THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES A RAW YOUTH THE NOVELS OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY Translated from the Russian by CONSTANCE GARNETT, Crown 8vo, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV THE IDIOT THE POSSESSED CRIME AND PUNISHMENT THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD THE INSULTED AND INJURED A RAW YOUTH THE ETERNAL HUSBAND THE GAMBLER AND OTHER STORIES WHITE NIGHTS .AN HONEST THIEF THE FRIEND OF THE FAMILY FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY YOUTH Translated from the Kussiau by CONSTANCE GARNETT NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANfY 1950 William Heinemann Ltd LONDON MELBOURNE TORONTO JOHANNESBURG AUCKLAND First published 1916 Reprinted 1923, 1950, 1956, 1964, 1970 434 20401 2 Reproduced and Printed by Redwood Press Limited Trowbridge & London о ч ^ У& 3326 PART I r]/G CHAPTER I 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 V- 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, how- ever, 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. 1773186 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 any- thing 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. I have passed the leaving examination at the grammar school, and now I am in my twenty-first year. My surname is Dol- goruky, 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, conspicu- ously 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 2 no describing him straight ofiF. 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 VersUov'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 viHage 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 bis method with his children, legitimate and illegitimate ^.like. 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 Ике — 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 excep- tion ; 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, 3 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 stem 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 prmce ? " by saying, " No, I'm the son of a servant, formerly a serf." At last, when I was roused to the utm9St 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 wa.<^ 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 medita- tive 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 co\irse, and no doubt you have something to be proud of ; but if I were in your р1аюе 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 4 prince but simply Dolgoruky. To explain again and defend myself would be humiliating. 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 ьЬе 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 matri- monial 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 mottier), had been for some years fatherless and motherless. Her father, also a serf, who had a great resj^ect 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 signifi- cantly to his daughter, had, in the presence of the pri(ist 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 timos 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, ladyhke 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. 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 hap- pened. I believe that it did just happen, and that Uttle phrase jiLst happened is delightful, yet I always wanted to know how it could have come about. I have always hated that sort of nasti- ness 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 ques- tion 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 " v( ry silly young puppy " ; not tLat 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 wUl 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 " Ver- silov might have pitched on some one else, and there was some one else in the house, an unmarried girl too, Anfisa Konstanti- novna 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 Mile. Sapozhkov was the loser by it (or rather, I should say, the gainer). I attacked him with all these ques- tions 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 teU 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 " sUly 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 8 happened at the very outset (I hope that the reader \ndll not be too squeamish to understand at once what I mean). In fact, it began with his exercising his seignorial rights, although Mile. 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 comers, wait for each other on the stairs, fly apart like bouncing balls, with flushed cheeks if anyone passed by, and the " tjrrant 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 charac- teristic 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 con- sidering 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, con- sidering 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 ae though he had been a god — how she cotdd have brought her- self 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 wae doing (I don't mean in the sense in which lawyers nowadays urge thie 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 flip- pantly 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 httle back room in the servants' quarters. . , , But enough of questions and scandalous details. After pay- ing Makar Ivanovitch a sum of money for my mother, Versilov went away shortly afterwarda, and ever since, as I have men- tioned already, he dragged her about with him, almost every- where he went, except at certain times when he absented himself 10 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 wsis 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 pubUcity 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, includ- ing me. I may remark here that Makar Ivanovitch had so much wit as never to describe " His high-bom 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 II the correspondence, Makar Ivanovitch wrote from all parts of Russia, from the towns and monasteries in which he some- times 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 afiEection 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 hke 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 bom my mother was still young and good-looking, and therefore necessary to Versilov ; and a screaming child, of course, was always a nuisance, especiaUy when they were travelling. That was how it happened that until I was nine- teen 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. 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 Uved 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, 12 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 vsTitten in his own hand, promising me a private situa- tion. 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 13 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 ever3rthing and retreat into my shell." Yes, into my shell I " 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^iappy, and I live with them for ten years 1 " 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 wou^ld be nothing. I was not fond of sentimentahty, 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 men- tioned), 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 1 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, Veriilov might think (if he ever deigned to think of me) that a small boy who had just left 14 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 i&ct) 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 ia 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 1 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 ae the leading figure every- where. 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, groveUed before him ae 15 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 in- finitely 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 Prmces 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 influen- tial 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 foHowed it by a challenge. Even his children (the i6 legitimate ones), his son and daughter, had turned against him and лл'сге iiolding 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 ofi 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 j-ouths, which I was hardly able to endure, though I knew it Avould 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 ofTor her and my sister. I had even uxed on the day ; and meanwhile I went to my wotk. CHAPTER П 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 break- ing 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 Sokobky, 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 Pav- lovna had intervened and it was through her that I was pFaced 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 stop. Of this later, but I may remark that the strangeness of hLs relations with Versilov impressed me in the lattor's favour. It occurred to the imagination that if the head of the injured family still cherished a respect for Versilov, the i8 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 protest- ing 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 pen- knife. All the while she nagged at me, scolded me, reproached me, cross-examined me, quoting as examples to me various phan- tom 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 naggmg at me just as she had done six years, before. And from that time for- ward 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 19 old invalid prince's in order to " amuse " him, and that that was my \v!k)1c duty. Naturally this Avas humiliating, and I should at once have taken steps, but the queer old fellow soon made an unexpected impres^^ion upon me. I felt something like com- pas.sion for him, and by the end jf the month 1 had become strangeh'' 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 suddeiily had a fit. He was travelling somewhere and went mad on the way, so there \vas sora 'thing of a scandal of Avhich 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 Avith noticeable heat) that he had not been insane at all, but had only had some sort of nervous fit. I promptly mule a note of Versilov's Avarmth about it. I may observe, however, that I Avas disposed to share his opinion. The old man only showed perhaps an excessive frivolity at times, not quite apjiropriate to his years, of which, so they say, there was no sign in hira bt^fore. It Mas said that in the past he had been a coun- cillor of som^ sort, and on one occasion had quite distinguished liimself in som ^ commission with which he had been charged. After knowing him for a Avhole 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 moans fell m 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 3'ears, and had only one daughter, the general's widow, who was now daily expected from iMoscow. 8he Mas a young person M'hose strength of Avill was evidently a source of apprehension to the old man. But he had masses of distant relatives, principally through his Avife, who were all almost beggars, besitles a multitude of proteges of all sorts, male and female, all of Avhom expected to be mentioned in his will, and so they all suyjportfd the general's Avidow in keeping Avateh over the old man. He had, moreover, had one strange propensity from his youth up (I don't know Avhether it was ridiculous or not) for making matches for poor girls. He 20 had been finding husbands for the last twenty-five year? — fcr 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 protegees 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 thtm oG with a dowry. The calls upon him were continually increasing. When his protegees were married the}' naturally produced more liitle girls ; and all these little girls became his protegees. He was always having to stand as god-father. The \vhole lot turned up to con- gratulate him on his birthdays, and it was ajl very agreeable to him. I noticed at с nee that the old msn had lurking in his mind a painful conviction (it was impossible to avoid noticing it, mdeed) that every one had begun to look at him strangely, that everyone had begun to behave to bira not as before, not as to a healthy man. This impression never left him even at the livelici-t 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 .susi^^ctcd him of beinp mad. He sometimes looked mistrustfully even at me. And if he had found out that some one was spreading or u];ho]ding 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 monf}' 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 share- holders' meetings, was appointed a director, presided at the board- meetings, opposed motions, was noisy and obviously enjoyed himself. He Avas very fond of making speeches ; every one could judge of his brain anA'waj'. And in general he de- veloped a great fancy for introducing profound reflections and bon mots in his conversation, even ui the intimacj^ of private life. I quite understand it. On the ground floor of his house there was something like a private оШсе where a single clerk kept the books and accounts and also managed the house. This clerk was v^uite equal to the 21 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 de- pression (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. 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 Audrey 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 fort- night 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. 22 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 aw ay. When I waked up and dressed that morning in my garret up- stairs, 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 Mas expected a луотап, whose presence I was reckoning upon for the explanation of ail that was tormenting me ! This was the prince's daughter, the 3'oung 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 Fome light thjtoAvn 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 expectmg her to return from Moscow for a week. I had learnt this the evenii^g 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 wjhen 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 di-op 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 Ijave trouble about me. I must add, how- ever, 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 oblig(>d to revise m}' 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 ^3 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 everj^hing in the world, but alwsys 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 school- fellow 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 goss ping about women, and he was sometimes positively disappointed at my disl king this subject of conversa- tion, 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 m}' heart 24 was beating) and then perhaps I should not be able to bring my- self 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. " I don't like women because they've no manners, because they are awkward, because they are not self-reliant, and becatise 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 some- times 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 25 to make way for her as a weaker creature, but why has she the right, why is ehe 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 equahty ; a fine sort of equahty 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 nin 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 yoxir 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 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." 26 " But, mj' dear boy, ^ou might get into serious trouble ; they might have hauled 3'ou 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 wTangling \\ ith 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 thcre'd been a man with them I should soon sing another tunc. 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, Avalking 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 1 •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- Ipoking one I must admit — one could see in at the windows a great many flowers, two canaries, three pug-dogs and engrav- ings 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 Avas not actually in a dressing-gown, but he was in a very domestic-locking attixe. He stcod 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 smilmg at me. I turned and walked алуау." " My dear boy, how Schilleresque ! I've always wondered at you ; with your rosy cheeks, your face blooming Avith 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, топ 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, 27 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 Avent 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 \vait on him, and take off his boots. When he was going to be confirmed an abbe, called Pi^igaud, came to congratulate him on his first communion, and they di.ssolved in t^ars on each other's necks, and the abbe 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 m'\ 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 Avith him. Though he had thrashed me two j'cars 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 Abbe 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 oat a knife and told him Id 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 abbe's mistress, and that he'd found it out, and he didn't care a hang for anything, and that all they said abou* the sacrament was rubbish. He said a great deal more, and I felt frightened. In Kuznetsky Street he bought a double- barrellfd gun, a game bag, cartridges, a riding-whip, and after- wards a pound of sweets. We were going out into the coimtry to shoot, and on the way we met a bird-aitcher 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 find off both barrels, and the bird was blown into a hundred feathers. Then we returned, drove to an hotel, took a room, and Ы gan eating, and drinking cham- pagne ; a lady came in. ... I remember being awfully imj)rrssed by her being so splendidly dressed ; she wore a green silk dress. It was then I saw ... all that I told you about. . . . After- wards, 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 Avith 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. " J\Ion 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 abbe's breast, and only a year or so later saying that of his mother and the abbe ! . . . Oh, топ 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 Httle children of your own. Why, you haven't any and never will have." " Ticns ! " His whole face was instantly transformed, " that's just what Alexandra Petrovna said — the day before yesterday, he-he ! — Alexandra Petrovna Sinitsky — ^j-ou must have met her here three weeks ago — only fancy, the day before 29 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 perpet\ial search for some one to submit to ... so to speak a thirst for submission. And mark ray words, there's not a single exception." " Perfectly true ! Magnificent ! " I cried rapturously. An- other time Ave should have launched into philosophical disqui- sitions on this theme, lasting for an hour, but suddenly I felt as though something had bitten me, and I flushed all over. I suddenly imaghaed 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 betAveen 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 30 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 forgottei^ 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 sa 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. Every- thing 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 faiows 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, btit 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 cau be enthusiastic. . . ." 31 " 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, mats je ne sais rien de bon.^ I don't know in the least what I have lived in this world for ! Put . . . 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 j'ou 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 iлclined 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 heЪad 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 1 vas burning with curiosity. " Yes, about money. His lawsuit is being decided to-day, and I'm expecting Prince Sorgay 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 Audrey 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 32 was a great shock 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 ? " " Audrey 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 qiielle idee ! 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 diffi- cult to understand), where does He live ? ' C'etait bete, no doubt, my dear boy, but, you know, all the arguments come to that. 33 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 voild 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 Vinconnu, 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 I 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. tl^em myself but . . .'* " Then let me tell you that all that is false, a tissue of loath- some 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 f . . . 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. 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 protegee of his for whom he had 34 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 Uved 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. After- wards 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 Ol3anpiada, 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 ^as 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 «■bout 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 35 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 extra- ordinary 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 Mile. 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 soHcitous 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 Mile. 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 feefing. " And this . . . this is my dear young friend Arkady Andreye- vitch 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 I " cried the prince, tapping his forehead with his finger. 36 " 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 reUeving the embarrassment of the prince, who was meanwhile listening with an amused smile to something funny Mile. 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 ? " Mile. Versilov asked in surprise. " Olympic ! 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 — tJiat worruxn 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 37 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 beheve 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 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 VersUov 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 delightfid. You have spat on me — and I am triumphant. И you were 38 literally to spit in my face I should really not be angry because you — are my victim ; mirie and not Ate. How fascinating was that idea ! Yes, the secret consciousness of power is more insupportably delightful than open domination, li 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 feeUng that day. I will only add that in what I have just written there is too much levity ; in reahty 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 wlule 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 ! 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 39 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 experi- ment — simply to look into it, as it were to indulge a fancy, and after that not to гесш: 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 comer of the yard of the house mentioned in the advertisement, and entered Mme. Lebrecht's fiat, 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 40 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 imdone 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 com&r 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 41 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 ърИЛ 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, pre- sentable-looking gentleman in a blue coat. He had come in late. " I am too late. Ach, what a pity ! How much was it 1 " " 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'U let you have it for ten roubles," I said, feeling a shiver run down my back. " Ten roubles ! Upon my word ! " *' As you Ике." 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 thiilking 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 smre of it. I won't take a farthing less." I turned and walked away. " Well, take fovur roubles," he said, overtaking me in the yard, " come, five ! " I strode on without speaking. 42 " WeU, 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 1 " 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 Due de Bern 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 Rothscluld, 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 himdred 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 ^v^as young, hand- some 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. 43 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 T 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 44 was, but he would never have been taken for more than seven- teen. I had nothmg 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 comer for myself and lived in it. But this was not what disturbed me. In any case I vowed not to let myself be dra\NTi 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 lashion, sufficiently though, and was even tidy. There 45 was a lithographed portrait on the wall, but a very cheap one ; in the comer 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, weiring 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 commimicative, 46 but he looked undeniably clever, cleverer than Dergatchev, of a more profound intelleot — 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. Ypu 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 caee 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 47 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 preju- dice and imtie 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. АД 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 attrac- tive part for her to play. Why not accept the idea calmly, con- sidering 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 imknown people that will be formed of all humanity without distinction of race. Russia would perish some time, anjrway ; even the most gifted peoples exist for fifteen hundred or at the most two thou- sand years. Isn't it all the same whether it's two thousand or two hundred 1 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 1 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 48 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 Ues 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 con- clusion is not a mere logical theory but, so to say, a theory that has been transmuted into a feeling. АД natures are not aUke ; 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 con- viction 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 49 . . . 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 bi"i — 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 rovmd. " 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 tKe subject," said Vassin, turning to me. 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 mvist 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 leist 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. After 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 50 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 de- lighted with Vassin, I felt ashamed, and felt myself an insigni- ficant child. Then there followed fresh ignominy. It was not a contemptible desire to show o£F 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 comer 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 Uke 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 ignotainious. It is a horrid thing to remember ! No, I must not associate with people, I think so even now. Forty years hence I will Epeak. My idea demands a comer. As soon as Vassin expressed approval I felt irresistibly impelled to talk. " I consider that every one has aright 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 Dergat- chev and shouted at Kraft that he was a German interposed with an ironical drawl. Regarding the speaker as a complete 51 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 1 " 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 ownf 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 ? " " Р-}юоЬ ! " 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 52 words were poiiring 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 remark- able that they were all suddenly ^bnt, 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 honoiirable.' You know there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world ; naive 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 scoun- drels. 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, 53 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 yoiu" 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, stride 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 comer you take away all my personal liberty ! For in- stance ; 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- resx)ect ? Why it's unnatural ; you ought to be ashamed ! " " You're a specialist on the woman question then 1 " 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." . 54 ** 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 imceremonious 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 shghtest 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 " (Kudryumoiv was the red-haired man), said Dergatchev. I followed Kraft out. I wa^ not in the least ashamed. 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, leavirg 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 deUcate 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 carry- ing them through — but without rendering an accoxmt 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 CathoUo ? But I forgot, perhaps you don't know ? " 55 If I had not been so excited I should not, of course, have fired ofi 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 fabe ! 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 soaiething 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 j'ears I have been silent ; for three years I hare been preparing to speak . . . You couldn't of course have thought me a fool, you're eg traordinarily 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 56 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 differ- ence, if you are capable of realizing it, then I bless this moment I " 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 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 Andronik6v, 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 e2фecting 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 57 had no servant. His trunk stood open, not yet unpacked. His belongings l?iy about on the chairs, and were spread out on the table in front of the sofa : his travelling bag, his cashbox, hie 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. " Kjraft, 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 Kj-aft 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 hke 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 53 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 Ls 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. " Now- adays 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 utterl}' 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. 59 " 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 Stolbeyev'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. Ver'^ilov's opponents would give a great deal for this letter, thougu 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. 60 " 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 lawj'er 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 positiv'ely that if this letter were put forward it would have no great legal x^alue, 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 iii 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." 6i " 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) oecame a constant visitor at the Ahraakovs' (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 Niko- laevna, 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 invete- rate 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 62 came a strange circumstance : Katerma 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 con- firmed 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 гоау, in subtly suggesting to the young person that the reason Katerina Nikolaevna would not agree was that she was in love with h im 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 Niko- laevna 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 beheved, and therefore I believed myself (of all this I had heard already). 63 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 feehng 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 incon- sistent in all this, that it was something in the style of la haine dans Varnour, 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 loatlisome 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 ; 64 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 impUcit 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 sub- scriptions 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 deceeused's papers and fell into the old prince's hands, he would, no doubt, have cast her ofif 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, 65 and even wanted to have him certified as a hmatic 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 inde- pendence 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 Avith Andronikov's widow and daughters ; it was known, indeed, that they had at once, of necessity, handed over all the deceased's papers to Wrsilov. 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. " Its all like a delirious nightmare," I said, deeply dejected, as I took up my hat. " Is the man so dear to you ? " asked lu-aft. I read his deep sympathy on his face at that minute. 66 " 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 every- thing, eh ? " " And what then ? " he asked almost sullenly, keeping his eyes on the ground. " Retreat within oneself 1 Break with everything and with- draw 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 j^urself ' ? " " 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 ^o hell ; I'd say : ' Get out with 3'OU ; 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. ICraft 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." 67. " 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 луаз 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. 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 Prospeot 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 68 pecking at the bottom of its cage. There was a noise in the adjoining Ь1Шаг(1-гоот, but I sat there and sank into deep thought. The setting sun (why was Kraft surprised at my not liking the sunset ?) aroiised in me a new and unexpected sensa- tion 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 mc; 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 begiin 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 role 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. 70 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 J 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 thatlhsul 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 anj^hing 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 71 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 whirUng up the dust and sand. How many sullen faces of poor people hurrying home to their comers 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 httle 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 wenf 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. 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 imiversity but went into a cavalry regiment of the guards. He married Mile. 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 Konigsberg, 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 72 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, 1 am convinced that for a very long time people would not have imderstood 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. 73 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 " vatersr 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 imique. 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 74 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 beg- ging in rags and was known to every one. On his death they foimd 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 restamrants holding out his hand. He was arrested and there was foxmd on him five thousand roubles. Two conclusions follpw directly from this. The first, that obstinacy in saving even the smallest coin will produce enormous results in the long rim (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 be- coming a Rothschild, no less strength of will is needed than in the case of those two beggars. The Oerman " 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 mona^stery, the same heroic asceticism. Feeling is wanted, not only idea. What for ? W^y 1 Is it moral and not monstrous to wear sackcloth 75 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 poimds 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 Nikolaj' 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 satis- fied 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. 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 76 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 oflf really be- ginning till I was perfectly free. I fully realized . that I must, for instance, finish my work at school. (The imiversity, 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 pro- posed beginning my enterprise alone, that was a sine qua поп. 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, tranquilhty 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 77 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 comer, 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 sho