Demons

7: The Last Peregrination of Stepan Trofimovich

I

I am convinced that Stepan Trofimovich was very much afraid as he felt the time of his insane undertaking draw near. I am convinced that he suffered very much from fear, especially the night before—that terrible night. Nastasya mentioned later that he had gone to bed late and slept. But that proves nothing; they say men sentenced to death sleep very soundly even the night before their execution. Though he started out with the light of day, when a nervous man always takes heart somewhat (the major, Virginsky's relative, even ceased believing in God as soon as the night was over), I am convinced that he could never before have imagined himself, without horror, alone on the high road and in such a situation. Of course, something desperate in his thoughts probably softened for him, in the beginning, the full force of that terrible feeling of sudden solitude in which he found himself all at once, the moment he left Stasie and the place he had been warming up for twenty years. But, anyhow: even with the clearest awareness of all the horrors awaiting him, he still would have gone out to the high road and gone down it! There was something proud here that he admired despite all. Oh, he could have accepted Varvara Petrovna's luxurious conditions and remained with her bounties "comme un mere sponger"! But he had not accepted her bounties and had not remained. And now he himself was leaving her and raising "the banner of a great idea" and going to die for it on the high road! That is precisely how he must have felt about it; that is precisely how his action must have presented itself to him.

The question also presented itself to me more than once: why did he precisely run away, that is, run with his feet, in the literal sense, and not simply drive off in a carriage? At first I explained it by fifty years of impracticality and a fantastical deviation of ideas under the effect of strong emotion. It seemed to me that the thought of traveling by post in a carriage (even with bells) must have appeared too simple and prosaic to him; pilgrimage, on the other hand, even with an umbrella, was much more beautiful and vengefully amorous. But now, when everything is over, I rather suppose that at the time it all happened in a much simpler way: first, he was afraid to hire a carriage because Varvara Petrovna might get wind of it and hold him back by force, which she would certainly have done, and he would certainly have submitted, and then—good-bye forever to the great idea. Second, in order to travel by post one must at least know where one is going. But to know this precisely constituted his chief suffering at the moment: he could not name or determine upon a place for the life of him. For if he were to decide upon some town, his undertaking would instantly become both absurd and impossible in his own eyes; he sensed that very well. What was he going to do precisely in this town and not in some other? To look for ce marchand?^[clxii] But what marchand? Here again that second and now most dreadful question popped up. In fact, there was nothing more dreadful for him than ce marchand whom he had so suddenly set off headlong in search of, and whom he was quite certainly afraid most of all to find in reality. No, better simply the high road, just simply to go out to it and go down it and not think of anything for as long as it was possible not to think. A high road is something very, very long, which one sees no end to—like human life, like the human dream. There is an idea in the high road; and what sort of idea is there in traveling by post? Traveling by post is the end of any idea. Vive la grande route,^[clxiii] and then it's whatever God sends.

After the sudden and unexpected meeting with Liza, which I have already described, he went on in even greater self-abandon. The high road passed within a quarter mile of Skvoreshniki, and—strangely—he did not even notice at first how he had come upon it. Sound reasoning, or clear awareness at the least, was unbearable to him at that moment. A drizzling rain kept stopping and starting again; but he did not notice the rain, either. He also did not notice how he had shouldered his bag, and how this made it easier for him to walk. He must have gone a half or three quarters of a mile when he suddenly stopped and looked around. Ahead of him the old, black, and deeply rutted road stretched in an endless thread, planted out with its willows; to the right—a bare place, fields harvested long, long ago; to the left—bushes, and beyond them—woods. And far away—far away the faintly noticeable line of the railroad running obliquely, with the smoke of some train on it; but the sound could no longer be heard. Stepan Trofimovich grew a bit timid, but only for a moment. He sighed aimlessly, placed his bag against a willow, and sat down to rest. As he went to sit down, he felt a chill and wrapped himself in a plaid; then, noticing the rain, he opened the umbrella over him. For quite a long time he went on sitting like that, occasionally munching his lips, the handle of the umbrella grasped tightly in his hand. Various images swept before him in feverish succession, rapidly supplanting one another in his mind. "Lise, Lise, " he thought, "and ce Maurice with her... Strange people... But what was this strange fire there, and what were they talking about, and who was murdered? ... I suppose Stasie hasn't had time to find anything out yet and is still waiting for me with coffee... Cards? Did I ever lose people at cards? Hm ... in our Russia, during the time of so-called serfdom... Ah, my God, and Fedka?"

He started up in fright and looked around: "And what if this Fedka is sitting here somewhere behind a bush? They say he has a whole band of highway robbers someplace around here. Oh, God, then I... then I'll tell him the whole truth, that I am to blame... and that I suffered for ten years over him, longer than he was there as a soldier, and... and I'll give him my purse. Hm, j'ai en tout quarante roubles; il prendra les roubles et il me tuera tout de même. "^[clxiv]

In fear he closed his umbrella, who knows why, and laid it down beside him. Far away, on the road from town, some cart appeared; he began peering anxiously:

"Grace à Dieu it's a cart, and it's moving slowly; that can't be dangerous. These broken-down local nags ... I always talked about breeding ... It was Pyotr Ilych, however, who talked about breeding in the club, and then I finessed him, et puis, but what's that behind, and ... it seems there's a woman in the cart. A woman and a peasant— cela commence à être rassurant. The woman behind and the peasant in front—c'est très rassurant. They have a cow tied behind by the horns, c'est rassurant au plus haut degré. "^[clxv]

The cart came abreast of him, a rather sturdy and roomy peasant cart. The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack, the peasant on the driver's seat, his legs hanging over on Stepan Trofimovich's side. Behind there indeed plodded a red cow tied by the horns. The peasant and the woman stared wide-eyed at Stepan Trofimovich, and Stepan Trofimovich stared in the same way at them, but after letting them go on about twenty paces, he suddenly got up in haste and went after them. Naturally, it felt more trustworthy in the vicinity of the cart, but when he caught up with it he at once forgot about everything again and again became immersed in his scraps of thoughts and imaginings. He was striding along and certainly did not suspect that for the peasant and the woman he constituted at that moment the most mysterious and curious object one could meet on the high road.

"You, I mean, what sorts are you from, if it's not impolite my asking?" the wench finally could not help herself, when Stepan Trofimovich suddenly glanced at her distractedly. She was a wench of about twenty-seven, sturdy, black-browed, and ruddy, with kindly smiling red lips, behind which her even, white teeth flashed.

"You... you are addressing me?" Stepan Trofimovich muttered in doleful surprise.

"Must be from merchants," the peasant said self-confidently. He was a strapping man of about forty, with a broad, sensible face and a full, reddish beard.

"No, I'm not actually a merchant, I. . . I. . . moi c'est autre chose,"^[clxvi] Stepan Trofimovich parried anyhow, and, just in case, dropped behind a little to the rear of the cart, so that he was now walking next to the cow.

"Must be from gentlefolk," the peasant decided, hearing non-Russian words, and pulled up on the nag.

"So here, to look at you, it's as if you're out for a walk?" the wench began to pry again.

"Is it ... is it me you're asking?"

"There's visiting foreigners come by rail sometimes, you're not from these parts with boots like that..."

"Military-type," the peasant put in, complacently and significantly.

"No, I'm not actually from the military, I..."

"What a curious wench," Stepan Trofimovich thought vexedly, "and how they're studying me... mais, enfin... Strange, in a word, just as if I were guilty before them, yet I'm not guilty of anything before them."

The wench whispered with the peasant.

"No offense, but we could maybe give you a lift, if only it's agreeable."

Stepan Trofimovich suddenly recollected himself.

"Yes, yes, my friends, with great pleasure, because I'm very tired, only how am I to get in?"

"How amazing," he thought to himself, "I've been walking next to this cow for such a long time, and it never occurred to me to ask if I could ride with them ... This 'real life' has something rather characteristic about it..."

The peasant, however, still did not stop his horse.

"And where are you headed for?" he inquired, with some mistrust.

Stepan Trofimovich did not understand at once.

"Khatovo, must be?"

"Khatov? No, not actually to Khatov... And I'm not quite acquainted; I've heard of him, though."

"It's a village, Khatovo, a village, five miles from here."

"A village? C'est charmant, I do believe I've heard..."

Stepan Trofimovich was still walking, and they still did not let him get in. A brilliant surmise flashed in his head.

"You think, perhaps, that I ... I have a passport, and I am a professor, that is, a teacher, if you wish... but a head one. I am a head teacher. Oui, c'est comme ça qu'on peut traduire.^[clxvii] I would very much like to get in, and I'll buy you... I'll buy you a pint for it."

"It'll be fifty kopecks, sir, it's a rough road."

"Or else we'd be getting the bad end," the wench put in.

"Fifty kopecks? Very well, then, fifty kopecks. C'est encore mieux, j'ai en tout quarante roubles, mais . . ."^[clxviii]

The peasant stopped, and by general effort Stepan Trofimovich was pulled into the cart and seated next to the woman on the sack. The whirl of thoughts would not leave him. At times he sensed in himself that he was somehow terribly distracted and not thinking at all of what he ought to be thinking of, and he marveled at that. This awareness of a morbid weakness of mind at times became very burdensome and even offensive to him.

"How ... how is it there's a cow behind?" he himself suddenly asked the wench.

"What's with you, mister, never seen one before?" the woman laughed.

"Bought her in town," the peasant intervened. "See, our cattle all dropped dead last spring—the plague. They all died, all, not even half was left, cry as you might."

And again he whipped up his nag, who had gotten stuck in a rut.

"Yes, that happens here in Russia... and generally we Russians... well, yes, it happens," Stepan Trofimovich trailed off.

"If you're a teacher, what do you want in Khatovo? Or maybe you're going farther?"

"I... that is, not actually farther... C'est-à-dire,^[clxix] to a merchant."

"To Spasov, must be?"

"Yes, yes, precisely, to Spasov. It makes no difference, however."

"If you're going to Spasov, and on foot, it'll take you a good week in those pretty boots," the wench laughed.

"Right, right, and it makes no difference, mes amis, no difference at all," Stepan Trofimovich impatiently cut her short.

"Terribly curious folk; the wench speaks better than he does, however, and I notice that since the nineteenth of February^[198] their style has changed somewhat, and ... and what do they care if it's Spasov or not Spasov? Anyhow, I'm paying them, so why are they pestering me?"

"If it's Spasov, then it's by steamer-boat," the peasant would not leave off.

"That's right enough," the wench put in animatedly, "because with horses along the shore you make a twenty-mile detour."

"Thirty."

"You'll just catch the steamer-boat in Ustyevo tomorrow at two o'clock," the woman clinched. But Stepan Trofimovich remained stubbornly silent. The questioners also fell silent. The peasant kept pulling up on the nag; the woman exchanged brief remarks with him from time to time. Stepan Trofimovich dozed off. He was terribly surprised when the woman, laughing, shook him awake and he saw himself in a rather large village at the front door of a cottage with three windows.

"You dozed off, mister?"

"What's that? Where am I? Ah, well! Well ... it makes no difference," Stepan Trofimovich sighed and got out of the cart.

He looked around sadly; the village scene seemed strange to him and in some way terribly alien.

"Ah, the fifty kopecks, I forgot!" he turned to the peasant with a somehow exceedingly hasty gesture; by now he was evidently afraid to part with them.

"Come in, you can pay inside," the peasant invited.

"It's a nice place," the wench encouraged.

Stepan Trofimovich climbed the rickety porch.

"But how is this possible?" he whispered in deep and timorous perplexity, and yet he entered the cottage. "Elle l'a voulu, "^[clxx] something stabbed at his heart, and again he suddenly forgot about everything, even that he had entered the cottage.

It was a bright, rather clean peasant cottage with three windows and two rooms; not really an inn, but a sort of guesthouse, where passing acquaintances stopped out of old habit. Stepan Trofimovich, without embarrassment, walked to the front corner, forgot to give any greetings, sat down, and lapsed into thought. Meanwhile, an extremely pleasant sensation of warmth, after three hours of dampness on the road, suddenly spread through his body. Even the chill that kept running briefly and abruptly down his spine, as always happens with especially nervous people when they are feverish and pass suddenly from cold to warmth, all at once became somehow strangely pleasant to him. He raised his head and the sweet smell of hot pancakes, over which the mistress was busying herself at the stove, tickled his nostrils. Smiling a childlike smile, he leaned towards the mistress and suddenly started prattling:

"What's this now? Is it pancakes? Mais... c'est charmant.”

"Do you wish some, mister?" the mistress offered at once and politely.

"I do, I precisely wish some, and ... I'd also like to ask you for tea," Stepan Trofimovich perked up.

"Start the samovar? With the greatest pleasure."

On a big plate with a bold blue pattern, pancakes appeared—those well-known peasant pancakes, thin, half wheat, with hot fresh butter poured over them—most delicious pancakes. Stepan Trofimovich sampled them with delight.

"How rich and how delicious they are! If only one could have un doigt d'eau de vie. "^[clxxi]

"You wish a little vodka, mister?"

"Precisely, precisely, just a bit, un tout petit rien, "^[clxxii]

"Five kopecks' worth, you mean?"

"Five kopecks' worth—five—five—five, un tout petit rien," Stepan Trofimovich yessed her with a blissful little smile.

Ask a peasant to do something for you, and, if he can and wants to, he will serve you diligently and cordially; but ask him to fetch a little vodka—and his usual calm cordiality suddenly transforms into a sort of hasty, joyful obligingness, almost a family solicitude for you. Someone going to get vodka—though only you are going to drink it, not he, and he knows it beforehand—feels all the same, as it were, some part of your future gratification ... In no more than three or four minutes (the pot-house was two steps away), there stood on the table before Stepan Trofimovich a half-pint bottle and a large greenish glass.

"And all that for me!" he was greatly surprised. "I've always had vodka, but I never knew five kopecks' worth was so much."

He poured a glass, rose, and with a certain solemnity crossed the room to the other corner, where his companion on the sack had settled herself—the black-browed wench who had so pestered him with her questions on the way. The wench was abashed and started making excuses, but, having uttered all that decency prescribed, in the end she rose, drank politely, in three sips, as women do, and with a show of great suffering on her face handed the glass back and bowed to Stepan Trofimovich. He pompously returned her bow and went back to his table even with a look of pride.

All this happened in him by some sort of inspiration: he himself had not known even a second before that he would go and treat the wench.

"My knowledge of how to handle the people is perfect, perfect, I always told them so," he thought smugly, pouring himself the remaining drink from the bottle; though it turned out to be less than a glass, the drink produced a vivifying warmth and even went to his head a little.

"Je suis malade tout à fait, mais ce n'est pas trop mauvais d'être malade. "^[clxxiii]

"Would you like to buy?" a woman's soft voice came from beside him.

He looked up and, to his surprise, saw before him a lady—une dame et elle en avait l'air^[clxxiv]—now past thirty, with a very modest look, dressed town-fashion in a dark dress, and with a big gray kerchief on her shoulders. There was something very affable in her face, which Stepan Trofimovich immediately liked. She had just come back to the cottage, where she had left her things on a bench next to the place Stepan Trofimovich had taken—among them a briefcase at which, he remembered, he had glanced curiously as he entered, and a not very large oilcloth bag. From this same bag she took two handsomely bound books with crosses stamped on the covers and brought them to Stepan Trofimovich.

"Eh... mais je crois que c'est l'Évangile;^[clxxv] with the greatest pleasure... Ah, I understand now... Vous êtes ce qu 'on appelle a book-hawker;^[clxxvi] I've read of it more than once... Fifty kopecks?"

"Thirty-five kopecks each," the book-hawker answered.

"With the greatest pleasure. Je n 'ai rien contre l'Évangile, et^[clxxvii] .... I've long wanted to reread ..."

It flitted through him at that moment that he had not read the Gospel for at least thirty years, and had merely recalled a bit of it perhaps seven years ago only from reading Renan's book, La Vie de Jésus.^[199] As he had no change, he pulled out his four ten-rouble bills—all he had. The mistress undertook to break one, and only now did he take a better look and notice that a good many people had gathered in the cottage and had all been watching him for some time and seemed to be talking about him. They also discussed the fire in town, the owner of the cart with the cow most of all, since he had just come from there. They were talking about arson, about the Shpigulin men.

"He never said a word to me about the fire while he was driving me, and yet he talked about everything," it somehow occurred to Stepan Trofimovich.

"Good sir, Stepan Trofimovich, is it you I see? I really never dreamed! ... Don't you recognize me?" exclaimed an elderly fellow, an old-time household serf by the looks, with a shaven beard and wearing a greatcoat with long, turned-back lapels.

Stepan Trofimovich was frightened at hearing his own name.

"Excuse me," he muttered, "I don't quite remember you..."

"No recollection! But I'm Anisim, Anisim Ivanov. I served the late Mr. Gaganov, and saw you, sir, many a time with Varvara Petrovna at the late Avdotya Sergevna's. I used to come to you from her with books, and twice brought Petersburg candy she sent to you..."

"Ah, yes, I remember you, Anisim," Stepan Trofimovich smiled. "So you live here?"

"Near Spasov, sir, by the V—— monastery, on Marfa Sergevna's estate, that's Avdotya Sergevna's sister, you may be pleased to remember her, she broke her leg jumping out of a carriage on her way to a ball. She now lives near the monastery, and me with her, sir; and now, if you please, I'm on my way to the provincial capital, to visit my family..."

"Ah, yes, yes."

"I saw you and it made me glad, you were ever kind to me, sir," Anisim was smiling rapturously. "And where is it you're going like this, sir, it seems you're all alone... Seems you never used to go out alone, sir?"

Stepan Trofimovich looked at him timorously.

"It mightn't be to our Spasov, sir?" "Yes, to Spasov. Il me semble que tout le monde va à Spassof . . ."^[clxxviii]

"It mightn't be to Fyodor Matveevich's? Won't he be glad of you. He had such respect for you in the old days; even now he often remembers you..."

"Yes, yes, to Fyodor Matveevich's."

"Must be so, sir, must be so. You've got the peasants here marveling; they let on, sir, that they supposedly met you on foot on the high road. Foolish folk, sir."

"I... It's... You know, Anisim, I made a wager, as Englishmen do, that I could get there on foot, and I..."

Sweat stood out on his forehead and temples.

"Must be so, sir, must be so..." Anisim listened with merciless curiosity. But Stepan Trofimovich could not bear it any longer. He was so abashed that he wanted to get up and leave the cottage. But the samovar was brought in, and at the same moment the book-hawker, who had stepped out somewhere, came back. He turned to her with the gesture of a man saving his own life, and offered her tea. Anisim yielded and walked away.

Indeed, perplexity had been emerging among the peasants.

"Who is this man? Found walking down the road, says he's a teacher, dressed like a foreigner, reasons like a little child, answers nonsensically, as if he'd run away from somebody, and he's got money!" There was beginning to be some thought of reporting to the authorities—"since anyway things are not so quiet in town." But Anisim settled it all that same minute. Stepping out to the front hall, he told everyone who cared to listen that Stepan Trofimovich was not really a teacher, but was "himself a great scholar and occupied with great studies, and was a local landowner himself and had lived for the past twenty-two years with the full general's widow Stavrogin, in place of the chiefest man in the house, and had great respect from everyone in town. He used to leave fifty or a hundred roubles of an evening in the gentlemen's club, and in rank he was a councillor, which is the same as a lieutenant colonel in the army, just one step lower than full colonel. And that he's got money is because through the full general's widow Stavrogin he has more money than you could count," and so on and so forth.

"Mais c'est une dame, et très comme il faut,"^[clxxix] Stepan Trofimovich was resting from Anisim's attack, observing with pleasant curiosity his neighbor, the book-hawker, who, however, was drinking her tea from the saucer with sugar on the side.^[200] "Ce petit morceau de sucre ce n'est rien^[clxxx]... There is in her something noble and independent and at the same time—quiet. Le comme il faut tout pur,^[clxxxi] only of a somewhat different sort."

He soon learned from her that she was Sofya Matveevna Ulitin, and actually lived in ——, where she had a widowed sister, a tradeswoman; she herself was also a widow, and her husband, a sublieutenant who had risen to that rank from sergeant major, had been killed at Sebastopol.^[201]

"But you're so young, vous n'avez pas trente ans. "^[clxxxii]

"Thirty-four, sir," Sofya Matveevna smiled.

"So, you also understand French?"

"A little, sir; I lived in a noble house for four years after that and picked it up from the children there."

She told him that being left after her husband at the age of eighteen, she had stayed for a while in Sebastopol "as a sister of mercy," and had then lived in various places, sir, and now here she was going around selling the Gospel.

"Mais mon Dieu, it wasn't you who were involved in that strange, even very strange, story in our town?"

She blushed; it turned out to have been she.

"Ces vauriens, ces malheureux!^[clxxxiii] . . ." he tried to begin, in a voice trembling with indignation; a painful and hateful recollection echoed tormentingly in his heart. For a moment he became as if oblivious.

"Hah, she's gone again," he suddenly came to himself, noticing that she was no longer beside him. "She steps out frequently and is preoccupied with something, I notice she's even worried... Bah, je deviens égoïste . . ."^[clxxxiv]

He looked up and again saw Anisim, this time in the most threatening circumstances. The whole cottage was filled with peasants, all apparently dragged there by Anisim. The proprietor was there, and the peasant with the cow, and another two peasants (they turned out to be coachmen), and some other half-drunk little man, dressed like a peasant but clean-shaven, who resembled a besotted tradesman and was talking more than anyone else. And they were all discussing him, Stepan Trofimovich. The peasant with the cow stood his ground, insisting that along the shore would be about a thirty-mile detour, and that it had to be by steamer-boat. The half-drunk tradesman and the proprietor hotly objected:

"Because, dear brother, if it's by steamer-boat, of course, His Excellency will have a closer way across the lake; that's right enough; except the way things are now, the steamer-boat may not even go."

"It will, it will, it'll go for another week," Anisim was the most excited of all.

"Maybe so! but it doesn't come on schedule, because it's late in the year, and sometimes they wait three days in Ustyevo."

"It'll come tomorrow, tomorrow at two o'clock it'll come on schedule. You'll get to Spasov still before evening, sir, right on schedule," Anisim was turning himself inside out.

"Mais qu 'est-ce qu 'il a, cet homme, "^[clxxxv] Stepan Trofimovich trembled, fearfully awaiting his fate.

The coachmen, too, stepped up and began bargaining; they were asking three roubles to Ustyevo. Others shouted that he wouldn't be doing badly, that it was the right price, just the same price they charged all summer for going from here to Ustyevo.

"But... it's also nice here... And I don't want to," Stepan Trofimovich started mumbling.

"Right, sir, it's just as you say, right now it's really nice in Spasov, and you'll make Fyodor Matveevich so glad."

"Mon Dieu, mes amis, all this is so unexpected for me."

At last Sofya Matveevna came back. But she sat on the bench quite crushed and sad.

"I'm not to be in Spasov!" she said to the mistress.

"What, you're going to Spasov, too?" Stepan Trofimovich roused himself.

It turned out that a certain landowner, Nadezhda Yegorovna Svetlitsyn, had told her the day before to wait for her in Khatovo and promised to take her to Spasov, and here she had not come.

"What am I to do now?" Sofya Matveevna kept repeating.

"Mais, ma chère et nouvelle amie,^[clxxxvi] I, too, can take you, as well as any landowner, to this, what is it called, this village I've hired a coach to, and tomorrow—well, tomorrow we'll go to Spasov together."

"But, are you also going to Spasov?"

"Mais que faire, et je suis enchanté!^[clxxxvii] I shall be extremely glad to take you there; they want to, I've already hired... Which of you did I hire?" Stepan Trofimovich suddenly wanted terribly much to go to Spasov.

A quarter of an hour later they were already getting into the covered britzka: he very animated and thoroughly pleased; she with her bag and a grateful smile beside him. Anisim helped them in.

"Have a good trip, sir," he was bustling with all his might around the britzka, "it was such gladness you caused us!" "Good-bye, good-bye, my friend, good-bye." "When you see Fyodor Matveevich, sir..." "Yes, my friend, yes ... Fyodor Petrovich ... and now good-bye."

II

You see, my friend—you will allow me to call you my friend, n'est-ce pas?"^[clxxxviii] Stepan Trofimovich began hastily, as soon as the britzka started. "You see, I... J'aime le peuple, c'est indispensable, mais il me semble que je ne l'avais jamais vu de près. Stasie... cela va sans dire qu 'elle est aussi du peuple... mais le vrai peuple,^[clxxxix] that is, the real ones, the ones on the high road, it seems to me, care only about where I'm actually going... But let's drop our grudges. It's as if I were straying a little, but that, it seems, is from haste."

"It seems you're unwell, sir," Sofya Matveevna was studying him keenly but respectfully.

"No, no, I just need to wrap myself up, and generally the wind is somehow fresh, even very fresh, but we'll forget that. I mainly wished to say something else. Chère et incomparable amie,^[cxc] it seems to me that I am almost happy, and the one to blame for it is—you. Happiness is unprofitable for me, because I immediately set about forgiving all my enemies ..."

"But that is very good, sir."

"Not always, chère innocente. L'Evangile... Voyez-vous, désormais nous le prêcherons ensemble,^[cxci] and I'll willingly sell your handsome books. Yes, I feel there's perhaps an idea there, quelque chose de très nouveau dans ce genre.^[cxcii] The people are religious, c'est admis,^[cxciii] but they still don't know the Gospel. I will expound it to them ... In expounding it orally, it is possible to correct the mistakes of this remarkable book, which I, of course, am prepared to treat with great respect. I'll also be useful on the high road. I've always been useful, I've always said so to them and to cette chère ingrate^[cxciv]... Oh, let's forgive, forgive, let's first of all forgive all and always... Let's hope that we, too, will be forgiven. Yes, because we are guilty one and all before each other. All are guilty! ..."

"That, I think, you said very well, if you please, sir."

"Yes, yes ... I feel that I am speaking very well. I will speak very well to them, but, but what was the main thing I wished to say? I keep getting confused and don't remember... Will you allow me not to part from you? I feel that your eyes and... I'm even surprised at your manners: you're simplehearted, and you say 'sir,' and you put the cup upside down on the saucer... with that ugly little sugar lump; but there's something lovely in you, and I can see by your features... Oh, don't blush, and don't be afraid of me as a man. Chère et incomparable, pour moi une femme c'est tout.^[cxcv] I cannot live without a woman near, but simply near... I'm terribly, terribly confused ... I simply cannot remember what I wished to say. Oh, blessed is he to whom God always sends a woman, and... and I even think I'm in some sort of ecstasy. And on the high road, too, there is a lofty thought! there—that is what I wished to say—about the thought, now I've remembered it, and I kept missing it before. But why did they take us farther on? It was nice there, too, and here—cela devient trop froid. A propos, j'ai en tout quarante roubles et voilà cet argent,^[cxcvi] take it, take it, I don't know how, I'll lose it, they'll take it from me, and ... It seems to me I want to sleep; something is spinning in my head. Just spinning, spinning, spinning. Oh, how kind you are, what's that you're covering me with?"

"You must be in a real fever, sir, and I've covered you with my blanket, only about the money, sir, I'd..."

"Oh, for God's sake, n 'en parlons plus, parce que cela me fait mal,^[cxcvii] oh, how kind you are!"

He somehow quickly interrupted his speaking and fell asleep extremely soon, in a feverish, shivering sleep. The country road they drove on for those ten miles was not a smooth one, and the carriage jolted cruelly. Stepan Trofimovich woke up frequently, raised himself quickly from the small pillow Sofya Matveevna had slipped under his head, seized her hand, and asked: "Are you here?"—as if he feared she might leave him. He also insisted that he had seen some gaping jaws with teeth in a dream and had found it very repulsive. Sofya Matveevna was greatly worried for him.

The coachman drove them straight up to a big cottage with four windows and wings of rooms in the yard. The awakened Stepan Trofimovich hurriedly walked in and went straight to the second room, the best and most spacious in the house. His sleepy face acquired a most bustling expression. He explained at once to the mistress, a tall and sturdy woman of about forty with very black hair and all but a moustache, that he required the whole room for himself "and that the door be shut and no one be let in, parce que nous avons à parler."^[cxcviii]

"Oui, j'ai beaucoup à vous dire, chère amie,^[cxcix] I'll pay you, I'll pay you!" he waved the mistress away.

Though he was hurrying, he moved his tongue somehow stiffly. The mistress listened with displeasure, but in token of agreement kept her silence, in which, however, one could sense a certain menace. He noticed none of this and hurriedly (he was in a terrible hurry) requested that she go and serve dinner at once as soon as possible, "without the least delay."

Here the woman with the moustache could bear it no longer.

"This isn't an inn, mister, we don't serve dinners for travelers. Some boiled crayfish or a samovar, we have nothing else. There won't be fresh fish till tomorrow."

But Stepan Trofimovich began waving his arms, repeating with wrathful impatience: "I'll pay, only be quick, be quick." They settled on fish soup and roast chicken; the landlady declared that there was not a chicken to be found in the whole village; however, she agreed to go and look, but with an air as though she were doing an extraordinary favor.

As soon as she left, Stepan Trofimovich instantly sat down on the sofa and sat Sofya Matveevna down next to him. There were both armchairs and a sofa in the room, but of dreadful appearance. Generally, the whole room, rather spacious (with a partition behind which stood a bed), with its yellow, old, torn wallpaper, with dreadful mythological lithographs on the walls, with a long row of icons and bronze triptychs^[202] in the front corner, with its strange assortment of furniture, presented an unsightly mixture of the urban and the aboriginally peasant. But he did not even glance at it all, did not even look out the window at the vast lake which began about seventy feet from the cottage.

"At last we're by ourselves, and we won't let anyone in! I want to tell you everything, everything, from the very beginning."

Sofya Matveevna stopped him, even with strong uneasiness:

"Is it known to you, Stepan Trofimovich..."

"Comment, vous savez déjà mon nom?"^[cc] he smiled joyfully.

"I heard it today from Anisim Ivanovich, when you were talking with him. But this, for my part, I will be so bold as to tell you..."

And in a quick whisper, glancing back at the closed door to be sure no one was eavesdropping, she told him that here, in this village, there is trouble, sir. That all the local peasants, though fishermen, in fact make a business of charging summer visitors whatever price they like. The village is not on a main route, but is out of the way, and the only reason to come here is that the steamer stops here, but when the steamer does not come, as always happens the moment the weather turns bad, there will be a crowd of people waiting for several days, and then all the houses in the village will be occupied, and that is just what the owners wait for; because they triple the price for everything, and the proprietor here is proud and haughty, because he is very rich for these parts—his net alone is worth a thousand roubles.

Stepan Trofimovich looked into Sofya Matveevna's extremely animated face all but with reproach, and several times made a gesture to stop her. But she held her own and finished: according to what she said, she had already come there in the summer with one "very noble lady, sir," from town, and had also stayed overnight waiting for the steamer to come, even two whole days, sir, and had suffered such grief that it was terrible to remember. "Now you, Stepan Trofimovich, were pleased to ask for this room for yourself alone, sir... It's just to warn you, sir... There, in the other room, there are already guests, an elderly man, a young man, and also some lady with children, and by tomorrow before two o'clock there'll be a houseful, because if there hasn't been a steamer for two days, it will surely come tomorrow. So for a separate room, and for having just asked for dinner, sir, and for making it bad for the other guests, they'll demand so much from you that it's even unheard-of in the capitals, sir..."

But he was suffering, truly suffering:

"Assez, mon enfant, I pray you; nous avons notre argent, et après—et après le bon Dieu. And I'm even surprised that you, with the loftiness of your notions... Assez, assez, vous me tourmentez,"^[cci] he said hysterically, "our whole future is ahead of us, and you... you make me fear for the future ..."

He immediately began telling the whole story, hurrying so much that at first it was even hard to understand. It took a long time. The fish soup was served, the chicken was served, the samovar, finally, was served, and he went on talking... What came out was somewhat strange and morbid, but he was indeed ill. This was a sudden straining of his mental powers, which, of course—and Sofya Matveevna foresaw it with anguish throughout his story—could not but lead immediately afterwards to a great loss of strength in his already unsettled organism. He started almost from childhood, when "with fresh breast he ran over the fields"; only an hour later did he reach his two marriages and Berlin life. I would not dream of laughing, however. There was something truly lofty for him here and, to use the newest language, almost a struggle for existence. He saw before him her whom he had already pre-elected for his future path, and he was hastening to initiate her, so to speak. His genius must no longer remain a secret to her... Perhaps he was greatly exaggerating with regard to Sofya Matveevna, but he had already elected her. He could not be without a woman. He himself saw clearly from her face that she hardly understood him at all, even in the most capital things.

"Ce n 'est rien, nous attendrons,^[ccii] and meanwhile she can understand by intuition..."

"My friend, all I need is your heart alone!" he kept exclaiming, interrupting his narrative, "and this dear, charming look with which you are gazing at me now. Oh, do not blush! I've already told you..."

The fogginess increased greatly for poor, trapped Sofya Matveevna when the story turned almost into a whole dissertation on the subject of how no one had ever been able to understand Stepan Trofimovich and of how "talents perish in our Russia." It was "all so very intelligent," she later reported dejectedly. She listened with obvious suffering, her eyes slightly popping out. And when Stepan Trofimovich threw himself into humor and the wittiest barbs concerning our "progressive and dominating ones," she made an attempt, from grief, to smile a couple of times in response to his laughter, but it came out worse than tears, so that in the end Stepan Trofimovich himself became abashed and struck out with even greater passion and spite at the nihilists and "new people." Here he simply frightened her, and she only got a bit of respite, though a most deceptive one, when the romance proper began. A woman is always a woman, be she even a nun. She smiled, shook her head, blushed deeply all at once and lowered her eyes, thereby sending Stepan Trofimovich into utter admiration and inspiration, so that he even added quite a lot. His Varvara Petrovna came out as a most lovely brunette ("the admiration of Petersburg and a great many European capitals"), and her husband had died, "cut down by a bullet at Sebastopol," solely because he felt unworthy of her love, giving way to his rival—that is, to the same Stepan Trofimovich... "Do not be embarrassed, my quiet one, my Christian!" he exclaimed to Sofya Matveevna, himself almost believing everything he was telling her. "This was something lofty, something so fine that not even once in our lives did we declare it." The reason for such a state of affairs turned out in the ensuing narrative to be a blonde (if not Darya Pavlovna, I really don't know whom Stepan Trofimovich meant). This blonde owed everything to the brunette and, being a distant relation, had grown up in her house. The brunette, having finally noticed the blonde's love for Stepan Trofimovich, withdrew into herself. The blonde, for her part, noticing the brunette's love for Stepan Trofimovich, also withdrew into herself. And so all three of them, languishing in mutual magnanimity, were silent like this for twenty years, withdrawn into themselves. "Oh, what a passion it was, oh, what a passion!" he kept exclaiming, gasping in the most genuine rapture. "I saw the full blossom of her (the brunette's) beauty; daily 'with a sprain in my heart' I saw her passing by me, as if ashamed of her loveliness." (Once he said: "ashamed of her portliness.") At last, he had run away, abandoning all this feverish twenty-year dream. "Vingt ans!" And now, on the high road... Then, in some sort of inflammation of the brain, he began explaining to Sofya Matveevna what must be the significance of their meeting that day, "so accidentally and so fatefully, unto ages of ages." Sofya Matveevna, in terrible embarrassment, finally got up from the sofa; he even made an attempt to go on his knees before her, at which she burst into tears. Twilight was gathering; the two had already spent several hours in the closed room...

"No, you'd better let me go to the other room, sir," she murmured, "or else people might think something."

She finally tore herself away; he let her go, giving his word that he would go to bed at once. As he was saying good night, he complained of a bad headache. Sofya Matveevna had left her bag and things in the first room when she came in, intending to spend the night with the proprietors; but she did not manage to get any rest.

During the night, Stepan Trofimovich had an attack of that cholerine so well known to me and to all his friends—the usual outcome with him of any nervous strain or moral shock. Poor Sofya Matveevna did not sleep all night. Since, in tending to the sick man, she had to go in and out of the cottage fairly often through the proprietors' room, the guests and the mistress who were sleeping there kept grumbling and finally even began to curse when she decided towards morning to start the samovar. Stepan Trofimovich was half oblivious throughout the attack; at times he as if fancied that the samovar was being prepared, that he was being given something to drink (raspberry tea), that something warm was being put on his stomach, his chest. But he felt almost every moment that she was there by him; that it was she coming and going getting him out of bed and putting him back in. By three o'clock in the morning he felt better; he sat up, lowered his legs from the bed, and, not thinking of anything, collapsed on the floor in front of her. This was no longer the former kneeling; he simply fell at her feet and kissed the hem of her dress...

"You mustn't, sir, I'm not worthy at all," she murmured, trying to lift him back into bed.

"My savior," he clasped his hands reverently before her. "Vous êtes noble comme une marquise!^[cciii] I—I am a blackguard! Oh, I have been dishonest all my life ..."

"Calm yourself," Sofya Matveevna pleaded.

"What I told you earlier was all lies—for glory, for magnificence, out of idleness—all, all, to the last word, oh, blackguard, blackguard!"

The cholerine thus turned into another attack, one of hysterical self-condemnation. I have already mentioned these attacks in speaking of his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He suddenly remembered Lise, their meeting the previous morning: "It was so terrible and—there must have been some misfortune, and I didn't ask, I didn't find out! I thought only of myself! Oh, what happened to her, do you know what happened to her?" he besought Sofya Matveevna.

Then he swore that he "would not betray," that he would return to her (that is, to Varvara Petrovna). "We shall go up to her porch" (all this, that is, with Sofya Matveevna) "every day, as she's getting into her carriage to go for a morning promenade, and secretly watch... Oh, I wish her to strike me on the other cheek; it delights me to wish it! I'll turn my other cheek to her comme dans votre livre!^[cciv] Now, only now do I understand what it means to... offer the other cheek.^[203] I never understood before!"

For Sofya Matveevna there followed two of the most frightful days of her life; even now she shudders to recall them. Stepan Trofimovich became so seriously ill that he could not go on the steamer, which this time came on schedule at two o'clock in the afternoon; to leave him alone was more than she could do, so she did not go to Spasov either. By her account, he was even very glad when the steamer left.

"Well, that's fine, that's wonderful," he muttered from the bed, "and I kept being afraid we would have to go. It's so nice here, it's better than anywhere... You won't leave me? Oh, you haven't left me!"

"Here," however, was not so nice at all. He did not want to know anything about her difficulties; his head was filled with nothing but fantasies. His illness he considered a fleeting thing, a trifle, and he gave no thought to it, but thought only of how they would go and sell "these books." He asked her to read him the Gospel.

"It's a long time since I've read it ... in the original. Otherwise someone may ask and I'll make a mistake; one must also be prepared, after all."

She sat down beside him and opened the book.

"You read beautifully," he interrupted her at the very first line. "I see, I see, I was not mistaken!" he added obscurely but rapturously. And generally he was in a constant state of rapture. She read the Sermon on the Mount.^[204]

"Assez, assez, mon enfant,^[ccv] enough... You can't think that that is not enough!"

And he closed his eyes strengthlessly. He was very weak, but did not yet lose consciousness. Sofya Matveevna moved to get up, thinking he wanted to sleep. But he stopped her:

"My friend, I've been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth. I never spoke for the truth, but only for myself, I knew that before, but only now do I see... Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And everyone, everyone! Savez-vous,^[ccvi] perhaps I'm lying now; certainly I'm also lying now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I lie. The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie... and ... and not believe one's own lie, yes, yes, that's precisely it! But wait, that's all for later... You and I together, together!" he added with enthusiasm.

"Stepan Trofimovich," Sofya Matveevna asked timidly, "shouldn't we send to the 'big town' for a doctor?"

He was terribly struck.

"What for? Est-ce que je suis si malade? Mais rien de sérieux.^[ccvii] And what do we need strangers for? People will find out and—what will happen then? No, no, no strangers, you and I together, together!"

"You know," he said after a silence, "read me something more, just so, don't choose, something, wherever your eye falls."

Sofya Matveevna opened and started to read.

"Wherever it opens, wherever it happens to open," he repeated.

“‘And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write...’”^[205]

"What? What is that? From where?"

"It's from the Apocalypse."

"O, je m'en souviens, oui, l'Apocalypse. Lisez, lisez,^[ccviii] I want to divine our future by the book, I want to know what comes out; read from the angel, from the angel..."

“‘And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot! Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.’”

"That. . . and that is in your book!" he exclaimed, flashing his eyes and raising himself from his pillow. "I never knew that great place! Do you hear: sooner cold, sooner cold than lukewarm, than only lukewarm. Oh, I'll prove to them. Only don't leave me, don't leave me alone! We'll prove to them, we'll prove to them!"

"No, I won't leave you, Stepan Trofimovich, I'll never leave you, sir!" she seized his hands and pressed them in hers, bringing them to her heart, looking at him with tears in her eyes. ("I pitied him so very much at that moment," she recounted later.) His lips quivered as if convulsively.

"However, Stepan Trofimovich, what are we going to do, sir?

Shouldn't we let some one of your acquaintances know, or maybe your relations?"

But at this he became so frightened that she regretted mentioning it. He implored her, trembling and shaking, not to send for anyone, not to do anything; he made her promise, he insisted: "No one, no one! We alone, only alone, nous partirons ensemble."^[ccix]

Another very bad thing was that the proprietors also began to worry, grumbling and pestering Sofya Matveevna. She paid them and made sure they saw she had money; this softened them for a time; but the proprietor demanded Stepan Trofimovich's "identity." With a haughty smile the sick man pointed to his little bag; in it Sofya Matveevna found the certificate of his resignation or something of the sort, with which he had lived all his life. The proprietor would not leave off and said that "he ought to be put someplace or other, because we're not a hospital, and if he dies there might be consequences; we'd all be in for it." Sofya Matveevna tried to speak with him about a doctor, but it turned out that sending to the "big town" would be so expensive that any thought of a doctor had, of course, to be abandoned. In anguish she went back to her patient. Stepan Trofimovich was growing weaker and weaker.

"Now read me one more passage... about the swine," he said suddenly.

"What, sir?" Sofya Matveevna was terribly frightened.

"About the swine... it's there... ces cochons^[ccx] ... I remember, demons entered into the swine and they all drowned. You must read it to me; I'll tell you why afterwards. I want to recall it literally. I need it literally."

Sofya Matveevna knew the Gospel well and immediately found in Luke the same passage I have placed as an epigraph to my chronicle. I quote it here again:

"Now a large herd of swine was feeding there on the hillside; and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them leave. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled, and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. And those who had seen it told them how he who had been possessed with demons was healed."

"My friend," Stepan Trofimovich said in great excitement, "savez-vous, this wonderful and... extraordinary passage has been a stumbling block for me all my life... dans ce livre ... so that I have remembered this passage ever since childhood. And now a thought has occurred to me; une comparaison. Terribly many thoughts occur to me now: you see, it's exactly like our Russia. These demons who come out of a sick man and enter into swine—it's all the sores, all the miasmas, all the uncleanness, all the big and little demons accumulated in our great and dear sick man, in our Russia, for centuries, for centuries! Oui, cette Russie que j'aimais toujours.^[ccxi] But a great will and a great thought will descend to her from on high, as upon that insane demoniac, and out will come all these demons, all the uncleanness, all the abomination that is festering on the surface... and they will beg of themselves to enter into swine. And perhaps they already have! It is us, us and them, and Petrusha. . . et les autres avec lui,^[ccxii] and I, perhaps, first, at the head, and we will rush, insane and raging, from the cliff down into the sea, and all be drowned, and good riddance to us, because that's the most we're fit for. But the sick man will be healed and 'sit at the feet of Jesus'... and everyone will look in amazement... Dear, vous comprendrez après, but it excites me very much now... Vous comprendrez après... Nous comprendrons ensemble, "^[ccxiii]

He became delirious and finally lost consciousness. It continued thus all the next day. Sofya Matveevna sat beside him and wept, this being the third night she went almost without sleep, and avoided being seen by the proprietors, who, as she sensed, were already up to something. Deliverance followed only on the third day. That morning Stepan Trofimovich came to, recognized her, and gave her his hand. She crossed herself in hope. He wished to look out the window: "Tiens, un lac,"^[ccxiv] he said, "ah, my God, I haven't even seen it yet..." At that moment someone's carriage clattered at the front door and a great hubbub arose in the house.

III

It was Varvara Petrovna herself, arriving in a four-place coach-and-four, with two footmen and Darya Pavlovna. The miracle had come about simply: Anisim, dying of curiosity, on his arrival in town, did after all go the next day to Varvara Petrovna's house, and blabbed to the servants that he had met Stepan Trofimovich alone in a village, that peasants had seen him on the high road, alone, on foot, and that he had set out for Spasov, by way of Ustyevo, together with Sofya Matveevna. Since Varvara Petrovna, for her part, was already terribly worried, and was searching as well as she could for her runaway friend, she was informed at once about Anisim. Having listened to him and, chiefly, to the details of the departure for Ustyevo together with some Sofya Matveevna in the same britzka, she instantly got ready and, following the still warm tracks, came rolling into Ustyevo herself. She knew nothing as yet of his illness.

Her stern and commanding voice rang out; even the proprietors quailed. She had stopped just to make inquiries and find things out, being certain that Stepan Trofimovich had long been in Spasov; learning that he was there and ill, she worriedly entered the cottage.

"Well, where is he? Ah, it's you!" she cried, seeing Sofya Matveevna, who just at that moment appeared in the doorway of the second room. "I could tell by your shameless face that it was you. Out, vile creature! Don't let a trace of her remain in the house! Drive her out, or else, my girl, I'll tuck you away in jail for good. Guard her meanwhile in another house. She already once spent time in jail in our town, and she can spend some more. And I ask you, landlord, not to dare let anyone in while I'm here. I am General Stavrogin's widow and I am taking the whole house. And you, my dearest, will account to me for everything."

The familiar sounds shocked Stepan Trofimovich. He trembled. But she had already come behind the partition. Flashing her eyes, she drew up a chair with her foot and, sitting back in it, shouted to Dasha:

"Go out for a while, stay with the proprietors. What is this curiosity? And do close the door tightly behind you."

For some time she peered silently and with a sort of predatory look into his frightened face.

"Well, how are you doing, Stepan Trofimovich? Had a nice little spree?" suddenly burst from her with furious irony.

''Chère, " Stepan Trofimovich babbled, hardly aware of himself, "I've come to know Russian real life ... Et je prêcherai l'Évangile ... "^[ccxv]

"Oh, shameless, ignoble man!" she suddenly cried out, clasping her hands. "It wasn't enough for you to disgrace me, you had to get mixed up with... Oh, you old, shameless profligate!"

"Chère ..."

His voice broke off, and he was unable to utter a sound, but only stared, his eyes popping with terror.

"What is she?"

"C'est un ange... C'était plus qu'un ange pour moi,^[ccxvi] all night she... Oh, don't shout, don't frighten her, chère, chère ..."

Varvara Petrovna suddenly jumped up from her chair with a clatter; her frightened cry rang out: "Water, water!" Though he came to, she was still trembling from fear and, pale, was looking at his distorted face: only here for the first time did she get some idea of the extent of his illness.

"Darya," she suddenly started whispering to Darya Pavlovna, "send immediately for the doctor, for Salzfisch; let Yegorych go at once; let him hire horses here, and take another coach from town. They must be here by nighttime."

Dasha rushed to carry out the order. Stepan Trofimovich went on staring with the same popping, frightened eyes; his white lips were trembling.

"Wait, Stepan Trofimovich, wait, my dearest," she was coaxing him like a child, "just wait, wait, Darya will come back and... Ah, my God, mistress, mistress, you come at least, my dear!"

In her impatience she ran to the mistress herself.

"Right now, this minute, that woman must come back. Bring her back, bring her back!"

Fortunately, Sofya Matveevna had not yet had time to get far from the house and was just going out the gate with her bag and bundle. They brought her back. She was so frightened that her legs and hands even shook. Varvara Petrovna seized her by the hand, like a hawk seizing a chicken, and dragged her impetuously to Stepan Trofimovich.

"Well, here she is for you. I didn't eat her. You must have thought I'd simply eaten her."

Stepan Trofimovich seized Varvara Petrovna by the hand, brought it to his eyes, and dissolved in tears, sobbing morbidly, fitfully.

"Well, calm yourself, calm yourself, my dear, my dearest. Ah, my God, but do ca-a-alm yourself!" she cried furiously. "Oh, tormentor, tormentor, my eternal tormentor!"

"Dear," Stepan Trofimovich finally murmured, addressing Sofya Matveevna, "stay out there, dear, I want to say something here..."

Sofya Matveevna hastened out at once.

"Chérie, chérie ..." he was suffocating.

"Wait before you talk, Stepan Trofimovich, wait a little and rest meanwhile. Here's water. Wa-a-ait, I said!"

She sat down on the chair again. Stepan Trofimovich held her firmly by the hand. For a long time she would not let him talk. He brought her hand to his lips and began to kiss it. She clenched her teeth, looking off into a corner.

"Je vous aimais!"^[ccxvii] escaped him finally. She had never heard such a word from him, spoken in such a way.

"Hm," she grunted in reply.

"je vous aimais toute ma vie... vingt ans!"^[ccxviii]

She remained silent—two minutes, three. "And sprayed yourself with perfume, getting ready for Dasha..." she suddenly said in a terrible whisper. Stepan Trofimovich simply froze.

"Put on a new tie..." Again about two minutes of silence.

"Remember the little cigar?"

"My friend," he began mumbling in terror.

"The little cigar, in the evening, by the window ... in the moonlight... after the gazebo ... in Skvoreshniki? Do you remember? Do you remember?" she jumped up from her place, seizing his pillow by two corners and shaking his head together with it. "Do you remember, you empty, empty, inglorious, fainthearted, eternally, eternally empty man!" she spat out in her furious whisper, keeping herself from shouting. Finally she dropped him and fell onto the chair, covering her face with her hands. "Enough!" she snapped, straightening up. "Twenty years are gone, there's no bringing them back; I'm a fool, too."

"Je vous aimais, " he again clasped his hands.

"Why keep at me with your aimais, aimais! Enough!" she jumped up again. "And if you don't go to sleep right now, I'll... You need rest; go to sleep, go to sleep right now, close your eyes. Ah, my God, maybe he wants to have lunch! What do you eat? What does he eat? Ah, my God, where's that woman? Where is she?"

A hubbub began. But Stepan Trofimovich murmured in a weak voice that he would indeed like to sleep for une heure, and then—un bouillon, un thé... enfin, il est si heureux.^[ccxix] He lay back and indeed seemed to fall asleep (he was probably pretending). Varvara Petrovna waited a little and then tiptoed out from behind the partition.

She sat down in the proprietors' room, chased the proprietors out, and ordered Dasha to bring her that woman. A serious interrogation began.

"Now, my girl, tell me all the details; sit beside me, so. Well?"

"I met Stepan Trofimovich..."

"Wait, stop. I warn you that if you lie or hold anything back, I'll dig you up out of the ground. Well?"

"Stepan Trofimovich and I ... as soon as I came to Khatovo, ma'am..." Sofya Matveevna was almost suffocating...

"Wait, stop, be quiet; what's all this stammering? First of all, what sort of bird are you?"

The woman told her haphazardly, though in the briefest terms, about herself, beginning with Sebastopol. Varvara Petrovna listened silently, sitting straight-backed on her chair, looking sternly and steadily straight into the narrator's eyes.

"Why are you so cowed? Why do you look at the ground? I like people who look straight and argue with me. Go on."

She finished telling about their meeting, about the books, about how Stepan Trofimovich treated the peasant woman to vodka...

"Right, right, don't leave out the smallest detail," Varvara Petrovna encouraged her. Finally, she told of how they had set off and how Stepan Trofimovich had kept talking, "already completely sick, ma'am," and even spent several hours here telling her his whole life from the very first beginning.

"Tell me about the life."

Sofya Matveevna suddenly faltered and was completely nonplussed.

"I couldn't say anything about that, ma'am," she spoke all but in tears, "and, besides, I hardly understood anything."

"Lies—it's impossible that you understood nothing at all."

"He was telling for a long time about some black-haired noble lady, ma'am," Sofya Matveevna blushed terribly, incidentally noticing Varvara Petrovna's fair hair and her total lack of resemblance to the "brunette."

"Black-haired? What, precisely? Speak!"

"How this noble lady was very much in love with him, ma'am, all her life, a whole twenty years; but she didn't dare open her heart and was ashamed before him, because she was very portly, ma'am..."

"Fool!" Varvara Petrovna snapped out, pensively but resolutely.

Sofya Matveevna was now completely in tears.

"I can't tell anything right about it, because I myself was in great fear for him and couldn't understand him, since he's such an intelligent man..."

"It's not for a crow like you to judge his intelligence. Did he offer you his hand?"

The narrator trembled.

"Did he fall in love with you? Speak! He offered you his hand?" Varvara Petrovna yelled.

"That's nearly how it was, ma'am," she sobbed. "Only I took it all for nothing, on account of his illness," she added firmly, raising her eyes.

"What is your name, name and patronymic?"

"Sofya Matveevna, ma'am."

"Let it be known to you, then, Sofya Matveevna, that he is the paltriest, the emptiest little man... Lord, Lord! Do you take me for some vile creature?"

The woman goggled her eyes.

"A vile creature, a tyrant? Who ruined his life?"

"How could that be, ma'am, seeing you yourself are weeping?"

Varvara Petrovna did indeed have tears in her eyes.

"Well, sit down, sit down, don't be frightened. Look me in the eyes again, straight; why are you blushing? Dasha, come here, look at her: what do you think, is her heart pure?..."

And to Sofya Matveevna's surprise, and perhaps still greater fright, she suddenly patted her on the cheek.

"Only it's a pity you're a fool. Too great a fool for your years. Very well, my dear, I shall concern myself with you. I see that this is all nonsense. Stay nearby for the time being, lodgings will be rented, and I'll provide board and everything... till I ask for you."

The frightened Sofya Matveevna tried to peep that she must hurry.

"You don't have to hurry anywhere. I'm buying all your books, and you can stay here. Quiet, no excuses. After all, if I hadn't come, you wouldn't have left him, would you?"

"I wouldn't have left him for anything, ma'am," Sofya Matveevna said softly and firmly, wiping her eyes.

It was late at night when Dr. Salzfisch was brought. He was a rather venerable old man, and quite an experienced practitioner, who had recently lost his official position in our town as the result of some ambitious quarrel with his superiors. Varvara Petrovna had instantly begun "patronizing" him with all her might. He examined the patient attentively, asked questions, and cautiously announced to Varvara Petrovna that the "sufferer's" condition was quite doubtful, owing to the occurrence of a complication in the illness, and that one must expect "even all the worst." Varvara Petrovna, who in twenty years had grown unaccustomed even to thinking that anything serious and decisive could proceed from Stepan Trofimovich personally, was deeply shaken, and even turned pale:

"Is there really no hope?"

"How could it be that there is by no means not any hope at all, but..."

She did not go to bed that night and could barely wait until morning. As soon as the sick man opened his eyes and regained consciousness (he had been conscious all the while, though he was growing weaker by the hour), she accosted him with the most resolute air:

"Stepan Trofimovich, one must foresee everything. I have sent for a priest. You have to fulfill your duty..."

Knowing his convictions, she greatly feared a refusal. He looked at her in surprise.

"Nonsense, nonsense!" she cried out, thinking he was already refusing. "This is no time for mischief. Enough foolery."

"But... am I really so ill?"

He pensively agreed. And, generally, I was greatly surprised to learn afterwards from Varvara Petrovna that he was not in the least afraid of death. Perhaps he simply did not believe it and continued to regard his illness as a trifle.

He confessed and took communion quite willingly. Everyone, including Sofya Matveevna, and even the servants, came to congratulate him on receiving the Holy Sacrament. Everyone to a man wept restrainedly, looking at his pinched and worn-out face and his pale, quivering lips.

"Oui, mes amis, and I am only surprised that you are... fussing so. Tomorrow I'll probably get up and we'll ... set off ... Toute cette cérémonie^[ccxx]... which, to be sure, I give all its due... has been..."

"I beg you, father, to be sure to stay with the sick man," Varvara Petrovna quickly stopped the priest, who was already taking off his vestments. "As soon as tea has been served, I beg you to start talking immediately about things divine, to bolster his faith."

The priest started to speak; everyone was sitting or standing near the sick man's bed.

"In our sinful times," the priest began smoothly, a cup of tea in his hands, "faith in the Most High is the only refuge for mankind in all the trials and tribulations of life, as well as in the hope of eternal bliss promised to the righteous..."

Stepan Trofimovich grew all animated, as it were; a subtle smile flitted across his lips.

"Mon pire, je vous remercie, et vous êtes bien bon, mais ... "^[ccxxi]

"No, no, no mais, no mais at all!" Varvara Petrovna exclaimed, leaping from her chair. "Father," she turned to the priest, "this, this is the sort of man, the sort of man ... he'll have to be reconfessed again in an hour. That's the sort of man he is!"

Stepan Trofimovich smiled restrainedly.

"My friends," he said, "God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally..."

Either he had really come to believe, or the majestic ceremony of the performed sacrament had shaken him and aroused the artistic receptivity of his nature, but he uttered firmly and, they say, with great feeling, a few words which went directly against many of his former convictions.

"My immortality is necessary if only because God will not want to do an injustice and utterly extinguish the fire of love for him once kindled in my heart. And what is more precious than love? Love is higher than being, love is the crown of being, and is it possible for being not to bow before it? If I have come to love him and rejoice in my love—is it possible that he should extinguish both me and my joy and turn us to naught? If there is God, then I am immortal! Voilà ma profession de foi.”^[ccxxii]

"There is God, Stepan Trofimovich, I assure you there is," Varvara Petrovna implored, "give up, drop all your silliness at least once in your life!" (It seems she had not quite understood his profession de foi. )

"My friend," he was growing more and more animated, though his voice broke frequently, "my friend, when I understood ... that turned cheek, I... right then I also understood something else... J'ai menti toute ma vie,^[ccxxiii] all, all my life! and I'd like... tomorrow, though... Tomorrow we shall all set off."

Varvara Petrovna began to weep. He was searching for someone with his eyes.

"She's here, here she is!" she seized Sofya Matveevna by the hand and brought her to him. He smiled tenderly.

"Oh, I wish so much to live again!" he exclaimed, with an extraordinary rush of energy. "Each minute, each instant of life should be blessedness for man... they should, surely they should! It is man's own duty to arrange it so; it is his law—a hidden but a surely existing one ... Oh, I wish to see Petrusha ... and all of them ... and Shatov!"

I will note that neither Darya Pavlovna, nor Varvara Petrovna, nor even Salzfisch, the latest to come from town, knew anything yet about Shatov.

Stepan Trofimovich was growing more and more excited, morbidly so, beyond his strength.

"The one constant thought that there exists something immeasurably more just and happy than I, fills the whole of me with immeasurable tenderness and—glory—oh, whoever I am, whatever I do! Far more than his own happiness, it is necessary for a man to know and believe every moment that there is somewhere a perfect and peaceful happiness, for everyone and for everything... The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man's always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite is as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits ... My friends, all, all of you: long live the Great Thought! The eternal, immeasurable Thought! For every man, whoever he is, it is necessary to bow before that which is the Great Thought. Even the stupidest man needs at least something great. Petrusha... Oh, how I want to see them all again! They don't know, they don't know that they, too, have in them the same eternal Great Thought!"

Dr. Salzfisch had not been present at the ceremony. Coming in suddenly, he was horrified and dispersed the gathering, insisting that the sick man should not be disturbed.

Stepan Trofimovich died three days later, by then completely unconscious. He somehow quietly went out, like a burnt-down candle. Varvara Petrovna, after having the funeral service performed there, transferred the body of her poor friend to Skvoreshniki. His grave is within the churchyard and is already covered with a marble slab. The inscription and railing have been left till spring.

In all, Varvara Petrovna's absence from town had lasted some eight days. Along with her, sitting beside her in the carriage, there also arrived Sofya Matveevna, who seemed to have settled with her for good. I will note that as soon as Stepan Trofimovich lost consciousness (that same morning), Varvara Petrovna immediately had Sofya Matveevna removed again, out of the cottage entirely, and tended the sick man herself, alone to the end; but the moment he gave up the ghost, she immediately summoned her. She refused to listen to any objections, terribly frightened though the woman was by her offer (her order, rather) to settle in Skvoreshniki for good.

"That's all nonsense! I myself will go around selling Gospels with you. I have no one in the world now!"

"You do have a son, however," Salzfisch attempted to observe. "I have no son!" Varvara Petrovna snapped out—as if prophetically.