Demons - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Fyodor Dostoevsky (ч. 11)

3: Someone Else's Sins

About a week went by, and the affair began to expand itself somewhat.

I will observe in passing that I endured much anguish during this unfortunate week, staying almost constantly at the side of my poor matchmade friend in the quality of his closest confidant. It was mainly shame that oppressed him, though during this week we did not see anyone and sat by ourselves all the time; but he was ashamed even before me, and to such an extent that the more he revealed to me, the more vexed he was with me for it. In his insecurity he suspected that everyone already knew everything, all over town, and was afraid to show himself not only at the club but in his own circle as well. Even for a stroll, to get the necessary exercise, he would go out only at full dusk, when it was already quite dark.

A week went by, and he still did not know whether he was engaged or not, and had no way of finding out for certain, however much he tried. He still had not seen the fiancée; did not even know if she was his fiancée; did not even know if there was anything serious in it all! Varvara Petrovna for some reason decidedly did not want to admit him to the house. She replied to one of his first letters (and he wrote her a great many) with a direct request that he spare her any relations with him for the time being, because she was busy, and as she herself had much of the greatest importance to tell him, she was deliberately waiting for a freer moment than the present, and would in time let him know herself when he could come to her. And she vowed to send his letters back unopened, because it was all "just sheer indulgence." I myself read this note; he showed it to me.

And yet all of it, all this rudeness and uncertainty, was nothing compared with his chief care. This care tormented him greatly, relentlessly; he kept losing weight over it, and his spirits declined. It was something he was ashamed of most of all, and which he by no means wished to speak about even with me; on the contrary, whenever the occasion arose, he lied and hedged before me like a little boy; and yet he himself would send for me every day, he was unable to be without me even for two hours, needing me like water or air.

Such behavior wounded my pride somewhat. Needless to say, I had long since guessed this chief secret for myself and seen through it all. According to my deepest conviction then, the revealing of this secret, this chief care of Stepan Trofimovich's, would not have added to his credit, and therefore, being still a young man, I was somewhat indignant at the coarseness of his feelings and the ugliness of some of his suspicions. In the heat of passion—and, I confess, finding it boring to be a confidant—I perhaps blamed him too much. In my cruelty, I tried to obtain a full confession from him, though, by the way, I did allow that to confess certain things might prove embarrassing. He, too, understood me thoroughly; that is, he clearly saw that I understood him thoroughly, and that I was even angry with him, and was himself angry with me for being angry with him and for understanding him thoroughly. Perhaps my irritation was petty and stupid; but shared isolation is sometimes extremely damaging to true friendship. From a certain angle he understood some aspects of his position correctly, and even defined it quite subtly in those points about which he did not find it necessary to be secretive.

"Oh, is this how she was then?" he would sometimes let slip about Varvara Petrovna. "Is she the same woman she once was, when she and I used to talk ... Do you know that she was still able to talk then? Can you believe that she had thoughts then, her own thoughts! That's all changed now! She says it was all just the same old blather! She despises the former times... She's become some sort of steward, an economist, a hard person, and she's angry all the time..."

"What is there for her to be angry about, since you've done what she demanded?" I objected to him.

He gave me a subtle look.

"Cher ami, if I hadn't consented she would have been terribly angry, ter-ri-bly! But still less than she is now that I have consented."

He remained pleased with this phrase of his, and we finished a little bottle that evening. But it was only momentary; the next day he was more terrible and morose than ever.

But I was vexed with him most of all because he could not even bring himself to go and pay the necessary call on the just-arrived Drozdovs, to renew the acquaintance, which it was heard they themselves desired, for they had already asked about him, and which grieved him daily. He spoke of Lizaveta Nikolaevna with a sort of rapture which was incomprehensible to me. No doubt he remembered in her the child he had once loved so much; but, besides that, for some unknown reason he fancied that near her he would at once find relief from all his present torments and would even resolve his most important doubts. He hoped to find some extraordinary being in Lizaveta Nikolaevna. And yet he would not go to her, though he made ready to do so every day. The main thing was that at the time I myself wanted terribly to be introduced and recommended to her, for which I had only Stepan Trofimovich to count on. I had been greatly impressed then by my frequent meetings with her—in the street, of course, when she went for an outing on horseback, dressed in a riding habit and mounted on a beautiful horse, accompanied by her so-called relative, a handsome officer, the late General Drozdov's nephew. My blindness lasted only a moment, and soon afterwards I understood all the impossibility of my dream—but it really did exist, if only for a moment, and therefore it may be imagined how indignant I occasionally became with my poor friend at that time for his persistent seclusion.

Our group was officially notified from the very beginning that Stepan Trofimovich would not be receiving for a while and asked to be left in perfect peace. He insisted on a circular notification, though I advised against it. And so I went around, at his request, and gave out to everyone that Varvara Petrovna had charged our "old man" (as we all referred to Stepan Trofimovich among ourselves) with some urgent work putting in order some correspondence from several years past; that he had locked himself in, and I was helping him, and so on and so forth. Only I had no time to go to Liputin and kept postponing it—or, rather, I was afraid to go. I knew beforehand that he would not believe a single word I said, would certainly imagine that there was some secret which we wanted to keep strictly hidden from him alone, and as soon as I left him would at once scuttle off inquiring and gossiping all over town. It so happened that while I was picturing all this to myself, I accidentally ran into him in the street. It turned out that he had already learned everything from the friends I had just notified. But, strangely, he was not only not curious, and asked nothing about Stepan Trofimovich, but, on the contrary, he himself interrupted me when I tried to apologize for not coming to him sooner, and skipped at once to another subject. True, he had stored up a lot to say; he was in an extremely excited state of mind, and was glad to have caught me as a listener. He began talking about town news, about the arrival of the governor's wife "with her new conversations," the opposition that had already formed in the club, how everyone was shouting about the new ideas, and how well it suited them all, and so on and so forth. He talked for nearly a quarter of an hour, and was so amusing that I was unable to tear myself away. Though I could not stand him, I confess that he had a gift for making one listen to him, especially when he was very angry about something. The man was, in my opinion, a natural-born spy. He knew at any moment all the latest news and all the innermost secrets of our town, mostly of the nasty sort, and one marveled at the degree to which he took things to heart that sometimes did not concern him at all. I always thought that the main feature of his character was envy. When, that same evening, I told Stepan Trofimovich about my morning meeting with Liputin and about our conversation, to my surprise he became extremely agitated and asked me a wild question: "Does Liputin know or not?" I started proving to him that he could not possibly have found out so soon, and had no one to find out from; but Stepan Trofimovich held his own. "Believe it or not, then," he finally concluded unexpectedly, "but I am convinced that he not only knows all about our position in all its details, but also knows something beyond that, something you and I do not know yet, and perhaps will never know, or will find out only when it's already too late, when there will be no turning back! ..." I said nothing, but these words hinted at a lot. After that we did not so much as mention Liputin for five days; it was clear to me that Stepan Trofimovich very much regretted having displayed such suspicions before me and having talked too much.

One morning—that is, on the seventh or eighth day after Stepan Trofimovich had consented to become engaged—at about eleven o'clock, when I was rushing as usual to my sorrowful friend, I had an adventure on the way.

I met Karmazinov, the "great writer," as Liputin styled him.^[46] I had been reading Karmazinov since childhood. His novellas and stories were known to the whole of the previous generation and even to ours; as for me, I reveled in them; they were the delight of my adolescence and youth. Later I grew somewhat cold to his pen; the tendentious novellas he had been writing lately I liked less than his first, original creations, in which there was so much ingenuous poetry; and his most recent works I even did not like at all.

Generally speaking, if I dare express my own opinion in such a ticklish matter, all these gentlemen talents of the average sort, who are usually taken almost for geniuses in their lifetime, not only vanish from people's memory almost without a trace and somehow suddenly when they die, but it happens that even in their lifetime, as soon as a new generation grows up to replace the one in whose time they were active—they are forgotten and scorned by everyone inconceivably quickly. This happens somehow suddenly with us, like a change of sets in the theater. Oh, it is quite another matter than with the Pushkins, Gogols, Molières, Voltaires,^[47] with all these figures who came to speak their new word! It is also true that these gentlemen talents of the average sort, in the decline of their venerable age, usually write themselves out in a most pathetic way, without even noticing it at all. Not infrequently it turns out that a writer to whom an extreme profundity of ideas had long been attributed, and from whom an extreme and serious influence upon the movement of society was expected, in the end displays such thinness and puniness in his basic little idea that no one is even sorry that he has managed to write himself out so quickly. But the old graybeards do not notice this and get angry. Their vanity, precisely towards the end of their career, sometimes takes on proportions worthy of wonder. God knows who they begin to think they are—gods, at the least. It was said of Karmazinov that he valued his connections with influential people and with higher society almost more than his soul. It was said that he would meet you, show you kindness, seduce you, charm you with his ingenuousness, especially if he needed you for some reason, and most certainly if you had been recommended to him beforehand. But at the first prince, at the first countess, at the first person he was in fear of, he would regard it as his sacred duty to forget you with the most insulting disdain, like a speck, like a fly, then and there, even before you had time to leave him; he seriously considered it the most lofty and beautiful tone. In spite of his complete self-possession and perfect knowledge of good manners, he was said to be so vain, to the point of such hysterics, that he was simply unable to conceal his authorial petulance, even in those social circles where there was little interest in literature. And if someone chanced to confound him with their indifference, he would be morbidly offended and seek to revenge himself.

About a year before, I had read an article of his in a magazine, written with a terrible pretension to the most naïve poetry and, at the same time, to psychology. He described the wreck of a steamer somewhere on the English coast, of which he himself had been a witness and had seen how the perishing were being saved and the drowned dragged out. The whole article, quite a long and verbose one, was written with the sole purpose of self-display. One could simply read it between the lines: "Pay attention to me, look at how I was in those moments. What do you need the sea, the storm, the rocks, the splintered planks of the ship for? I've described it all well enough for you with my mighty pen. Why look at this drowned woman with her dead baby in her dead arms? Better look at me, at how I could not bear the sight and turned away. Here I am turning my back; here I am horrified and unable to look again; I've shut my eyes—interesting, is it not?" I told Stepan Trofimovich my opinion of Karmazinov's article, and he agreed with me.

When rumors began to spread recently that Karmazinov was coming, I, of course, wanted terribly to see him and, if possible, to make his acquaintance. I knew that I could do so through Stepan Trofimovich; they had been friends once upon a time. And now I suddenly met him at an intersection. I recognized him at once; he had already been pointed out to me three days earlier as he rode past in a carriage with the governor's wife.

He was quite a short, prim little old man, though no more than fifty-five, with a rather red-cheeked little face, with thick gray locks emerging from under his round cylindrical hat and curling behind his clean, pink little ears. His clean little face was not exactly handsome, with its thin, long, slyly compressed lips, its somewhat fleshy nose, and its sharp, intelligent little eyes. He was dressed somehow shabbily, with a sort of cloak thrown over his shoulders such as would have been worn at that season somewhere in Switzerland, say, or the north of Italy. But at least all the minor accessories of his costume—the little cuff links, collar, studs, the tortoiseshell lorgnette on its narrow black ribbon, the little signet ring—were most assuredly just as they are with people of irreproachably good tone. I am sure that in summer he certainly went around in bright prunella bootikins with mother-of-pearl buttons at the side. When we ran into each other, he had stopped for a moment at the street corner and was looking around with attention. Noticing that I was looking at him curiously, he asked me in a honeyed, though somewhat shrill, little voice:

"Would you be so good as to tell me the shortest way to Bykov Street?"

"Bykov Street? But it's here, right here," I cried out in unusual excitement. "Keep straight on this way, then second turn to the left."

"I am much obliged to you."

Cursed be that moment: I seemed to have grown timid and looked fawning! He instantly noticed everything, and, of course, understood everything at once—that is, understood that I already knew who he was, that I had read him and revered him since childhood, and that I had just grown timid and looked fawning. He smiled, nodded his head once more, and went straight on as I had directed him. I do not know why I turned to follow him; I do not know why I went running alongside him for about ten paces. He suddenly stopped again.

"And might you be able to tell me where the nearest cabstand is located?" he shouted to me again.

A nasty shout; a nasty voice!

"Cabstand? The nearest cabstand ... is by the cathedral, that's where they always stand"—and I almost turned and ran to fetch a cab. I suspect that that was precisely what he expected of me. Of course, I came to my senses at once and stopped, but he had made good note of my movement and went on watching me with the same nasty smile. What happened then I shall never forget.

He suddenly dropped a tiny satchel that he was holding in his left hand. It was not a satchel, by the way, but a sort of little box, or rather a sort of briefcase, or, better still, a little reticule such as ladies once used to carry, but I do not know what it was, I only know that it seems I rushed to pick it up.

I am perfectly convinced that I did not pick it up, but my initial movement was unquestionable; it was too late to conceal it, and I blushed like a fool. The cunning fellow at once derived all that could be derived from this circumstance.

"Don't trouble, I'll do it myself," he said charmingly—that is, once he had fully noted that I was not going to pick up his reticule—picked it up as if forestalling me, nodded his head once more, and went on his way, having made a fool of me. It was the same as if I had picked it up myself. For about five minutes I considered myself disgraced utterly and forever; but coming up to Stepan Trofimovich's house, I suddenly burst out laughing. The encounter seemed so funny to me that I immediately decided to amuse Stepan Trofimovich by telling him about it and even acting out the whole scene.

III

But this time, to my surprise, I found him in an extreme change. True, he fell upon me with a sort of greediness as soon as I entered, and began listening to me, but with such a lost look that at first he appeared not to understand what I was saying. But as soon as I uttered the name of Karmazinov, he suddenly flew into a complete frenzy.

"Don't tell me, don't utter!" he exclaimed, all but in a rage. "Here, here, look, read! read!"

He pulled open the drawer and threw onto the table three small scraps of paper, hastily written on in pencil, all of them from Varvara Petrovna. The first note was from two days ago, the second from yesterday, and the last had come today, just an hour earlier; they were all of the most vapid content, to do with Karmazinov, betraying Varvara Petrovna's vain and ambitious concern for fear that Karmazinov might forget to call on her. Here is the first one, from two days ago (there had probably also been one from three days ago, and perhaps one from four days ago):

If he finally honors you today, not a word about me, I beg you. Not the slightest hint. No mention, no reminder.

V.S.

And yesterday's:

If he finally decides to call on you this morning, I think the most noble thing would be not to receive him at all. That is my opinion, I don't know what yours is.

V.S.

And today's, the latest:

I'm sure you have a whole heap of litter there and clouds of tobacco smoke. I'll send you Marya and Fomushka; they'll tidy up in half an hour. And don't get in their way, just sit in the kitchen while they're tidying up. I'm sending you a Bukhara rug and two Chinese jars—I've long been meaning to give them to you—and also my Teniers^[48] (for a time). You can put the vases on the windowsill and hang the Teniers to the right above Goethe's portrait, it's a more conspicuous place and always light in the morning. If he finally appears, receive him with refined courtesy, but try to talk about trifles, about something learned, and make it seem as if you parted only yesterday. Not a word about me. Perhaps I'll stop by for a look this evening.

V.S. P.S. If he doesn't come today, he won't come at all.

I read and was surprised that he was so agitated over such trifles. Glancing at him questioningly, I suddenly noticed that he had had time, while I was reading, to change his usual white tie for a red one. His hat and stick lay on the table. He was pale, and his hands were even trembling.

"I won't hear of her worries!" he cried out frenziedly, in response to my questioning glance. "Je m'en fiche!^[xxxiii] She has the heart to worry about Karmazinov, and yet she doesn't answer my letters! Here, here is a letter she returned to me unopened yesterday, here on the table, under the book, under L'Homme qui rit.^[49] What do I care if she's grieving over Ni-ko-lenka! Je m'en fiche et je proclame ma liberté. Au diable le Karmazinoff! Au diable la Lembke!^[xxxiv] I put the vases away in the front hall, and Teniers into the chest, and demanded that she receive me at once. Do you hear: demanded! I sent her an identical scrap of paper, in pencil, unsealed, through Nastasya, and I am waiting. I want Darya Pavlovna herself to tell me with her own lips, and before the face of heaven, or at least before you. Vous me seconderez, n 'est-ce pas, comme ami et témoin.^[xxxv] I do not want to blush, I do not want to lie, I do not want secrets, I will not allow secrets in this matter! Let them confess everything to me sincerely, guilelessly, nobly, and then... then perhaps I'll surprise the whole generation with my magnanimity! ... Am I a scoundrel or not, my dear sir?" he concluded suddenly, giving me a menacing look, as though it were I who considered him a scoundrel.

I suggested that he drink some water; I had never before seen him like this. All the while he was speaking, he kept running from one corner of the room to the other, but suddenly he stopped before me in some extraordinary attitude.

"Can you really think," he began again, with morbid haughtiness, looking me up and down, "can you really suppose that I, Stepan Verkhovensky, will not find moral strength enough to take my box— my beggar's box—and, heaving it onto my weak shoulders, go out the gate and disappear from here forever, if honor and the great principle of independence demand? This is not the first time that Stepan Verkhovensky will have to repel despotism with magnanimity, be it only the despotism of a crazy woman—that is, the most offensive and cruel despotism that can possibly exist in the world, despite the fact that you now permit yourself, it seems, to smile at my words, my dear sir! Oh, you do not believe that I can find enough magnanimity in myself to be able to end my life as a tutor in some merchant's house, or die of hunger in a ditch! Answer me, answer me at once: do you believe it, or do you not?"

But I purposely held my tongue. I even pretended that I did not dare to offend him with a negative answer, but could not answer positively either. There was something in all this irritation that decidedly offended me, and not personally—oh, no! But... I will explain myself later.

He even turned pale.

"Perhaps you're bored with me, G——v" (that is my last name), "and would prefer... not to come to me at all?" he said, in that tone of pale composure that usually precedes some extraordinary explosion. I jumped up in fright; at the same moment, Nastasya walked in and silently handed Stepan Trofimovich a piece of paper with something written on it in pencil. He glanced at it and threw it over to me. On the piece of paper, in Varvara Petrovna's hand, were written just two words: "Stay home."

Stepan Trofimovich silently grabbed his hat and stick and went quickly to the door; I followed him mechanically. Suddenly voices and the sound of someone's rapid footsteps came from the hallway. He stopped as if thunderstruck.

"That's Liputin, and I am a lost man!" he whispered, seizing my arm.

At the same moment, Liputin entered the room.

Why he should be a lost man as the result of Liputin I did not know, nor did I attach much importance to his words; I ascribed it all to nerves. But even so his fright was extraordinary, and I decided to watch closely.

By his look alone the entering Liputin already announced that this time he had a special right to enter, in spite of all prohibitions. He led in an unknown gentleman who must have been a newcomer to town. In reply to the senseless stare of the dumbfounded Stepan Trofimovich, he at once loudly proclaimed:

"I bring you a visitor, and a special one! I make so bold as to break in upon your seclusion. Mr. Kirillov, a remarkable structural engineer. And the main thing is that he knows your boy, the much respected Pyotr Stepanovich; very closely, sir; and he has an errand from him. He has just arrived, if you please."

"You added that about the errand," the visitor remarked curtly, "there was never any errand, but it's true I know Verkhovensky. I left him in Kh—— province, ten days before here."

Stepan Trofimovich mechanically held out his hand and pointed to the seats; he looked at me, looked at Liputin, and suddenly, as if coming to his senses, hastened to sit down, still holding his hat and stick without noticing it.

"Hah, but you were about to go out! And I was told that your studies had left you quite indisposed."

"Yes, I'm ill, I was just intending to go for a walk, I..." Stepan Trofimovich stopped, quickly threw his hat and stick on the sofa, and—blushed.

Meanwhile, I made a hurried examination of the visitor. He was still a young man, about twenty-seven years old, decently dressed, trim and lean, dark-haired, with a pale face of a somewhat muddy tinge and black, lusterless eyes. He seemed somewhat pensive and absentminded, spoke abruptly and somehow ungrammatically, somehow strangely shuffling his words, and became confused when he had to put together a longer phrase. Liputin noticed very well how extremely frightened Stepan Trofimovich was, and this apparently pleased him. He sat on a wicker chair, which he pulled almost into the middle of the room so as to be at an equal distance from the host and the visitor, who had installed themselves facing each other on two opposing sofas. His sharp eyes darted curiously into every corner.

"I. . . haven't seen Petrusha for a long time now... Did you meet abroad?" Stepan Trofimovich barely muttered to the visitor.

"Both here and abroad."

"Alexei Nilych himself has just returned from abroad, after a four-year absence," Liputin picked up. "He went to advance himself in his profession, and came here having reasons to hope he could obtain a position for the building of our railroad bridge, and is now awaiting an answer. He knows Mrs. Drozdov and Lizaveta Nikolaevna through Pyotr Stepanovich."

The engineer sat looking ruffled and listened with awkward impatience. It seemed to me that he was angry about something.

"He knows Nikolai Vsevolodovich, too, sir."

"You know Nikolai Vsevolodovich, too?" Stepan Trofimovich inquired.

"Him, too."

"I ... I haven't seen Petrusha for an extremely long time, and... I find I have so little right to be called a father... c'est le mot;^[xxxvi] I... how did you leave him?"

"I just left him... he'll be coming himself," Mr. Kirillov again hastened to get off. He was decidedly angry.

"He'll be coming! At last I... you see, I haven't seen Petrusha for so very long!" Stepan Trofimovich had gotten mired in this phrase. "I'm now awaiting my poor boy, before whom... oh, before whom I am so guilty! That is, as a matter of fact, I mean to say, when I left him then in Petersburg, I ... in short, I regarded him as nothing, quelque chose dans ce genre,^[xxxvii] A nervous boy, you know, very sensitive and ... fearful. Before going to sleep, he'd bow to the ground and make a cross over his pillow, so as not to die in the night... je m'en souviens. Enfin,^[xxxviii] no sense of refinement whatsoever, that is, of anything lofty, essential, of any germ of a future idea. . . c'était comme un petit idiot.^[xxxix] However, I seem to be confused myself, excuse me, I... you have caught me ..."

"You're serious about him crossing his pillow?" the engineer suddenly inquired with some special curiosity.

"Yes, he crossed..."

"No, never mind. Go on."

Stepan Trofimovich looked questioningly at Liputin.

"I thank you very much for your visit, but, I confess, right now I'm ... unable... However, allow me to ask, where are you staying?"

"In Bogoyavlensky Street, at Filippov's house."

"Ah, the same place where Shatov lives," I remarked involuntarily.

"Precisely the same house," Liputin exclaimed, "only Shatov is staying upstairs in the garret, and he is downstairs, at Captain Lebyadkin's. He also knows Shatov, and he knows Shatov's wife. He met her very closely abroad."

"Comment!^[xl] Do you really know something about this unfortunate marriage de ce pauvre ami,^[xli] and this woman?" Stepan Trofimovich exclaimed suddenly, carried away by emotion. "You are the first one I've met who knows her personally; and if only..."

"What nonsense!" the engineer snapped, blushing all over. "How you add on, Liputin! Now how did I see Shatov's wife; just once far off, not close at all... Shatov I know. Why do you add on various things?"

He turned sharply on the sofa, seized his hat, then put it down again, and, having settled himself as before, fixed his black and now flashing eyes on Stepan Trofimovich with some sort of defiance. I was quite unable to understand such strange irritability.

"Excuse me," Stepan Trofimovich remarked imposingly, "I understand that this may be a most delicate matter..."

"There's no most delicate matter here, and it's even shameful, and I shouted 'nonsense' not at you but at Liputin, because he adds on. Excuse me if you took it to your name. I know Shatov, but I don't know his wife at all... not at all!"

"I understand, I understand, and if I insisted, it was only because I love our poor friend, notre irascible ami,^[xlii] very much, and have always taken an interest ... In my opinion, the man changed his former, perhaps too youthful, but still correct ideas too abruptly. And now he shouts various things about notre sainte Russie,^[xliii] so much so that I've long attributed this break in his organism, for I do not want to call it anything else, to some strong family shock—namely, to his unsuccessful marriage. I, who have come to know my poor Russia like my own two fingers, and have given my whole life to the Russian people, can assure you that he does not know the Russian people,^[50] and what's more..."

"I don't know the Russian people either, and... there's no time to study!" the engineer snapped again, and again turned sharply on the sofa. Stepan Trofimovich broke off in the middle of his speech.

"He's studying, he's studying," Liputin picked up, "he's already begun studying, and is composing a most curious article on the reasons for the increasing number of suicides in Russia and generally on the reasons for the increase or restriction of the spread of suicides in society. He's reached some surprising results."

The engineer became terribly agitated.

"You have no right about that," he began to mutter angrily. "Not an article. No such foolishness. I asked you confidentially, quite by chance. Not an article at all; I don't publish, and you have no right..."

Liputin was obviously enjoying himself.

"I beg your pardon, perhaps I was mistaken in calling your literary work an article. He only collects observations, and as for the essence of the question, or its moral side, so to speak, he doesn't touch on that at all, he even rejects morality itself outright, and holds to the newest principle of universal destruction for the sake of good final goals. He's already demanding more than a hundred million heads in order to establish common sense in Europe, much more than was demanded at the last peace congress. In this sense, Alexei Nilych goes further than anyone."

The engineer listened with a contemptuous and pale smile. For half a minute or so everyone was silent.

"This is all stupid, Liputin," Mr. Kirillov said finally, with a certain dignity. "If I accidentally told you a few points, and you picked them up, it's as you like. But you have no right, because I never tell anyone. I despise about telling ... If one has convictions, it's clear to me ... and you've acted stupidly. I don't reason about these points that are done with. I can't stand reasoning. I never want to reason..."

"And perhaps it's quite wonderful that you don't," Stepan Trofimovich could not help saying.

"I excuse myself to you, but I am not angry with anyone here," the visitor continued in an ardent patter. "For four years I've seen little of people ... For four years I've spoken little and tried to meet no one, for my own purposes, which don't matter, for four years. Liputin found out and laughs. I understand and do not regard. I'm not easy to offend, it's just vexing because of his liberty. And if I don't explain thoughts with you," he concluded unexpectedly, looking around at us with a firm look, "it is not at all as I'm afraid of being denounced to the government, no, not that; please do not think any trifles in that sense..."

None of us made any reply to these words, we merely exchanged glances. Even Liputin himself forgot to titter.

"Gentlemen, I'm very sorry," Stepan Trofimovich rose from the sofa, "but I'm feeling unwell and upset. Excuse me."

"Ah, about us leaving," Mr. Kirillov suddenly recollected, seizing his cap. "It's good you said; I'm forgetful."

He stood up and with a simplehearted look went over to Stepan Trofimovich, holding out his hand.

"Sorry you're not well and I came."

"I wish you all success here," Stepan Trofimovich replied, shaking his hand well-wishingly and unhurriedly. "I understand that if you have lived so long abroad, as you say, avoiding people for your own purposes, and—have forgotten Russia, then, of course, whether you will or no, you must look at us dyed-in-the-wool Russians with surprise, and, in the same measure, we at you. Mais cela passera.^[xliv] Only one thing puzzles me: you want to build our bridge, and at the same time you declare yourself for the principle of universal destruction. They'll never let you build our bridge!"

"What? What did you say ... ah, the devil!" Kirillov exclaimed, amazed, and suddenly burst into the most gay and bright laughter. For a moment his face took on a most childlike expression, which I found very becoming to him. Liputin was rubbing his hands, delighted with Stepan Trofimovich's little witticism. Meanwhile, I kept wondering to myself why Stepan Trofimovich was so afraid of Liputin, and why he had cried out, "I am a lost man," when he heard him coming.

We were still standing on the threshold, in the doorway. It was that moment when hosts and guests hasten to exchange their last and most amiable words and then happily part.

"He's so sullen today just because," Liputin suddenly put in as he was leaving the room and, so to speak, on the wing, "just because of some row he had earlier with Captain Lebyadkin over his dear sister. The captain whips that beautiful sister of his, the crazy one, with a quirt, a real Cossack quirt, sir, every day, morning and evening. So Alexei Nilych has even moved to another wing of the house so as to have no part of it. Well, sir, good-bye."

"Sister? Ill? With a quirt?" Stepan Trofimovich cried out, as if he himself had suddenly been lashed with a quirt. "What sister? What Lebyadkin?"

His former fear instantly returned.

"Lebyadkin? He's a retired captain; only he used to call himself a captain junior-grade..."

"Eh, what do I care about his rank! What sister? My God... Lebyadkin, you say? But we had a Lebyadkin..."

"That's the very one, our Lebyadkin—remember, at Virginsky's?"

"But that one was caught with bogus banknotes?"

"And now he's back, since three weeks ago, and under the most peculiar circumstances."

"But he's a scoundrel!"

"What, can't we have any scoundrels around here?" Liputin suddenly grinned, as if he were feeling Stepan Trofimovich all over with his thievish little eyes.

"Ah, my God, I don't mean that... though, by the way, I quite agree with you about the scoundrel, with you precisely. But go on, go on! What did you mean by that?... You must have meant something by that!"

"It's all really such trifles, sir ... that is, this captain, in all likelihood, left us then not from the bogus banknotes, but just so as to find this sister of his, and she was allegedly hiding in some unknown place; well, and now he's brought her, that's the whole story. Why is it you seem so frightened, Stepan Trofimovich? I'm only repeating his drunken babble, anyway; when he's sober he keeps mum about it. He's an irritable man and, shall we say, of military aesthetics, only in bad taste. And this sister is not only mad, but even lame. She supposedly had her honor seduced by somebody, and for that Mr. Lebyadkin has supposedly been taking an annual tribute from the seducer for many years, in reward for a noble offense, so at least it comes out from his babble— but I think it's just drunken talk, sir. He's simply boasting. Such things are handled more cheaply. But that he has money—that is completely correct: a week and a half ago he was walking around without socks, and now I've seen for myself he has hundreds in his hands. His sister has some kind of fits every day, she shrieks, and he 'puts her in order' with a quirt. One has to instill respect into a woman, he says. Only I don't understand how Shatov can go on living near them. Alexei Nilych stayed just three days, he's known them since Petersburg, and now he's living in the wing on account of the disturbance."

"Is this all true?" Stepan Trofimovich turned to the engineer.

"You're babbling too much, Liputin," the latter muttered angrily.

"Mysteries! Secrets! Where did we get so many mysteries and secrets all of a sudden!" Stepan Trofimovich exclaimed, not restraining himself.

The engineer frowned, blushed, heaved his shoulders, and started out of the room.

"Alexei Nilych even snatched away his quirt, sir, broke it, and threw it out the window, and there was a big quarrel," Liputin added.

"What are you babbling for, Liputin, it's stupid, what for?" Alexei Nilych at once turned back again.

"And why conceal out of modesty the noblest impulses of one's soul—your soul, that is, sir, I'm not talking about mine."

"How stupid this is... and quite unnecessary... Lebyadkin is stupid and completely empty—useless for action and... completely harmful. Why do you babble various things? I'm leaving."

"Ah, what a pity!" Liputin exclaimed, with a bright smile. "Otherwise I'd get you to laugh, Stepan Trofimovich, with yet another little anecdote. I even came with that in mind, though anyway you must have heard it yourself. Well, let's wait till next time, Alexei Nilych is in such a hurry... Good-bye, sir. The anecdote is about Varvara Petrovna, she really made me laugh the day before yesterday, she sent for me on purpose, it's really killing! Good-bye, sir."

But here Stepan Trofimovich simply fastened on to him: he seized him by the shoulders, turned him sharply back into the room, and sat him on a chair. Liputin even got scared.

"But it really is, sir!" he began, looking cautiously at Stepan Trofimovich from his chair. "She suddenly sent for me and asked 'confidentially' what I think in my own opinion: is Nikolai Vsevolodovich crazy, or in his right mind? Isn't that surprising?"

"You're out of your mind!" Stepan Trofimovich muttered, and suddenly seemed beside himself: "Liputin, you know perfectly well that you came here only in order to tell me some abomination of that sort and... something worse still!"

I instantly recalled his surmise that Liputin not only knew more about our situation than we did, but even knew something that we ourselves would never know.

"For pity's sake, Stepan Trofimovich!" Liputin muttered, as if terribly frightened, "for pity's sake..."

"Keep still and begin! I beg you, too, Mr. Kirillov, to come back and be present, I beg you! Sit down. And you, Liputin, begin directly, simply... and without any little excuses!"

"If I'd only known you'd be so astounded by it, I wouldn't have begun at all, sir ... But I really did think you already knew everything from Varvara Petrovna herself!"

"You didn't think anything of the kind! Begin, begin, I tell you!"

"Only do me a favor, sit down yourself, or else I'll be sitting and you'll be... running about in front of me all agitated. It will be awkward, sir."

Stepan Trofimovich restrained himself and sank imposingly into an armchair. The engineer sullenly fixed his eyes on the ground. Liputin looked at them with wild delight.

"How shall I begin... you've got me so confused..."

"All of a sudden, the day before yesterday, she sent her servant to me: 'You are requested,' he says, 'to visit tomorrow at twelve o'clock.' Can you imagine? I dropped what I was doing, and yesterday at twelve sharp was there ringing the bell. I'm taken straight to the drawing room; I wait for a minute—she comes in, sits me down, sits down facing me. I sit and just can't believe it; you know how she's always treated me! The lady begins directly, without dodging, in her usual way: 'You remember,' she says, 'that four years ago Nikolai Vsevolodovich, while ill, committed several strange acts, so that the whole town was puzzled until everything became clear. One of these acts concerned you personally. Nikolai Vsevolodovich then came to see you after he recovered and at my request. I am also informed that he had spoken with you several times before. Tell me, frankly and straightforwardly, how did you...' (here she hesitated a little) 'how did you find Nikolai Vsevolodovich then ... how did you regard him generally... what opinion were you able to form of him... and do you have of him now?..."

"Here she really hesitated, so that she even stopped for a whole minute and suddenly blushed. I got scared. She begins again, not so much in a moving tone—that wouldn't be like her—but so imposingly:

“‘I wish you,' she says, 'to understand me fully and correctly,' she says. 'I sent for you now because I consider you a perspicacious and sharp-witted man, capable of forming an accurate observation' (such compliments!). 'You,' she says, 'will also understand, of course, that this is a mother speaking to you... Nikolai Vsevolodovich has experienced certain misfortunes and many upheavals in his life. All this,' she says, 'could influence his frame of mind. Of course,' she says, 'I am not talking about madness—that could never be!' (spoken firmly and with pride). 'But there could be something strange, peculiar, a certain turn of thought, an inclination towards certain special views' (these are all her exact words, and I marveled, Stepan Trofimovich, at how exactly Varvara Petrovna is able to explain the matter. A lady of high intelligence!). 'I myself, at least,' she says, 'have noticed a certain constant restlessness in him, and an urge towards peculiar inclinations. But I am a mother, while you are an outsider and are therefore capable, given your intelligence, of forming a more independent opinion. I implore you, finally' (uttered just like that: 'I implore'), 'to tell me the whole truth, without any contortions, and if at the same time you give me your promise never to forget in future that I have spoken with you confidentially, you may expect of me a complete and henceforth permanent readiness to show my gratitude at every opportunity.' Well, what do you think of that, sir!"

"You... you astound me so..." Stepan Trofimovich stammered, "that I don't believe you..."

"No, but observe, observe," Liputin picked up, as if he had not even heard Stepan Trofimovich, "how great the trouble and worry must be, if such a question is addressed from such a height to such a man as me, and if she stoops so far as to beg for secrecy. What can it be, sir? Has she received some unexpected news about Nikolai Vsevolodovich?"

"I don't know... any news... it's some days since I've seen... but I must observe to you..." Stepan Trofimovich went on stammering, apparently barely able to master his thoughts, "but I must observe to you, Liputin, that if this was told you confidentially, and now, in front of everyone, you..."

"Absolutely confidentially! God strike me dead if I... And so what if now... what of it, sir? Are we strangers here, even taking Alexei Nilych?"

"I do not share such a view; no doubt the three of us here will keep the secret; it is you, the fourth, that I am afraid of, and I do not believe you in anything!"

"Oh, come now, sir! I'm the one who has most to gain, it's to me the eternal gratitude was promised! And, in this same connection, I precisely wanted to mention an extremely strange occurrence—or more psychological, so to speak, than simply strange. Yesterday evening, under the influence of that conversation at Varvara Petrovna's (you can imagine what an impression it made on me), I addressed Alexei Nilych with a distant question: 'You,' I say, 'used to know Nikolai Vsevolodovich even before, abroad and in Petersburg; what do you think,' I say, 'regarding his intelligence and abilities?' So this gentleman answers laconically, as his way is, that he is a man 'of refined mind and sound judgment,' he says. 'And didn't you ever notice over the years,' I say, 'some deviation of ideas, as it were, or a peculiar turn of thought, or as if some madness, so to speak?' In short, I repeated Varvara Petrovna's own question. And just imagine, Alexei Nilych suddenly turned thoughtful and scowled, just as he's doing now. 'Yes,' he says, 'at times it seemed to me there was something strange.' Note, besides, that if there could seem something strange even to Alexei Nilych, then what might turn out in reality, eh?"

"Is this true?" Stepan Trofimovich turned to Alexei Nilych.

"I wish not to speak of it," Alexei Nilych replied, suddenly raising his head and flashing his eyes. "I want to contest your right, Liputin. You have no right to this occurrence about me. I by no means told my whole opinion. Though I was acquainted in Petersburg, that was long ago, and though I met him now, I still know Nikolai Stavrogin very little. I ask that you remove me and... and this all resembles gossip."

Liputin spread his arms in the guise of oppressed innocence.

"A gossip, am I! And maybe also a spy? It's easy for you to criticize, Alexei Nilych, since you remove yourself from everything. But you wouldn't believe it, Stepan Trofimovich, take even Captain Lebyadkin, sir, one might think he's stupid as a... that is, it's even shameful to say as what—there's a Russian comparison signifying the degree— but he, too, considers himself offended from Nikolai Vsevolodovich, though he bows to his sharp wits. 'The man amazes me,' he says, 'a wise serpent' (his very words). So I asked him (still under yesterday's same influence and after talking with Alexei Nilych), 'And what do you think for your own part, Captain, is your wise serpent crazy, or not?' And, can you believe, it was as if I'd given him a lash from behind without asking permission; he simply jumped in his seat. 'Yes,' he says... 'Yes,' he says, 'only that,' he says, 'cannot affect. . .' but affect what—he didn't finish saying; and then he turned so ruefully thoughtful, so thoughtful that even his drunkenness dropped off him. We were sitting in Filippov's tavern, sir. And only maybe half an hour later he suddenly banged his fist on the table: 'Yes,' he says, 'maybe he is crazy, only that cannot affect...' and again he didn't finish saying what it couldn't affect. Of course, I'm telling you only an extract of the conversation, but the thought is clear; whoever you ask, they all come up with the same thought, even if it never entered anybody's head before: 'Yes,' they say, 'crazy—very intelligent, but maybe also crazy.’”

Stepan Trofimovich sat deep in thought, his mind working intensely.

"And why does Lebyadkin know?"

"Be so good as to make that inquiry of Alexei Nilych, who has just called me a spy. I am a spy, yet I don't know—while Alexei Nilych knows all the innermost secrets and keeps silent, sir."

"I know nothing, or little," the engineer replied, with the same irritation. "You pour drink into Lebyadkin in order to find out. You also brought me here in order to find out, and to get me to say. So you are a spy!"

"I've never yet poured any drink into him, sir, and he's not worth the money, with all his secrets—that's how much he means to me, I don't know about you. On the contrary, he's throwing money around, though twelve days ago he came to beg me for fifteen kopecks, and he's pouring champagne into me, not I into him. But you've given me an idea, and if need be I will get him drunk, precisely in order to find things out, and perhaps I will learn, sir... all your little secrets, sir," Liputin snarled back spitefully.

Bewildered, Stepan Trofimovich observed the two quarreling men. They were giving themselves away and, moreover, were being quite unceremonious about it. It occurred to me that Liputin had brought this Alexei Nilych to us precisely so as to draw him into the conversation he wanted through a third person—his favorite maneuver.

"Alexei Nilych knows Nikolai Vsevolodovich only too well," he went on irritably, "but he conceals it. And as for your question about Captain Lebyadkin, he met him before any of us, in Petersburg, five or six years ago, in that little-known epoch, if I may put it so, of Nikolai Vsevolodovich's life when he had not yet even thought of doing us the happiness of coming here. Our prince, one can only conclude, surrounded himself at that time in Petersburg with a very odd choice of acquaintances. It was then, I believe, that he became acquainted with Alexei Nilych."

"Beware, Liputin, I warn you that Nikolai Vsevolodovich is intending to be here in person soon, and he knows how to stand up for himself."

"And how do I deserve this, sir? I am the first one to shout that he's a man of the most refined and elegant mind, and I set Varvara Petrovna completely at ease yesterday in that regard. 'Only,' I said to her, 'I cannot vouch for his character.' Yesterday Lebyadkin said it in so many words: 'I've suffered from his character,' he said. Ah, Stepan Trofimovich, it's fine for you to shout about gossiping and spying, and that, notice, when you yourself have already extorted everything from me, and with such exceeding curiosity besides. And Varvara Petrovna, she really put her finger on it yesterday: 'You had a personal interest in the matter,' she says, 'that's why I'm turning to you.' And what else, sir! Why talk about purposes, when I swallowed a personal offense from His Excellency in front of a whole gathering! It would seem I have reasons to be interested, not just for the sake of gossip. Today he shakes your hand, and tomorrow, for no reason at all, to repay your hospitality, he slaps your face in front of a whole honorable gathering, the moment he pleases. From fat living, sir! And the main thing with them is the female sex: butterflies and strutting roosters! Landowners with little wings like antique cupids, lady-killer Pechorins!^[51] It's easy for you, Stepan Trofimovich, an inveterate bachelor, to talk this way and call me a gossip on account of His Excellency. But if you, being the fine fellow you still are, were to marry a pretty and young one, you might just keep your door bolted against our prince, and build barricades in your own house! But why go far: if this Mademoiselle Lebyadkin, who gets whipped with knouts, weren't mad and bow-legged, by God, I'd think it was she who was the victim of our general's passions, and that this is what Captain Lebyadkin has suffered 'in his familial dignity,' as he himself puts it. Only maybe it contradicts his refined taste, but that's no great trouble to him. Any berry will do, so long as it comes his way while he's in a certain mood. You talk about gossip, but I'm not shouting about it, the whole town is clattering, while I just listen and yes them—yessing's not forbidden, sir." "The town is shouting? What is it shouting about?" "That is, it's Captain Lebyadkin, in a drunken state, who's shouting for the whole town to hear—well, and isn't that the same as if the whole marketplace was shouting? How am I to blame? I'm interested only as among friends, sir, because I still consider myself among friends here." He looked around at us with an innocent air. "There was an incident here, sirs, just think: it seems His Excellency, while still in Switzerland, supposedly sent three hundred roubles by a most noble girl and, so to speak, humble orphan, whom I have the honor of knowing, to be given to Captain Lebyadkin. But a little later Lebyadkin received most precise information, I won't say from whom, but also from a most noble and therefore most reliable person, that the sum sent was not three hundred roubles, but a thousand! ... 'That means,' Lebyadkin is shouting, 'that the girl filched seven hundred roubles from me,' and he wants to demand it back even if it's through the police, at least he's threatening to, and he's clattering all over town..."

"That is mean, mean of you!" the engineer suddenly jumped up from his chair.

"But you yourself are that most noble person who confirmed to Lebyadkin on Nikolai Vsevolodovich's behalf that it was not three hundred but a thousand roubles that were sent. The captain himself told me in a drunken state."

"That... that is an unfortunate misunderstanding. Someone made a mistake and it came out... that is nonsense, and you are mean! ..."

"But I also want to believe that it's nonsense, and I listen to it with regret, because, whether you like it or not, a most noble girl is mixed up, first of all, with the seven hundred roubles and, second, in some obvious intimacy with Nikolai Vsevolodovich. It's nothing for His Excellency to disgrace the noblest girl or to defame another man's wife, just as in that mishap with me, sir! He'll come across some man full of magnanimity and make him cover up someone else's sins with his honorable name. Just the same way as I suffered, sir; I'm talking about myself, sir..."

"Beware, Liputin!" Stepan Trofimovich rose from his chair and turned pale.

"Don't believe it, don't believe it! Someone made a mistake, and Lebyadkin is drunk..." the engineer exclaimed in inexpressible agitation. "It will all be made clear, but I can no longer... it's baseness... and enough, enough!"

He ran out of the room.

"What's the matter? I'm going with you!" Liputin, all aflutter, jumped up and ran after Alexei Nilych.

VII

Stepan Trofimovich stood in thought for a moment, glanced at me somehow without looking, took his hat and stick, and slowly walked out of the room. I went after him as before. Passing through the gate, he noticed that I was following him and said:

"Ah, yes, you can serve as a witness ... de l'accident. Vous m'accompagnerez; n'est-ce pas?"^[xlv]

"Stepan Trofimovich, are you really going there again? Think what may come of it!"

With a pathetic and lost smile—a smile of shame and utter despair, and at the same time of some strange rapture—he whispered to me, stopping for a moment:

"I really cannot marry 'someone else's sins'!"

This was just the phrase I had been waiting for. At last this little phrase, cherished, concealed from me, had been spoken, after a whole week of hedging and contortions. I decidedly lost my temper.

"And such a dirty, such a... base thought could come to you, to Stepan Verkhovensky, to your lucid mind, to your kind heart, and... even prior to Liputin!"

He looked at me, made no reply, and continued on his way. I did not want to lag behind. I wanted to testify before Varvara Petrovna. I would have forgiven him if, in his womanish faintheartedness, he had simply believed Liputin, but it was clear now that he had conceived it all even long before Liputin, and Liputin had merely confirmed his suspicions and added fat to the fire. He had not hesitated to suspect the girl from the very first day, still without any grounds, not even Liputin's. He had explained Varvara Petrovna's despotic actions to himself only by her desperate wish to paint over the aristocratic peccadilloes of her priceless Nicolas by a marriage with an honorable man! I certainly wanted to see him punished for it.

"O Dieu qui est si grand et si bon!^[xlvi] Oh, who will comfort me!" he exclaimed, having gone another hundred steps or so and suddenly stopped.

"Let's go home now, and I'll explain everything to you!" I cried out, forcing him to turn back towards his house.

"It's him! Stepan Trofimovich, is it you? You?" a fresh, playful young voice, like a sort of music, was heard beside us.

We had not noticed anything, but suddenly there beside us was Lizaveta Nikolaevna, on horseback, with her usual companion. She stopped her horse.

"Come, come quickly!" she called loudly and gaily. "I haven't seen him for twelve years and I recognized him, but he... Don't you recognize me?"

Stepan Trofimovich seized the hand she offered him and kissed it reverently. He looked at her as if in prayer and could not utter a word.

"He recognizes me, and he's glad! Mavriky Nikolaevich, he's delighted to see me! Then why haven't you come for two whole weeks? Auntie kept persuading us you were sick and couldn't be disturbed; but I know auntie lies. I stamped my feet and abused you, but I absolutely, absolutely wanted you to be the first to come, that's why I didn't send for you. God, he hasn't changed in the least!" she examined him, leaning down from her saddle, "It's funny how he hasn't changed! Ah, no, there are wrinkles, lots of little wrinkles around the eyes, and on the cheeks, and some gray hair, but the eyes are the same! And have I changed? Have I? But why don't you say something?"

I remembered at that moment having been told of how she was almost ill when she was taken to Petersburg at the age of eleven; during her illness she had allegedly cried and asked for Stepan Trofimovich.

"You ... I ..." he babbled now, in a voice breaking with joy, "I just cried out, 'Who will comfort me!' and then heard your voice ... I regard it as a miracle et je commence à croire,"^[xlvii]

"En Dieu? En Dieu qui est là-haut et qui est si grand et si bon?^[xlviii] You see, I remember all your lectures by heart. Mavriky Nikolaevich, how he taught me then to believe en Dieu, qui est si grand et si bon! And do you remember your story of how Columbus discovered America and everybody shouted: 'Land, land!' My nurse Alyona Frolovna says that I raved during the night after that and shouted 'Land, land!' in my sleep. And do you remember telling me the story of Prince Hamlet? And do you remember describing to me how poor emigrants were transported from Europe to America? It was all untrue, I learned it all later, how they were transported, but how well he lied to me then, Mavriky Nikolaevich, it was almost better than the truth! Why are you looking at Mavriky Nikolaevich that way? He is the best and most faithful man on the whole earth, and you must come to love him as you do me! Il fait tout ce que je veux.^[xlix] But, dear Stepan Trofimovich, it must mean you're unhappy again, if you're crying out in the middle of the street about who will comfort you? Unhappy, is it so? Is it?"

"I am happy now..."

"Does auntie offend you?" she went on without listening, "that same wicked, unjust, and eternally priceless auntie of ours! And do you remember how you used to throw yourself into my arms in the garden, and I'd comfort you and weep—don't be afraid of Mavriky Nikolaevich; he has known everything about you, everything, for a long time; you can weep on his shoulder as much as you like, and he'll stand there as long as you like! ... Lift your hat, take it all the way off for a moment, raise your head, stand on tiptoe, I'm going to kiss you on the forehead now, as I kissed you that last time, when we were saying good-bye. See, that young lady is admiring us through the window... Well, closer, closer. God, how gray he's become!"

And, leaning down from her saddle, she kissed him on the forehead.

"Well, now to your house! I know where you live. I'll join you presently, in a moment. I'll pay you the first visit, you stubborn man, and then I'll drag you to our place for the whole day. Go, now, get ready to receive me."

And she rode off with her cavalier. We came back. Stepan Trofimovich sat down on the sofa and wept.

"Dieu! Dieu!" he kept exclaiming, "enfin une minute de bonheur!"^[l]

Not more than ten minutes later she appeared as promised, accompanied by her Mavriky Nikolaevich.

"Vous et le bonheur, vous arrivez en même temps!"^[li] He rose to meet her.

"Here is a bouquet for you; I've just been to Madame Chevalier's, she'll have bouquets for birthday parties all winter. Here is Mavriky Nikolaevich as well, please become acquainted. I almost wanted to get a cake instead of a bouquet, but Mavriky Nikolaevich insists that it's not the Russian spirit."

This Mavriky Nikolaevich was an artillery captain, about thirty-three years old, a tall gentleman, of handsome and impeccably decent appearance, with an imposing and, at first glance, even stern physiognomy, in spite of his remarkable and most delicate kindness, of which everyone became aware almost from the moment of making his acquaintance. However, he was taciturn, appeared rather cool, and did not force his friendship upon anyone. Many in our town said afterwards that he was none too bright; that was not quite correct.

I will not describe the beauty of Lizaveta Nikolaevna. The whole town was already shouting about her beauty, though some of our ladies and young girls indignantly disagreed with the shouters. There were some among them who already hated Lizaveta Nikolaevna, in the first place for her pride: the Drozdovs had hardly even begun to pay any visits, which was insulting, though in fact the cause of the delay was Praskovya Ivanovna's ailing condition. In the second place, she was hated because she was a relative of the governor's wife; and in the third place, because she went for daily outings on horseback. There had never been any horsewomen in our town before; it was natural that the appearance of Lizaveta Nikolaevna, going for her outings on horseback without having paid any visits, was bound to insult society. Incidentally, everyone knew already that she went riding on doctor's orders, and spoke caustically of her poor health. She was indeed ill. One thing that was obvious about her from the first glance was her morbid, nervous, unceasing restlessness. Alas! the poor girl was suffering very much, and everything became clear afterwards. Recalling the past now, I will not say that she was the beauty she seemed to me then. Perhaps she was even not good-looking at all. Tall, slender, but lithe and strong, the irregularity of the lines of her face was even striking. Her eyes were set somehow in Kalmuck fashion, slantingly; her face was pale, with high cheekbones, swarthy and thin; yet there was in this face something so conquering and attracting! Some sort of power told itself in the burning look of her dark eyes; she appeared "as a conqueror, and to conquer." She seemed proud, and sometimes even bold; I do not know if she succeeded in being kind; but I know that she wanted terribly and suffered over forcing herself to be a little bit kind. In her nature there were, of course, many beautiful yearnings and very just undertakings; but it was as if everything in her were eternally seeking its level without finding it, everything was chaos, restlessness, agitation. Perhaps she made too severe demands on herself, never finding herself strong enough to satisfy them.

She sat down on the sofa and looked around the room.

"Why is it that I always feel sad at such moments—can you solve that, my learned man? All my life I thought I'd be God knows how glad to see you and remember everything, and now I don't seem to be glad at all, though I do love you... Ah, God, he's got my portrait hanging here! Give it to me, I remember it, I remember!"

An excellent miniature watercolor portrait of the twelve-year-old Liza had been sent to Stepan Trofimovich by the Drozdovs from Petersburg nine years before. Since then it had always hung on his wall.

"Was I really such a pretty child? Is that really my face?"

She got up and, holding the portrait in her hand, looked at herself in the mirror.

"Take it, quickly!" she exclaimed, giving the portrait back. "Don't hang it up now, later, I don't even want to look at it." She sat down on the sofa again. "One life passed, another began, then that passed and a third began, and there's still no end. All the ends are cut off as if with a pair of scissors. See what old things I'm saying, and yet so true!"

She grinned and looked at me; she had already glanced at me several times, but Stepan Trofimovich, in his excitement, even forgot that he had promised to introduce me.

"And why is my portrait hanging under those daggers? And why do you have so many daggers and swords?"

Indeed, he had hanging on the wall, I do not know why, two crossed yataghans and, above them, a real Circassian sabre. She looked at me so directly as she asked that I was just about to make some reply, but cut myself short. Stepan Trofimovich finally realized and introduced me.

"I know, I know," she said, "I'm very glad. Maman has also heard a lot about you. And let me also introduce you to Mavriky Nikola-evich, he is a wonderful man. I've already formed a funny idea of you: you're Stepan Trofimovich's confidant, aren't you?"

I blushed.

"Ah, forgive me, please, I used the completely wrong word—not funny at all, but just..." She blushed and became embarrassed. "However, why be ashamed of being a wonderful man? Well, it's time to go, Mavriky Nikolaevich! Stepan Trofimovich, in half an hour you must be at our place. God, how we're going to talk! Now I am your confidante, in everything, everything, understand?"

Stepan Trofimovich immediately became frightened.

"Oh, Mavriky Nikolaevich knows everything, don't be embarrassed because of him!"

"What does he know?"

"But can it be, really?" she cried out in amazement. "Hah, so it's true they're hiding it! I didn't want to believe it. They're hiding Dasha, too. Auntie wouldn't let me see Dasha just now, said she had a headache."

"But... but how did you find out?"

"Ah, my God, the same way everyone else did. What could be simpler!"

"But does everyone ... ?"

"Well, and what else? Mama, it's true, was the first to find out, through my old nurse Alyona Frolovna; your Nastasya came running to tell her. And you did tell Nastasya, didn't you? She says you told her yourself."

"I ... I once said..." Stepan Trofimovich stammered, blushing all over, "but... I only hinted ...; 'étais si nerveux et malade et puis. . . "^[lii]

She burst out laughing.

"And the confidant wasn't around, and Nastasya turned up—and that was it! And the woman's got herself a whole town full of busy-bodies. Well, good heavens, what difference does it make? Let them know, it's even better. Come for dinner as quickly as you can, we dine early... Oh, yes, I forgot," she sat down again, "listen, what is this Shatov?"

"Shatov? He is Darya Pavlovna's brother..."

"I know he's her brother, what's the matter with you, really!" she interrupted impatiently. "I want to know what he is, what sort of man?"

"C'est un pense-creux d'ici. C'est le meilleur et le plus irascible homme du monde..."^[liii]

"I've heard he's somehow odd. Anyway, that's not the point. I've heard he knows three languages, English, too, and can do literary work. If so, I have a lot of work for him; I need an assistant, and the sooner the better. Will he take work, or not? He was recommended to me..."

"Oh, most certainly, et vous fairez un bienfait ... "^[liv]

"It's not for the sake of a bienfait; I myself need assistance."

"I know Shatov quite well," I said, "and if you charge me with telling him, I'll go this minute."

"Tell him to come tomorrow morning at twelve o'clock. Wonderful! Thank you. Mavriky Nikolaevich, are you ready?"

They left. Of course, I ran at once to Shatov.

"Mon ami!" Stepan Trofimovich overtook me on the porch, "you must be here at ten or eleven o'clock, when I come back. Oh, I am guilty, all too guilty before you, and... before everyone, everyone."

VIII

I did not find Shatov at home; I ran by two hours later—again no one home. Finally, after seven o'clock, I went hoping either to find him or to leave a note; again I did not find him. His apartment was locked, and he lived alone without any servant. It occurred to me to try knocking downstairs at Captain Lebyadkin's, to ask about Shatov; it was locked there, too, and there was not a sound, not a glimmer, as if the place were empty. I passed Lebyadkin's door with curiosity, being under the influence of the stories I had just heard. Finally, I decided to come back early the next day. Indeed, I did not count very much on the note; Shatov might ignore it, he was so stubborn, so shy. Cursing my bad luck and already going out the gate, I suddenly ran into Mr. Kirillov; he was going into the house and recognized me first. Since he began questioning me himself, I told him all the essentials, and that I had a note.

"Let's go," he said, "I'll do everything."

I remembered that according to Liputin's words he had been occupying the wooden wing in back since morning. This wing, which was too spacious for him, he shared with some old deaf woman who also served him. The owner of the house lived in another, new house, on another street, where he ran a tavern, and this old woman, apparently his relative, stayed to look after the whole of the old house. The rooms in the wing were quite clean, but the wallpaper was dirty. In the room we entered, the furnishings were random, ill-sorted, utter rejects: two card tables, an alder-wood chest, a big plank table brought from some peasant cottage or kitchen, chairs and a sofa with lattice backs and hard leather cushions. In the corner there was an old icon in front of which the woman had lighted an oil lamp before we came, and on the walls there hung two big, dark oil portraits—one of the late emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, painted back in the twenties by the look of it; the other of some bishop.

Mr. Kirillov, having entered, lit a candle, and from his suitcase, which stood in the corner and was still unpacked, took an envelope, a piece of wax, and a crystal seal.

"Seal your note and address the envelope."

I tried to protest that there was no need for that, but he insisted. Having addressed the envelope, I took my cap.

"And I thought perhaps some tea," he said. "I bought tea. Want some?"

I did not refuse. The woman soon brought in the tea—that is, a great big kettle of hot water, a small teapot full of strongly brewed tea, two large, crudely painted stoneware cups, a kalatch,^[52] and a whole soup plate of crumbled loaf sugar.

"I like tea," he said, "at night; a lot: I walk and drink; till dawn. Tea at night is awkward abroad."

"You go to bed at dawn?"

"Always; a long time. I eat little; mainly tea. Liputin is cunning, but impatient."

I was surprised that he wanted to talk; I decided to make use of the moment.

"There were some unpleasant misunderstandings today," I observed.

He frowned deeply.

"It's foolishness; great trifles. It's all trifles, because Lebyadkin is drunk. I told Liputin nothing, I just explained the trifles, because the other one gets it all wrong. Liputin has a lot of fantasy; in place of the trifles he made mountains. I trusted Liputin yesterday."

"And me today?" I laughed.

"But you already know everything from this morning. Liputin is either weak, or impatient, or harmful, or ... envious."

The last little word struck me.

"Anyway, you've set up so many categories, it would be surprising if he didn't fit into one of them."

"Or into all together."

"Yes, you're right about that, too. Liputin is—a chaos! Is it true what he was blathering today, that you're planning to write something?"

"Why blathering?" he frowned again, staring at the floor.

I apologized and began assuring him that I was not trying to get it out of him. He blushed.

"He was telling the truth; I am writing. Only it makes no difference."

We were silent for a moment; suddenly he smiled the same childlike smile as that morning.

"He invented about the heads himself, from books, and told me first, and he understands badly, but I'm only looking for the reasons why people don't dare to kill themselves, that's all. And it makes no difference."

"What do you mean, don't dare? Do we have so few suicides?"

"Very few."

"You really think so?"

He did not answer, got up, and began pacing back and forth pensively.

"And what, in your opinion, keeps people from suicide?" I asked.

He looked at me distractedly, as if trying to recall what we were talking about.

"I ... I still know little ... two prejudices keep them, two things; just two; one very small, the other very big. But the small one is also very big."

"What is the small one?"

"Pain."

"Pain? Is it really so important ... in this case?"

"The foremost thing. There are two sorts: those who kill themselves from great sorrow, or anger, or the crazy ones, or whatever... they do it suddenly. They think little about pain and do it suddenly. But the ones who do it judiciously—they think a lot."

"Are there any who do it judiciously?"

"Very many. If it weren't for prejudice, there'd be more; very many; everybody."

"Really? Everybody?"

He did not reply.

"But aren't there ways of dying without pain?"

"Imagine," he stopped in front of me, "imagine a stone the size of a big house; it's hanging there, and you are under it; if it falls on you, on your head—will it be painful?"

"A stone as big as a house? Naturally, it's frightening."

"Fright is not the point; will it be painful?"

"A stone as big as a mountain, millions of pounds? Of course, it wouldn't be painful at all."

"But go and stand there in reality, and while it's hanging you'll be very much afraid of the pain. Every foremost scientist, foremost doctor, all, all of them will be very afraid. They'll all know it won't be painful, but they'll all be very afraid it will be."

"Well, and the second reason, the big one?"

"The other world."

"Punishment, you mean?"

"That makes no difference. The other world; the one other world."

"Aren't there such atheists as don't believe in the other world at all?"

Again he did not reply.

"You're judging by yourself, perhaps."

"Each man cannot judge except by himself," he said, blushing. "There will be entire freedom when it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live. That is the goal to everything."

"The goal? But then perhaps no one will even want to live?"

"No one," he said resolutely.

"Man is afraid of death because he loves life, that's how I understand it," I observed, "and that is what nature tells us."

"That is base, that is the whole deceit!" his eyes began to flash. "Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That's how they've made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God. And this God will not be."

"So this God exists, in your opinion?"

"He doesn't, yet he does. There is no pain in the stone, but there is pain in the fear of the stone. God is the pain of the fear of death. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself become God. Then there will be a new life, a new man, everything new... Then history will be divided into two parts: from the gorilla to the destruction of God, and from the destruction of God to..."

"To the gorilla?"

"... to the physical changing of the earth and man. Man will be God and will change physically. And the world will change, and deeds will change, and thoughts, and all feelings. What do you think, will man then change physically?"

"If it makes no difference whether one lives or does not live, then everyone will kill himself, and perhaps that will be the change."

"It makes no difference. They will kill the deceit. Whoever wants the main freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself knows the secret of the deceit. There is no further freedom;

here is everything; and there is nothing further. He who dares to kill himself, is God. Now anyone can make it so that there will be no God, and there will be no anything. But no one has done it yet, not once."

"There have been millions of suicides."

"But all not for that, all in fear and not for that. Not to kill fear. He who kills himself only to kill fear, will at once become God."

"He may not have time," I observed.

"It makes no difference," he replied softly, with quiet pride, almost with scorn. "I'm sorry you seem to be laughing," he added half a minute later.

"And I find it strange that you were so irritated earlier today, and are now so calm, though you talk heatedly."

"Earlier? Earlier today it was funny," he replied with a smile. "I don't like to abuse, and I never laugh," he added sadly.

"Well, you do spend your nights rather cheerlessly over your tea." I rose and took my cap.

"You think so?" he smiled, somewhat surprised. "But why? No, I... I don't know," he suddenly became confused, "I don't know how it is with others, and my feeling is that I cannot be like any other. Any other thinks, and then at once thinks something else. I cannot think something else, I think one thing all my life. God has tormented me all my life," he suddenly concluded, with surprising expansiveness.

"And tell me, if I may ask, why do you speak Russian not quite correctly? Can it be you forgot in your five years abroad?"

"Do I, really, incorrectly? I don't know. No, not because of abroad. I've spoken this way all my life ... it makes no difference to me."

"Another question, a more delicate one: I fully believe that you are not inclined to meet people and that you speak little with them. Why did you get into conversation with me now?"

"With you? You sat there nicely this morning, and you ... anyway it makes no difference... you very much resemble my brother, a lot, extremely," he said, blushing. "He died seven years ago—the older one—very, very much."

"He must have greatly influenced your way of thinking."

"N-no, he spoke little; he said nothing. I'll deliver your note."

He walked me to the gate with a lantern, to lock up after me. "He's crazy, of course," I decided to myself. At the gate a new encounter took place.

Just as I lifted my foot to step over the high sill of the gate, someone's strong hand grabbed me by the chest.

"Who's this?" someone's voice bellowed, "friend or foe? Confess!"

"He's one of us, one of us!" Liputin's little voice squealed nearby.

"It's Mr. G——v, a young man of classical upbringing and connected with the highest society."

"I love it, if it's society, clas-si... that means high-ly ed-u-ca-ted... retired captain Ignat Lebyadkin, at the world's and his friends' service ... if they're faithful, faithful, the scoundrels!"

Captain Lebyadkin, over six feet tall, fat, beefy, curly-haired, red, and extremely drunk, could barely stand up in front of me and had difficulty articulating. I had, incidentally, seen him even before, from a distance.

"Ah, and this one, too!" he bellowed again, noticing Kirillov, who was still standing there with his lantern. He raised his fist, but lowered it at once.

"I forgive him on account of his learning! Ignat Lebyadkin—the high-ly ed-u-ca-ted...

A cannonball with hot love loaded In Ignat's noble breast exploded. Again with bitter torment groaned Sebastópol's armless one.

Though I was never at Sebastopol,^[53] nor am I armless—but what rhymes!" He thrust himself at me with his drunken mug.

"He has no time, no time, he's going home," Liputin tried to reason with him. "He'll tell Lizaveta Nikolaevna all about it tomorrow."

"Lizaveta!" he shouted again. "Wait, don't move! A variation:

A star on horseback she flies free In Amazonian round-dance wild

And then from horseback smiles on me, The aris-to-crat-ic child.

'To a Star-Amazon.' This is a hymn, see! It's a hymn, or else you're an ass! The slobs, they don't understand! Wait!" he grabbed at my coat, though I was trying with all my might to pass through the gate. "Tell her I'm a knight of honor, and Dashka... With two fingers I'll... She's a serf slave and won't dare..."

At this point he fell over, because I forcibly tore myself from his grip and ran off down the street. Liputin tagged along.

"Alexei Nilych will pick him up. Do you know what I just found out from him?" he babbled, huffing and puffing. "Did you hear that jingle? Well, he's sealed those same verses 'To a Star-Amazon' in an envelope, and is going to send them to Lizaveta Nikolaevna tomorrow with his full signature. How about that!"

"I bet you put him up to it yourself."

"You lose!" Liputin guffawed. "He's in love, in love like a tomcat, and, you know, it actually started with hatred. He hated Lizaveta Nikolaevna at first for riding around on horseback, so much so that he almost abused her out loud in the street; in fact, he did abuse her! Only the day before yesterday he abused her when she rode by—fortunately she didn't hear; and suddenly today—verses! Do you know he means to venture a proposal? Seriously, seriously!"

"I'm surprised at you, Liputin; wherever there's some such trash to be found, you're always there as a leader!" I said in a rage.

"Now, that's going too far, Mr. G——v; hasn't your little heart skipped a beat for fear of a rival, eh?"

"Wha-a-at?" I cried, stopping.

"So, just to punish you, I'm not going to say anything more! And you'd love to hear more, wouldn't you? Just this one thing: that that nitwit is no longer merely a captain, but a landowner of our province, and quite a significant one at that, because Nikolai Vsevolodovich sold him his entire estate, his former two hundred souls, the other day, and by God I'm not lying! I only just found it out, but from a most reliable source. So now go groping around for the rest yourself; I won't tell you anything more; good-bye, sir!"

Stepan Trofimovich was waiting for me with hysterical impatience. He had been back for an hour. He was as if drunk when I found him; at least for the first five minutes I thought he was drunk. Alas, his visit to the Drozdovs had knocked the last bit of sense out of him.

"Mon ami, I've quite lost the thread... Lise ... I love and respect the angel as before, exactly as before; but it seems they were both waiting for me only in order to find something out, that is, quite simply, to wheedle it out of me, and then—off you go, and God be with you... It's really so."

"Shame on you!" I cried out, unable to help myself.

"My friend, I am completely alone now. Enfin, il'est ridicule.^[lv] Imagine that there, too, it's all crammed with mysteries. They simply fell on me with these noses and ears and other Petersburg mysteries. It was only here that the two of them found out about those local stories to do with Nicolas four years ago: 'You were here, you saw, is it true that he's mad?' And where this idea came from, I don't understand. Why is it that Praskovya must absolutely have Nicolas turn out to be mad? The woman wants it, she does! Ce Maurice, or what's his name, Mavriky Nikolaevich, brave homme tout de même,^[lvi] but can it be for his benefit, after she herself was the first to write from Paris to cette pauvre amie... Enfin, this Praskovya, as cette chère amie calls her, is a type, she's Gogol's Korobochka,^[54] Mrs. Littlebox, of immortal memory, only a wicked Littlebox, a provoking Littlebox, and in an infinitely enlarged form."

"That would make her a trunk! Enlarged, really?"

"Well, diminished then, it makes no difference, only don't interrupt me, because it all keeps whirling around. They had a final spat there, except for Lise; she still says 'auntie, auntie,' but Lise is sly, and there's something more to it. Mysteries. But she did quarrel with the old woman. Cette pauvre auntie, it's true, is despotic with everyone ... and there's also the governor's wife, and the disrespect of society, and the 'disrespect' of Karmazinov; and then suddenly this notion of craziness, ce Liputine, ce que je ne comprends pas,^[lvii] and... and they say she put vinegar to her head, and then you and I come along with our complaints and letters ... Oh, how I've tormented her, and at such a time! Je suis un ingrat!^[lviii] Imagine, I come back and find a letter from her— read it, read it! Oh, how ignoble it was on my part."

He handed me the just-received letter from Varvara Petrovna. She seemed to have repented of her morning's "Stay home." It was a polite little letter, but nonetheless resolute and laconic. She invited Stepan Trofimovich to call on her the day after tomorrow, Sunday, at twelve o'clock sharp, and advised him to bring along some one of his friends (my name appeared in parentheses). She, for her part, promised to invite Shatov, as Darya Pavlovna's brother. "You can receive a final answer from her; will this suffice you? Is this the formality you've been striving for?"

"Note that irritated phrase at the end about formality. Poor, poor woman, the friend of my whole life! I confess, this sudden deciding of my fate crushed me, as it were ... I confess, I was still hoping, but now tout est dit, I know it's finished; c'est terrible.^[lix] Oh, if only there were no Sunday at all, and everything could go on as before: you would visit me, and I would..."

"You're bewildered by all that nasty gossip of Liputin's today."

"My friend, you have just put your friendly finger on another sore spot. These friendly fingers are generally merciless, and sometimes muddled, pardon, but would you believe that I almost forgot about it all, I mean that nasty gossip—that is, I by no means forgot, but, in my foolishness, all the while I was at Lise's I tried to be happy and kept assuring myself that I was happy. But now... oh, now it's this woman—magnanimous, humane, patient with my mean shortcomings—that is, perhaps not quite patient, but what am I myself, with my bad, empty character! I am a whimsical child, with all the egoism of a child, but with none of the innocence. For twenty years she's been looking after me like a nurse, cette pauvre auntie, as Lise graciously calls her... And suddenly, after twenty years, the child decides to get married—get me married, get me married, in letter after letter—and she sits putting vinegar to her head and... and here I've done it, on Sunday I'll be a married man, no joking ... And why did I insist, why did I write letters? Ah, yes, I forgot: Lise idolizes Darya Pavlovna, at least she says she does. 'C'est un ange,'^[lx] she says of her, 'only a rather secretive one.' They both advised it, even Praskovya... though Praskovya didn't advise it. Oh, how much venom is locked up in that Littlebox! And, as a matter of fact, Lise did not advise it either: 'What do you need to get married for; the pleasures of learning are enough for you.' Gales of laughter. I forgave her the laughter, because she herself is sick at heart. All the same, they said, it is impossible for you to be without a woman. Infirmity is coming upon you, and she will cover you, or whatever... Ma foi, all this time I've been sitting here with you, I, too, have been thinking to myself that providence was sending her in the decline of my stormy days and that she would cover me, or whatever ... enfin, would be useful around the house. My place is a mess, look, over there, everything's scattered about, I just ordered it to be tidied up, and there's a book lying on the floor. La pauvre amie has always been angry at the mess in my place... Oh, no longer will her voice be heard here! Vingt ans!^[lxi] And—and it seems they've got anonymous letters, imagine, Nicolas has supposedly sold his estate to Lebyadkin. C'est un monstre; et enfin,^[lxii] who is this Lebyadkin? Lise listens, listens, ohh, how she listens! I forgave her the laughter, I saw the look on her face as she listened, and ce Maurice... I wouldn't want to be in his present role, brave homme tout de même, but somewhat shy; God help him though..."

He fell silent; he was tired and bewildered, and sat downcast, his tired eyes fixed on the floor. I took advantage of the pause to tell him about my visit to Filippov's house, expressing curtly and dryly my opinion that Lebyadkin's sister (whom I had not seen) might indeed have been some sort of victim of Nicolas's during the mysterious period of his life, as Liputin put it, and that it was quite possible that Lebyadkin was for some reason receiving money from Nicolas, but that was all. As for the gossip about Darya Pavlovna, it was all nonsense, it had all been stretched by the blackguard Liputin, or so at least Alexei Nilych, whom there was no reason to doubt, hotly insisted. Stepan Trofimovich listened to my assurances with a distracted look, as if it did not concern him. I also mentioned, incidentally, my conversation with Kirillov, and added that Kirillov was possibly mad.

"He's not mad, but these people have short little thoughts," he mumbled listlessly and as if unwillingly. "Ces gens-là supposent la nature et la société humaine autre que Dieu ne les a faites et qu 'elles ne sont réellement.^[lxiii] They are flirted with, but not at any rate by Stepan Verkhovensky. I saw them when I was in Petersburg, avec cette chère amie (oh, how I used to insult her then!), and I was frightened neither of their abuse—nor even of their praise. I will not be frightened now either, mais parlons d'autre chose^[lxiv] ... I seem to have done some terrible things; imagine, I sent Darya Pavlovna a letter yesterday, and... how I curse myself for it!"

"What did you write about?"

"Oh, my friend, believe me, it was all done so nobly. I informed her that I had written to Nicolas five days before, also nobly."

"Now I understand!" I cried out hotly. "And what right did you have to put them together like that?"

"But, mon cher, don't crush me finally, don't yell at me; I am quite crushed as it is, like... like a cockroach, and, finally, I think it is all so noble. Suppose there had indeed been something there ... en Suisse ... or there was beginning to be. Oughtn't I to question their hearts first, so as... enfin, so as not to hinder their hearts or stand in their way like a post... solely out of nobility?"

"Oh, God, what a stupid thing to do!" burst from me involuntarily.

"Stupid, stupid!" he picked up, even greedily. "You've never said anything more intelligent, c'était bête, mais que faire, tout est dit.^[lxv] I am getting married anyway, even if it's to 'someone else's sins,' and so what was the point of writing? Isn't that so?"

"You're at it again!"

"Oh, you won't frighten me with your shouting now, it's not the same Stepan Verkhovensky you see before you; that one is buried; enfin, tout est dit. And why are you shouting? Only because it's not you who is getting married, and it's not you who is going to wear a certain ornament on your head. You're cringing again? My poor friend, you don't know women; as for me, all I've ever done is study them. 'If you want to overcome the whole world, overcome yourself—the only thing that other romantic like yourself, Shatov, my spouse's dear brother, ever managed to say well. I gladly borrow the utterance from him. Well, now I, too, am prepared to overcome myself and am getting married, and yet what am I conquering in place of the whole world? Oh, my friend, marriage is the moral death of any proud soul, of any independence. Married life will corrupt me, will rob me of my energy, my courage in serving the cause; there will be children, perhaps not even mine, that is, certainly not mine—a wise man is not afraid to face the truth... Liputin suggested today that I save myself from Nicolas with barricades; he's stupid, Liputin. A woman will deceive the all-seeing eye itself. Le bon Dieu knew, of course, what he was letting himself in for when he created woman, but I'm sure she herself interfered with him and forced him to make her this way and... with these attributes; otherwise who would want to get himself into such troubles for nothing? Nastasya, I know, will probably be angry with me for freethinking, but... Enfin, tout est dit.”

He would not have been himself if he could have done without the cheap, quibbling freethinking that had flourished so much in his day, but at least he had comforted himself this time with his little quibble, though not for long.

"Oh, why couldn't there simply not be this day after tomorrow, this Sunday!" he suddenly exclaimed, now in utter despair. "Why couldn't just this one week be without a Sunday—si le miracle existe?^[lxvi] What would it cost providence to cross out just this one Sunday from the calendar, just to prove its power to an atheist, et que tout soit dit!^[lxvii] Oh, how I loved her! Twenty years, all these twenty years, and she never, never understood me!"

"But who are you talking about? I also don't understand you!" I asked in surprise.

"Vingt ans! And she never once understood me—oh, this is cruel! Can she really think I'm getting married out of fear, out of need? Oh, shame! Auntie, auntie, it is for you that I... Oh, may she know, this auntie, that she is the only woman I have adored for these twenty years! She must know it, otherwise it will not be, otherwise they will have to drag me by force to this ce qu'on appelle le^[lxviii] altar!"

It was the first time I had heard this confession, and so energetically expressed. I will not conceal that I had a terrible urge to laugh. I was wrong.

"Alone, he alone is left to me, my only hope!" he clasped his hands all at once, as if suddenly struck by a new thought. "Now only he alone, my poor boy, can save me, and—oh, why does he not come! Oh, my son, oh, my Petrusha... and though I am not worthy to be called a father, but a tiger rather, still. . . laissez-moi, mon ami,^[lxix] I'll lie down for a while to collect my thoughts. I'm so tired, so tired, and I suppose it must be time for you to go to bed, voyez-vous,^[lxx] it's twelve o'clock..."