . . or somewhere in that direction."

"Yes, I know the stone," I made haste to answer, dropping into a
chair beside him.  They were sitting at the table.  The whole room
was just fourteen feet square.  I drew a deep breath.

There was a gleam of pleasure in Versilov's eyes.  I believe he was
uncertain, and afraid I should be demonstrative.  He was reassured.

"You must begin again, Pyotr Ippolitovitch."  They were already
calling each other by their names.

"It happened in the reign of the late Tsar," Pyotr Ippolitovitch
said, addressing me nervously and with some uneasiness, anxious as
to the effect of his story.  "You know that stone--a stupid stone
in the street, and what use is it, it's only in the way, you'd say,
wouldn't you?  The Tsar rode by several times, and every time there
was the stone.  At last the Tsar was displeased, and with good
reason; a rock, a regular rock standing in the street, spoiling it. 
'Remove the stone!'  Well, he said remove it--you understand what
that means--'remove the stone!'  The late Tsar--do you remember
him?  What was to be done with the stone?  They all lost their
heads, there was the town council, and a most important person, I
can't remember his name, one of the greatest personages of the
time, who was put in charge of the matter.  Well, this great
personage listened; they told him it would cost fifteen thousand
roubles, no less, and in silver too (for it was not till the time
of the late Tsar that paper money could be changed into silver). 
'Fifteen thousand, what a sum!'  At first the English wanted to
bring rails, and remove it by steam; but think what that would have
cost!  There were no railways then, there was only one running to
Tsarskoe-Selo."

"Why, they might have smashed it up!" I cried, frowning.  I felt
horribly vexed and ashamed in Versilov's presence.  But he was
listening with evident pleasure.  I understood that he was glad to
have the landlord there, as he too was abashed with me. I saw that. 
I remember I felt it somehow touching in him.

"Smash it up!  Yes, that was the very idea they arrived at.  And
Montferant, too,--he was building St. Isaak's Cathedral at the
time.--Smash it up, he said, and then take it away.  But what would
that cost?"

"It would cost nothing.  Simply break it up and carry it away."

"No, excuse me, a machine would be wanted to do it, a steam-engine,
and besides, where could it be taken?  And such a mountain, too! 
'Ten thousand,' they said, 'not less than ten or twelve thousand.'"

"I say, Pyotr Ippolitovitch, that's nonsense, you know.  It
couldn't have been so. . . ."

But at that instant Versilov winked at me unseen, and in that wink
I saw such delicate compassion for the landlord, even distress on
his account, that I was delighted with it, and I laughed.

"Well, well then," cried the landlord, delighted; he had noticed
nothing, and was awfully afraid, as such story-tellers always are,
that he would be pestered with questions; "but then a Russian
workman walks up, a young fellow, you know the typical Russian,
with a beard like a wedge, in a long-skirted coat, and perhaps a
little drunk too . . . but no, he wasn't drunk.  He just stands by
while those Englishmen and Montferant are talking away, and that
great personage drives up just then in his carriage, and listens,
and gets angry at the way they keep discussing it and can't decide
on anything.  And suddenly he notices the workman at a distance
standing there and smiling deceitfully, that is, not deceitfully
though, I'm wrong there, what is it. . . ?"

"Derisively," Versilov prompted him discreetly.

"Derisively, yes, a little derisively, that kind, good Russian
smile, you know; the great personage was in a bad humour, you
understand:  'What are you waiting here for, big beard?' said he. 
'Who are you?'

"'Why, I'm looking at this stone here, your Highness,' says he. 
Yes, I believe he said Highness, and I fancy it was Prince Suvorov,
the Italian one, the ancestor of the general. . . .  But no, it was
not Suvorov, and I'm so sorry I've forgotten who it was exactly,
but though he was a Highness he was a genuine thorough-bred
Russian, a Russian type, a patriot, a cultured Russian heart; well,
he saw what was up.

"'What is it,' says he.  'Do you want to take away the stone? 
What are you sniggering about?'

"'At the Englishmen, chiefly, your Highness.  They ask a prodigious
price because the Russian purse is fat, and they've nothing to eat
at home.  Let me have a hundred roubles, your Highness,' says he;
'by to-morrow evening we'll move the stone.'

"Can you imagine such a proposition?  The English, of course, are
ready to devour him; Montferant laughs.  But that Highness with the
pure Russian heart says:  'Give him a hundred roubles!  But surely
you won't remove it?' says he.

"'To-morrow evening, your Highness, we'll have it on the move,'
says he.

"'But how will you do it?'

"'If you'll excuse me, your Highness, that's our secret,' he says,
and in that Russian way, you know.  It pleased him:  'Hey, give him
anything he wants.'  And so they left it.  What would you suppose
he did?"

The landlord paused, and looked from one to the other with a face
full of sentiment.

"I don't know," said Versilov, smiling; I scowled.

"Well, I'll tell you what he did," said the landlord, with as much
triumph as though it were his own achievement, "he hired some
peasants with spades, simple Russians, and began digging a deep
hole just at the edge of it.  They were digging all night; they dug
an immense hole as big as the stone and just about an inch and a
half deeper, and when they dug it out he told them to dig out the
earth from under the stone, cautiously, little by little.  Well,
naturally, as they'd dug the earth away the stone had nothing to
stand upon, it began to overbalance; and as soon as it began to
shake they pushed with their hands upon the stone, shouting hurrah,
in true Russian style, and the stone fell with a crash into the
hole!  Then they shovelled earth on it, rammed it down with a
mallet, paved it over with little stones--the road was smooth, the
stone had disappeared!"

"Only fancy!" cried Versilov.

"The people rushed up to be sure, in multitudes innumerable; the
Englishmen had seen how it would be long before; they were furious. 
Montferant came up:  'That's the peasant style,' says he, 'it's too
simple,' says he.  'That's just it, that it's so simple, but you
never thought of it, you fools!'  And so I tell you that commander,
that great personage, simply embraced him and kissed him.  'And
where do you come from?' says he.  'From the province of Yaroslav,
your Excellency, we're tailors by trade, and we come to Petersburg
in the summer to sell fruit.'  Well, it came to the ears of the
authorities; the authorities ordered a medal to be given him, so he
went about with a medal on his neck; but he drank himself to death
afterwards, they say; you know the typical Russian, he has no self-
restraint!  That's why the foreigners have got the better of us so
far, yes, there it is!'

"Yes, of course, the Russian mind. . . ." Versilov was beginning.

But at this point, luckily, the landlord was called away by his
invalid wife, and hastened off, or I should have been unable to
restrain myself.  Versilov laughed.

"He's been entertaining me for a whole hour, my dear.  That
stone . . . is the very model of patriotic unseemliness among such
stories, but how could I interrupt him?  As you saw, he was melting
with delight.  And what's more, I believe the stone's there still,
if I'm not mistaken, and hasn't been buried in the hole at all."

"Good heavens, yes!" I cried, "that's true! How could he dare! . . ."

"What's the matter?  Why, I believe you're really indignant; he
certainly has muddled things up.  I heard a story of the sort about
a stone when I was a child, only of course it was a little
different, and not about the same stone.  That 'it came to the ears
of the authorities!'  Why, there was a paean of glory in his heart
when he uttered that phrase 'it came to the ears of the authorities.'
In the pitiful narrowness of their lives they can't get on without
such stories.  They have numbers of them, chiefly owing to their
incontinence.  They've learnt nothing, they know nothing exactly,
and they have a longing to talk about something besides cards and
their wares, something of universal interest, something poetic. . . .
What sort of man is this Pyotr Ippolitovitch?"

"A very poor creature, and unfortunate too."

"Well, there, you see, perhaps he doesn't even play cards.  I
repeat, in telling that foolish story he was satisfying his love
for his neighbour: you see, he wanted to make us happy.  His
sentiment of patriotism was gratified too; they've got another
story, for instance, that the English gave Zavyalov a million on
condition that he shouldn't put his stamp on his handiwork."

"Oh, goodness, I've heard that story too."

"Who hasn't heard it, and the teller of it knows, too, that you
have heard it, but still he tells it, INTENTIONALLY supposing that
you haven't.  The vision of the Swedish king, I believe, is a
little out of date with them now, but in my youth it used to be
repeated unctuously, in a mysterious whisper.  And so was the story
of some one's having knelt in the Senate before the Senators at the
beginning of last century.  There were lots of anecdotes about
Commander Bashutsky, too, how he carried away a monument.  They
simply love anecdotes of the court; for instance, tales of
Tchernyshev, a minister in the last reign, how when he was an old
man of seventy he got himself up to look like a man of thirty, so
much so that the late Tsar was amazed at the levées. . . ."

"I've heard that too."

"Who hasn't heard it?  All these anecdotes are the height of
indecency; but, let me tell you, this kind of indecency is far more
deeply rooted and widely spread than we imagine.  The desire to lie
with the object of giving pleasure to your neighbour one meets even
in Russian society of the highest breeding, for we all suffer from
this incontinence of our hearts.  Only anecdotes of a different
type are current among us; the number of stories they tell about
America is simply amazing, and they're told by men even of
ministerial rank!  I must confess I belong to that indecent class
myself, and I've suffered from it all my life."

"I've told anecdotes about Tchernyshev several times myself."

"You've told them yourself?"

"There's another lodger here besides me, marked with smallpox too,
an old clerk, but he's awfully prosaic, and as soon as Pyotr
Ippolitovitch begins to speak he tries to refute him and
contradict.  He's reduced Pyotr Ippolitovitch to such a point that
he waits on the old fellow like a slave, and does everything to
please him, simply to make him listen."

"That's another type of the indecent, one even perhaps more
revolting than the first.  The first sort is all ecstasy!  'You
only let me lie,' he seems to say, 'you'll see how nice it will
be.'  The second sort is all spleen and prose.  'I won't let you
lie,' he says, 'where, when, in what year?'--in fact a man with no
heart.  My dear boy, we must always let a man lie a little.  It's
quite innocent.  Indeed we may let him lie a great deal.  In the
first place it will show our delicacy, and secondly, people will
let us lie in return--two immense advantages at once.  Que diable!
one must love one's neighbour.  But it's time for me to be off. 
You've arranged the place charmingly," he added, getting up from
his chair.  "I'll tell Sofia Andreyevna and your sister that I've
been here and found you quite well.  Good-bye, my dear."

Could this be all?  This was not at all what I wanted.  I was
expecting something different, something important, though I quite
understood that this was how it must be.  I got up with a candle to
light him down the stairs.  The landlord would have come forward,
but without Versilov's seeing it I seized him by the arm and thrust
him back savagely.  He stared with astonishment, but immediately
vanished.

"These staircases . . ." Versilov mumbled, dwelling on the
syllables evidently in order to say something, and evidently afraid
I might say something, "I'm no longer used to such stairs, and
you're on the third storey, but now I can find the way. . . . 
Don't trouble, my dear, you'll catch cold, too."

But I did not leave him.  We were going down the second flight.

"I've been expecting you for the last three days," broke from me
suddenly, as it were of itself; I was breathless.

"Thank you, my dear."

"I knew you'd be sure to come."

"And I knew that you knew I should be sure to come.  Thank you, my
dear."

He was silent.  We had reached the outer door, and I still followed
him.  He opened the door; the wind rushing in blew out my candle. 
Then I clutched his hand.  It was pitch dark.  He started but said
nothing.  I stooped over his hand and kissed it greedily several
times, many times.

"My darling boy, why do you love me so much?" he said, but in quite
a different voice.  His voice quivered, there was a ring of
something quite new in it as though it were not he who spoke.

I tried to answer something, but couldn't, and ran upstairs.  He
stood waiting where he was, and it was only when I was back in the
flat that I heard the front door open and shut with a slam.  I
slipped by the landlord, who turned up again, and went into my
room, fastened the latch, and without lighting the candle threw
myself on my bed, buried my face in the pillow and cried and cried. 
It was the first time I had cried since I was at Touchard's.  My
sobs were so violent, and I was so happy . . . but why describe it?

I write this now without being ashamed of it, for perhaps it was
all good, in spite of its absurdity.


3


But didn't I make him suffer for it!  I became frightfully
overbearing.  There was no reference to this scene between us
afterwards.  On the contrary, we met three days later as though
nothing had happened--what's more, I was almost rude that evening,
and he too seemed rather dry.  This happened in my room again; for
some reason I had not been to see him in spite of my longing to see
my mother.

We talked all this time, that is throughout these two months, only
of the most abstract subjects.  And I can't help wondering at it;
we did nothing but talk of abstract subjects--of the greatest
interest and of vast significance for humanity, of course, but with
no bearing whatever on the practical position.  Yet many, many
aspects of the practical position needed, and urgently needed,
defining and clearing up, but of that we did not speak.  I did not
even say anything about my mother or Liza or . . . or indeed about
myself and my whole history.  Whether this was due to shame or to
youthful stupidity I don't know.  I expect it was stupidity, for
shame I could have overcome.  But I domineered over him frightfully,
and absolutely went so far as insolence more than once, even against
my own feelings.  This all seemed to happen of itself, inevitably; I
couldn't restrain myself.  His tone was as before, one of light
mockery, though always extremely affectionate in spite of everything.
I was struck, too, by the fact that he preferred coming to me, so
that at last I very rarely went to see my mother, not more than once
a week, especially towards the latter part of the time, as I became
more and more absorbed in frivolity.  He used always to come in the
evenings, to sit and chat with me, he was very fond of talking to
the landlord too, which enraged me in a man like him.

The idea struck me that he might have nowhere to go except to see
me.  But I knew for a fact that he had acquaintances, and that he
had, indeed, of late renewed many of his old ties in society, which
he had dropped the year before.  But he did not seem to be
particularly fascinated by them, and seemed to have renewed many of
them simply in a formal way; he preferred coming to see me.

I was sometimes awfully touched by the timid way in which he almost
always opened my door, and for the first minute looked with strange
anxiety into my eyes.  "Am I in the way?" he seemed to ask, "tell
me, and I'll go."  He even said as much sometimes.  Once, for
instance, towards the end he came in when I had just put on a suit,
brand new from the tailor's, and was just setting off to Prince
Sergay's, to go off somewhere with him (where, I will explain
later).  He sat down without noticing that I was on the point of
going out; he showed at moments a remarkable absence of mind.  As
luck would have it, he began to talk of the landlord.  I fired up.

"Oh, damn the landlord!"

"Ah, my dear," he said, getting up, "I believe you're going out and
I'm hindering you. . . .  Forgive me, please."

And he meekly hastened to depart.  Such meekness towards me from a
man like him, a man so aristocratic and independent, who had so
much individuality, at once stirred in my heart all my tenderness
for him, and trust in him.  But if he loved me so much, why did he
not check me at the time of my degradation?  If he had said one
word I should perhaps have pulled up.  Though perhaps I should not. 
But he did see my foppery, my flaunting swagger, my smart Matvey (I
wanted once to drive him back in my sledge but he would not
consent, and indeed it happened several times that he refused to be
driven in it), he could see I was squandering money--and he said
not a word, not a word, he showed no curiosity even!  I'm surprised
at that to this day; even now.  And yet I didn't stand on ceremony
with him, and spoke openly about everything, though I never gave
him a word of explanation.  He didn't ask and I didn't speak.

Yet on two or three occasions we did speak on the money question. 
I asked him on one occasion, soon after he renounced the fortune he
had won, how he was going to live now.

"Somehow, my dear," he answered with extraordinary composure.

I know now that more than half of Tatyana Pavlovna's little capital
of five thousand roubles has been spent on Versilov during the last
two years.

Another time it somehow happened that we talked of my mother.

"My dear boy," he said mournfully, "I used often to say to Sofia
Andreyevna at the beginning of our life together, though indeed
I've said it in the middle and at the end too:  'My dear, I worry
you and torment you, and I don't regret it as long as you're before
me, but if you were to die I know I should kill myself to atone for
it.'"

I remember, however, that he was particularly open that evening.

"If only I were a weak-willed nonentity and suffered from the
consciousness of it!  But you see that's not so, I know I'm
exceedingly strong, and in what way do you suppose?  Why just in
that spontaneous power of accommodating myself to anything whatever,
so characteristic of all intelligent Russians of our generation.
There's no crushing me, no destroying me, no surprising me.  I've as
many lives as a cat.  I can with perfect convenience experience two
opposite feelings at one and the same time, and not, of course,
through my own will.  I know, nevertheless, that it's dishonourable
just because it's so sensible.  I've lived almost to fifty, and to
this day I don't know whether it's a good thing I've gone on living
or not.  I like life, but that follows as a matter of course.  But
for a man like me to love life is contemptible.  Of late there has
been a new movement, and the Krafts won't accommodate themselves to
things, and shoot themselves.  But it's evident that the Krafts are
stupid, we, to be sure, are clever--so that one can draw no
parallel, and the question remains open anyway.  And can it be that
the earth is only for such as we?  In all probability it is; but the
idea is a comfortless one.  However . . . however, the question
remains open, anyway."

He spoke mournfully and yet I didn't know whether he was sincere or
not.  He always had a manner which nothing would have made him
drop.


4


Then I besieged him with questions, I fell upon him like a starving
man on bread.  He always answered me readily and straightforwardly,
but in the end always went off into the widest generalizations, so
that in reality one could draw no conclusions from it.  And yet
these questions had worried me all my life, and I frankly confess
that even in Moscow I had put off settling them till I should meet
him in Petersburg.  I told him this plainly, and he did not laugh
at me--on the contrary, I remember he pressed my hand.

On general politics and social questions I could get nothing out of
him, and yet in connection with my "idea" those subjects troubled
me more than anything.  Of men like Dergatchev I once drew from him
the remark that "they were below all criticism," but at the same
time he added strangely that "he reserved the right of attaching no
significance to his opinions."  For a very long time he would say
nothing on the question how the modern state would end, and how the
social community would be built up anew, but in the end I literally
wrenched a few words out of him.

"I imagine that all that will come about in a very commonplace
way," he said once.  "Simply un beau matin, in spite of all the
balance-sheets on budget days, and the absence of deficits, all the
states without exception will be unable to pay, so that they'll all
be landed in general bankruptcy.  At the same time all the
conservative elements of the whole world will rise up in opposition
to everything, because they will be the bondholders and creditors,
and they won't want to allow the bankruptcy.  Then, of course,
there will follow a general liquidation, so to speak; the Jews will
come to the fore and the reign of the Jews will begin: and then all
those who have never had shares in anything, and in fact have never
had anything at all, that is all the beggars, will naturally be
unwilling to take part in the liquidation. . . .  A struggle will
begin, and after seventy-seven battles the beggars will destroy the
shareholders and carry off their shares and take their places as
shareholders, of course.  Perhaps they'll say something new too,
and perhaps they won't.  Most likely they'll go bankrupt too. 
Further than that, my dear boy, I can't undertake to predict the
destinies by which the face of this world will be changed.  Look in
the Apocalypse though . . ."

"But can it all be so materialistic?  Can the modern world come to
an end simply through finance?"

"Oh, of course, I've only chosen one aspect of the picture, but
that aspect is bound up with the whole by indissoluble bonds, so to
speak."

"What's to be done?"

"Oh dear, don't be in a hurry; it's not all coming so soon.  In any
case, to do nothing is always best, one's conscience is at rest
anyway, knowing that one's had no share in anything."

"Aië, do stop that, talk sense.  I want to know what I'm to do and
how I'm to live."

"What you are to do, my dear?  Be honest, never lie, don't covet
your neighbour's house; in fact, read the Ten Commandments--it's
written there once for all."

"Don't talk like that, all that's so old, and besides . . . it's
all words; I want something real."

"Well, if you're fearfully devoured by eunui, try to love some one
or something, or at any rate to attach yourself to something."

 "You're only laughing!  Besides, what can I do alone with your Ten
Commandments?"

"Well, keep them in spite of all your doubts and questions, and
you'll be a great man."

"Whom no one will know of."

"'There is nothing hidden that shall not be made manifest.'"

"You're certainly laughing."

"Well, if you take it so to heart you'd better try as soon as
possible to specialize, take up architecture or the law, and then
when you're busy with serious work you'll be more settled in your
mind and forget trifles."

I was silent.  What could I gather from this?  And yet, after every
such conversation I was more troubled than before.  Moreover I saw
clearly that there always remained in him, as it were, something
secret, and that drew me to him more and more.

"Listen," I said, interrupting him one day, "I always suspect that
you say all this only out of bitterness and suffering, but that
secretly you are a fanatic over some idea, and are only concealing
it, or ashamed to admit it."

"Thank you, my dear."

"Listen, nothing's better than being useful.  Tell me how, at the
present moment, I can be most of use.  I know it's not for you to
decide that, but I'm only asking for your opinion.  You tell me,
and what you say I swear I'll do!  Well, what is the great
thought?"

"Well, to turn stones into bread.  That's a great thought."

"The greatest?  Yes, really, you have suggested quite a new path. 
Tell me, is it the greatest?"

"It's very great, my dear boy, very great, but it's not the
greatest.  It's great but secondary, and only great at the present
time.  Man will be satisfied and forget; he will say:  'I've eaten
it and what am I to do now?'  The question will remain open for all
time."

"You spoke once of the 'Geneva ideas.'  I didn't understand what
was meant by the 'Geneva ideas.'"

"The 'Geneva idea' is the idea of virtue without Christ, my boy,
the modern idea, or, more correctly, the ideas of all modern
civilization.  In fact, it's one of those long stories which it's
very dull to begin, and it will be a great deal better if we talk
of other things, and better still if we're silent about other
things."

"You always want to be silent!"

"My dear, remember that to be silent is good, safe, and picturesque."

"Picturesque?"

"Of course.  Silence is always picturesque, and the man who is
silent always looks nicer than the man who is speaking."

"Why, talking as we do is no better than being silent.  Damn such
picturesqueness, and still more damn such profitableness."

"My dear," he said suddenly, rather changing his tone, speaking
with real feeling and even with a certain insistence, "I don't want
to seduce you from your ideals to any sort of bourgeois virtue, I'm
not assuring you that 'happiness is better than heroism'; on the
contrary 'heroism is finer than any happiness,' and the very
capacity for it alone constitutes happiness.  That's a settled
thing between us.  I respect you just for being able in these
mawkish days to set up some sort of an 'idea' in your soul (don't
be uneasy, I remember perfectly well).  But yet one must think of
proportion, for now you want to live a resounding life, to set fire
to something, to smash something, to rise above everything in
Russia, to call up storm-clouds, to throw every one into terror and
ecstasy, while you vanish yourself in North America.  I've no doubt
you've something of that sort in your heart, and so I feel it
necessary to warn you, for I really love you, my dear."

What could I gather from that either?  There was nothing in it but
anxiety for me, for my material prosperity; it betrayed the father
with the father's kindly but prosaic feelings.  Was this what I
wanted by way of an idea for the sake of which any honest father
would send his son to face death, as the ancient Roman Horatius
sent his sons for the idea of Rome?

I often pressed him on the subject of religion, but there the fog
was thicker than ever.  When I asked him what to do about that, he
answered in the stupidest way, as though to a child:

"You must have faith in God, my dear."

"But what if I don't believe in all that?" I cried irritably once.

"A very good thing, my dear."

"How a good thing?"

"It's a most excellent symptom, dear boy; a most hopeful one, for
our atheists in Russia, if only they are really atheists and have
some little trace of intelligence, are the best fellows in the
whole world, and always disposed to be kind to God, for they're
invariably good-humoured, and they're good-humoured because they're
immensely pleased at being atheists.  Our atheists are respectable
people and extremely conscientious, pillars of the fatherland, in
fact. . . ."

This was something, of course, but it was not what I wanted.  On
one occasion, however, he spoke out, but so strangely that he
surprised me more than ever, especially after the stories of
Catholicism and penitential chains that I had heard about him.

"Dear boy," he said one day, not in my room, but in the street,
when I was seeing him home after a long conversation, "to love
people as they are is impossible.  And yet we must.  And therefore
do them good, overcoming your feelings, holding your nose and
shutting your eyes (the latter's essential).  Endure evil from them
as far as may be without anger, 'mindful that you too are a man.' 
Of course you'll be disposed to be severe with them if it has been
vouchsafed to you to be ever so little more intelligent than the
average.  Men are naturally base and like to love from fear.  Don't
give in to such love, and never cease to despise it.  Somewhere in
the Koran Allah bids the prophet look upon the 'froward' as upon
mice, do them good, and pass them by--a little haughty, but right. 
Know how to despise them even when they are good, for most often it
is in that they are base.  Oh, my dear, it's judging by myself I
say that.  Anyone who's not quite stupid can't live without
despising himself, whether he's honest or dishonest--it makes no
difference.  To love one's neighbour and not despise him--is
impossible.  I believe that man has been created physically
incapable of loving his neighbour.  There has been some mistake in
language here from the very first, and 'love for humanity' must be
understood as love for that humanity which you have yourself
created in your soul (in other words, you have created yourself and
your love is for yourself)--and which, therefore, never will be in
reality."

"Never will be?"

"My dear boy, I agree that if this were true, it would be stupid,
but that's not my fault, and I was not consulted at the creation. 
I reserve the right to have my own opinion about it."

"How is it they call you a Christian, then?" I cried.  "A monk in
chains, a preacher?  I don't understand it!"

"Why, who calls me that?"

I told him; he listened very attentively, but cut short the
conversation.

I can't remember what led to this memorable conversation; but he
was positively irritated, which scarcely ever happened to him. 
He spoke passionately and without irony, as though he were not
speaking to me.  But again I didn't believe him.  He could not
speak on such subjects seriously to anyone like me.



CHAPTER II


1


On that morning, the 15th of November, I found him at Prince
Sergay's.  I had brought the prince and him together, but they had
ties apart from me (I mean the affair abroad, and all that). 
Moreover, the prince had promised to divide the disputed fortune
with him, giving him a third, which would mean twenty thousand at
least.  I remember at the time I thought it awfully strange that he
was giving him only a third and not the full half; but I said
nothing.  Prince Sergay gave this promise of his own accord;
Versilov had not said a syllable to suggest it, had not dropped a
hint.  Prince Sergay came forward himself and Versilov only let it
pass in silence, never once alluded to it, and showed no sign that
he had the least recollection of a promise.  I may mention, by the
way, that Prince Sergay was absolutely enchanted with him at first
and still more with the things he said.  He fell into positive
raptures about him, and several times expressed his feelings to me. 
Sometimes when he was alone with me he exclaimed about himself,
almost with despair, that he was "so ill-educated, that he was on
the wrong track! . . ."  Oh, we were still so friendly then! . . . 
I kept trying to impress Versilov with Prince Sergay's good points
only, and excused his defects though I saw them myself; but
Versilov listened in silence, or smiled.

"If he has faults he has at least as many virtues as defects!" I
once exclaimed to Versilov when I was alone with him.

"Goodness, how you flatter him!" he said laughing.

"How do I flatter him?" I said, not understanding.

"As many virtues!  Why he must be a saint if he has as many virtues
as defects!"

But, of course, that was not his opinion.  In general he avoided
speaking of Prince Sergay at that time, as he did indeed of
everything real, but of the prince particularly.  I suspected, even
then, that he went to see Prince Sergay without me, and that they
were on rather peculiar terms, but I did not go into that.  I was
not jealous either at his talking to him more seriously than to me,
more positively, so to speak, with less mockery; I was so happy at
the time that I was actually pleased at it.  I explained it too by
Prince Sergay's being of rather limited intelligence, and so being
fond of verbal exactitude; some jests he absolutely failed to see.

But of late he had, as it were, begun to emancipate himself.  His
feelings for Versilov seemed beginning to change.  Versilov with
his delicate perception noticed it.  I may mention at this point
that Prince Sergay's attitude to me, too, became different at the
same time, rather too obviously, in fact.  Only the lifeless forms
of our warm earlier relations were maintained.  Yet I went on going
to see him; I could not indeed help it, having once been drawn into
it.  Oh, how clumsy and inexperienced I was then; it is almost
beyond belief that mere foolishness of heart can have brought
anyone to such humiliation and lack of perception.  I took money
from him and thought that it didn't matter, that it was quite
right.  Yet that is not true: even then I knew that it was not
right, but it was simply that I thought very little about it.  I
did not go to the prince to get money, though I needed the money so
much.  I knew I did not go for the sake of the money, but I
realized that I went every day to borrow money.  But I was in a
whirl then, and besides all that I had something very different in
my soul--it was singing with joy!

When I went in at eleven o'clock in the morning I found Versilov
just finishing a long tirade.  Prince Sergay was walking about the
room listening, and Versilov was sitting down.  Prince Sergay
seemed in some excitement.  Versilov was almost always able to work
him into a state of excitement.  He was exceedingly impressionable,
to a degree of simplicity, indeed, which had often made me look
down on him.  But, I repeat, of late I had detected in him
something like a resentful sneer.  He stopped short, seeing me, and
a quiver seemed to pass over his face.  I knew in my heart to what
to attribute the shadow over him that morning, but I had not
expected that his face would be so distorted by it.  I knew that he
had an accumulation of anxieties, but it was revolting that I
didn't know more than a tenth part of them--the rest had been kept
so far a dead secret from me.  What made it stupid and revolting
was that I often obtruded my sympathy on him, gave advice and often
laughed condescendingly at his weakness at being so upset "about
such trifles."  He used to be silent; but he must have detested me
at those moments; I was in an utterly false position and had no
suspicion of it.  Oh, I call God to witness that of the chief
trouble I had no suspicion!

He courteously held out his hand to me, however; Versilov nodded,
without interrupting himself.  I stretched myself on the sofa--my
tone and manners were horrible at that time!  My swagger went even
further: I used to treat his acquaintances as though they were my
own.  Oh, if it could only be done all over again, I should know
how to behave very differently!

Two words, that I may not forget.  Prince Sergay was still living
in the same flat, but now occupied almost the whole of it.  Mme.
Stolbyeev, whose flat it was, after staying only a month, had gone
away again.


2


They were talking of the aristocracy.  I may mention that Prince
Sergay grew sometimes much excited over this subject in spite of
his progressive notions.  I suspect indeed that many of his
misdoings had their source and origin in this idea.  Attaching
great significance to his princely rank, he threw money away in all
directions although he was a beggar, and became involved in debt. 
Versilov had more than once hinted that this extravagance was not
the essence of princeliness, and tried to instil into him a higher
conception of it; but Prince Sergay had begun to show signs of
resentment at being instructed.  Evidently there had been something
of the same sort that morning, but I hadn't arrived in time for the
beginning of it.  Versilov's words struck me at first as
reactionary, but he made up for that later on.

"The word honour means duty," he said (I only give the sense as far
as I remember it); "when the upper class rules in a state the
country is strong.  The upper class always has its sense of honour,
and its code of honour, which may be imperfect but almost always
serves as a bond and strengthens the country; an advantage morally
and still more politically.  But the slaves, that is all those not
belonging to the ruling class, suffer.  They are given equal rights
to prevent their suffering.  That's what has been done with us, and
it's an excellent thing.  But in all experience so far (in Europe
that is to say) a weakening of the sense of honour and duty has
followed the establishment of equal rights.  Egoism has replaced
the old consolidating principle and the whole system has been
shattered on the rock of personal freedom.  The emancipated masses,
left with no sustaining principle, have ended by losing all sense
of cohesion, till they have given up defending the liberties they
have gained.  But the Russian type of aristocrat has never been
like the European nobility.  Our nobility, even now that it has
lost its privileges, might remain the leading class as the
upholders of honour, enlightenment, science, and higher culture,
and, what is of the greatest importance, without cutting themselves
off into a separate caste, which would be the death of the idea. 
On the contrary, the entrance to this class has been thrown open
long ago among us, and now the time has come to open it completely. 
Let every honourable and valiant action, every great achievement in
science enable a man to gain the ranks of the highest class.  In
that way the class is automatically transformed into an assembly of
the best people in a true and literal sense, not in the sense in
which it was said of the privileged caste in the past.  In this
new, or rather renewed form, the class might be retained."

The prince smiled sarcastically.

"What sort of an aristocracy would that be?  It's some sort of
masonic lodge you're sketching; not an aristocracy."

Prince Sergay had been, I repeat, extremely ill-educated.  I turned
over with vexation on the sofa, though I was far from agreeing with
Versilov.  Versilov quite understood that the prince was sneering.

"I don't know in what sense you talk of a masonic lodge," he
answered.  "Well, if even a Russian prince recoils from such an
idea, no doubt the time for it has not arrived.  The idea of honour
and enlightenment as the sacred keys that unlock for any man the
portals of a class thus continually renewed is, of course, a
Utopia.  But why is it an impossible one?  If the thought is living
though only in a few brains it is not yet lost, but shines like a
tiny flame in the depths of darkness."

"You are fond of using such words as 'higher culture,' 'great
idea,' 'sustaining principle' and such; I should like to know what
you mean exactly by a 'great idea'?"

"I really don't know how to answer that question, dear prince,"
Versilov responded with a subtle smile.  "If I confess to you that I
myself am not able to answer, it would be more accurate.  A great
idea is most often a feeling which sometimes remains too long
undefined.  I only know that it's that which has been the source of
living life, gay joyous life, I mean, not theoretical and
artificial; so that the great idea, from which it flows, is
absolutely indispensable, to the general vexation, of course."

"Why vexation?"

"Because, to live with ideas is dreary, and it's always gay without
them."

The prince swallowed the rebuke.

"And what do you mean by this living life as you call it?"  (He was
evidently cross.)

"I don't know that either, prince; I only know that it must be
something very simple, the most everyday thing, staring us in the
face, a thing of every day, every minute, and so simple that we can
never believe it to be so simple, and we've naturally been passing
it by for thousands of years without noticing it or recognizing
it."

"I only meant to say that your idea of the aristocracy is
equivalent to denying the aristocracy," observed Prince Sergay.

"Well, if you will have it so, perhaps there never has been an
aristocracy in Russia."

"All this is very obscure and vague.  If one says something, one
ought, to my mind, to explain it. . . ."

Prince Sergay contracted his brows and stole a glance at the clock
on the wall.  Versilov got up and took his hat.

"Explain?" he said, "no, it's better not to, besides, I've a
passion for talking without explanations.  That's really it.  And
there's another strange thing: if it happens that I try to explain
an idea I believe in, it almost always happens that I cease to
believe what I have explained.  I'm afraid of that fate now.  Good-
bye, dear prince; I always chatter unpardonably with you."

He went out; the prince escorted him politely, but I felt offended.

"What are you ruffling up your feathers about?" he fired off
suddenly, walking past me to his bureau without looking at me.

"I'm ruffling up my feathers," I began with a tremor in my voice,
"because, finding in you such a queer change of tone to me and even
to Versilov I . . . Versilov may, of course, have begun in rather a
reactionary way, but afterwards he made up for it and . . . there
was perhaps a profound meaning in what he said, but you simply
didn't understand, and . . ."

"I simply don't care to have people putting themselves forward to
teach me and treating me as though I were a schoolboy," he snapped
out, almost wrathfully.

"Prince, such expressions . . ."

"Please spare me theatrical flourishes--if you will be so kind.  I
know that what I am doing is--contemptible, that I'm--a spendthrift,
a gambler, perhaps a thief. . . .  Yes, a thief, for I gamble away
the money belonging to my family, but I don't want anybody's
judgment.  I don't want it and I won't have it.  I'm--the judge of
my own actions.  And why this ambiguity?  If he wants to say
anything to me let him say it straight out, and not go in for this
mysterious prophetic twaddle.  To tell me all this he ought to have
the right to, he ought to be an honourable man himself. . . ."

"In the first place I didn't come in at the beginning and I don't
know what you were talking about, and, secondly, what has Versilov
done dishonourable, allow me to ask?"

"Please, that's enough, that's enough.  You asked me for three
hundred roubles yesterday.  Here it is. . . ."

He laid the money on the table before me, sat down in the armchair,
leaned nervously against the back of it, and crossed one leg over
the other.  I was thrown into confusion.

"I don't know .  .  ." I muttered, "though I did ask you for
it . . . and though I do need the money now, since you take such
a tone . . ."

"Don't talk about tone.  If I spoke sharply you must excuse me.  I
assure you that I've no thoughts to spare for it.  Listen to this:
I've had a letter from Moscow.  My brother Sasha, who was only a
child, as you know, died four days ago.  My father, as you know
too, has been paralysed for the last two years, and now, they write
to me, he's worse, he can't utter a word and knows nobody.  They
were relieved to get the inheritance, and want to take him abroad,
but the doctor writes that he's not likely to live a fortnight. 
So I'm left with my mother and sister . . . that is, almost
alone. . . .  In fact, I'm--alone.  This fortune . . . this
fortune--oh, it would have been better perhaps if it had not come to
me at all! But this is what I wanted to tell you:  I promised Andrey
Petrovitch a minimum of twenty thousand. . . .  And, meanwhile, only
imagine, owing to legal formalities I've been able to do nothing.  I
haven't even . . . we, that is . . . my father that is, has not yet
been informed of the inheritance.  And meanwhile I've lost so much
money during the last three weeks, and that scoundrel Stebelkov
charges such a rate of interest. . . .  I've given you almost the
last. . . ."

"Oh, prince, if that's how it is . . ."

"I didn't mean that.  I didn't mean that.  Stebelkov will bring
some to-day, no doubt, and there'll be enough to go on with, but
what the devil's one to think of Stebelkov?  I entreated him to get
me ten thousand, so that I might at least give Andrey Petrovitch
that much.  It worries me, it plagues me to think of my promise to
give him a third.  I gave my word and I must keep it.  And I swear
I'll do my utmost to free myself from obligations in that direction
anyhow.  They weigh upon me, they weigh upon me, they're
insufferable!  This burdensome tie. . . .  I can't bear to see
Andrey Petrovitch, for I can't look him in the face. . . .  Why
does he take advantage of it?"

"What does he take advantage of, prince?" I stood before him in
amazement.  "Has he ever so much as hinted at it?"

"Oh, no, and I appreciate it, it's I who reproach myself.  And
in fact I'm getting more and more involved. . . .  This
Stebelkov. . . ."

"Listen, prince, do calm yourself, please.  I see you get more
excited the more you talk, and yet it may be all imagination.  Oh,
I've got myself into difficulties too, unpardonably, contemptibly. 
But I know it's only temporary . . . and as soon as I win back a
certain sum, then . . . I say, with this three hundred, I owe you
two thousand five hundred, don't I?"

"I'm not asking it from you, I believe," the prince said suddenly
with a sneer.

"You say ten thousand for Versilov.  If I borrow from you now the
money will be taken off Versilov's twenty thousand; otherwise I
won't consent.  But . . . but I shall certainly pay it back
myself. . . .  But can you possibly imagine that Versilov comes
to you to get the money?"

"It would be easier for me if he did come for the money," Prince
Sergay observed enigmatically.

"You talk of some 'burdensome tie.' . . .  If you mean with
Versilov and me, upon my soul it's an insult.  And you say why
isn't he what he preaches--that's your logic!  And, in the first
place it's not logic, allow me to tell you, for even if he's not,
he can't help saying what's true. . . .  And besides, why do you
talk about 'preaching'?  You call him a 'prophet.'  Tell me, was it
you who called him a 'petticoat prophet' in Germany?"

"No, it was not I."

"Stebelkov told me it was you."

"He told a lie.  I'm--no hand at giving derisive nicknames.  But if
a man preaches honour he ought to be honourable himself--that's my
logic, and if it's incorrect I don't care.  I prefer it to be so. 
And I won't have anyone dare to come and judge me in my own house
and treat me like a baby!  That's enough!" he shouted, waving his
hand to stop me. . . .  "Ah, at last!"

The door opened and Stebelkov walked in.


3


He was exactly the same, just as jauntily dressed; and squa