A Hero of Our Time

2 PRINCESS MARY

Yesterday I arrived in Pyatigorsk and hired quarters at the edge of town, at the highest point, at the foot of Mount Mashuk. When a storm arrives, the clouds will come right down to my roof. Today, at five o’clock in the morning, when I opened the window, my room filled with the scent of the flowers, which grow inside the modest palisade. The blooming branches of a cherry tree look at me through my window, and the wind strews my writing desk with white petals. The view in three directions is marvelous. To the west the five-headed Beshtau is shining blue, like “the last storm-cloud of a dissipating storm.”[1] To the north rises Mashuk, like a shaggy Persian hat, covering one whole part of the horizon. Looking eastward is more cheering: below, a clean and new little town is flashing its colors, curative springs are babbling, the many-tongued crowd is babbling; in the distance an amphitheater of blue and cloudy hills towers over the town; and farther still, a silver chain of snowy peaks extends along the horizon’s edge, beginning with Kazbek and ending with the two-headed Elbrus… What joy to live in such country! A kind of joyful feeling has spread to all my veins. The air is clean and fresh, like the kiss of a baby; the sun is bright, the sky blue—what more could one wish? What place do passions, desires, and regrets have here?… But it’s time now. I am going to Elizabeth’s Spring: it is said that the whole spa community gathers there in the morning.

I went down into the middle of the town and walked the boulevard, where I met several doleful groups going slowly up the hill. One could immediately guess by the worn, out-of-fashion frock coats of the husbands and by the refined apparel of the wives and daughters, that mostly these groups were the households of a landowner from the Steppe. It was obvious that the spa’s young men had already been found and counted because they looked at me with a tender curiosity. My Petersburg-cut frock coat led them to an initial illusion, but as soon as they recognized the army epaulets they turned away with indignation.

The wives of the local authorities, the “mistresses of the waters,” so to speak, were more gracious. They have lorgnettes, they pay less attention to uniform, and they are accustomed in the Caucasus to meeting ardent hearts beneath numbered buttons and educated minds under white military caps. These ladies are very charming and remain so for a long time! Every year their admirers are relieved by new ones, and this is perhaps the secret of their inexhaustible graciousness. Climbing the narrow path to the Elizabeth Spring, I overtook a crowd of men, civilian and military, which, as I later learned, comprised a particular class of people among those hoping to benefit from the action of the waters. They drink (but not the waters); they promenade little; they flirt but only in passing; they gamble; and they complain of boredom. They are dandies: they adopt academic poses as they lower their wickered glasses into the well of sulfurous water. The civilians among them wear light-blue neckcloths, and the military turn out the frills of their collars. They profess deep disdain toward provincial houses and long for the aristocratic drawing rooms of the capital where they wouldn’t be admitted.

Finally, the well… In the little square next to it there is a small house with a red roof built over baths, and beyond that is a gallery where people promenade during rainstorms. A few injured officers sat on a bench, their crutches tucked up—pale, sad. A few ladies were walking to and fro with quick steps around the square, awaiting the effects of the water. There were two or three lovely little faces among them. Under the alley of vines obscuring the slope of Mount Mashuk, I could see the occasional flashings of a colorful hat, which must have belonged to persons who loved company in their solitude, since there was always a military cap, or one of those ugly round hats next to it. In a pavilion called the Aeolian Harp, which was built above a steep rock-face, the lovers of views hung about and directed a telescope at Mount Elbrus. Among them were two tutors with their pupils, come to be cured of scrofula.

I stopped, out of breath, on the edge of the hill and, leaning on the corner of a little house, I started to examine the picturesque environs, when suddenly I heard a familiar voice behind me:

“Pechorin! Have you been here long?”

I turn around: Grushnitsky! We embraced. I had met him on active service. He had been wounded by a bullet in the leg and had come to the waters a week before me.

Grushnitsky is a cadet. After just a year in service, he wears a heavy soldier’s greatcoat—a particular kind of dandyism. He has the St. George’s Cross for soldiers. He is well-built, has black hair and a dark complexion. He looks as though he is twenty-five years old, but he is barely twenty-one. He throws his head back when he talks and he twists his mustache with his left hand all the time, while the right hand leans on his crutch. His speech is quick and fanciful: he is one of those people who have a flamboyant phrase ready for any situation, who aren’t touched by the simply beautiful, and who grandly drape themselves with extraordinary feelings, sublime passions and exceptional suffering. They delight in producing an effect. They are madly fancied by romantic provincial girls. Toward old age, they become either peaceful landowners, or drunks—and sometimes both. There are often many good attributes to their souls, but not a half-kopeck piece of poetry. Grushnitsky’s passion was to declaim: he bespattered you with words as soon as the conversation left the arena of usual understanding; I could never argue with him. He doesn’t answer objections, he doesn’t listen to you. As soon as you stop, he begins a long tirade, which seemingly has some sort of connection to what you have just said, but which in fact is only a continuation of his own speech.

He is fairly sharp: his epigrams are often amusing, but they are never well-aimed or wicked. He will never slay a person with one word. He doesn’t know people and their weak strings because he has been occupied with himself alone for his whole life. His goal is to be the hero of a novel. He has so often tried to convince people that he is not of this world but is doomed to some sort of secret torture, that he has almost convinced himself of it. This is why he so proudly wears his heavy soldier’s greatcoat. I have seen through him, and for this he doesn’t like me, even though on the exterior we have the most friendly of relationships. Grushnitsky has a reputation for being an excellent brave. I have seen him in action. He waves his saber, cries out, and throws himself forward, with screwed up eyes. This is something other than Russian courage!

I don’t like him either: I feel that one day we shall bump into each other on a narrow road and it will end badly for one of us.

His arrival in the Caucasus was the consequence of just such romantic fanaticism. I am sure that on the eve of his departure from his father’s village he was telling some pretty neighborhood girl with a gloomy look that he was going not just to serve in the army but that he was in search of death, because… and then he, probably, covered his eyes with his hands and continued: “No, you mustn’t know this! Your pure soul will shudder! And why would I? What am I to you? Do you understand me?” and so on.

He himself has told me that what induced him to join the K—regiment will remain an eternal secret between him and the heavens.

However, during those moments when he drops his tragic mantle, Grushnitsky is rather charming and amusing. I am curious to see him with women: here, I think, he will apply himself!

We greeted each other like old friends. I started to question him about the way of life at the spa and about its noteworthy personages.

“We lead a fairly prosaic life,” he said, exhaling. “Those who drink water in the morning are sluggish, like all ill people, and those who drink wine in the evenings are intolerable, like all healthy people. There is female company but they don’t provide much consolation: they play whist,[2] dress badly, and speak terrible French. This year, only Princess Ligovsky is here with her daughter, but I haven’t met them yet. My soldier’s greatcoat is like the stamp of an outcast. The sympathy it arouses is as oppressive as alms.”

At that moment two ladies walked past us toward the well: one was older, the other young and well-proportioned. I didn’t catch sight of their faces under their hats, but they were dressed according to the strict rules of the best taste: nothing extraneous. The second lady wore a high-necked dress in gris de perles, with a light silk fichu[3] twisted around her lithe neck. Little boots du couleur puce were tightened at her ankle, and her lean little foot was so sweet that even those uninitiated into the secrets of beauty would unfailingly have exclaimed “ah!”—even if only in surprise. Her light but noble gait contained something virginal about it that escaped definition, but it was decipherable to the gaze. When she walked past us, an indescribable aroma wafted from her, the kind that emanates sometimes from the letter of a beloved lady.

“That is Princess Ligovsky,” said Grushnitsky, “and with her is her daughter, Mary, as she is called in the English manner. They have been here only three days.”

“But you already know her name?”

“Yes, I heard it accidentally,” he replied, blushing. “I admit that I don’t want to be introduced. This proud nobility looks at us army-men like savages. And what is it to them whether there is a mind underneath this numbered military cap and a heart beneath this heavy greatcoat?”

“The poor greatcoat!” I said, bursting into laughter, “and who is the gentleman who is walking up to them and so courteously offering them a glass?”

“Oh! That is the Muscovite dandy Rayevich! He is a gambler: it is immediately obvious from the enormous gold chain, which coils around his light blue waistcoat. And what of the heavy walking stick—just like Robinson Crusoe! Yes, and his beard for that matter, and hair are à la moujik.”[4]

“You are embittered against the whole human race.”

“And for good reason…”

“Oh! Is that right?”

At that moment the ladies had walked away from the well and came up level with us. Grushnitsky managed to strike a dramatic pose with the help of his crutch and responded to me loudly in French:

“Mon cher, je haïs les hommes pour ne pas mépriser, car autrement la vie serait une farce trop dégoutante.”[5]

The pretty princess turned around and gifted the orator with a long and curious gaze. The expression of this gaze was very ambiguous but not mocking, for which I applauded her from my innermost soul.

“This Princess Mary is very pretty,” I said to him. “She has such velvet eyes—yes, velvet. I advise you to appropriate this expression when speaking about her eyes. Her lower and upper eyelashes are so long that the rays of the sun don’t reflect in her pupils. I love eyes that have no reflection; they are so soft, it’s as though they stroke you… However, it seems that everything about her face is pretty… But now, are her teeth white? This is very important! A shame that she didn’t smile at your magnificent sentence.”

“You speak about pretty ladies as though they’re English horses,” said Grushnitsky with indignation.

“Mon cher,” I replied to him, attempting to imitate his tone, “je méprise les femmes pour ne pas les aimer, car autrement la vie serait un mélodrame trop ridicule.”[6]

I turned and walked in the other direction. For about half an hour I wandered along the grapevine alleys, along the limestone ledge, and among the shrubbery that hung between them. It was becoming hot, and I hurried back. Walking past the sulfurous spring, I stopped at the covered gallery to catch my breath in its shade, and this provided me with the occasion to witness a rather curious scene. The central characters were in this arrangement: the elder princess sat with the Muscovite dandy on a bench in the covered gallery, and both were engaged, it seemed, in a serious conversation. The young princess, probably having drunk her last glass, was strolling pensively by the well. Grushnitsky was standing at the well itself; and there was no one else in the little square.

I approached and hid in a corner of the gallery. At that moment Grushnitsky let his glass fall in the sand and then tried to bend down and pick it up—but his injured leg was in the way. Poor thing! How he was contriving, leaning on his crutch, making vain attempts. His expressive face really did convey suffering.

Princess Mary saw all of this better than I did.

Lighter than a little bird, she ran up to him, bent down, lifted the glass and gave it to him in a motion performed with indescribable charm. Then she blushed terribly, looked back at the gallery and, having reassured herself that her mama hadn’t seen anything, calmed down immediately. By the time Grushnitsky had opened his mouth to thank her, she was already far gone. After a minute she came out of the gallery with her mother and the dandy, but assumed an air of utter propriety and importance as she passed Grushnitsky. She didn’t even turn, didn’t even notice the ardent look with which he long accompanied her, while she descended the hill and was eventually obscured by the linden trees of the boulevard… But then, her hat flashed on the other side of the street; she was running into one of the best houses of Pyatigorsk. The elder princess walked in after her and exchanged bows with Rayevich at the threshold.

Only then did the poor ardent cadet notice my presence.

“Did you see that?” he said, squeezing my hand tightly. “She is simply an angel!”

“Why?” I asked with an appearance of the purest sincerity.

“Didn’t you see it?”

“No, I didn’t see it. She picked up your glass. If the sentry had been here, he would have done the same, and even more swiftly in hopes of a tip. However, it’s perfectly understandable that she was sorry for you. You were making such an awful grimace, when you stood on your wounded leg…”

“And you weren’t at all moved, looking at her, at the moment when her soul shined through her face?”

“No.”

I was lying, but I wanted to infuriate him. I have a congenital desire to contradict; my whole life is merely a chain of sad and unsuccessful contradictions to heart and mind. When faced with enthusiasm, I am seized by a midwinter freeze, and I suppose that frequent dealings with sluggish phlegmatics would have made a passionate dreamer of me. I will also confess that a feeling, unpleasant yet familiar, lightly ran over my heart at that moment—and this feeling was envy. I say “envy” boldly because I have become accustomed to admitting to everything; and you will rarely find a young man who, upon meeting a pretty girl who has captured his idle attention and discovering that she has suddenly singled out another man, equally unknown to her—you will rarely find, I tell you, a young man (it goes without saying that he lives in le grande monde, and is used to indulging his vanity) who would not be struck unpleasantly by this.

Grushnitsky and I descended the hill in silence and walked down the boulevard, past the windows of the house in which our beauty had hidden herself. She was sitting in the window. Grushnitsky, holding me by the arm, threw her one of those cloudy, tender looks, which have so little effect on women. I directed my lorgnette toward her and noticed that she smiled at his look, and that she was not at all amused but vexed by my impertinent lorgnette. How indeed could a Caucasian soldier have dared to point his piece of glass at a princess from Moscow…

Today, in the morning, the doctor came to see me. His name is Werner, though he is Russian. What is surprising about that? I knew a German who was called Ivanov.

Werner was an excellent person for many reasons. He was a skeptic and a materialist, like almost all medics, but furthermore he was a poet—I jest not. Always a poet in deed, and often in word, though he hasn’t written two verses in his life. He has studied every living string of the human heart, like some who study the circulation of a corpse, but he has never been able to profit from his knowledge—like an excellent anatomist who isn’t able to treat a fever! Usually, Werner ridicules his patients when they aren’t looking; but I once saw him weep over a dying soldier… He was poor and dreamed of making millions but has not taken one extra step for money’s sake. He once said to me that he would sooner do a favor for an enemy than for a friend, because for a friend it seemed like selling charity, whereas the generosity of an adversary only gives proportional strength to hatred. He has a wicked tongue, expressed through his epigrams; more than one good-natured person has gained the reputation of a vulgar fool as a result. His rivals, envious spa medics, sent out a rumor that he draws caricatures of his patients; the patients became enraged, and almost all of them refused to see him. His acquaintances, all truly decent folk who have served in the Caucasus, then strived in vain to resurrect his fallen credibility.

His appearance was one that strikes you, on first glance, as unpleasant but which subsequently becomes likable, when the eye has learned to read the stamp of an experienced and lofty soul in his irregular features. There have been examples of women falling madly in love with such people, who wouldn’t exchange ugliness like his for the beauty of the most fresh and rosy Endymions. One must do justice to women: they have an instinct for a beautiful soul. That is perhaps why people like Werner love women so passionately.

Werner was short, thin, and as weak as a baby; one of his legs was shorter than the other, like Byron; his head seemed enormous in comparison to his trunk: he cropped his hair close, and the unevenness of his skull, exposed as it was, would have shocked a phrenologist with its strange weavings of opposing inclinations. His small black eyes, always agitated, sought to penetrate your thoughts. It was evident that there was taste and tidiness to his attire; his lean, veined hands stood out vividly in their light-yellow gloves. His frock coat, neck-tie and waistcoat were always black in color. Young men nicknamed him Mephistopheles. He acted as though he was angry at such a nickname but in actual fact, it gratified his vanity. We quickly understood each other and became friendly, because I am not capable of true friendship: one friend is always slave to the other, though often neither of them will admit it. I cannot be a slave, and to dominate in such a situation is an exhausting labor, because you must also lie at the same time. And besides I have a lackey and money! This is how we became friendly: I met Werner at S—in a crowded and noisy circle of young men; the conversation toward the end of the evening took a philosophical and metaphysical direction; we were talking about convictions. Each one of us was convinced of this or that.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’m convinced of only one thing…” said the doctor.

“And what is that?” I asked, wanting to know the opinion of this person who had not yet spoken.

“Of the fact,” he replied, “that sooner or later, one fine day, I will die.”

“I am richer than you,” I said, “as I have, apart from that, another conviction, which is that one very nasty evening I had the misfortune of being born.”

Everyone found that we were talking nonsense, but, really, not one of them said anything any cleverer than that. From that minute, we had singled each other out in the crowd. The two of us often met and discussed abstract subjects that were very serious, neither of us noticing that we were but pulling the wool over each other’s eyes. Then, having looked meaningfully into each other’s eyes, as did the Roman augurs according to Cicero, we started guffawing and having laughed ourselves out, went our separate ways, satisfied with our evening.

I lay on the divan, aiming my eyes at the ceiling with my hand behind my head, when Werner came into my room. He sat in the armchair, put his walking stick in the corner, yawned and announced that it was becoming hot in the courtyard. I replied that the flies were bothering me, and we both fell silent.

“Note, dear doctor,” I said, “that, without fools, the world would be very boring… See, here we are, two intelligent people. We know in advance that we are each capable of debating to eternity, and so we don’t debate. We know nearly all of each other’s innermost thoughts. One word tells a whole story. We could see the kernel of each of our feelings through a three-layered shell. Sad things are funny to us. Funny things are sad to us. And in general, to tell the truth, we are indifferent to everything apart from our selves. And thus, there cannot be an exchange of feelings and thoughts between us. We know everything we wish to know about each other, and don’t wish to know more. One solution remains: to discuss the news. Can you give me any news?”

Tired from my long speech, I closed my eyes and yawned…

He thought for a while and replied:

“Well, there is an idea in that nonsense of yours.”

“Two of them!” I replied.

“Tell me one of them and I’ll tell you the other.”

“Good, let’s begin!” I said, continuing to examine the ceiling and smiling inwardly.

“You want details about one of the spa visitors, and I can guess which one you are bothering about, because there have been questions already about you, too.”

“Doctor! We must absolutely not converse: we are reading each other’s souls.”

“And for the second…?”

“The other idea is this: I wanted to make you recount something. Firstly, because listening is less tiring; and secondly, one mustn’t be indiscreet; and thirdly, to learn the secrets of others; and fourthly, because intelligent people such as you like listeners more than they like storytellers. So then, to the matter at hand: what did old Princess Ligovsky say about me?”

“You are very sure that it was the older one… and not the young one?”

“Absolutely certain.”

“Why?”

“Because the young one was asking about Grushnitsky.”

“You have a great gift of understanding. The young princess said that she was certain that the young man in the soldier’s greatcoat was reduced to the ranks on account of a duel…”

“I hope that you left her with that pleasant delusion.”

“Of course!”

“We have a start!” I cried with rapture. “And we will take some trouble over the start of this comedy! Obviously, fate has taken upon itself to make things interesting for me!”

“I have a premonition,” said the doctor, “that poor Grushnitsky will be your victim…”

“Continue, Doctor…”

“Princess Ligovsky said that your face is familiar. I remarked to her that she had probably met you in St. Petersburg, somewhere in social circles… I told her your name… It was familiar to her. It seems that your story has made quite a lot of noise there… The princess continued to describe your escapades, adding, in all likelihood, her own observations to society gossip… The daughter listened with interest. In her imagination, you grew into the hero of one of those new novels… I didn’t contradict the princess, even though I knew that she was talking nonsense.”

“My worthy friend!” I said, offering him my hand.

The doctor shook it with feeling, and continued:

“If you like, I’ll introduce you…”

“Good gracious!” I said, raising my hands. “Do heroes really get introduced? Do they not become acquainted as they save their beloved from certain death…?”

“And you really want to court the princess?”

“On the contrary, absolutely on the contrary! Doctor, finally I have triumphed: you don’t understand me!” I continued after a minute of silence: “But this distresses me, Doctor… I have never exposed my secrets, but I do awfully like it when they are guessed because, in that case, I can always deny them when something happens. However, you must describe mother and daughter to me. How are they as people?”

“Firstly, the Princess Ligovsky is a lady of forty-five years,” said Werner, “and she has excellent digestion, but her blood is contaminated. She has red dots on her cheeks. She has spent the last half of her life so far in Moscow and now, in retirement, she has grown fat. She loves naughty anecdotes and she herself sometimes speaks of indecent things when her daughter is not in the room. She conveyed to me that her daughter is as innocent as a dove. What was it to me?… I was moved to say something in reply—that I wouldn’t tell anyone, to ensure her peace of mind! The Princess Ligovsky is being treated for rheumatism, and the daughter for goodness knows what. I ordered them both to drink two glasses of sulfurous water a day and to bathe in a diluted bath twice a week. The Princess Ligovsky, it seems, is not used to orders. She has a respect for the intelligence and knowledge of her daughter, who has read Byron in English and knows algebra. In Moscow, the young ladies have embarked on learning and it is a good thing, I’d say! Our men are so impolite in general, that to have to flirt with them must be unbearable to a clever woman. The Princess Ligovsky likes young men, but the young Princess Mary looks at them with a certain contempt: a Muscovite habit! In Moscow, they have only forty-year-old wits for their consumption.”

“Have you been to Moscow, doctor?”

“Yes, I have practiced there a bit.”

“Continue.”

“Well, I have said everything, it seems… Yes! One more thing: the young princess, it seems, loves to discuss feelings, passions, and the like… She was in Petersburg for a winter, and it didn’t please her, especially the society there. I suppose they received her coldly.”

“You didn’t see anyone with them today?”

“On the contrary: there was one adjutant, one tense-looking guardsman, and a lady who has just arrived, a relative of the princess by marriage, very pretty, but very poorly, it seems… Didn’t you meet her at the well? She is of medium height, fair, with regular features and a consumptive color to her face, and there is a mole on her right cheek. Her expressive face is most striking.”

“A mole!” I muttered through my teeth. “Really?”

The doctor looked at me and said solemnly, putting his hand on my heart: “You are acquainted with her…!”

Indeed, my heart was beating more strongly than usual. “Now it is your turn to celebrate!” I said. “Only I am counting on you: don’t lie to me. I haven’t yet seen her, but I am sure that I recognize a certain woman in your portrait, whom I loved in days of old… But do not breathe a word about me to her; if she asks, treat me with disdain.”

“As you like!” said Werner, shrugging his shoulders.

When he left, a terrible sadness squeezed my heart. Had fate led us again to the Caucasus, or had she purposefully come here, knowing she would find me?… And how will we meet?… And also, is it really her?… My sense of premonition has never lied to me. There isn’t a person in the world over whom the past gains such power as it does over me. Every memory of a past sorrow or joy hits my soul painfully and elicits from it the same sounds it once did… I am a foolish creature: I don’t forget anything—ever!

After dinner, at about six o’clock, I went to the boulevard: there was a crowd. Princess Ligovsky and Princess Mary sat on a bench, surrounded by young men, who were vying with one another to pay them their compliments. I placed myself on another bench at some distance and stopped two officers from the D—— regiment whom I knew, and started to tell them something. Obviously it was funny because they started to laugh as loudly as lunatics. The curiosity of several of those surrounding the young princess was piqued. One by one, they all abandoned her and joined my circle. I didn’t stop: my anecdotes were so clever that they were silly; my mockeries of the eccentrics walking past were mean to the point of brutality… I continued to entertain the public until the sun went down. Several times, the young princess walked past with her mother, arm in arm, accompanied by some limping little old man. Several times her gaze, falling on me, expressed contempt while trying to express indifference…

“What stories was he telling?” she asked one of the young people who turned to her in politeness. “I suppose it was a very enthralling story—about his victory in battle…?” she said rather loudly and, probably, with the intention of taunting me.

“Aha,” I thought, “you have become angry indeed, dear princess; but wait, there is more!”

Grushnitsky followed her movements like a predatory beast—she didn’t leave his sight. I’ll wager that tomorrow he will be begging someone to introduce him to her. She will be very glad of it because she is bored.

Over the last two days, my affairs have progressed tremendously. The young princess decidedly hates me. Two or three epigrams at my expense have already been circulated, and they were rather biting but also very flattering. It is horribly strange to her that, accustomed as I am to good society, and as friendly as I am with her cousins and aunties, I am not making any attempt to become acquainted with her. We encounter each other every day at the well and on the boulevard. I make every effort, and do my utmost to distract her admirers—the shining adjutants, pale Muscovites and others—and I am almost always successful. I have always hated having guests but now I have a full house every day; they have dinner, supper, they gamble—and, alas, my champagne is triumphing over the power of her magnetic little eyes!

Yesterday, I encountered her in Chelakhov’s shop. She was bargaining for a marvelous Persian rug. The young princess was entreating her mama not to begrudge her—this rug would decorate her dressing room so nicely!… I offered forty rubles more and bought it—and for that I was rewarded with a look that shined with the most ravishing fury. Near dinner-time, I ordered my Circassian horse to be led past her window, covered with this rug, just for fun. Werner was at their house at the time and told me that the effect of this scene was most dramatic. The young princess now wants to drum up a militia against me. I have already noticed that two adjutants bow to me very dryly in her presence, even though they dine at my house every day.

Grushnitsky has taken on a mysterious look: he walks around, with his hands behind his back, and doesn’t acknowledge anyone. His leg has suddenly healed: he barely limps. He has found occasion both to enter into conversation with the Princess Ligovsky, and to give some sort of compliment to the young princess. She, evidently, is not very discriminating, because since then she has replied to his bows with the sweetest of smiles.

“You are resolute in not wanting to be introduced to the Ligovskys?” he said to me yesterday.

“Resolute.”

“As you please! It is the most pleasant household at the spa! All the best society here…”

“My friend, I’m tired even of the best society that is not here. Have you been to their house?”

“Not yet. I have spoken twice with the young princess, not more, but you know, somehow it is not appropriate to impose oneself on a household, though it is done here… It would be another matter if I wore epaulets…”

“Come now! You are much more interesting as you are! You simply don’t know how to make best use of your advantageous situation… That soldier’s greatcoat makes you into a hero or a martyr in the eyes of any sentimental young lady.”

Grushnitsky smiled in a self-satisfied way.

“What nonsense!” he said.

“I am sure,” I continued, “that the young princess is already in love with you.”

He blushed to his ears and puffed out his chest.

Oh vanity! You are the lever with which Archimedes wanted to raise the earthly globe!

“Everything is a joke to you!” he said, pretending to be angry. “Firstly, she knows me so little yet…”

“Women only love those that they don’t know.”

“Well, I don’t have the least impression that she likes me. I simply want to make acquaintance with a pleasant household, and it would be very funny if I had any hopes… But you, for example, are another matter! You Petersburg conquerors: one look from you and the women melt… And do you know, Pechorin, that the young princess has been talking about you?”

“What? She has already spoken of me to you?”

“Well, don’t start rejoicing yet. I somehow entered a conversation with her at the well, by accident. And her third comment was: ‘Who is this gentleman who has such an unpleasant and oppressive gaze? He was with you when…’

“She blushed and didn’t want to say which day, having remembered her charming gesture.

“‘You don’t have to tell me which day,’ I responded to her. ‘It will always be in my memory…’

“My friend Pechorin! I congratulate you: you are on her black list… and this is a shame indeed! Because Mary is very charming…”

It must be remarked that Grushnitsky is one of those people, who, in speaking about a woman with whom they are barely acquainted, will call her my Mary, my Sophie, if she has the good fortune to have taken their fancy.

I assumed a serious air and responded to him:

“Yes, she is not foolish… But be careful, Grushnitsky! Young Russian ladies live on platonic love for the most part, without adding the thought of marriage to it. And platonic love is the most unsettling of all. The young princess, it seems, is one of those ladies who want you to entertain them. If they are bored with you for more than two minutes in a row, then you are irretrievably finished. Your silence must excite her curiosity, your conversation should never quench it. You must continue to disturb her with every passing minute. She will disregard considered opinion for you ten times in public, then call it a sacrifice; and in order to reward herself for it, she will torment you, and afterward will simply say that she cannot stand you. If you don’t gain power over her, then her first kiss will not give you the right to a second. She will flirt with you abundantly, and after about two years she will marry a monster, out of deference to her mother, and will start to convince herself that she is wretched, that she only loved one person—you, that is—but that the heavens didn’t unite her with him, because he wore a soldier’s greatcoat, though under that thick, gray greatcoat, an ardent and noble heart was beating…”

Grushnitsky banged his fist on the table and started to pace the room.

I was laughing loudly inside and almost smiled twice, but he, fortunately, didn’t notice this. It was clear that he was in love, because he became even more gullible than before. He even began to wear a silver ring with black enamel, made locally. It seemed a little dubious to me… I started to scrutinize it and what did I see?… Engraved on the inside in tiny letters, was the name “Mary,” and next to it, the date of the day she picked up the famous glass. I hid my discovery. I don’t want to force a confession from him. I want him to choose me as a confidante, and then I will really enjoy it…

Today I was up late; I arrived at the well—and no one was there anymore. The day began to get hot. White, shaggy rain clouds quickly sped down from the snowy mountains, promising a storm. The head of Mount Mashuk was smoking like an extinguished torch. Gray shreds of cloud twisted and crawled around it, like snakes, and they seemed to be held back in their strivings, as if they had been caught up in its prickly shrubbery. The air was filled with electricity. I went deep into the grapevine alley that led to a grotto; I was melancholy. I was thinking about the young woman whom the doctor had mentioned, with the mole on her cheek… Why is she here? Is it she? And why do I think that it is she? And why am I even convinced of it? Are women with moles on their cheeks so very rare? Thinking in this way, I walked right up to the grotto and looked: on a stone bench in the cool shadows of its entrance, a woman was sitting, wrapped in a black shawl, wearing a straw hat, with her head lowered onto her chest. The hat covered her face. I wanted to turn, in order not to ruin her daydreaming, when she caught sight of me.

“Vera!” I exclaimed involuntarily.

She shuddered and went pale.

“I knew you were here,” she said.

I sat next to her and took her hand. A long forgotten feeling of awe ran along my veins at the sound of this sweet voice. She looked me in the eyes with her deep and peaceful eyes. They expressed mistrust and something like reproach.

“We haven’t seen each other in a long while,” I said.

“A long time, and we have both changed in many ways!”

“I assume you don’t love me anymore?”

“I am married!” she said.

“Again? But this reason also existed a few years ago, and yet…”

She pulled her hand out of mine, and her cheeks blazed.

“Maybe you love your second husband?”

She didn’t answer and turned away.

“Or he is very jealous?”

Silence.

“Well? He is young, handsome, special, faithful, rich, and you are afraid…”

I looked at her and became scared: her face expressed deep despair; tears were sparkling in her eyes.

“Tell me,” she finally whispered, “is it fun for you to torture me?… I should really hate you. Ever since we have known each other, you have given me nothing but suffering…” Her voice trembled, she leaned toward me, and lowered her head onto my breast.

“Perhaps,” I thought, “this is exactly why you loved me: joys are forgotten, but sadness, never…”

I hugged her tightly and we stayed like that for a long time. Finally, our lips approached each other and merged into a hot, intoxicating kiss. Her hands were as cold as ice, and her head was burning. Then one of those conversations started up between us, which don’t make any sense on paper, which you can’t repeat, and which you can’t even remember. The meanings of the sounds replace and add to the meanings of the words, as in an Italian opera.

She absolutely doesn’t want me to be introduced to her husband—the limping little old man whom I saw in passing on the boulevard. She married him for her son’s sake. He is rich and suffers from rheumatism. I didn’t allow myself to make even one mockery of him: she respects him, like a father—and will deceive him like a husband… It is a strange thing the human heart in general—and the female one in particular!

Vera’s husband, Semyon Vasilievich G——v, is a distant relative of Princess Ligovsky. He lives near her. Vera is often a guest of the princess. I gave her my word that I would make acquaintance with the Ligovskys and would flirt with the princess in order to deflect attention from her. This way, my plans won’t be spoiled in the slightest and it will be amusing for me…

Amusing!… Yes, I have already surpassed that period in a soul’s life when it seeks only happiness, when the heart feels a necessity to love someone strongly and ardently. Now I only want to be loved, and at that, only by a very few. It seems to me, even, that one constant attachment would be enough for me—a sorry habit of the heart!

One thing has always been strange to me: I have never been a slave to any woman. On the contrary, I have always gained indomitable power over a woman’s will and heart, absolutely without trying to do so. Why is this? Is it because I never prize anything and that they are permanently afraid to let me out of their grasp? Or is it the magnetic influence of a powerful organism? Or have I simply not succeeded in meeting a woman with an obstinate character?

I must admit that I absolutely do not like women of character: it is not their business!

It’s true, I now remember: once, only once, I loved a woman with a firm will, whom I could never conquer… We parted as enemies—and yet, maybe, if we had met some five years later, we might have parted differently…

Vera is ill, very ill, though she doesn’t admit to it. I am afraid that she has consumption, or that illness which they call fièvre lente—this is altogether not a Russian illness, and it has no name in our language.

The thunderstorm caught us in the grotto and kept us there for another half hour. She didn’t make me swear my loyalty, didn’t ask if I had loved any others since we parted… She put herself in my hands again with her former lack of concern—and I do not deceive her: she is the one woman in the world whom I would not have the strength to deceive. I know we will soon part again, and perhaps forever: we are following different paths to the grave. But the memory of her will remain inviolable in my soul. I have always repeated this to her, and she believes me, even though she says the opposite.

Finally, we separated. I followed her with my gaze for a long time, until her hat was hidden behind the shrubbery and the cliffs. My heart was tightening painfully, as it had after our first parting. Oh, how I was glad of this feeling! Could it be that youth wishes to return to me with its wholesome storms, or is this only its departing glance, its last gift, as a keepsake…? It is amusing to think that I am still a boy to look at: my face, though pale, is still fresh; my limbs are well-built and lithe; my thick curls wave, my eyes glow, my blood stirs hotly…

Returning home, I mounted my horse and galloped into the Steppe. I love galloping through the long grass on a hot-tempered horse, in the face of the winds of the desert. I gulp the fragrant air with greediness and I direct my gaze into the blue distances, trying to make out the cloudy details of various objects, which become clearer and clearer with every minute. Any bitterness that weighs on the heart, any agitation that tortures the thoughts—it is all dispersed within a minute. The soul becomes lighter, and the exhaustion of the body conquers the anxiety of the mind. There isn’t one female gaze that I wouldn’t forget upon looking at leafy mountains, illuminated by the southern sun, or looking at the blue sky, or noticing the sound of a waterfall, falling from crag to crag.

I think that the Cossacks, yawning in their watchtowers, seeing me galloping without need or aim, would long be tortured by such a riddle, or, they would likely take me for a Circassian, given my attire. I have actually been told that on horseback, in Circassian costume, I look more Kabardin than most Kabardins. And when it comes to this noble battle attire, I am a perfect dandy: not one bit of extraneous galloon; an expensive weapon with simple finishings; the fur on my hat isn’t too long, too short; leggings and high boots fitted to utter exactitude; a white beshmet, and a dark-brown cherkeska.[7] I have long studied the mountain riding style: nothing would flatter my vanity more than an acknowledgment of my art in the Caucasian manner of horsemanship. I keep four horses: one for myself, three for friends, to avoid the boredom of roaming about the fields on one’s own. They take my horses with pleasure and never go out together with me. It was already six hours after midday when I realized it was time to dine. My horse was worn out. I went out onto the road that leads from Pyatigorsk to the German colony where the spa community often goes en pique-nique. The road goes meandering between shrubs, descending into small gullies where brooks flow under the canopy of the long grasses. The blue masses of the peaks—Beshtau, Zmeinaya, Zheleznaya, and Lisaya[8]—tower above and around like an amphitheater. Having descended into one of the gullies, called balkas in the local dialect, I stopped to let my horse drink. At that moment a noisy and shiny cavalcade appeared on the road. There were ladies in light-blue and black riding habits, and cavaliers in outfits made up of a mixture of Circassian and Nizhny Novgorod styles; and Grushnitsky rode at the front with Princess Mary.

Ladies of the spa still believe in the possibility of attacks by Circassians in broad daylight—that’s probably why Grushnitsky hung a saber and a pair of pistols over his soldier’s greatcoat. He was rather amusing-looking in these heroic vestments. A tall bush hid me from them, but through its leaves I could see everything and could guess from the expressions on their faces that their conversation was sentimental in nature. At last they approached the slope; Grushnitsky took the reins of the princess’s horse, and then I heard the end of their conversation.

“And do you want to spend your whole life in the Caucasus?” the princess was saying.

“What is Russia to me!” replied her cavalier. “A country where thousands of people will look at me with contempt since they are richer than I am, when here, here, this thick greatcoat didn’t prevent me from making acquaintance with you…”

“Quite the opposite…” said the princess, blushing.

Grushnitsky’s face showed pleasure. He continued:

“Here my life flows past noisily, imperceptibly, and quickly, under the gunfire of savages, and if God would send me a bright female gaze every year, a gaze like the one…”

At that moment they came up beside me; I struck my horse with my whip and came out of the bush…

“Mon dieu, un Circassien!”[9] the princess cried out in horror.

In order to completely disabuse her of this, I replied in French, slightly bowing:

“Ne craignez rien, madame—je ne suis pas plus dangereux que votre cavalier.”[10]

She was embarrassed—but by what? By her mistake or by my reply, which may have seemed audacious to her? I would hope that the latter suggestion is correct. Grushnitsky threw me a look of displeasure.

Late that evening, at eleven o’clock that is, I went out for a stroll along the linden alley of the boulevard. The city was sleeping, the lights of fires flashed in a few windows. Craggy crests loomed black on three sides: the ridges of Mount Mashuk, on whose peaks lay a sinister little cloud. The moon smoked in the east. In the distance the snowy mountains sparkled with a silver fringe. The calls of the sentries alternated with noises from the hot springs, which are released at night. From time to time, the ringing clatter of horses scattered along the street, accompanied by the creaking of a Nogay wagon,[11] and doleful Tatar song. I sat on a bench and became lost in my thoughts… I felt the necessity to give vent to my thoughts in a conversation with a friend… but with whom?

“What is Vera doing right now?” I thought… I would give dearly to be holding her hand at this moment. Suddenly I hear quick and uneven steps… It’s probably Grushnitsky… It is!

“Where have you come from?”

“From the Princess Ligovsky,” he said very significantly.

“How Mary sings!”

“Do you know what?” I said to him. “I’ll wager that she doesn’t know you’re a cadet but thinks you were demoted…”

“Maybe! What is it to me?” he said absentmindedly.

“Well, I’m just saying…”

“And do you know that you made her terribly angry today? She felt it was an outrageous audacity. It took enormous effort but I managed to convince her that you are so well brought up and so well acquainted with society that you couldn’t have had the intention of insulting her. She says that you have an insolent gaze, that you probably have a very high opinion of yourself.”

“She isn’t mistaken… and do you not wish to defend her honor?”

“I regret that I do not have this right yet…”

“O-ho!” I thought, “he obviously has hopes already…”

“But then again, it’s worse for you,” continued Grushnitsky. “Now it will be difficult for you to make their acquaintance— a pity! Theirs is one of the most pleasant households I have ever known…”

I smiled inwardly.

“The most pleasant household to me is currently my own,” I said, yawning, and stood up to leave.

“But you must admit that you are contrite?”

“What nonsense! If I so wished, I could be at the princess’s house tomorrow evening…”

“We shall see…”

“And, in order to please you, I will even flirt with the princess…”

“Yes, if she deigns to speak to you…”

“I am waiting for the moment when your conversation bores her… Farewell!”

“And I am off to wander—I’m not at all able to fall asleep these days… Listen, why don’t we go to the restaurant, where we can gamble… I need strong sensations today…”

“I hope you lose…”

I went home.

Almost a week had passed and I still hadn’t made the acquaintance of the Ligovskys. I am waiting for a suitable occasion. Grushnitsky, like a shadow, follows the young princess everywhere. Their conversations are endless: when will she tire of him?… The mother isn’t paying attention to this, because he isn’t an eligible suitor. That is the logic of mothers! I noticed two, three affectionate glances—an end must be put to this.

Yesterday, Vera appeared at the well for the first time… Since we met in the grotto, she hasn’t left her house. We lowered our glasses at the same time, and leaning in, she said to me in a whisper:

“Would you not like to meet the Ligovskys?… Only there can we see each other…”

A reproach! Boring! But I have earned it…

Incidentally: tomorrow there is a subscription ball in the hall of the restaurant and I am going to dance the mazurka with Princess Mary.

The hall of the restaurant had been turned into the Club of the Nobility. At nine o’clock everyone arrived. The princess and her daughter were among the last to appear; many ladies looked at her with envy and ill will because Princess Mary was dressed in such good taste. Those who consider themselves local aristocracy hid their envy and attached themselves to her. What is to be done? Where there is a collection of women, there will instantly appear a higher and a lower circle. Grushnitsky stood by the window, in a crowd of people, having pressed his eyes against the glass and now not allowing them to leave his goddess. Walking past, she nodded her head toward him just perceptibly. He beamed like the sun… The dances started with a polonaise; then they began to play a waltz. Spurs started ringing, coattails lifted and twirled.

I stood behind one fat lady, overshadowed by pink feathers; the splendor of her dress reminded me of the times of farthingales—and the mottled colors of her rough skin, of the happy era of black taffeta beauty spots. The biggest wart on her neck was covered by the clasp of her necklace. She was saying to her cavalier, a dragoon captain:

“This young Princess Ligovsky is a highly intolerable girl! Imagine, she bumped into me and didn’t excuse herself, yes and she even turned and looked at me through her lorgnette… C’est impayable![12]… And what does she have to be proud of? Someone needs to teach her…”

“No sooner said than done,” the obliging captain replied and went off to the other room.

I then walked up to the princess, and invited her to waltz, employing the liberal local customs, which allow one to dance with unfamiliar ladies.

She could barely prevent herself from smiling and hiding her sense of triumph. She succeeded, however, quickly enough in striking a pose of complete indifference, even severity: she carelessly extended a hand to my shoulder, bending her head slightly to the side, and we were off. I haven’t known a more voluptuous and supple waist! Her fresh breath touched my face; occasionally a ringlet, which had come loose from its friends in the whirlwind of the waltz, slipped across my hot cheek… I did three circuits. (She waltzes surprisingly well.) She was out of breath, her eyes had grown dim, and her half-opened lips could barely whisper the obligatory: “Merci Monsieur.”

After a few minutes of silence, I said to her, with a very humble air:

“I have heard, princess, that though completely unacquainted with you, I already have the unhappiness of having earned your disfavor… that you found me to be audacious… is it true?”

“And would you now like to confirm that opinion for me?” she replied with an ironic grimace, which, however, well suited her animated physiognomy.

“If I have had the audacity to offend you somehow, then let me have the even greater audacity to beg your forgiveness… And, really, I would very much like to prove to you that you are mistaken with regard to me…”

“That will be very difficult for you…”

“Why?”

“Because you don’t visit us, and these balls, likely, will not be repeated very often.”

This means, I thought, that their doors are forever closed to me.

“Do you know, princess,” I said with a certain vexation, “one must never reject a penitent criminal: he might do something doubly criminal out of despair… and then…”

A guffaw and whispering in the people surrounding us forced me to turn and cut short my sentence. Several paces away from me stood a group of men, and in their number was the dragoon captain, who had just expressed hostile intentions toward the charming princess. He was especially pleased with something; he was rubbing hands, guffawing, and winking at his friends. Suddenly a gentleman in a frock coat with a long mustache and a flushed face separated from among them, and directed his unsure steps straight for the princess: he was drunk. Stopping in front of the embarrassed princess and putting his hand behind his back, he fixed his cloudy gray eyes on her and pronounced in a wheezy descant:

“Permetay… oh now what is it!?… Essentially, I’m reserving you for the mazurka…”

“What can I do for you?” uttered the princess in a trembling voice, throwing a pleading look around. Alas! Her mother was far away, and none of her friendly cavaliers were nearby; one adjutant, it seems, saw all this and hid behind the crowd, in order not to be caught up in the story.

“What?” said the drunken gentleman, winking at the dragoon captain, who was encouraging him with his gestures. “Aren’t you game?… Then I again request the honor of engaging you for the mazurka… Maybe you think I’m drunk? No matter!… I can assure you it feels a lot more free that way…”

I saw that she was ready to faint out of fright and indignation.

I walked up to the drunk gentleman, grabbed him rather firmly by the arm, and, looking at him squarely in the eyes, requested him to move off. “Because,” I added, “the princess long ago promised the mazurka to me.”

“Well, what of it!… Another time!” he said, laughing, and withdrew toward his ashamed friends, who immediately led him off to the other room.

I was rewarded with a deep and miraculous look.

The princess walked up to her mother and told her everything, and the latter sought me in the crowd and thanked me. She declared to me that she knew my mother and was friendly with a half dozen of my aunts.

“I don’t know how it has happened that we haven’t met before now,” she added, “but admit that you alone are to blame: you avoid people as I have never seen a person do. I hope that the air of my drawing room will chase away your spleen… will it not?”

I gave her one of those lines which every one of us should have prepared for such circumstances.

The quadrille went on for an awfully long time.

At last, the mazurka began to thunder from the balcony above; the young princess and I seated ourselves.

I didn’t once allude to the drunken gentleman, nor to my previous behavior, nor to Grushnitsky.

The effect of the unpleasant scene slowly dissipated in her. Her little face became radiant. She made sweet jokes. Her conversation was keen, without the pretension of witticisms, lively and free. Her remarks were sometimes profound… I led her to feel, with a very intricate phrase, that I had long ago taken a fancy to her. She bent her head and lightly blushed.

“You are an odd person!” she said then, lifting her velvet eyes to me and forcing a laugh.

“I didn’t want to be introduced to you,” I continued, “because there is too thick a crowd of admirers around you, and I was afraid of disappearing in it.”

“You needn’t have been afraid! They are all very tedious…”

“All of them! Not all of them surely?”

She looked at me intently, as though trying to remember something, and then blushed again lightly, and, finally, articulated decisively: “All of them!”

“Even my friend Grushnitsky?”

“Is he your friend?” she said, displaying a certain doubt.

“Yes.”

“He, of course, isn’t included in the ranks of the boring…”

“But in the ranks of the unfortunate,” I said, laughing.

“Naturally! Is it funny to you? I wish that you were in his place…”

“What? I was once myself a cadet, and, really, that was the best time of my life!”

“Is he a cadet?” she said quickly and then added: “But I thought he was…”

“What did you think?”

“Nothing!… Who is that lady?”

Here the conversation changed direction and did not return to this again.

Then the mazurka finished and we bid each other farewell with hopes to meet anew. The ladies dispersed… I went off to dine and encountered Werner.

“Aha!” he said. “There you are! I thought you wanted to become acquainted with the princess only while saving her from certain death?”

“I did better,” I replied to him. “I saved her from fainting at the ball!”

“How is that? Tell me!”

“No, guess—o you who thinks he can guess everything in the world!”

At around seven o’clock in the evening I was strolling along the boulevard. Grushnitsky, seeing me from a distance, walked up to me: some kind of amusing delight was shining in his eyes. He shook my hand tightly and said in a tragic voice:

“I thank you, Pechorin… Do you understand me?”

“No. But in any case, you needn’t thank me,” I replied, not having any good deed on my conscience.

“What? And yesterday? Have you forgotten?… Mary told me everything…”

“What? Do you now share everything? Gratitude too?”

“Listen,” said Grushnitsky very significantly, “please, don’t mock my love if you want to remain my friend… You see: I love her to distraction… and I think, I hope, that she loves me similarly… I have a request of you: that you will be their guest this evening. And promise me that you will observe everything. I know that you are experienced in these things. You know women better than I do… Women! Women! Who can fathom them? Their smiles contradict their gaze, their words promise and beckon, but the tone of their voices pushes you aside… Within one minute they can understand and anticipate our most secret thoughts, and then miss the clearest hints… Take the princess: yesterday her eyes burned with passion, and they rested on me. Today they are cloudy and cold…”

“This might be the effect of the waters,” I responded.

“You always think the worst… materialist!” he added disdainfully. “However, let us move on to other matters.”

And, satisfied with his bad pun, he cheered up.

At nine o’clock we went to the Princess Ligovsky together.

I saw Vera at the window when I walked past her windows. We threw each other a fugitive look. Soon after us, she came into the Ligovsky drawing room. The Princess Ligovsky introduced her to me as her relative. We drank tea; there were many guests; the conversation was commonplace. I strove to ingratiate myself to Princess Ligovsky, telling jokes, making her laugh heartily a few times; the young princess also wanted to laugh more than once but held herself back, in order not to depart from her accepted role. She finds that languor suits her—and perhaps she is not wrong. Grushnitsky, it seems, was very pleased that my jollity did not communicate itself to her.

After tea, everyone went to the hall.

“Are you satisfied with my obedience, Vera?” I said, walking past her.

She threw me a look, full of love and gratitude. I am used to these looks—they once formed my bliss. The Princess Ligovsky sat the young princess at the piano; everyone asked her to sing something. I stayed quiet and made use of this commotion by going to the window with Vera, who wanted to tell me something very important concerning us both… It came out as nonsense…

Meanwhile, my indifference was vexing to the young princess, as far as I could tell from one angry, brilliant look… Oh, I understand this dialogue marvelously—mute but expressive, short but strong!

She sang: her voice was not bad, but she sings badly… though I wasn’t listening. Grushnitsky, however, was leaning his elbows on the piano opposite her, and every minute saying under his breath, “Charmant! Delicieux!”

“Listen,” Vera said to me, “I don’t want you to become acquainted with my husband, but you must immediately ingratiate yourself with Princess Ligovsky. This will be easy for you: you can do anything you want to do. We will see each other only here…”

“Only?”

She blushed and continued: “You know that I am your slave: I was never able to resist you… and I will be punished for this: you will cease to love me! At least I want to guard my reputation… Not for my own sake: you know that perfectly well!… Oh, I beg you: don’t torture me as you did before with empty doubts and feigned coldness. I may soon die, I feel that I am weakening from day to day… and despite this, I cannot think about a future life, I think only of you. You men don’t understand the pleasure of a glance, a squeeze of a hand, and, I swear to you, listening to your voice, I feel such a profound, strange bliss, that the hottest kiss could not replace it.”

Meanwhile, Princess Mary stopped singing. A murmur of praise distributed itself around her. I went up to her after everyone and said something to her about her voice that was rather offhand.

“I was even more flattered,” she said, “to see that you didn’t listen to me at all. But maybe you don’t like music?”

“On the contrary… after dinner especially.”

“Grushnitsky is right, when he says that you have the most prosaic tastes… and I see that you like music in a gastronomical respect…”

“You are again mistaken: I am not a gastronome at all. I have a particularly foul gut. But music after dinner lulls me to sleep, and sleep after dinner is especially healthy: therefore, I like music in a medical respect. In the evening, on the other hand, it agitates my nerves too much: it makes me either too sad, or too merry. One and the other are so exhausting, when there isn’t a circumstantial reason to be sad or make merry, and besides, sadness in company is amusing, but an exaggerated merriness is not appropriate…”

She didn’t continue listening until I had finished but walked right off and sat next to Grushnitsky, and some kind of sentimental dialogue started between them. It looked as though the princess was responding to his wise phrases rather distractedly and inappropriately, even though she was trying to look as if she were listening to him with attention, for he sometimes looked at her with surprise, striving to guess the cause of the inner anxiety conveying itself occasionally in her uneasy glances…

But I have found you out, darling princess, beware! You want to pay me back in my own coin, and prick my vanity—but you won’t succeed! And if you declare war with me, then I will be merciless.

Over the rest of the evening I interfered with their conversation on purpose several times, but she would meet my remarks rather dryly, and with feigned vexation, I finally withdrew. The princess rejoiced in triumph; Grushnitsky did too.

Rejoice, my friends, and hurry… you won’t have long to rejoice. What is to be done? I have a premonition… Upon becoming acquainted with a woman, I have always guessed, without error, whether she would love me or not…

I spent the remaining part of the evening next to Vera and we discussed every single thing about the past… Why she loves me so much, really, I don’t know! Furthermore she is the one woman who has understood me completely, with all my small-minded weaknesses, my evil passions… Can it be that evil is so very attractive?

I left with Grushnitsky. On the street, he took me by the arm and after a long silence he said:

“Well?”

I wanted to tell him “you’re a fool,” but I held back and only shrugged my shoulders.

I haven’t once diverted from my plan during all these days. The young princess has started to like my conversation; I have recounted several of my life’s bizarre events to her, and she has started to see a rare person in me. I make fun of everything in the world, especially feelings: this has started to frighten her. She doesn’t dare start up a sentimental debate with Grushnitsky in front of me and has already several times replied to his escapades with a mocking smile. But every time Grushnitsky comes up to her, I adopt a meek attitude and leave them alone. The first time she was glad of this or tried to seem so. The second time she became angry with me, and the third time—with Grushnitsky.

“You have very little self-regard!” she said to me yesterday. “Why do you think it is more fun for me to be with Grushnitsky?”

I responded that I am sacrificing my own pleasure to the happiness of a friend…

“And mine, too,” she added.

I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air. Then I didn’t say a word to her for the rest of the day… In the evening she was pensive; and this morning by the well she was even more pensive. When I went up to her she was absentmindedly listening to Grushnitsky, who, it seems was delighting in nature, but as soon as she saw me, she started laughing loudly (very inappropriately), making it seem as if she had not noticed me. I went on a bit further and started to observe her stealthily: she turned from her interlocutor and yawned twice.

Grushnitsky has absolutely bored her.

I won’t speak to her for another two days.

I often ask myself why I strive so doggedly for the love of young ladies whom I don’t want to seduce and whom I will never marry! What is this feminine coquetry for? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary will ever love; if she had seemed an unconquerable beauty, then maybe I would be enticed by the difficulty of the enterprise… But not a bit! This is not that restless need for love, which torments us in the early years of youth and throws us from one woman to the other, until we find one that can’t stand us. At that point our constancy begins—the true, everlasting love, which can be mathematically expressed with a line falling from a point into space—and the secret of this everlastingness lies in the impossibility of attaining its goal, that is, the end.

So why am I going to such pains? Out of envy for Grushnitsky? The poor thing, he doesn’t deserve it at all. Or is this the result of that nasty but invincible feeling that makes us destroy the sweet delusions of a dear friend, in order to have the petty satisfaction of telling him, when in despair he asks you what he should believe: “My friend, I have had the same thing happen. And yet, as you can see, I enjoy dinner and supper and sleep very peacefully, and, I hope, I will be able to die without shouts and tears.”

But there is an unbounded pleasure to be had in the possession of a young, newly blossoming soul! It is like a flower, from which the best aroma evaporates when meeting the first ray of the sun; you must pluck it at that minute, breathing it in until you’re satisfied, and then throw it onto the road: perhaps someone will pick it up! I feel this insatiable greed, which swallows everything it meets on its way. I look at the suffering and joy of others only in their relation to me, as though it is food that supports the strength of my soul. I myself am not capable of going mad under the influence of passion. My ambition is stifled by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in another way, for ambition is nothing other than a thirst for power, and my best pleasure is to subject everyone around me to my will, to arouse feelings of love, devotion and fear of me—is this not the first sign and the greatest triumph of power? Being someone’s reason for suffering while not being in any position to claim the right—isn’t this the sweetest nourishment for our pride? And what is happiness? Sated pride. If I considered myself to be better, more powerful than everyone in the world, I would be happy. If everyone loved me, I would find endless sources of love within myself. Evil spawns evil. The first experience of torture gives an understanding of the pleasure in tormenting others. An evil idea cannot enter a person’s head without his wanting to bring it into reality: ideas are organic creations, someone once said. Their birth gives them form immediately, and this form is an action. The person in whom most ideas are born is the person who acts most. Hence a genius, riveted to his office desk, must die or lose his mind, just as a man with a powerful build who has a sedentary life and modest behavior will die from an apoplectic fit. Passions are nothing other than the first developments of an idea: they are a characteristic of the heart’s youth, and whoever thinks to worry about them his whole life long is a fool: many calm rivers begin with a noisy waterfall, but not one of them jumps and froths until the very sea. And this calm is often the sign of great, though hidden, strength. The fullness and depth of both feeling and thought will not tolerate violent upsurges. The soul, suffering and taking pleasure, takes strict account of everything and is always convinced that this is how things should be. It knows that without storms, the constant sultriness of the sun would wither it. It is infused with its own life—it fosters and punishes itself, like a child. And it is only in this higher state of self-knowledge that a person can estimate the value of divine justice.

As I re-read this page, I notice that I have substantially digressed from my subject… But what of it?… I am, after all, writing these diaries for myself, and therefore, whatever I throw into it, will become, in time, precious recollections.

Grushnitsky came in and threw his arms around my neck. He was made an officer. We drank champagne. Doctor Werner came in after him.

“I do not congratulate you,” he said to Grushnitsky.

“And why not?”

“Because, the soldier’s greatcoat suits you very much, and you have to admit that an infantry uniform, tailored here at the spa, will not bestow on you any allure… Do you see that until now you were an exception, and now you will join the general rule?”

“Goad me, Doctor! You won’t stop me from celebrating. He doesn’t know,” added Grushnitsky in my ear, “how much hope these epaulets have given me… Oh, epaulets, epaulets! Your little stars, your little guiding stars. No—I am now completely happy!”

“Are you coming to walk with us to the chasm?” I asked him.

“Me? I will absolutely not show myself to the princess until my uniform is ready.”

“Would you like us to make your joy known to her?”

“No, if you please, don’t tell her… I want her to see me…”

“Tell me, then, how are matters between you and her?”

He became embarrassed and thoughtful: he had a desire to boast, to tell lies—and yet he was ashamed to lie. But he was also ashamed to admit to the truth.

“What do you think—does she love you?”

“Love me? For pity’s sake, Pechorin, what notions you have!… How could that be, so soon?… Yes, and even if she does love me, then a proper lady wouldn’t say it…”

“Good! And, in your opinion I suppose, a proper person should also keep silent about his passions?”

“Eh, brother! There is a manner of behaving in everything; a lot goes unsaid, but is guessed…”

“That is true… But the love that we read in the eyes does not oblige a woman as words can… Be careful, Grushnitsky, that she doesn’t dupe you…”

“She?” he replied, lifting his eyes to the sky and smiling with self-satisfaction, “I feel sorry for you, Pechorin!”

He went off.

In the evening a large gathering set off to the chasm on foot.

In the opinion of the local scientists, this chasm is nothing other than an extinguished crater. It is located on the slopes of Mount Mashuk, one verst from the town. A narrow path leads to it between the shrubbery and crags; climbing up the hill, I gave my hand to Princess Mary, and she didn’t let go of it for the whole remaining portion of the walk.

Our conversation began with gossip: I started to go through our acquaintances, both present and absent. At first I exposed their amusing sides, and then their bad sides. My bile was excited. I began by jesting—and finished with sincere malice. Initially this amused her, and then it frightened her.

“You are a dangerous person!” she said to me. “I would rather be caught in the forest under the knife of a murderer than by your tongue… I beg of you in all seriousness: when it occurs to you to speak badly about me, take a knife instead and stab me—I don’t think you’ll find it difficult.”

“Do I really look like a murderer?”

“You are worse…”

I became pensive for a minute and then, adopting an air of being deeply troubled, said:

“Yes, such has been my lot since early childhood. Everyone would read on my face evil signs that weren’t even there. But they were assumed to be there, and so they were born in me. I was modest—and I was accused of craftiness: I started to be secretive. I had deep feelings of good and evil. No one caressed me; everyone insulted me. I became rancorous. I was sullen—other children were merry and chatty. I felt myself to be superior to them—and I was made inferior. I grew envious. I was prepared to love the whole world—and no one understood me—and I learned to hate. My colorless youth elapsed in a struggle with myself and the world. Fearing mockery, I buried my most worthy feelings in the depths of my heart: and they died there. I was telling the truth—and no one believed me—so I started lying. Having become familiar with the world and the mechanics of society, I became skillful in the science of life, but I saw how others without such art were happy, blessed with the advantages for which I tirelessly strived. And then, despair was born in my breast—and not the kind of despair that can be cured by the bullet of a pistol, but a cold, impotent despair, masked by politeness and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple: one half of my soul didn’t exist; it had dried out, evaporated, died. I had cut it off and thrown it away—while the other half stirred and lived at everyone’s service, and no one noticed this because no one knew about the other half, which had died. But now you have awakened the memory of it and I have read you its epitaph. To many, epitaphs are funny, but not to me, especially when I remember what lies beneath this one. However, I don’t ask you to share my opinion: if my antics are funny to you—please laugh. I let you know in advance that it won’t distress me in the least.”

At that minute I met her eyes: there were tears running from them. Her hand, leaning on mine, was trembling. Her cheeks were glowing. She was sorry for me! Compassion—a feeling to which women submit themselves so easily—had sunk its talons into her inexperienced heart. She was distracted throughout the whole excursion and didn’t flirt with anyone—and this was a great sign!

We arrived at the chasm; ladies abandoned their cavaliers, but she didn’t let go of my hand. The witticisms of the local dandies didn’t make her laugh. The steepness of the precipice at which she stood didn’t scare her, while the other young ladies squeaked and closed their eyes.

On the way back I didn’t resume our melancholy conversation, and she responded shortly and distractedly to my empty questions and jokes.

“Have you ever loved?” I asked her toward the end.

She looked at me intently, shook her head—and again fell into reverie: it was obvious that she wanted to say something, but she didn’t know how to start. Her breast was excited… What was there to be done? Her muslin sleeves were a weak defense against the electric spark that ran from my arm to hers. Almost all passions begin this way, and we often deceive ourselves, thinking that a woman loves us for our physical or moral attributes. Of course, these things prepare her heart for receiving the holy fire, but it is still the first bite that decides the whole matter.

“Wouldn’t you agree that I was most cordial today?” the princess said to me with a forced smile when we had returned from the excursion.

We parted.

She was dissatisfied with herself: she had accused herself of coldness… Oh, this is the first major triumph! Tomorrow she will want to recompense me. I know this all by heart already—that’s what’s so boring!

Today I saw Vera. She bored me to tears with her jealousy. The princess has taken it into her head, it seems, to trust Vera with her heart’s secrets: it must be said that that is a happy choice!

“I can guess where all this is leading,” Vera was saying to me, “and it would be better if you just simply told me now that you love her.”

“And if I don’t love her?”

“Well, then why are you pursuing her, alarming her, agitating her imagination?… Oh, I know you well! Listen, if you want me to trust you, then come to Kislovodsk in a week’s time. The day after tomorrow we will be going there. The Princess Ligovsky will be staying here for the meantime. Take an apartment nearby. We will stay in the mezzanine of a big house near the source; downstairs will be the Princess Ligovsky, and next door there is a house that belongs to the same owner, which is not yet occupied… Will you come?”

I promised, and the same day I sent someone to reserve the apartment.

Grushnitsky came to me at six o’clock in the evening and announced that tomorrow his full-dress uniform would be ready, just in time for the ball.

“At last I will dance with her the whole evening… then I will say everything that needs saying!”

“When is this ball?”

“Tomorrow! Don’t you know? A big festival, and the local authorities have undertaken to organize it…”

“Let’s go down to the boulevard…”

“Not on your life, in this ugly greatcoat…”

“What, have you ceased to love it?”

I went out alone and encountered Princess Mary, whereupon I invited her to dance the mazurka. She seemed to be surprised and glad.

“I thought that you only dance out of necessity, like the last time,” she said, very sweetly smiling…

She, it seems, hadn’t been noticing the absence of Grushnitsky.

“You will be pleasantly surprised tomorrow,” I said to her.

“By what?”

“That is a secret… you will find out for yourself at the ball.”

I finished the evening at Princess Ligovsky’s house; there weren’t any guests except Vera and one very amusing old man. I was in high spirits, and improvised various strange stories. The young princess sat opposite me and listened to my nonsense with such deep and strained yet gentle attention that I felt guilty. Where had her vitality gone? Her coquettishness, her caprice, her cheeky mien, her contemptuous smile, her absentminded look…?

Vera noticed all of this: a deep sadness showed itself on her sickly face; she sat in the shadows by the window, sunken in a wide armchair… I started to feel sorry for her…

Then I recounted the whole dramatic story of our acquaintance, our love—but it goes without saying that I concealed all this with invented names.

I depicted my affection, my anxieties, my raptures so vividly. I painted her behavior and character in such an advantageous light, that against her will, she had to forgive me for my flirtations with the princess.

She stood up, came and sat with us, and livened up… and it was not until two o’clock at night that we all remembered the doctor had ordered us to go to bed at eleven.

Half an hour before the ball began, Grushnitsky appeared at my place in the total brilliance of a full dress infantry uniform. There was a little bronze chain attached to his third button, on which hung a double lorgnette; his epaulets of incredible size were turned up like the little wings of Cupid; his boots squeaked; in his left hand he held brown kid-gloves and a military cap, and with his right hand he fluffed up the wavy tuft of his crested hair into little curls. His face expressed self-satisfaction with a touch of uncertainty. His festive appearance and his proud demeanor would have made me laugh if it had been in accordance with my plans.

He cast his military cap and gloves onto the table and started to pull down his coattails and to adjust himself in the mirror. He had an enormous black neckcloth, which was wound around an extremely high stiffener, the bristles of which supported his chin and stuck out half an inch above his collar. But it seemed to him that it showed too little so he pulled it up further, to his ears. Since the collar of his uniform was very tight, this great effort made his face fill with blood.

“They say that these days you are chasing after my princess awfully much,” he said rather carelessly, without looking at me.

“What would fools like us be doing drinking tea?” I replied, repeating the favorite proverb of one of the cleverest rakes of a previous era, as once extolled by Pushkin.[13]

“Tell me, does this uniform sit well on me? Oh, that damnable Jew! How this cuts into me under the arms! Do you not have any perfume?”

“For pity’s sake, do you need more? You already reek of rose pomade…”

“Never mind. Pass it here…”

He poured half the vial under his neckcloth, into his handkerchief and onto his sleeves.

“Are you going to dance?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“I am afraid that I will have to start the mazurka with the princess—and I barely know even one of the figures…”

“Have you reserved her for the mazurka?”

“Not yet…”

“Careful that you have not been preempted…”

“Really?” he said, clapping his hand on his forehead. “See you later… I am going to wait for her at the entrance.” He grabbed his military cap and ran off.

I set off half an hour later. The street was dark and empty; a crowd was squeezing around the hall or the tavern (whichever you’d like to call it); its windows were illuminated; the evening wind carried the sounds of a military band to me. I walked slowly. I was melancholy… Can it be that my single purpose on this earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Since I have been living and breathing, fate has somehow always led me into the dramatic climaxes of others’ lives, as if without me no one would be able to die, or to come to despair! I have been the necessary character of the fifth act; I have played the sorry role of executioner or traitor involuntarily. What was fate’s intent in all this?… Was I appointed the author of bourgeois tragedies and family novels—or collaborator to those who supply stories to the “Library for Reading”?[14]… How could I know? How many people begin life thinking that they will end it like Alexander the Great or Lord Byron, and yet remain a titular counselor for the duration…

Entering the hall, I hid in a crowd of men and started to make my observations. Grushnitsky stood by the princess and was saying something with great heat; she was listening to him absentmindedly, looking from side to side, putting her fan to her lips; her face expressed impatience; her eyes were searching for someone. I quietly walked up behind them, in order to listen to their conversation.

“You torture me, princess!” Grushnitsky was saying. “You have changed awfully since I last saw you…”

“You have also changed,” she replied, throwing him a quick look, in which he couldn’t discern the hidden mockery.

“Me? I have changed?… Oh never! You know that isn’t possible! A person who sees you but once will forever carry your divine image away with him.”

“Don’t…”

“Why do you no longer want to hear what not long ago you frequently received so favorably?”

“Because I don’t like repetition…” she said, laughing.

“Oh, I have been bitterly mistaken!… I thought, like a lunatic, that at least these epaulets would give me the right to hope… No, I would have been better off keeping that contemptible soldier’s greatcoat forever, to which I perhaps owed your attention…”

“It’s true, the greatcoat suited your face much better…” At that moment I went up to the princess and bowed. She blushed slightly and quickly said, “Isn’t it true, Monsieur Pechorin, that the gray greatcoat suited Monsieur Grushnitsky much better?”

“I don’t agree with you,” I replied. “Why, he looks even younger in his uniform.”

Grushnitsky could not endure this blow; like all boys, he makes a pretense of being an old man. He thinks that there are deep traces of passion on his face that substitute for the imprint of years. He threw me a furious look, clicked his heels, and walked off.

“But admit,” I said to the princess, “though he has always been amusing, not long ago you found him interesting too… in his gray greatcoat?”

She lowered her eyes and did not reply.

Grushnitsky pursued the princess the whole evening, dancing either with her or vis-à-vis. He devoured her with his eyes, sighed often, and exasperated her with his entreaties and reproaches.

By the third quadrille, she already detested him.

“I didn’t expect this of you,” he said, walking up to me and taking me by the arm.

“What?”

“You are dancing the mazurka with her?” he asked in a solemn voice. “She admitted it to me.”

“And so? Was it a secret?”

“It stands to reason… I should have expected this from a girl… from a coquette… I will have revenge!”

“Blame your greatcoat or your epaulets, but why take against her? What is she guilty of—that she doesn’t like you anymore?”

“Why would she give me hope, then?”

“Why did you have hope? To want and strive for something, I understand, but who entertains hopes?”

“You have lost the bet—only not completely,” he said, smiling spitefully.

The mazurka began. Grushnitsky picked the princess only, and the other cavaliers picked her constantly too; there was obviously a conspiracy against me—all the better. She wants to speak to me, and is being prevented from it—then she will want it twice over.

I pressed her hand twice, and on the second time she snatched it away, not saying a word.

“I will sleep badly tonight,” she said to me when the mazurka had finished.

“Grushnitsky is to blame.”

“Oh no!” and her face became so pensive, so melancholy, that I swore to myself I would kiss her hand this evening without fail.

People started to leave. Having seated the princess in her carriage, I quickly pressed her little hand to my lips. It was dark, and no one could have seen it.

I went back into the hall, satisfied with myself.

Some youths were dining at the big table, and Grushnitsky was with them. When I came in, they all fell silent: they were obviously talking about me. Many had grumbled at me since the previous ball, especially the dragoon captain—but now they had definitely formed an adversarial gang against me, under the command of Grushnitsky. He had such a proud and brave look to him… I am very pleased. I love enemies, though not in the Christian way. They amuse me, excite my blood. Being always on one’s guard, catching every glance, the significance of every word, guessing at intentions, frustrating their plots, pretending to be tricked, and suddenly, with a shove, upturning the whole enormous and arduously built edifice of their cunning and schemes—that’s what I call life.

For the rest of supper, Grushnitsky conversed in whispers and winks with the dragoon captain.

This morning Vera left with her husband to Kislovodsk. I met their carriage as I was walking to Princess Ligovsky’s house. She nodded at me: there was reproach in her look.

But who is to blame? Why wouldn’t she give me a chance to see her alone? Love, like a fire, goes out without nourishment. Perhaps jealousy will do what my requests could not.

I sat at the Ligovskys’ for a good hour. Mary didn’t come out—she was unwell. She didn’t appear on the boulevard that evening. Again, the newly-formed gang, armed with lorgnettes, assumed a really rather threatening look. I am glad that the princess was unwell: they would have done some impertinence to her. Grushnitsky had a disheveled coiffure and a reckless look to him. It seems he was genuinely distressed, his vanity was particularly offended—but it seems there are people in whom despair is even amusing!

Returning home, I noticed that something seemed to be missing. I hadn’t seen her! She is unwell! Surely I haven’t actually fallen in love? What nonsense!

At eleven o’clock in the morning—the hour when Princess Ligovsky is usually steaming in the Yermolovsky baths—I walked past her house. Princess Mary was sitting at the window, lost in thought. When she saw me she leapt up.

I went into the entrance hall; there was no one there, and I took advantage of the liberal local mores and forced my way into the drawing room without being announced.

A dull pallor spread over the princess’s sweet face. She stood by the piano, with one hand on the spine of an armchair: this hand trembled slightly.

I quietly walked up to her and said:

“Are you angry with me?”

She raised a languid and deep gaze to me and shook her head. Her lips wanted to utter something and couldn’t. Her eyes filled with tears. She sank into the armchair and covered her face with her hands.

“What is wrong with you?” I said, taking her hand.

“You don’t respect me! Oh! Leave me in peace!”

I took a few steps. She straightened up in the chair, her eyes sparkling…

I stopped, having taken hold of the doorknob, and said:

“Forgive me, princess! I have behaved like a madman… it won’t happen again. I will take measures… If only you knew what has been happening in my soul until now! You will never know, and all the better for you. Farewell.”

As I left, it seemed to me that I heard her crying.

I wandered around the foothills of Mount Mashuk until evening. I became terribly tired, and, arriving at home, I threw myself on my bed in total exhaustion.

Werner came to visit me.

“Is it true,” he asked me, “that you are marrying the Princess Mary?”

“What?”

“The whole town is saying it; all my patients are busy with this important news—these patients are quite a people—they know everything!”

“Grushnitsky is behind this trick!” I thought.

“In order to prove to you the falsity of these rumors, doctor, I will announce to you in confidence that tomorrow I am leaving for Kislovodsk…”

“And the Princess Ligovsky, too?”

“No, she is staying here yet another week.”

“So you are not marrying?”

“Doctor, doctor! Look at me: surely I don’t resemble a person who is betrothed or anything of the like?”

“I didn’t say that… but you know, there are occasions…” he added, smiling cunningly, “in which a noble person is obliged to marry, and there are mamas who, at least, won’t stand in the way of such occasions… And so, as your friend, I advise you to be more careful! Here, at the spa, the air is very dangerous. How many excellent young men have I seen, who deserve the best of success, and leave here to get married straight away… Even, believe me, some want to marry me! There was one mama in particular who was departing with her very pale daughter. I had the misfortune of telling her that the color would return to her daughter’s face when she married. Then she, with tears of gratitude, offered me her daughter’s hand and all her means too—fifty souls,[15] it seems. But I replied that I wasn’t up to it…”

Werner left in the full certainty that he had cautioned me. From his words, I noted that various nasty rumors regarding the princess and myself had spread in the town: Grushnitsky will receive his comeuppance!

It is already three days since I arrived in Kislovodsk. Every day I see Vera at the well and during the promenade. In the morning, upon waking, I sit in the garden that leads from our houses down to the well. The bracing mountain air has returned strength and color to her face. It is for good reason that the Narzan is called a mighty spring. The local residents confirm that the air of Kislovodsk disposes one toward love, and that all love affairs that begin somewhere in the foothills of Mount Mashuk have their denouements here. And it is true, everything here breathes seclusion; everything here is mysterious. The thick canopies of the linden avenues lean over a stream, which falls with foam and noise from rock to rock, cutting itself a path between the verdant mountains. The ravines, full of mist and silence, diverge like branches in all directions. The freshness of the aromatic air is burdened with the scents of the high southern grasses and the white acacia. And there is the constant sweet and soporific sound of the very cold streams, which meet at the bottom of the valley, chasing one another amicably, flinging themselves finally into the Podkumok River. On this side, the ravine is wider and turns into a green hollow, along which winds a dusty road. Every time I look at it, it seems to me that there is a carriage passing along it and that there is a rosy face looking out of its window. Lots of carriages do pass along this road, but that one hasn’t appeared yet. The slobodka behind the fortress is densely settled; evening lights in the restaurant built on the hill a few paces from my quarters are starting to twinkle through two rows of poplars. Noise and the ringing of glasses stretch late into the night.

Nowhere do people drink so much Kakhetian wine and mineral waters as here.

Grushnitsky and his gang rage in the tavern every day and barely bow when they see me.

He arrived only yesterday but has already managed to argue with three old men, who tried to sit in the baths before him: misfortune definitely produces a warring spirit in him.

Finally they have arrived. I was sitting at the window when I heard the clatter of their carriage: my heart started… what was that? I couldn’t be in love. Yet I am so inanely composed that you might expect something like this of me.

I dined at their house. The Princess Ligovsky looks at me very affectionately and doesn’t leave the young princess’s side… not good! But to make up for it, Vera is jealous of the princess’s effect on me. To have attained such success! What a woman wouldn’t do to upset a rival! I remember one girl that fell in love with me because I loved another. There isn’t anything as paradoxical as a woman’s mind; it’s hard to convince a woman of anything, you have to lead them to convince themselves. The order of proof with which they destroy their caution is very original; to learn their dialect, you have to overturn all the rules of logic you learned at school. For example, this is the usual way:

This man loves me, but I am married: therefore I should not love him.

A woman’s way:

I should not love him for I am married; but he loves me, therefore…

Here: an ellipsis, for common sense has already fallen silent. And most of the speaking is done like this: by the tongue, then the eyes, and, following them, the heart, if it is able.

What would happen if a woman’s eyes were to fall on these diaries? “Slander!” she would scream with indignation.

Since poets started writing, and women have been reading them (and for this, profound gratitude is owed), women have been called angels so many times that, with heartfelt simplicity, they actually believe this compliment, forgetting that these are the very same poets who glorified Nero as a demi-god for money…

It is inappropriate for me to speak about them with such malice—me, a man who has loved nothing in the world except them—who is always ready to sacrifice them for serenity, ambition, life… But it is not in a fit of annoyance and insulted vanity that I am trying to pull from them that magic veil, which only the practiced gaze can penetrate. No, everything that I say about them is only the result of

Women should wish that all men knew them as well as I do, because I love them a hundred times more since I am not afraid of them and have comprehended their petty weaknesses.

Incidentally: the other day, Werner compared women with the enchanted forest, about which Tasso wrote in his “Liberation of Jerusalem.”

“As soon as you set out,” he said, “Heaven help you, such horrors fly at you from all sides: duty, pride, decorum, public opinion, mockery, contempt… You must not look, and you must just walk straight ahead and, little by little, the monsters will disappear, and a quiet and bright glade will open up before you, in the middle of which a green myrtle will blossom. But on the other hand, if your heart freezes at the first steps and you turn around then it is calamity!”

This evening was rich with incident. About three versts from Kislovodsk, there is a rock formation called the Ring, in a ravine through which the Podkumok River flows. It is a gate formed by nature; it rises up on a high hill, and through it the setting sun throws its last flaming glance to the world. A large cavalcade set off to see the sunset through this little rock-window. No one among us, to tell the truth, was thinking about the sun. I rode next to the princess; and on our way home, we had to ford the Podkumok. The smallest little mountain streams are especially dangerous because their depths are an absolute kaleidoscope: every day, they change due to the pressure of the waves; where a stone lay yesterday, today there is a hole. I took the princess’s horse by the reins, and led her to the water, which wasn’t more than knee-high; we gently started to advance along the diagonal, against the flow. It is well known that you mustn’t look at the water when crossing a quickly flowing stream, for your head will immediately spin. I forgot to forewarn Princess Mary of this.

We were in the middle, in the rapids, when she suddenly swayed in the saddle. “I am not well!” she uttered in a weak voice… I quickly bent toward her, and threw my arm around her lithe waist. “Look upward!” I whispered to her. “It’s nothing, don’t be scared, I am with you.”

She felt better. She wanted to be released from my arm, but I wound it even tighter around her delicate figure. My cheek almost touched her cheek. Flames wafted from her.

“What are you doing with me? Good God…!”

I wasn’t paying attention to her quivering and embarrassment, and my lips touched her delicate little cheeks; she flinched but didn’t say anything. We were riding at the back, no one saw. When we managed to get to the bank, everyone had already set off at a trot. The princess held her horse back. I stayed next to her. It was obvious that she was agitated by my silence, but I swore not to say a word—out of curiosity. I wanted to see how she would disentangle herself from this embarrassing situation.

“Either you despise me or love me very much!” she said finally with a voice containing tears. “Maybe you wanted to laugh at me, to perturb my soul, and then to leave. This would be so despicable, so base, that the supposition alone… oh no! Tell me,” she added with a voice of tender confidence. “Is there something in me that denies me respect? Your audacious behavior… I should, I should forgive you for it because I allowed for it… Answer me, say something, I want to hear your voice!”

There was such female impatience in these last words that I smiled involuntarily. Thankfully, it had started to darken outside. I didn’t answer.

“You stay silent?” she continued. “Maybe you want me to tell you that I love you first?”

I said nothing…

“Is that what you want?” she continued, quickly turning to me… There was something frightening in the resolve of her gaze and voice…

“What for?” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

She struck her horse with the whip and went off at full speed along the narrow, dangerous road; it happened so quickly that I barely managed to catch up and then only once she had joined the rest of the group. She talked and laughed in alternation all the way home. There was something feverish in her movements. She didn’t look at me once. Everyone noticed this unusual jollity. And the Princess Ligovsky was overjoyed inside, looking at her daughter. But her daughter was simply having a nervous fit: she would spend the night without sleeping and would weep too. This thought gave me immense pleasure: there are moments when I understand vampires[18]… But I also have a reputation for being a good fellow and aspire to this name too!

Dismounting from their horses, the ladies went in to Princess Ligovsky’s house. I was agitated and I galloped to the mountains to disperse the thoughts that were thronging in my head. The dewy evening breathed a ravishing coolness. The moon was rising from behind the dark mountaintops. Every step made by my unshod horse resounded dully in the silence of the ravine. At the waterfall, I let my horse drink, and I greedily took two breaths of the fresh air of the southern night, and set off on my return journey. I passed through the slobodka. The lights in the windows were going out. The sentries on the ramparts of the fortress and the Cossacks on the surrounding picquets called to each other in long, drawn-out sounds.

I noticed an extraordinary light from one of the houses of the slobodka, which was built on the edge of the precipice; from time to time, the discordant sounds of talking and shouting rang out, indicating that it was a military carousal. I dismounted and stole up to the window; the shutters were not too tightly shut, which allowed me to see the revelers and to catch their words. They were talking about me.

The dragoon captain, flushed with wine, was banging his fist on the table, demanding attention.

“Gentlemen!” he said. “This is like nothing I’ve seen before. Pechorin needs to be taught a lesson! Those Petersburg fledglings are always giving themselves airs, until you hit them on the nose! He thinks that he is the only one who has lived in good society, since he always wears clean gloves and polished boots.”

“And what of that haughty smile! I am convinced, meanwhile, that he is a coward, yes, a coward!”

“I think the same,” said Grushnitsky, “and he likes a riposte. I once said a great deal of things that would have normally incited a person to hack me to pieces on the spot, but Pechorin addressed everything from an amusing perspective. I didn’t challenge him, of course, because that was for him to do. Yes, and I didn’t want to have any more business with him…”

“Grushnitsky is being vicious toward him because he snatched the princess away,” someone said.

“What a thing to invent! It’s true, I pursued the princess a little, yes, and I have now given it up, because I don’t want to get married, and it isn’t within my principles to compromise a young lady.”

“Yes, I believe you, that he is a prime coward, that is Pechorin, and not Grushnitsky—oh, Grushnitsky is a clever fellow, and what’s more he is my true friend!” said the dragoon captain again. “Gentlemen! Is anyone here going to defend him? No one? Excellent! And would you like to test his bravery? It will amuse us…”

“Yes, we would—but how?”

“Well, listen now: Grushnitsky is especially angry with him—so he has the principal role! He will find something wrong with some sort of silliness and will challenge Pechorin to a duel… Wait now, this is where it gets interesting… He will challenge him to a duel: good! And everything—the challenge, the preparations, the stipulations—will be as solemn and awful as possible. I will take care of this. I will be your second, my poor friend! Good! Only here is the hitch: we won’t put bullets in the pistols. I posit that Pechorin will lose his nerve—I will put them at six paces apart, damn it! Are you all in agreement, gentlemen?”

“Glorious plan! We agree! Why not?” resounded from all sides.

“And you, Grushnitsky?”

I awaited Grushnitsky’s answer with agitation. A cold fury possessed me at the thought that were it not for this happenstance, then I would have been made a laughing stock by these idiots. If Grushnitsky hadn’t agreed to it, I would have thrown myself upon him. But after a certain silence, he stood up from his place and, extending a hand to the captain, said very importantly, “Very well, I agree to it.”

It is difficult to describe the rapture of the whole honored company at this.

I returned home, agitated by two different feelings. The first was sorrow. “Why do they all hate me so much?” I thought. Why? Have I insulted someone? No. Surely I am not one of those people who can incite ill will at first appearance? And I felt a poisonous malevolence, little by little, filling my soul.

“Watch yourself, Mr. Grushnitsky!” I was saying, walking up and down my room. “You can’t play with me like this. You may pay dearly for the approval of your stupid comrades. I am not your toy!”

I didn’t sleep all night. By morning, I was as yellow as a sour orange.

In the morning I met the young princess at the well. “Are you unwell?” she said, looking at me intently.

“I didn’t sleep last night.”

“I didn’t either… I have accused you… Perhaps it was unwarranted? But explain yourself, and I can forgive you everything…”

“Everything?”

“Everything… only tell me the truth… and quickly… Can’t you see that I have thought about it so much, tried to explain everything, to justify your behavior. Maybe you are afraid of certain obstacles in the form of my relatives… This is nothing. When they find out… (her voice quivered) I will prevail upon them. Or is it your personal situation… but you know that I could sacrifice everything for the person I loved… Oh, say something quickly, take pity… You don’t despise me—don’t you?” She grabbed my hand. Princess Ligovsky walked in front of us with Vera’s husband and didn’t see anything. But we could be seen by the cure-seekers strolling past, the most curious scandalmongers of all, and I quickly freed my hand from her passionate grip.

“I will tell you the whole truth,” I replied to the young princess, “I won’t justify, nor will I explain my actions. I don’t love you…”

Her lips paled slightly…

“Leave me alone,” she said, only just distinguishably.

I shrugged my shoulders, turned, and walked off.

I sometimes despise myself… is that not why I despise others? I have become incapable of noble impulses. I am afraid to seem ridiculous to myself. Another person in my place would offer the princess son coeur et sa fortune.[19] But the word “marry” has some sort of magical power over me. As passionately as I can love a woman, if she gives me to feel even slightly that I should marry her—good-bye love! My heart turns to stone, and nothing will warm it up again. I am prepared for every sacrifice but this one. I would place my life on a card twenty times over—and my honor too… but my freedom I will not sell. Why do I value it so much? What does it do for me? Where am I planning to go? What am I expecting of the future? Exactly nothing, really. It is some kind of inborn fear, an inexplicable sense of foreboding… There are people who are instinctively afraid of spiders, cockroaches, mice… And shall I admit the truth? When I was still a child, an old woman told my fortune to my mother. She predicted that I would die at the hands of an evil woman. At the time, this struck me deeply. An insuperable disgust toward marriage was born in my soul… Meanwhile, something tells me that her prediction will come true. I will try, at least, to make sure that it comes true as late as possible.

Yesterday a conjurer called Applebaum arrived here. A long poster appeared on the doors of the restaurant, notifying the most venerable public of the fact that the above-mentioned conjurer, acrobat, chemist, and optician would have the honor of giving a magnificent performance on today’s date at eight o’ clock in the evening, in the noble assembly rooms (otherwise known as the restaurant). Tickets for two rubles and fifty kopecks.

Everyone intends to watch the amazing conjurer. Even the Princess Ligovsky, despite her daughter’s malaise, has taken a ticket for herself.

Today, after dinner, I walked past Vera’s window. She was sitting on the balcony alone. A note fell at my feet:

“Aha!” I thought. “Finally things are turning out my way.” At eight o’clock I went to see the conjurer. The audience had gathered just before nine. The performance began. In the seats of the back row I recognized the lackeys and housemaids employed by Vera and the Princess Ligovsky. They were all here, every single one. Grushnitsky was sitting in the first row with a lorgnette. The conjurer addressed him every time he needed a handkerchief, a pocket-watch, a ring, and the rest.

Grushnitsky hasn’t bowed to me for a while now, and the last two times he has looked at me rather impertinently. He will be reminded of this when it comes to settling our score.

Before ten, I stood up and left.

It was as dark as pitch in the courtyard. Heavy, cold clouds had settled on the pinnacles of the surrounding mountains. Only now and then, the dying wind sounded in the tops of the poplars, surrounding the restaurant. People were crowded around its windows. I went down the hill and hastened my steps as I turned into the gate. Suddenly it seemed that someone was following me. I stopped and looked around. In the darkness I couldn’t make out anything. However, out of carefulness, I walked around the house, as though I was having a stroll. Walking past the Princess Mary’s window, I heard steps behind me again. A person, wrapped up in a greatcoat, ran past me. This alarmed me. However, I stole onto the veranda and hurriedly ran up the dark staircase. The door opened. A small hand grasped my hand…

“No one saw you?” said Vera in a whisper, pressing herself to me.

“No one!”

“Now do you believe that I love you? Oh, I hesitated for a long time, I was tormented… but you can do with me what you like.”

Her heart pounded; her hands were as cold as ice. The reproaches, the jealousies, the complaints began. She was demanding of me that I confess everything to her, saying that she would endure my betrayal with submissiveness, because all she wanted was my happiness. I didn’t completely believe this, but I reassured her with my vows, promises, and so on.

“So, you are not marrying Mary? You don’t love her? But she thinks… You know, she is madly in love with you, the poor thing!”

Around two o’clock after midnight I opened the window, and tying together two shawls and holding onto the column, I descended from the top balcony to the lower one. Princess Mary’s lights were still lit. The curtain wasn’t totally drawn, and I was able to cast a curious peek into the interior of the room. Mary was sitting on her bed, her hands crossed in her lap. Her thick hair was gathered up under a night bonnet stitched with lace. A big crimson kerchief covered her little white shoulders. Her little feet were hidden in colorful Persian slippers. She was sitting motionless, her head lowered onto her breast. There was an open book in front of her on the table, but her eyes were motionless, full of indescribable sadness, and it seemed that they had been running over one and the same page for the hundredth time, since her thoughts were far away…

At that moment, someone moved behind a bush. I leapt from the balcony onto the turf. An invisible hand grabbed me by the shoulder.

“Aha!” said a rough voice. “You’ve been caught! Visiting princesses at night, indeed!”

“Hold him tighter!” said another voice, jumping out from behind a corner.

This was Grushnitsky and the dragoon captain.

I hit the latter on the head with my fist, knocked him from his feet, and fled into the bushes. I was familiar with all the paths of the garden that covered the slope opposite our houses.

“Thieves! Help!” they cried. A rifle shot rang out. A smoking wad fell almost at my feet.

A minute later I was already in my room, undressed and lying down. My lackey had barely closed the door and locked it when Grushnitsky and the captain started knocking.

“Pechorin! Are you sleeping? Are you there?” yelled the captain.

“Get up—there are thieves about… Circassians!”

“I have a cold,” I replied, “and I am afraid to make it worse.”

They left. It was a mistake to respond to them: they would have looked for me in the garden for another hour. In the meantime a terrible alarm was raised. A Cossack came galloping from the fortress. Everyone stirred. They started to search for Circassians in every bush—and, it goes without saying, they didn’t find anything. But I imagine many remained firm in the conviction that had the garrison demonstrated more courage and haste, then at least two dozen of the predators would have been stopped in their tracks.

This morning at the well there was talk and nothing else about the nocturnal attack of the Circassians. Having drunk the prescribed number of glasses of Narzan, I walked the length of the linden avenue about ten times and encountered Vera’s husband, who had just arrived from Pyatigorsk. He took me by the arm, and we went to the restaurant to have breakfast. He was terribly worried about his wife.

“How frightened she was last night!” he was saying. “And that it would happen at the moment of my absence.”

We settled down to breakfast by the door that led to a corner room in which ten or so young men were sitting, and amongst their number was Grushnitsky. Fate, for a second time, had provided me with the occasion of overhearing a conversation that was supposed to decide his fate. He didn’t see me, and therefore I couldn’t be suspicious of his designs. But this only augments his guilt in my eyes.

“It can’t really be that they were Circassians,” someone said. “Did anyone see them?”

“I will tell you the whole story,” replied Grushnitsky, “only, please, don’t give me away. Here is how it was: yesterday a man whom I won’t name comes to me and tells me that just before ten o’clock in the evening he saw someone stealing up to the Ligovsky house. I must remark that the Princess Ligovsky was here, but the young princess was at home. So he and I set off to lie in wait for the lucky man under the window.”

I admit that I took fright at this, even though my interlocutor was very busy with his breakfast: he could have overheard things that would be rather unpleasant for him, if Grushnitsky had guessed the truth. But blind with jealousy, he didn’t suspect it.

“So you see,” continued Grushnitsky, “we set off just simply to scare him, having taken a gun with us, loaded with blank cartridges. Toward two o’clock we were waiting in the garden. Finally, and God knows where he appeared from, only it wasn’t from the window, because it wasn’t open—he must have come out of the glass door that is behind the columns—finally, I say, we see someone coming down from the balcony… What kind of princess can she be? Ah? Well, I do declare, young Muscovite ladies! After this, what can you trust? We wanted to capture him, but he broke free, and, like a hare, fled into the bushes. Then I shot at him.”

A grumble of disbelief could be heard around Grushnitsky.

“You don’t believe me?” he continued. “I give you my honest, noble word, that all this is the absolute truth, and in evidence, if you like, I will give the gentleman’s name.”

“Tell us, tell us—who is it, then?” could be heard from every side.

“Pechorin,” replied Grushnitsky.

At that moment, he raised his eyes—I was standing in the doorway opposite him. He blushed horribly. I walked up to him and said slowly and distinctly:

“I am very sorry to have come in after you have already given your honest word in the confirmation of this disgusting slander. My presence saves you from further depravity.”

Grushnitsky leapt up from his place and made motions of becoming impassioned.

“I request of you,” I continued in the same tone, “I request of you that you retract your words right now. You know very well that this is a fabrication. I don’t think that the indifference of a woman toward your shining merits deserves such terrible vengeance. Consider this well: in maintaining your opinion, you are losing the right to be called a noble man and are risking your life.”

Grushnitsky stood in front of me, having lowered his eyes, in fierce agitation. But the struggle between his conscience and his vanity was short-lived. The dragoon captain, sitting next to him, nudged him with his elbow. He flinched and quickly answered me without lifting his eyes:

“Gracious sir, when I say something, then it is what I think, and I am prepared to repeat it… I am not afraid of your threats and am prepared for anything…”

“You have already demonstrated the latter,” I replied to him coldly, and, taking the dragoon captain by the arm, I left the room.

“What can I do for you?” asked the captain.

“You are Grushnitsky’s friend, and will be his second, I assume?”

The captain bowed very importantly.

“You have guessed it,” he answered. “I am even obliged to be his second, since the insult caused to him concerns me too. I was with him yesterday night,” he added, straightening his slightly round-shouldered figure.

“Oh! So it was you whom I hit so clumsily on the head?”

He turned yellow, then blue. The concealed spite showed on his face.

“I will have the honor of sending my second to you today,” I added, bowing very politely and giving the impression that I wasn’t paying attention to his fury.

I met Vera’s husband on the terrace of the restaurant. It seems that he had been waiting for me.

He grasped my hand with a feeling that looked like delight.

“Noble young man!” said he, with tears in his eyes. “I heard everything. What a swine! Ingrate!… What proper household would entertain them after this?! Thank God I don’t have daughters. But you will be rewarded by the young lady for whom you are risking your life. You can be sure of my modesty for the time being,” he continued. “I was once young myself and served in the military—I know not to intervene in these matters. Farewell.”

Poor man! He is happy that he doesn’t have daughters…

I went straight to Werner, found him at home, and told him everything—my relations with Vera and with the princess and the conversation that I overheard, from which I learned the intention of these gentlemen to make a fool of me, to make me fire blank cartridges. But now the matter had departed from the boundaries of a joke. They probably didn’t expect such a result. The doctor agreed to be my second. I gave him several instructions concerning the stipulations of the duel. He should insist that the matter is worked out as secretly as possible, because though I am ready to expose myself to death at any time, I am not in the least inclined toward ruining my future in this world forever.

After this I went home. The doctor returned from his mission an hour later.

“There is definitely a plot against you,” he said. “I found the dragoon captain and another gentleman, whose last name I don’t remember, at Grushnitsky’s place. I paused for a minute in the entrance hall in order to remove my galoshes. There was a terrible noise and argument going on inside…

“‘I won’t agree to that for anything!’ Grushnitsky was saying. ‘He insulted me publicly—before that it was entirely different…’

“‘What is it to you?’ answered the dragoon captain. ‘I’ll take it all onto myself. I have been a second in five duels and I know well how to arrange it all. I have devised everything. If you please, just don’t get in my way. Giving someone a scare is no bad thing. And why expose yourself to danger, if you can escape it?’

“At that minute I walked up. They went silent. Our negotiations lasted rather a long time; finally we decided the matter thus: about five versts from here, there is a hidden gully. They will go there tomorrow at four o’clock in the morning, and we will depart half an hour after them. Shots will be at six paces—this was requested by Grushnitsky. The dead body will be attributed to the Circassians. Now, these are my suspicions: they, the seconds that is, have somewhat changed their prior plans it seems, and they want to load a bullet into Grushnitsky’s pistol alone. This is a little similar to murder, but in wartime, and especially an Asiatic war, such stratagems are allowed. Only Grushnitsky, it would seem, is a little more noble than his friends. What do you think? Shall we reveal to him that we have figured it out?”

“Not for anything in this world, Doctor! Be calm, I will not give in to them.”

“What then do you want to do?”

“That is my secret.”

“Watch you don’t get caught… especially at six paces!”

“Doctor, I will wait for you tomorrow at four o’clock. The horses will be ready… Good-bye.”

I sat at home until evening, and shut myself in my room. A lackey came to call me to the Princess Ligovsky—I ordered him to tell them I was ill.

Two o’clock at night… I cannot sleep… But I must fall asleep, so that tomorrow my hand won’t shake. However, at six paces, it is hard to miss. Ah! Mr. Grushnitsky! You won’t succeed in your hoax… We will swap roles. Now it is I who shall look for the symptoms of secret fear on your pale face. Why did you set yourself these fateful six paces? You think that I will offer you my forehead without a struggle… but we are casting lots!… But then… then… what if his luck outweighs mine… if my star has at last betrayed me?… It would be no surprise: it has faithfully served my whims for so long, there is no more constancy in the heavens than on earth.

So? If I die, then I die! The loss to the world won’t be great. Yes, and I’m fairly bored with myself already. I am like a man who is yawning at a ball, whose reason for not going home to bed is only that his carriage hasn’t arrived yet. But the carriage is ready… farewell!

I run through the memory of my past in its entirety and can’t help asking myself: Why have I lived? For what purpose was I born?… There probably was one once, and I probably did have a lofty calling, because I feel a boundless strength in my soul… But I didn’t divine this calling. I was carried away with the baits of passion, empty and unrewarding. I came out of their crucible as hard and cold as iron, but I had lost forever the ardor for noble aspirations, the best flower of life. Since then, how many times have I played the role of the ax in the hands of fate! Like an instrument of execution, I fell on the head of doomed martyrs, often without malice, always without regret… My love never brought anyone happiness, because I never sacrificed anything for those I loved: I loved for myself, for my personal pleasure. I was simply satisfying a strange need of the heart, with greediness, swallowing their feelings, their joys, their suffering—and was never sated. Just as a man, tormented by hunger, goes to sleep in exhaustion and dreams of sumptuous dishes and sparkling wine before him. He devours the airy gifts of his imagination with rapture, and he feels easier. But as soon as he wakes: the dream disappears… and all that remains is hunger and despair redoubled!

And, maybe, I will die tomorrow!… And not one being on this earth will have ever understood me totally. Some thought of me as worse, some as better, than I actually am… Some will say “he was a good fellow,” others will say I was a swine. Both one and the other would be wrong. Given this, does it seem worth the effort to live? And yet, you live, out of curiosity, always wanting something new… Amusing and vexing!

It is already a month and a half now since I arrived at Fortress N——. Maxim Maximych has gone hunting… I am alone. I am sitting at the window. Gray storm clouds have covered the mountains down to their foothills. The sun, through the mist, looks like a yellow stain. It’s cold. The wind is whistling and shaking the shutters… How boring! I will take up writing my diaries again, which was interrupted by many strange events.

As I re-read this last page: funny! I thought I would die. This was impossible. I had not yet drained the cup of suffering, and now feel that I have a long while still to live.

How clearly and sharply these past events flood back to my memory! Not one line, not one hue, has been wiped away by time!

I remember that for the duration of the night preceding the duel, I didn’t sleep a minute. I couldn’t write for long: a mysterious anxiety possessed me. For an hour I walked around my room, then I sat down and opened the novel by Walter Scott that had been lying on the table. Since it was Old Mortality, I read it at the start with strain, and then I sank into reveries, carried away by the magical flight of imagination… Do they recompense the Scottish bard in the next world for each gratifying minute that his book gives?

Finally the day dawned. My nerves had become calm. I looked at myself in the mirror: a dull pallor had spread over my face, preserving the traces of agonizing insomnia. But my eyes, though encircled with brown shadows, shone proudly and inexorably. I remained content with myself.

Having ordered the horses to be saddled, I dressed and ran down to the bathhouse. Plunging into the cold bubblings of the Narzan, I felt my bodily and spiritual strengths returning. I left the baths fresh and bright, as though I were preparing for a ball. Tell me that the soul and body aren’t connected after that!

Returning, I found the doctor at my quarters. He was wearing gray riding breeches, an arkhaluk,[20] and a Circassian hat. I started roaring with laughter upon seeing this small figure under an enormous shaggy hat: his face was not at all bellicose and, at that moment in time, it was even longer than usual.

“What makes you so sad, doctor?” I said to him. “Haven’t you led people a hundred times to the next world with supreme indifference? Imagine that I have a bilious fever. I may recover, I may die. Either would be according to the order of things. Try to look at me as if I were a patient, afflicted by an illness that is unknown to you—and then your curiosity will be aroused to the highest degree. You can make some important physiological observations of me… Is not the expectation of a violent death a genuine illness in fact?”

This thought struck the doctor, and he cheered up.

We mounted our horses. Werner seized the reins with both hands, and we set off. In an instant we galloped past the fortress, through the slobodka, and entered the gully; the road twisted along it, half-overgrown with high grasses, intersecting constantly with a noisy stream, across which we had to ford frequently, to the great despair of the doctor, because each time we did his horse stopped in the water.

I don’t remember a morning more blue and fresh! The sun had barely appeared from behind the green heights, and the confluence of the heat of its rays and the dying chill of night brought feelings of a sort of sweet anguish to everything. The young day had not yet sent one joyful ray into the gully. But it gilded the summits of the crags hanging over us on either side. The thick-leaved bushes, growing in their deep cracks, showered us with silver rain at the least breath of wind. I remember, at this point, I felt a love for nature greater than at any time before. How interesting to watch a single dewdrop, quivering on a wide vine-leaf and reflecting millions of rainbow rays! How greedily my gaze sought to penetrate the foggy distance! There the path became narrower all the time, the crags bluer and more fearsome, and, finally, it seemed that they converged into an impenetrable wall. We rode in silence.

“Have you written your will?” Werner suddenly asked.

“No.”

“And in the case of your death?”

“My beneficiaries will appear by themselves.”

“Surely you have friends to whom you would like to send a final farewell?”

I shook my head.

“Surely there is one woman in the world to whom you might like to leave something for memory’s sake?”

“Would you like, doctor,” I replied to him, “that I bare my soul to you?… You see, I have grown out of the times when a person dies, pronouncing the name of their beloved, and bequeathing to their friend a lock of their pomaded or unpomaded hair. Considering near and possible death, I think only about myself—some don’t even do that. The friends who will tomorrow forget me, or, worse, those who will pin God knows what cock-and-bull stories on me, and the women who, embracing another, will laugh at me, in order not to arouse jealousy toward the deceased—good luck to them! I have carried only a few ideas out of life’s storm—and not one feeling. I have long lived according to the head, not the heart. I consider and analyze my personal passions and actions with a strict curiosity, but without sympathy. There are two people within me: one who lives in the full sense of the word, and the other who reasons and judges him. The first, maybe, in an hour’s time may bid forevermore farewell to you and the world, and the second… the second? Look doctor: do you see there on that precipice, to the right, three figures blackening the landscape? They are our adversaries I suppose?”

We set off at a trot.

At the foot of the rock-face, in the bushes, three horses were tied up. We tied ours there too, and clambered up the narrow footpath to the little platform, where we were awaited by Grushnitsky, the dragoon captain, and his other second called Ivan Ignatievitch (I have never heard his last name).

“We have been expecting you for a long time,” said the dragoon captain with an ironic smile.

I pulled out my timepiece and showed it to him.

He apologized, saying that his watch was running fast.

An embarrassing silence endured for several minutes. Finally the doctor broke it, addressing himself to Grushnitsky.

“It seems to me,” he said, “that, having both demonstrated a readiness to fight and having paid these debts to the conditions of honor, you could both, gentlemen, make yourselves understood now and end this matter amicably.”

“I am willing,” I said.

The captain winked at Grushnitsky, and the latter, thinking I was being a coward, assumed a proud air, though until this minute a dull pallor had spread over his cheeks. For the first time since we arrived, he raised his eyes to me. But there was some sort of unrest in his gaze, indicating an inner struggle.

“Clarify your conditions,” he said, “and I will do everything that I can for you, you may rest assured…”

“Here are my conditions: that you now publicly retract your slander and ask my forgiveness…”

“Gracious sir, I am astonished that you deign to propose such things to me.”

“What could I propose to you otherwise?”

“We will shoot…”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“As you please, only remember that one of us will certainly be killed.”

“Would that it were you…”

“And I feel assured of the opposite…”

He became embarrassed, turned red, then laughed forcedly.

The captain took him by the arm and led him off to the side. They whispered for a long time. I had arrived in a rather peaceable mood, but all this was starting to madden me.

The doctor walked up to me.

“Listen,” he said with evident anxiety. “I suppose you have forgotten about their plot?… I don’t know how to load a pistol, but if it comes to that… You are a strange man! Tell them that you know their intentions, and they won’t dare… What is this—hunting? They’ll shoot you like a bird…”

“Please, don’t worry, doctor, and wait… I will arrange it all so that there is no advantage to their side. Let them whisper…”

“Gentlemen, this is getting tiresome!” I said to them loudly. “If we’re going to fight then let’s fight. You had time yesterday to discuss the matter in its entirety.”

“We are ready,” the captain answered.

“Take your positions, gentlemen!… Doctor, measure six paces, if you please.”

“Take your positions!” repeated Ivan Ignatievitch in a squeaky voice.

“Allow me!” I said, “… one more condition. Since we are fighting to the death, then we are obliged to do everything possible to make sure that this remains secret and that our seconds aren’t held responsible. Do you all agree?”

“Absolutely agreed.”

“So, this is what I have devised. Do you see, at the top of that sheer rock-face on the right, there is a narrow platform? From there to the bottom would be about thirty sazhens, if not more. Below, there are sharp rocks. Each of us will stand at the edge of the platform—this way, even a light wound will be fatal. This should complement your wishes, since you yourselves set six paces. Whoever is wounded will fly to the bottom without fail and will smash into smithereens. The doctor will extract the bullet, and then this sudden death can be easily explained by an unfortunate leap. We will cast lots to decide who shoots first. I inform you of my inference that I won’t otherwise fight.”

“As you please!” said the dragoon captain, having looked over at Grushnitsky expressively, who himself nodded his head as a sign of agreement. His face was changing by the minute. I had put him in a difficult situation. Shooting under the usual conditions, he could have aimed at my leg and lightly wounded me, and satisfied his revenge in this way without burdening his conscience too much. But now, he had to shoot at the air, or commit murder, or, finally, abandon his vile scheme and be subjected to an equal danger to mine. At that moment, I wouldn’t have wished to be in his place. He led the captain aside and started to talk to him about something with great heat. I saw how his lips were turning blue and trembling. But the captain turned away from him with a contemptuous smile. “You are a fool!” he said to Grushnitsky rather loudly. “You don’t understand anything! Let us be off gentlemen!”

The narrow path led between bushes on the slope; the loose steps of this natural staircase were made up of debris from the rock face; hanging on to the shrubs, we started to clamber up. Grushnitsky walked at the front, his seconds behind him, and then the doctor and me.

“You surprise me,” said the doctor, taking me firmly by the hand. “Let me take your pulse!… Oho! A fever!… But nothing is evident from the face… only your eyes are shining more brightly than usual.”

Suddenly, small rocks started noisily rolling down toward our feet. What was this? The branch that Grushnitsky had been holding onto had snapped; he slipped, and he would have slid down to the bottom on his back, had his seconds not held him up.

“Be careful!” I cried to him. “Don’t fall before it’s time—it’s a bad omen. Remember Julius Caesar!”

We had just climbed to the top of the bluff. The little platform was covered with a fine sand, as though designed for the purposes of a duel. The mountain summits clustered like an innumerable flock all around us, disappearing in the golden clouds of the morning; the white bulk of Elbrus rose up in the south, a lock in the chain of icy pinnacles; stringy clouds, racing in from the east, wandered among the peaks. I went up to the edge of the little platform, looked down, and my head was almost spinning—it looked cold and dark down there, like a grave. The mossy jagged edges of rock, scattered by thunderstorm and time, were awaiting their spoils.

The little platform on which we were meant to fight made a nearly perfect triangle. They measured six paces from the protruding corner and decided that the first of us to whom it would come to face unfriendly fire would stand in that corner, with his back to the edge. If he wasn’t killed then the opponents would switch places.

I had decided to give Grushnitsky every advantage. I wanted to test him. Perhaps a spark of magnanimity would be awakened in his soul, and then everything would turn out for the best; but vanity and weakness of character were to be victorious… I wanted to give myself full rights to have no mercy on him, if fate would pardon me. Who hasn’t negotiated such conditions with their conscience?

“Cast lots, Doctor!” said the captain.

The doctor pulled a silver coin out of his pocket and held it up.

“Tails!” cried Grushnitsky, hurriedly, like a man who has been suddenly wakened by a friendly nudge.

“Heads!” I said.

The coin soared up and fell ringing. Everyone rushed toward it.

“You are lucky,” I said to Grushnitsky. “You shoot first! But remember that if you don’t kill me, then I won’t miss. I give you my honest word.”

He blushed. He was ashamed to kill an unarmed man. I looked at him intently. For about a minute it seemed to me that he would throw himself at my feet, begging forgiveness. But how could you admit to such a vile scheme? One means remained for him—to shoot into the air. I was sure that he would shoot into the air! Just one thing could prevent this: the thought that I would request a second duel.

“It’s time,” the doctor whispered to me, tugging me by the sleeve. “If you don’t now say that we know their intentions, then everything is lost. Look, he is already loading… if you don’t say something then I will…”

“Not for anything in the world, doctor!” I answered, holding him back by the arm. “You will ruin everything. You gave me your word that you wouldn’t get in my way… What is it to you? Perhaps I want to be killed…”

He looked at me in surprise.

“Oh, that is another matter!… Only don’t complain about me in the next world…”

Meanwhile the captain was loading his pistols; he handed one to Grushnitsky, whispering something to him with a little smile; and handed the other to me.

I stood in the corner of the little platform, having tightly wedged my left foot against a rock and leaning a little forward so that in the event of a light wound I would not topple backward.

Grushnitsky stood opposite me, and when given the signal he began to raise his pistol. His knees were shaking. He aimed straight at my forehead…

An indescribable rage started boiling in my breast. Suddenly he lowered the muzzle of the pistol and, turning pale as a sheet, turned to his second.

“I can’t,” he said in a dull voice.

“Coward!” the captain responded.

A shot rang out. The bullet scratched my knee. I couldn’t help taking a few steps forward, to move away from the edge as soon as possible.

“Well, brother Grushnitsky, too bad that you missed!” said the captain. “Now it’s your turn: take up your position! Embrace me first: we won’t see each other again!”

They embraced; the captain could barely keep himself from laughing. “Don’t be afraid,” he added, slyly looking at Grushnitsky. “Everything on earth is nonsense!… Nature is a fool, fate is a turkey, and life is a kopeck!”

With this tragic phrase, delivered with decorous importance, he walked to his place. Grushnitsky was then also embraced by a teary-eyed Ivan Ignatievitch and then remained alone before me. I am still trying to explain to myself what kind of feeling was agitating then in my breast: it was the vexation of insulted vanity, and contempt, and anger, borne of the thought that this man, looking at me now with such assurance, with such calm impertinence, had, but two minutes ago, without exposing himself to any danger, wanted to kill me like a dog, for if he had wounded me a little more forcefully, I would have definitely fallen from the crag.

I looked him intently in the face for several minutes, trying to note at least a faint trace of repentance. But it seemed to me that he was holding back a smile.

“I advise you to pray to God before you die,” I said to him then.

“Don’t worry more about my soul than your own. Just one thing I’ll ask of you: fire sooner.”

“And you don’t retract your slander? You won’t ask my forgiveness?… Think now, isn’t your conscience telling you something?”

“Mr. Pechorin!” cried the dragoon captain. “You are not here to hear a confession, allow me to remark… Let us be done with this. Suppose someone were to pass through the gully—and were to see us.”

“Very good, doctor, come here.”

The doctor approached. The poor doctor! He was paler than Grushnitsky had been ten or so minutes ago.

I pronounced the following words purposefully, with pauses, loudly and distinctly, just as they pronounce death sentences:

“Doctor, these gentlemen, likely in haste, have forgotten to put a bullet in my pistol. I ask you to load it again—and well!”

“It’s not possible!” cried the captain. “It’s not possible! I loaded both pistols. Unless, perhaps the ball rolled out of yours… and that’s not my fault! But you don’t have the right to reload… no right… this is completely against the rules, and I don’t allow it…”

“Good!” I said to the captain, “if that is so, then you and I will shoot under the very same conditions…” He stopped short.

Grushnitsky stood, having lowered his head onto his breast, embarrassed and dismal.

“Let them!” he said finally to the captain, who wanted to pull my pistol from the doctor’s hands… “You know yourself that they are right.”

In vain, the captain was making various signals to him—and Grushnitsky didn’t want to look.

In the meantime, the doctor had loaded the pistol and given it to me. Having seen this, the captain spat and stamped his foot.

“You are such a fool, brother,” he said. “A vulgar fool!… Since you put yourself in my hands you should listen to me in everything… It serves you right! Die, like a fly…”

He turned and walked off, muttering, “And anyway, this is completely against the rules.”

“Grushnitsky!” I said. “There is still time. Retract your slander, and I will forgive you everything. You didn’t succeed in fooling me, and my vanity is satisfied—remember, we were once friends…”

His face flared up, his eyes sparkled.

“Shoot!” he answered. “I despise myself, and I hate you. If you don’t kill me, I will stab you from around a corner one night. There isn’t room on this earth for both of us…”

I shot…

When the smoke had dissipated, there was no Grushnitsky on the platform. Only a light pillar of dust still curled up at the edge of the precipice.

Everyone cried out in one voice.

“É finita la commedia!”[21] I said to the doctor.

He didn’t reply and turned away in horror.

I shrugged my shoulders and exchanged bows with Grushnitsky’s seconds.

Going down the path, I noticed Grushnitsky’s bloody corpse between fissures in the rock. I couldn’t help closing my eyes… Leading my horse away, I set off for home at a walking pace. There was a stone in my heart. The sun seemed dim to me, its rays didn’t warm me.

Before reaching the slobodka, I turned right along the gully. The sight of another person would have been distressing to me. I wanted to be alone. Having let go of the reins and lowered my head onto my breast, I rode for a long time, and finally found myself in a place that was entirely unknown to me. I turned the horse around and started to search for the road. The sun was already setting when I rode up toward Kislovodsk, worn out, on a worn-out horse.

My lackey told me that Werner had come by and delivered two notes. One from him, the other… from Vera.

I unsealed the first, and it had the following contents:

I took a long time in deciding to open the second note… What could she have written to me?… A heavy foreboding worried my soul.

This is it, the letter, of which each word is indelibly marked onto my memory:

Like a lunatic, I leapt out onto the veranda and jumped on my Circassian horse, who was being led around the courtyard, and set off at full tilt along the road to Pyatigorsk. I spurred the worn-out horse mercilessly onward, and he rushed me along the rocky road, snorting and covered with foam.

The sun had already concealed itself in the black clouds that were resting on the ridge of the western mountains. It was becoming dark and damp in the gully. The Podkumok River forced its way through the rocks, bellowing darkly and monotonously. I rode at a furious pace, gasping for breath out of impatience. The thought of not finding her in Pyatigorsk was beating me like a hammer on the heart!

One minute, just to see her for one more minute, to bid farewell, to squeeze her hand… I prayed, I cursed, I wept, I laughed… No, nothing could express my troubled mind, my desperation!… Before the possibility of losing her forever, Vera became dearer to me than everything in the world—dearer than life itself, than honor, than happiness! God knows what peculiar, what mad ideas swarmed in my head… And meanwhile, I continued to ride at a furious pace, spurring my horse mercilessly onward. And then I started to notice that my horse was breathing more heavily. He had already stumbled twice on even ground… There were five versts more to Essentukov—a Cossack station, where I could exchange my horse.

All would have been saved had my horse had enough strength for another ten minutes! But suddenly, passing up out of a small gully, at an egress from the mountains, on a tight bend, he crashed to the ground. I swiftly jumped off—at this point I wanted to get him up and was holding the reins—all in vain. A faint moan escaped from between his clenched teeth; after a few minutes, he expired. I was left alone on the Steppe, having lost my last hope. I tried to continue on foot; my legs gave way, exhausted with the distress of the day and insomnia, then I fell onto the wet grass and cried like an infant.

For a long time I lay motionless and wept bitterly, not making any attempt to restrain my tears and sobbing. I thought that my breast would explode. All my hardness, all my cool indifference, disappeared like smoke. My soul lost its strength, my reason went quiet, and if someone had seen me at that minute, they would have turned away in disdain.

When the dew of night and the mountain wind had refreshed my hot head, and my thoughts had returned to regular order, I understood that chasing after a perished happiness was useless and heedless. What did I need? To see her? Why? Had not everything ended between us? One bitter departing kiss wouldn’t distill my memories, and would only make it harder to part ways thereafter.

It was pleasant, to me, however, that I could cry! As for the rest, it may be that the cause of this was shattered nerves, a night without sleep, two minutes in the face of a pistol’s muzzle, and an empty stomach.

All will be better! This new suffering, to use a military idiom, has given me a fortunate diversion. Weeping is healthy. And moreover, it is likely that, had I not set off on horseback, and not been made to walk fifteen versts back, then sleep wouldn’t have closed my eyes that night.

I returned to Kislovodsk at five o’clock in the morning, threw myself on my bed, and slept the sleep of Napoleon after Waterloo.

When I wakened, it was already dark in the courtyard. I sat by the open window, unbuttoned my arkhaluk, and the mountain wind refreshed my breast, which had still not calmed with the heavy sleep of fatigue. The lights of the fortress and the slobodka twinkled in the distance, beyond the river, through the tops of the thick linden trees that overshadowed it. All was quiet in our courtyard; it was dark in the house of the Princess Ligovsky.

The doctor came by. His brow was crossed, and he did not extend his hand to me as he would usually.

“Where have you come from, Doctor?”

“From the Princess Ligovsky. Her daughter is ill—with a weakening of the nerves… But that is not the matter, this is: the town authorities have guessed the truth, even though they can’t positively prove anything. However, I advise you to be more careful. The Princess Ligovsky was telling me today that she knows that you dueled for her daughter’s sake. That little old man told her everything… what was his name? He was witness to your skirmish with Grushnitsky in the restaurant. I have come to warn you. Farewell. It may be that we will never see each other again, that they will dispatch you somewhere.”

He stopped at the threshold. He wanted to shake my hand… and if I had given him the slightest indication of such a desire on my part, he would have thrown his arms around my neck. But I stayed cold, like a rock—and he walked out.

People! They are all the same: they know all the bad aspects to a deed in advance, and they help you, advise you, even approve of it, seeing that no other way is possible—and then they wash their hands of it and turn away with indignation from the person who had the courage to take the whole burden of responsibility onto himself. They are all the same, even the kindest, the most intelligent of them!

The next morning, having received an order from the authorities to take myself to the Fortress N——, I went to the Princess Ligovsky to bid them farewell.

She was astonished when, to her question of whether I had something especially important to say to her, I replied that I wished her happiness, et cetera.

“Well, I need to speak with you about something very serious.”

I sat down, saying nothing.

It was obvious that she didn’t know how to begin. Her face turned crimson, her plump fingers tapped the table. Finally she started like this, in a broken voice:

“Listen, Monsieur Pechorin! I think that you are a noble man.”

I bowed.

“Indeed I am convinced of it,” she continued, “though your behavior has been somewhat dubious. But you may have your reasons, which I don’t know, and you must now confide them to me. You defended my daughter from slander, you dueled for her sake—which is to say that you risked your life for her… Don’t say anything, I know that you won’t admit to it, because Grushnitsky is killed (she made the sign of the cross). God will forgive him—and, I hope He will forgive you too!… But this is not my concern, I cannot judge you because my daughter, though she was innocent, was nonetheless the cause of it. She told me everything… I think it was everything. You declared your love for her… she confessed hers to you (here the princess exhaled heavily). But she is ill, and I am sure that this is not a simple illness! A secret sadness is killing her. She doesn’t admit to it, but I am sure that you are the cause of it… Listen, you may think that I am seeking an official with enormous wealth for her—disabuse yourself! I only want the happiness of my daughter. Your current situation is unenviable, but it can be righted. You have means. My daughter loves you, she is brought up to make a husband happy. I am wealthy, and she is my only child… Tell me, what is holding you back? You see, I wasn’t supposed to tell you all of this, but I count upon your heart, upon your honor. Remember that I have only one daughter… only one…”

She started to weep.

“Princess,” I said. “It is impossible for me to answer you. Allow me please to speak with your daughter alone…”

“Never!” she exclaimed, getting up from her chair with great emotion.

“As you wish,” I replied, preparing myself to leave.

She became distracted, gestured to me with her hand that I should wait, and went out.

About five minutes passed. My heart was pounding, but my thoughts were calm, my head was cold. As much as I tried to find a spark of love in my heart toward the lovely Mary, my strivings were in vain.

Then the doors opened, and she came in. Good God! How she had changed since I had last seen her—was it that long ago?

Walking to the middle of the room, she swayed. I jumped up, gave her my arm, and led her to an armchair.

I stood opposite her. We were silent for a long time. Her big eyes, filled with indescribable sorrow it seemed, were looking into mine with something resembling hope. Her pale lips tried to smile in vain. Her delicate hands, crossed on her knees, were so thin and transparent that I felt pity for her.

“Princess,” I said, “did you know that I was mocking you?… You should despise me.”

A sickly flush appeared in her cheeks.

I continued, “Therefore, you cannot love me…”

She turned away, leaned her elbows on the table, and covered her eyes with her hand, and it seemed to me that they glistened with tears.

“My God!” she uttered, barely distinguishably.

This was becoming unbearable—in a minute I would fall to her feet.

“So, as you can see yourself,” I said, with as firm a voice as I could, and a forced grin, “you can see for yourself that I cannot marry you; even if you might want this right now, you would soon rue it. My conversation with your mama has forced me to clarify this so plainly and grossly. I hope that she is in error. It will be easy for you to persuade her to the contrary. You see, in your eyes, I am playing the most pitiful and vile role, and I am even admitting to it. This is all I can do for you. Whatever bad opinion you hold of me, I submit to it… You see, I am lowly before you. Isn’t it true that even if at one time you loved me, that from this minute you despise me?”

She turned to me, pale as marble—only her eyes sparkled marvelously.

“I hate you,” she said.

I thanked her, bowed politely, and left.

An hour later, a courier troika was rushing me from Kislovodsk. A few versts from Essentukov I recognized the corpse of my spirited horse near the road. The saddle was removed—probably by passing Cossacks—and instead of the saddle, on his back stood two crows. I exhaled and turned away…

And now, here, in this boring fortress, I often ask myself, running through thoughts of the past: why didn’t I want to follow the path opened to me by fate, where quiet happiness and spiritual peace awaited me?… No, such a fate wouldn’t have agreed with me! I am like a sailor, born and bred on the deck of a pirate ship. His soul has got used to storms and battles, and, when thrown ashore, he pines and languishes much as the shady groves beckon him, much as the peaceful sun shines at him. He walks along the coastal sands all day, listening to the monotonous murmur of the lapping waves and peering into the cloudy distance: is that the sail he seeks, on the pale line that separates the blue deep from the little gray storm clouds—at first resembling the wing of a seagull, but little by little, separating from the foam of the boulders, with a steady approach toward the deserted jetty…

3 THE FATALIST

I once happened to spend two weeks in a Cossack stanitsa[1] on the left flank. An infantry battalion was stationed there. The officers gathered in one another’s quarters in turns, and played cards.

Once, we stayed up late at Major S—’s, having become bored with Boston[2] and thrown the cards under the table. The conversation was, for once, entertaining. We were discussing the Muslim belief that apparently says the fate of a man is written in the sky; this also finds many believers among us Christians. Each of us was recounting various unusual occurrences, pro and contra.

“All this, gentlemen, doesn’t prove anything,” said the old major. “Indeed, none of you have borne witness to these strange occurrences with which you are shoring up your opinions.”

“None of us has, of course,” the men said, “but we have heard these things from trusted people…”

“All this is nonsense!” someone said. “Where are these trusted people, who have seen this list that tells us the appointed hour of our death?… And if there is definitely such thing as predestination—why were we given free will, and reason? Why should we atone for our actions?”

At this time, an officer who had been sitting in the corner of the room stood and walked slowly up to the table, throwing a cool glance at the company. He was a Serbian type, which was evident from his name.

The exterior of Lieutenant Vulich corresponded entirely with his character. His great height and the dark complexion of his face, his black hair, his black and penetrating eyes, a big but straight nose (characteristic of his nation), a sad and cold smile eternally roaming on his lips—all this seemed to coordinate itself in giving him the look of a special being, not able to share thoughts and passions with those whom fate had given him to be his comrades.

He was brave, spoke little but incisively; he did not entrust anyone with the secrets of his spirit or family. He hardly drank wine, never pursued young Cossack girls—the charms of whom it is difficult to imagine without seeing them. They used to say, however, that the wife of the colonel was not indifferent to his expressive eyes. But he became seriously angry when you hinted at this.

There was only one passion that he didn’t hide: a passion for gambling. At the green table he forgot everything, and usually lost. But constant losses only aggravated his stubborn nature. They say that once, during a night expedition, he was keeping bank on his pillow, and he was having terrific luck. Suddenly shots rang out, an alarm was raised, everyone jumped up and dashed to their guns.

“Stake the bank!” cried Vulich to one of the hottest betters, without getting up.

“Sevens,” replied the other, running off. Disregarding the general chaos, Vulich shuffled the double-deck of cards, and the card was dealt.

When he appeared on the front line, there was already a fierce gunfight in progress. Vulich didn’t bother himself about the bullets, or the Chechen sabers. He was looking for his lucky punter.

“Seven it is!” he cried, finding him at last in the line of skirmishers, which had started to force the enemy out of the forest. Walking closer, he pulled out his coin-purse and wallet and gave them both to the lucky man, not paying attention to objections about the inappropriateness of the payment. Having fulfilled this unpleasant debt, he threw himself forward, carrying the soldiers along and fired back and forth with the Chechens with a cold and calm head, until the end.

When Lieutenant Vulich walked up to the table, everyone fell silent, expecting some original trick from him.

“Gentlemen!” he said (his voice was calm, even though his tone was lower than usual). “Gentlemen! What is this empty argument? You want proof: I suggest you put this to the test yourselves. Perhaps there is a person who will exercise his will and put their life at our disposal, or is a fateful minute affixed to each of us beforehand… Who is game?”

“Not me, not me,” resounded from every side. “What a crank! The things that enter his head!”

“I’ll make a wager!” I said, joking.

“Which one?”

“I assert that predestination does not exist,” I said, pouring some two dozen gold pieces onto the table—everything that was in my pocket.

“I’ll take it,” replied Vulich in a muffled voice. “Major, you will be the judge; here are fifteen gold pieces, the remaining five you owe me, and please do me the kindness of adding them to this.”

“I will,” said the major, “only I don’t understand, really, what is happening, and how you will decide the matter?”

Vulich went into the major’s sleeping quarters without saying anything; we followed him. He walked up to a wall where some guns were hanging. At random he took down one of the variously calibered pistols from its nail; we still didn’t understand him but when he cocked the gun and poured gunpowder into the pan, many couldn’t help but cry out, and they grabbed his arms.

“What do you want to do? Listen, this is madness!” they screamed at him.

“Gentlemen!” he said slowly, freeing his hands. “Whom would it please to pay twenty gold pieces on my behalf?”

Everyone went quiet and stepped away.

Vulich walked into the other room and sat at the table. Everyone followed him. With a gesture, he invited us to sit down in a circle. Silently we obeyed him. At that moment he had acquired some kind of secret power over us. I looked him intently in the eye. With a calm and motionless gaze, he met my searching look, and his pale lips smiled. But, despite his composure, it seemed to me that I could read the stamp of death on his pale face. I had been making observations, and many old soldiers had confirmed my observations, that there is often some sort of strange imprint of inescapable fate on the face of a man who would die in a few hours’ time, so much so that to an experienced eye it is hard to mistake.

“You will die today!” I said to him.

He turned quickly to me, but answered slowly and calmly:

“Maybe yes, maybe no…” And then, addressing the major, he asked, “Is the pistol loaded?” The major in confusion couldn’t remember very well.

“Yes, it is, Vulich!” someone cried. “Of course it’s loaded if it’s hanging at the head of the bed—why play the fool?”

“A stupid joke!” another chimed in.

“I’ll wager fifty rubles to five that the pistol isn’t loaded!” a third cried out.

New bets were made.

I was becoming fed up with this long ceremony.

“Listen,” I said, “either shoot yourself or hang the pistol back in its former place and let’s all go to bed.”

“Of course,” many exclaimed, “let’s all go to bed.”

“Gentlemen, I ask you to not move from your places!” said Vulich, putting the muzzle of the pistol to his forehead. Everyone seemed to turn to stone.

“Mr. Pechorin,” he added, “take a card and throw it up.”

I took, as I remember it now, an ace of hearts from the table and threw it upward; everyone’s breathing stopped; all eyes, showing fear and a sort of ambiguous curiosity, ran between the pistol and the fateful ace, which quivered in the air and slowly fell. The moment it touched the table, Vulich pulled the trigger… a misfire!

“Thank God!” many cried out. “It wasn’t loaded!”

“But, let’s see…” said Vulich. He cocked the gun again and took aim at a military cap hanging above the window. A shot rang out—the smoke filled the room. When it dissipated, they took down the military cap: it was shot right through the middle, and the bullet was lodged deeply in the wall.

About three minutes passed, and no one could utter a word. Vulich poured my gold pieces into his purse.

There was talk about the fact that the pistol didn’t fire the first time; some maintained that the pan had probably been clogged, others were saying in whispers that the gunpowder was damp the first time and that Vulich had poured some fresh powder into it afterward. But I claimed that the latter suggestion was unfounded, because I hadn’t taken my eyes from the pistol once.

“You are lucky in gambling,” I said to Vulich.

“For the first time since I was born,” he replied, smiling with self-satisfaction. “This is better than faro[3] and stuss.”[4]

“And a little more dangerous, too.”

“What’s this? Are you starting to believe in predestination?”

“I believe in it; but I don’t understand why I was so certain that you would die today…”

And the man, who had aimed so coolly at his own forehead not long ago, now suddenly blushed and became embarrassed.

“Enough now!” he said, standing up. “Our wager has been settled, and now your observations, I think, are inappropriate…” He took his hat and walked out. This seemed strange to me—and for good reason!

Soon everyone dispersed to their houses, variously talking about Vulich’s caprice and, probably, unanimously calling me an egoist since I had made a wager with a man who wanted to shoot himself. As if, without me, he wouldn’t have found a convenient occasion!

I was returning home along the empty lanes of the stanitsa; the moon, full and red, like the glow of a fire, was beginning to show itself from behind the jagged horizon of houses. The stars calmly shone in the dark-blue vault of the sky, and I was amused to remember that there were once very sage people who thought that heavenly bodies took part in our insignificant arguments over little tufts of earth or over various invented rights…! And what happened? These lamps which were lit, in their opinion in order to illuminate their battles and victories, still burn with their original brilliance, while their own passions and hopes were extinguished long ago along with their very selves, like small fires lit at the edge of a wood by a careless wanderer! And then what force of will gave them the conviction that the whole sky, with its innumerable population, was watching them with constant concern, mute though it may have been!… And we, their pitiful descendants, wandering the earth without conviction or pride, without pleasure or fear, but with that involuntary dread that grips the heart at the thought of an inescapable end—we are no longer able to be great martyrs, not for the good of mankind, nor even for the sake of our own happiness, because we know it is impossible. And we shift indifferently from one doubt to another, just as our ancestors rushed from one delusion to the next, but without having, as they did, either hope or even that indeterminate but real pleasure that meets the soul in every struggle with people or fate…

Many similar such thoughts passed through my mind, and I didn’t suppress them because I don’t like to dwell on any sort of abstract thought. Where would that lead me?… In my early youth I was a dreamer, I loved to cherish gloomy and iridescent images in turn, which my restless and thirsty imagination painted for me. But what did this leave me with? Only fatigue, like that which comes after a nocturnal battle with a specter, and dim recollections, filled with regret. In this pointless struggle I exhausted both the fire of my soul and the constancy of my will, both necessary for a real life. I then set about living this life, having survived it already in my thoughts, and I became bored and repulsed, like a man who is reading a stupid imitation of a book with which he has long been familiar.

The incidents of the evening had made a rather deep impression on me and agitated my nerves. I do not know whether now I do indeed believe in predestination or not, but I firmly believed in it that night. The proof was striking, and despite the fact that I had mocked our ancestors and their obliging astrology, I had fallen involuntarily into their trap but stopped myself from following this dangerous path just in time. And having the rule of never rejecting anything absolutely, and never believing in anything blindly, I threw out metaphysics and started to look beneath my feet. Such precaution was very apt. I nearly fell, stumbling on something fat and soft, but by all appearances, not living. I stooped—the moon was shining directly onto the road—and what was it? In front of me lay a swine, cleaved in half by a saber… I had barely managed to examine it when I heard the noise of footsteps. Two Cossacks were running from the alley; one walked up to me and asked if I had seen a drunk Cossack chasing a swine. I declared to them that I had not met said Cossack and pointed to the unfortunate victim of his frenzied bravery.

“What a scoundrel!” said the second Cossack. “When he drinks too much chikhir,[5] then he’s off hacking to pieces everything that he sees. Let’s go after him, Yeremeich, we must tie him up, otherwise…”

They went off, and I continued on my path with great care and happily made it to my quarters at last.

I stayed with an old uryadnik,[6] whom I loved for his good morals, and especially for his pretty daughter, Nastya.

She was waiting for me at the wicket gate as usual, wrapped in a fur coat. The moon lit up her lovely lips, which had turned a little blue from the cold of the night. Having recognized me, she smiled, but I wasn’t in the mood. “Good night, Nastya,” I said, walking past. She wanted to say something in reply but simply sighed.

I closed the door to my room behind me and lit the candle and fell onto my bed. But slumber made me wait for it longer than usual. The east was already paling when I fell asleep, but apparently it was written in the skies that I wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep. At four o’clock in the morning, two fists knocked on my window. I jumped up. “What is it?”

“Get up! Get dressed!” various voices cried to me. I quickly dressed and went out. “Do you know what has happened?” three officers asked me in unison, coming for me. They were as pale as death.

“What?”

“Vulich has been killed.”

I turned to stone.

“Yes, killed,” they continued. “Let’s go, quickly.”

“Where to?!”

“You’ll find out on the way…”

We went off. They told me all that had happened, adding remarks about the strange predestination that had saved him from inevitable death half an hour before his death. Vulich had been walking alone along a dark street; the drunk Cossack who had cleaved the swine galloped at him and might have passed him by without noticing Vulich had the latter not stopped and said:

“Brother, whom are you looking for?”

“You!” replied the Cossack, striking him with his saber, slicing him from the shoulder almost to the heart… The two Cossacks I encountered, who had been tracking the murderer, had appeared just then; they picked up the wounded man, but he was already at his final breath, saying, “He was right!” I alone understood the dark meaning of these words. They referred to me. I had involuntarily predicted his poor fate. My instinct had not fooled me. I had correctly read the stamp of near demise in his altered face.

The murderer had locked himself in an empty hut at the end of the stanitsa. We went there. A mass of women were weeping while running in the same direction. From time to time a tardy Cossack galloped out onto the street, hurriedly fastening his dagger to his belt, and outstripping us at a gallop.

The turmoil was terrible.

At long last we arrived. We watched: a crowd stood around the peasant house, the doors and shutters of which were locked from the inside. Officers and Cossacks talked heatedly among themselves. The women were wailing, condemning and reckoning. My eyes were cast on to an old woman among them, whose conspicuous face was expressing mad despair. She was sitting on a thick log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and supporting her head with her hands: it was the mother of the murderer. Her lips stirred from time to time. Were they whispering a curse or a prayer?

In the meantime, something needed to be resolved, and the criminal needed to be captured. No one, however, dared to cast himself forward. I walked up to the window and looked through a chink in the shutters. He lay on the floor, pale, holding a pistol in his right hand. His bloodied saber lay next to him. His expressive eyes were rolling around in a frightening way. Now and then he flinched and grabbed hold of his head, as if indistinctly remembering yesterday’s events. I didn’t read any significant resolution in this agitated gaze and said to the major that it was pointless of him not to order the Cossacks to break down the door and rush in because it would be better done now than later when he had completely come to his senses.

At this time, old Esaul walked up to the door and called him by name; the latter responded.

“You have sinned, brother Efimych,” said Esaul, “and there’s nothing to be done—give yourself up!”

“I will not give up!” answered the Cossack.

“Fear God. After all, you are not an accursed Chechen, but an honest Christian. And well, if your sin has led you astray, then there is nothing to be done—you won’t avoid your fate!”

“I will not give up!” the Cossack cried threateningly, and the cracking of his cocking-piece was audible.

“Hey, auntie,” said Esaul to the old woman, “talk to your boy, perhaps he will listen to you… All this will only anger God. Yes, and see here, these men have waited two hours already.”

The old woman looked at him intently and shook her head.

“Vasily Petrovich,” said Esaul, walking up to the major. “He won’t give himself up—I know him. But if we break down the door, then many of our people will be killed. Would it not be better to order him shot? There is a big chink in the shutters.”

At that minute a strange thought flashed through my head: like Vulich, I was thinking of testing fate.

“Wait,” I said to the major, “I will get him alive.”

Having ordered Esaul to engage him in conversation and placing three Cossacks at the door, ready to beat it down and rush to my aid at the given signal, I walked around the peasant house and approached the fateful window. My heart was pounding.

“Oh, you, accursed man!” cried Esaul. “What are you doing—mocking us, are you? Or do you think we won’t get the better of you?”

He started knocking on the door with all his might. Having put my eye to the chink in the shutter, I followed the movements of the Cossack, who wasn’t expecting an attack from this side. And suddenly I ripped off the shutter and flung myself headfirst through the window. A shot rang out just above my ear; the bullet tore my epaulet. But the smoke that had filled the room prevented my opponent from finding his saber, which was lying next to him. I grabbed him by the arm; the Cossacks burst in, and three minutes hadn’t passed before the criminal was tied up and led off under guard. The people walked off. The officers congratulated me—and for good reason!

After all this, how could one not become a fatalist? But who knows for sure if he is convinced of something or not?… And how often do we take a deception of feelings or a blunder of common sense for a conviction!

I love to doubt everything: this inclination of mind doesn’t hinder the decisiveness of a character—on the contrary, as far as I am concerned, I am always braver going forward when I don’t know what to expect. After all, nothing can happen that is worse than death—and you can’t avoid death!

Having returned to the fortress, I recounted to Maxim Maximych all that had happened to me and all that I had witnessed, and wanted to know his opinion on the count of predestination. At first he didn’t understand the word, but I explained it to him as best I could and then he said significantly, shaking his head:

“Yes, sir. Of course. Quite a wise old joke!… But those Asian cocking-pieces frequently misfire if they are badly greased or if you haven’t pressed hard enough with your finger. I admit I don’t much like Chechen rifles, either. They are somehow unbecoming to our brothers. The butt is small—look into them and you burn your nose! That said, their sabers demand respect, pure and simple!”

Then, having thought for a while, he added:

“Yes, I have pity for the wretch… The devil possessed him to talk to a drunk that night! But, clearly, it had been written for him in the sky at his birth…!”

I couldn’t get any more out of him; he doesn’t like metaphysical debates in general.