Demons

At Tikhon's

I

Nikolai Vsevolodovich did not sleep that night and spent the whole of it sitting on the sofa, often turning his fixed gaze towards one point in the corner by the chest of drawers. His lamp burned all night. Around seven in the morning he fell asleep sitting up, and when Alexei Yegorovich, as their custom had been established once and for all, came into his room at exactly half past nine with a morning cup of coffee, and woke him up by his appearance, he, having opened his eyes, seemed unpleasantly surprised that he could have slept so long and that it was already so late. He hastily drank his coffee, hastily dressed, and hurriedly left the house. To Alexei Yegorovich's cautious inquiry: "Will there be any orders?"—he answered nothing. He walked along the street, looking at the ground, deep in thought, and only at moments raising his head and suddenly showing now and then some vague but intense disquiet. At one intersection, still not far from his house, a crowd of men crossed his path, fifty or more; they walked decorously, almost silently, in deliberate order. By the shop near which he had to wait for about a minute, someone said they were "Shpigulin workers." He barely paid any attention to them. Finally, at around half past ten, he reached the gates of our Savior - St. Yefimi Bogorodsky monastery,^[211] on the outskirts of town, by the river. It was only here that he suddenly seemed to remember something, stopped, hastily and anxiously felt for something in his side pocket—and grinned. Entering the grounds, he asked the first server he met how to find Bishop Tikhon, who was living in retirement in the monastery. The server began bowing and led him off at once. By the porch at the end of a long, two-storied monastery building, they met a fat and gray-haired monk, who imperiously and deftly took him over from the server and led him through a long, narrow corridor, also kept bowing (although, being unable to bend down owing to his fatness, he merely jerked his head frequently and abruptly) and kept inviting him to please come in, though Stavrogin was following him even without that. The monk kept posing all sorts of questions and talked about the father archimandrite;^[212] receiving no answers, he became more and more deferential. Stavrogin noticed that he was known there, though, as far as he could remember, he had come there only in childhood. When they reached the door at the very end of the corridor, the monk opened it as if with an imperious hand, inquired familiarly of the cell attendant who sprang over to him whether they could come in, and, without even waiting for an answer, flung the door wide and, inclining, allowed the "dear" visitor to pass by: then, having been rewarded, he quickly vanished, all but fled. Nikolai Vsevolodovich entered a small room, and at almost the same moment there appeared in the doorway of the adjoining room a tall and lean man of about fifty-five, in a simple household cassock, who looked as if he were somewhat ill, with a vague smile and a strange, as if shy, glance. This was the very Tikhon of whom Nikolai Vsevolodovich had heard for the first time from Shatov, and of whom, since then, he had managed to gather certain information.

The information was diverse and contradictory, but there was something common to all of it—namely, that those who loved and those who did not love Tikhon (there were such), all somehow passed over him in silence—those who did not love him, probably out of scorn, and his devotees, even the ardent ones, out of some sort of modesty, as if they wished to conceal something about him, some weakness of his, perhaps holy folly.^[213] Nikolai Vsevolodovich learned that he had been living in the monastery for some six years and that he was visited by the simplest people as well as the noblest persons; that even in far-off Petersburg he had ardent admirers, chiefly lady admirers. On the other hand, he heard from one of our dignified little old "club" gentlemen, a pious gentleman himself, that "this Tikhon is all but mad, a totally giftless being in any case, and unquestionably a tippler." I will add, running ahead of myself, that this last is decidedly nonsense, that he simply had a chronic rheumatic condition in his legs and now and then some nervous spasms. Nikolai Vsevolodovich also learned that, either from weakness of character or from "an absentmindedness unpardonable and unbefitting his rank," the retired bishop had proved unable to inspire any particular respect for himself in the monastery. It was said that the father archimandrite, a stern and strict man with regard to his duties as a superior, and known, besides, for his learning, even nursed a certain hostility towards him, as it were, and denounced him (not to his face, but indirectly) for careless living and almost for heresy. The monastery brethren, too, seemed to treat the ailing bishop not so much carelessly as, so to speak, familiarly. The two rooms that constituted Tikhon's cell were also furnished somehow strangely. Alongside clumpish old-style furniture with worn-through leather stood three or four elegant pieces: a luxurious easy chair, a big desk of excellent finish, an elegantly carved bookcase, little tables, whatnots—all given to him. There was an expensive Bukhara carpet, and straw mats alongside it. There were prints of "secular" subjects and from mythological times, and right there in the corner, on a big icon stand, icons gleaming with gold and silver, among them one from ancient times with relics. The library, they say, had also been assembled in a much too varied and contrasting way: alongside the writings of great Christian hierarchs and ascetics, there were theatrical writings "and maybe even worse." After the first greetings, spoken for some reason with obvious mutual awkwardness, hastily and even indistinctly, Tikhon led his visitor to the study, sat him down on the sofa facing the table, and placed himself next to him in a wicker armchair. Nikolai Vsevolodovich was still greatly distracted by some inner anxiety that was oppressing him. It looked as if he had resolved upon something extraordinary and unquestionable but at the same time almost impossible for him. For a minute or so he looked around the study, apparently not noticing what he was looking at; he was thinking and, of course, did not know what about. He was roused by the silence, and it suddenly seemed to him that Tikhon looked down somehow bashfully and even with some unnecessary and ridiculous smile. This instantly aroused loathing in him; he wanted to get up and leave, the more so as Tikhon, in his opinion, was decidedly drunk. But the man suddenly raised his eyes and gave him a look that was so firm and so full of thought, and at the same time so unexpected and enigmatic in its expression, that he almost jumped. He imagined somehow that Tikhon already knew why he had come, had already been forewarned (though no one in the whole world could have known the reason), and that if he did not start speaking first, it was to spare him, for fear of humiliating him.

"Do you know me?" he suddenly asked curtly. "Did I introduce myself to you when I came in? I'm rather distracted..."

"You did not introduce yourself, but I had the pleasure of seeing you once, four years ago, here at the monastery ... by chance."

Tikhon spoke very unhurriedly and evenly, in a soft voice, pronouncing the words clearly and distinctly.

"I wasn't in this monastery four years ago," Nikolai Vsevolodovich objected, somehow even rudely, "I was here only as a little child, when you weren't here at all."

"Perhaps you've forgotten?" Tikhon observed cautiously and without insistence.

"No, I haven't forgotten; and it would be funny not to remember," Stavrogin insisted somehow excessively. "Perhaps you simply heard about me and formed some idea, and so you confused that with seeing me."

Tikhon held his peace. Here Nikolai Vsevolodovich noticed how a nervous twitch would occasionally pass over his face, the sign of an old nervous disorder.

"I can see only that you are not well today," he said, "and I think it will be better if I leave."

He even made as if to get up from his place.

"Yes, today and yesterday I've been feeling severe pain in my legs, and I got little sleep last night..."

Tikhon stopped. His visitor again and suddenly fell back into his former vague pensiveness. The silence lasted a long time, about two minutes.

"Have you been watching me?" he suddenly asked, anxiously and suspiciously.

"I was looking at you and recalling your mother's features. For all the lack of external resemblance, there is much resemblance inwardly, spiritually."

"No resemblance at all, especially spiritually. None what-so-ever!" Nikolai Vsevolodovich, anxious again, insisted unnecessarily and excessively, himself not knowing why. "You're just saying it. . . out of sympathy for my position and—rubbish," he suddenly blurted out. "Hah! does my mother come to see you?"

"She does."

"I didn't know. Never heard it from her. Often?"

"Almost every month, or oftener."

"I never, never heard. Never heard. And you, of course, have heard from her that I'm crazy," he suddenly added.

"No, not really that you're crazy. However, I have also heard this notion, but from others."

"You must have a very good memory, then, if you can recall such trifles. And have you heard about the slap?"

"I've heard something."

"Everything, that is. You have an awful lot of spare time. And about the duel?"

"And about the duel."

"You've heard quite a lot here. No need for newspapers in this place. Did Shatov warn you about me? Eh?"

"No. I do know Mr. Shatov, however, but it's a long time since I've seen him."

"Hm... What's that map you've got there? Hah, a map of the last war! How do you have any need for that?"

"I was checking the chart against the text. A most interesting description."

"Show me. Yes, it's not a bad account. Strange reading for you, however."

He drew the book to him and took a fleeting glance at it. It was a voluminous and talented account of the circumstances of the last war,^[214]though not so much in a military as in a purely literary sense. He turned the book over in his hands and suddenly tossed it aside impatiently.

"I decidedly do not know why I've come here," he said with disgust, looking straight into Tikhon's eyes, as if expecting him to reply.

"You, too, seem to be unwell?"

"Yes, unwell."

And suddenly, though in the most brief and curt expressions, so that some things were even hard to understand, he told how he was subject, especially at night, to hallucinations of a sort; how he sometimes saw or felt near him some malicious being, scoffing and "reasonable," "in various faces and characters, but one and the same, and I always get angry..."

These revelations were wild and incoherent, and indeed came as if from a crazy man. But, for all that, Nikolai Vsevolodovich spoke with such strange sincerity, never before seen in him, with such simple-heartedness, completely unlike him, that it seemed the former man, suddenly and inadvertently, had vanished in him completely. He was not in the least ashamed to show the fear with which he spoke about his phantom. But all this was momentary and vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

"This is all rubbish," he said quickly and with awkward vexation, recollecting himself. "I'll go to a doctor."

"You certainly should," Tikhon confirmed.

"You say it so affirmatively ... Have you seen such people as I, with such visions?"

"I have, but very rarely. I remember only one such in my life, an army officer, after he lost his wife, an irreplaceable life's companion for him. The other I only heard about. They were both cured abroad... And how long have you been subject to this?"

"About a year, but it's all rubbish. I'll go to a doctor. It's all rubbish, terrible rubbish. It's I myself in various aspects and nothing more. Since I've just added this... sentence, you must be thinking I'm still doubtful and am not certain that it's I and not actually a demon?"

Tikhon gave him a questioning look.

"And ... do you see him really?" he asked, so as to remove all doubt that it was undoubtedly a false and morbid hallucination, "do you actually see some sort of image?"

"It's strange that you should insist about it, when I've already told you I do," Stavrogin again began to grow more irritated with every word, "of course I do, I see it, just as I see you... and sometimes I see it and am not sure I see it, though I do see it... and sometimes I'm not sure I see it, and I don't know what's true: he or I. . . it's all rubbish. And you, can't you somehow suppose that it's actually a demon?" he added, laughing, and changing too abruptly to a scoffing tone. "Wouldn't that be more in line with your profession?"

"It's more likely an illness, although..."

"Although what?"

"Demons undoubtedly exist, but the understanding of them can vary greatly."

"You lowered your eyes again just now," Stavrogin picked up with irritable mockery, "because you were ashamed for me, that I believe in the demon, and yet in the guise of not believing I slyly asked you the question: does he or does he not actually exist?"

Tikhon smiled vaguely.

"And, you know, lowering your eyes is totally unbecoming to you: unnatural, ridiculous, and affected, and to give satisfaction for my rudeness I will tell you seriously and brazenly: I believe in the demon, believe canonically in a personal demon, not an allegory, and I have no need to elicit anything from anyone, there you have it. You must be terribly glad ..."

He gave a nervous, unnatural laugh. Tikhon was gazing at him with curiosity, his eyes gentle and as if somewhat timid.

"Do you believe in God?" Stavrogin suddenly blurted out.

"I do."

"It is said that if you believe and tell a mountain to move, it will move^[215]... that's rubbish, however. But, still, I'm curious: could you move a mountain, or not?"

"If God told me to, I could," Tikhon said softly and with restraint, again beginning to lower his eyes.

"Well, but that's the same as if God moved it himself. No, you, you, as a reward for your belief in God?"

"Perhaps not."

“‘Perhaps'? That's not bad. And why do you doubt?"

"I don't believe perfectly."

"What, you? not perfectly? not fully?"

"Yes... perhaps not to perfection."

"Well! In any case you still believe that at least with God's help you could move it, and that's no small thing. It's still a bit more than the très peu^[ccxxiv] of a certain also archbishop—under the sword, it's true.^[216] You are, of course, a Christian, too?"

"Let me not be ashamed of thy cross, O Lord," Tikhon almost whispered in a sort of passionate whisper, inclining his head still more. The corners of his lips suddenly moved nervously and quickly.

"And is it possible to believe in a demon, without believing at all in God?" Stavrogin laughed.

"Oh, quite possible, it happens all the time," Tikhon raised his eyes and also smiled.

"And I'm sure you find such faith more respectable than total disbelief... Oh, you cleric!" Stavrogin burst out laughing. Tikhon again smiled to him.

"On the contrary, total atheism is more respectable than worldly indifference," he added, gaily and ingenuously.

"Oho, so that's how you are."

"A complete atheist stands on the next-to-last upper step to the most complete faith (he may or may not take that step), while the indifferent one has no faith, apart from a bad fear."

"However, you... you have read the Apocalypse?"

"I have."

"Do you remember: 'To the angel of the church in Laodicea write...'?"

"I do. Lovely words."

"Lovely? A strange expression for a bishop, and generally you are an odd man... Where is the book?" Stavrogin became strangely hurried and anxious, his eyes seeking the book on the table. "I'd like to read it to you ... do you have a Russian translation?"

"I know it, I know the passage, I remember it very well," said Tikhon.

"You know it by heart? Recite it! ..."

He quickly lowered his eyes, rested his two palms on his knees, and impatiently prepared to listen. Tikhon recited, recalling it word for word: "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked..."^[217]

"Enough..." Stavrogin cut him short. "It's for the middling sort, for the indifferent ones, right? You know, I love you very much."

"And I you," Tikhon responded in a low voice.

Stavrogin fell silent and suddenly lapsed again into his former pensiveness. This occurred as if in fits, for the third time now. And he had said "I love you" to Tikhon also almost in a fit, at least unexpectedly for himself. More than a minute passed.

"Don't be angry," Tikhon whispered, touching his elbow just barely with his finger, and as if growing timid himself. The other gave a start and frowned wrathfully.

"How could you tell I was angry?" he said quickly. Tikhon was about to say something, but the other suddenly interrupted him in inexplicable alarm:

"What made you precisely think I was sure to get angry? Yes, I was angry, you're right, and precisely for having said 'I love you.' You're right, but you're a crude cynic, your thoughts are humiliating to human nature. There might be no anger if it was another man and not me... However, the point isn't about this other one, but about me. Anyhow you're an odd man and a holy fool..."

He was growing more and more irritated, and, strangely, no longer bothered about his words:

"Listen, I don't like spies and psychologists, at least those who try to pry into my soul. I don't invite anyone into my soul, I don't need anyone, I'm able to manage by myself. You think I'm afraid of you?" he raised his voice and looked up defiantly. "You are fully convinced that I've come to reveal some 'dreadful' secret to you and are waiting for it with all the monkish curiosity you're capable of? Well, know then that I shall reveal nothing to you, no secret, because I don't need you at all."

Tikhon looked at him steadily:

"You are struck that the Lamb loves the cold one better than the merely lukewarm one," he said. "You do not want to be merely luke-warm. I feel that you are in the grip of an extraordinary intention, perhaps a terrible one. If so, I implore you, do not torment yourself and tell me everything you've come with."

"And you knew for certain that I had come with something?"

"I... guessed it from your face," Tikhon whispered, lowering his eyes.

Nikolai Vsevolodovich was somewhat pale, his hands were trembling slightly. For a few seconds he looked motionlessly and silently at Tikhon, as if making a final decision. Finally he took some printed pages from the side pocket of his frock coat and placed them on the table.

"These are pages intended for distribution," he said in a somewhat faltering voice. "If at least one man reads them, then you should know that I am not going to conceal them, and everyone will read them. That is decided. I don't need you at all, because I've decided everything. But read it... While you're reading, don't say anything, and when you've finished—say everything..."

"Shall I read it?" Tikhon asked hesitantly.

"Read it; I've long been at peace."

"No, I can't make it out without my glasses; the print is fine, foreign."

"Here are your glasses," Stavrogin picked them up from the table, handed them to him, and leaned back on the sofa. Tikhon immersed himself in reading.

II

The print was indeed foreign—three printed pages of ordinary, small-format stationery, sewn together. It must have been printed secretly by some Russian press abroad, and at first glance the pages looked very much like a tract. The heading read: "From Stavrogin." I introduce this document into my chronicle verbatim. One may suppose it is now known to many. I have allowed myself only to correct the spelling errors, rather numerous, which even surprised me somewhat, since the author was after all an educated man, and even a well-read one (judging relatively, of course). In the style I have made no changes, despite the errors and even obscurities. In any case, it is apparent that the author is above all not a writer.

FROM STAVROGIN

I, Nikolai Stavrogin, a retired officer, was living in Petersburg in the year 1867, giving myself over to debauchery in which I found no pleasure. For a certain stretch of time then, I had three apartments. In one of them I myself lived, in a rooming house with board and service, where Marya Lebyadkin, now my lawful wife, was then also living. My other two apartments I then rented by the month for an intrigue: in one of them I received a lady who was in love with me, and in the other her maid, and for a while I was much taken up by the intention of bringing the two together, so that the mistress and the wench should meet at my place, in the presence of my friends and the husband. Knowing both their characters, I expected to derive great pleasure from this stupid joke.

While I was leisurely preparing this meeting, I had more often to visit one of these apartments, in a large house on Gorokhovy Street, since this was where the maid used to come. I had only one room there, on the fourth floor, rented from some Russian tradespeople.^[218] They themselves occupied the next room, a smaller one, so much so that the door between the two was always left open, which was just what I wanted. The husband worked in someone's office and was away from morning till night. The wife, a woman of about forty, cut up and remade new clothes out of old ones, and also frequently left the house to deliver what she had sewn. I would be left alone with their daughter, about fourteen years old, I think, but who still looked quite a child. Her name was Matryosha. The mother loved her, but used to beat her often, and yelled at her terribly, as such women have a habit of doing. This girl served me and tidied up behind my screen. I declare that I have forgotten the number of the house. Now, on inquiring, I have learned that the old house was demolished, resold, and in place of two or three former houses there stands one very large new one. I have also forgotten the family name of my tradespeople (maybe I did not know it then, either). I remember that the woman's name was Stepanida—Mikhailovna, I think. His I don't remember. Who they were, where they came from, and what has become of them, I have no idea. I suppose if one were really to start searching and making all sorts of inquiries from the Petersburg police, one might find traces. The apartment was on the courtyard, in a corner. It all happened in June. The house was of a light blue color.

One day a penknife, which I didn't need at all and which was just lying about, disappeared from my table. I told the landlady, not even thinking she would whip her daughter. But the woman had just yelled at the child (I lived simply, and they didn't stand on ceremony with me) for the disappearance of some rag, suspecting her of filching it, and had even pulled her hair. And when this same rag was found under the tablecloth, the girl chose not to utter a word of reproach and watched silently. I noticed this, and then for the first time noticed the child's face, which before had just flitted by. She was pale-haired and freckled, an ordinary face, but with much in it that was childish and quiet, extremely quiet. The mother was displeased that the daughter did not reproach her for having beaten her for nothing, and she shook her fist at her, but did not hit her; just then my penknife came up. Indeed, there was no one there except the three of us, and only the girl had gone behind my screen. The woman went wild, because her first beating had been unjust, rushed for the broom, pulled some twigs from it, and whipped the girl so that she raised welts on her, right in front of me. Matryosha did not cry out from the birching, but somehow whimpered strangely at each stroke. And afterwards she whimpered very much, for a whole hour.

But before that here is what happened: at the same moment as the landlady was rushing to pull the twigs from the broom, I found the knife on my bed, where it had somehow fallen from the table. It immediately came into my head not to announce anything, so that she would get a birching. I decided on it instantly: such moments always take my breath away. But I intend to tell everything in the firmest words, so that nothing remains hidden any longer.

Every extremely shameful, immeasurably humiliating, mean, and, above all, ridiculous position I have happened to get into in my life has always aroused in me, along with boundless wrath, an unbelievable pleasure. Exactly the same as in moments of crime, or in moments threatening to life. If I was stealing something, I would feel, while committing the theft, intoxication from the awareness of the depth of my meanness. It was not meanness that I loved (here my reason was completely sound), but I liked the intoxication from the tormenting awareness of my baseness. In the same way, each time I stood at the barrier waiting for my adversary to shoot, I felt the same shameful and violent sensation, and once extraordinarily strongly. I confess, I often sought it out myself, because for me it is stronger than any of its sort. When I was slapped (and I have been slapped twice in my life), it was there as well, in spite of the terrible wrath. But if, for all that, the wrath can be restrained, the pleasure will exceed anything imaginable. I never spoke of it to anyone, never even hinted at it, and concealed it as a shame and a disgrace. Yet when I was badly beaten once in a pot-house in Petersburg, and dragged by the hair, I did not feel this sensation, but only unbelievable wrath, without being drunk, but just fighting. Yet if that Frenchman abroad, the vicomte who slapped me and whose lower jaw I shot off for it, had seized my hair and pulled me down, I would have felt intoxication and perhaps not even wrath. So it seemed to me then.

All this so that everyone will know that this feeling never subjected the whole of me, but there was always full consciousness left (and it was all based on consciousness!). And though it possessed me to the point of recklessness, it never came to the point of forgetting myself. Going as far as a perfect burning in me, I was at the same time quite able to subdue it, even to stop it at its peak. I am convinced that I could live my whole life as a monk, despite the animal sensuality I am endowed with and which I have always provoked. Giving myself with extraordinary immoderation, until the age of sixteen, to the vice confessed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,^[219] I stopped it the moment I decided I wanted to, in my seventeenth year. I am always master of myself when I want to be. And so, let it be known that I do not want to seek irresponsibility for my crimes either in the environment or in illness.

When the punishment was over, I put the knife into my waistcoat pocket, went out, and threw it away in the street, far from the house, so that no one would ever know. Then I waited for two days. The girl cried a little and became even more silent; against me, I am convinced, she had no spiteful feeling. Though there probably was some shame at having been punished in such a way in front of me, she hadn't cried out, but had only whimpered under the strokes, of course because I was standing there and saw it all. But, being a child, she probably blamed only herself for this shame. Up to then, perhaps, she had only feared me, not personally, but as a tenant, a stranger, and it seems she was very timid.

It was during those two days that I once asked myself the question whether I could drop it and walk away from my planned intention, and I felt at once that I could, could at any time and at that very moment. Around then I wanted to kill myself, from the disease of indifference; however, I do not know from what. During those same two or three days (because I absolutely had to wait until the girl forgot it all), I committed a theft in the rooming house, probably to distract myself from incessant dreaming, or just for the fun of it. This was the only theft in my life.

There were many people nesting in that rooming house. Among them was one official and his family, living in two furnished rooms; about forty years old, not all that stupid, and with a decent air, but poor. I never got close with him, and he was afraid of the company that surrounded me there. He had just received his pay, thirty-five roubles. What chiefly prompted me was that at that moment I really did need money (though four days later I received a postal money order), so that I stole as if from need and not as a joke. It was done brazenly and obviously: I simply went into his room while he and his wife and children were having dinner in their other closet. There on the chair, right next to the door, lay his folded uniform. The thought had suddenly flashed in me still in the corridor. I thrust my hand into the pocket and took out the wallet. But the official heard a rustle and peeked out of the closet. It seems he even saw at least something, but since it was not everything, of course he did not believe his eyes. I said that as I was going down the corridor I came in to glance at the time on his wall clock. "Stopped, sir," he replied, and I left.

I was drinking a lot then, and there used to be a whole crowd in my rooms, Lebyadkin among them. I threw out the wallet with the small change and kept the bills. There were thirty-two roubles, three red bills and two yellow. I broke one of the red ones immediately and sent for champagne; then I sent another red one, and then the third. About four hours later, in the evening, the official stood waiting for me in the corridor.

"Nikolai Vsevolodovich, when you came in earlier, didn't you accidentally knock my uniform off the chair... where it was lying by the door?"

"Not that I remember. Your uniform was lying there?"

"Yes, lying there, sir." "On the floor?"

"First on the chair and then on the floor."

"So, did you pick it up?"

"I did."

"Well, what more do you want?"

"In that case, nothing, sir..."

He did not dare finish, and he did not dare tell anyone in the rooming house—so timid these people are. However, everybody in the rooming house was terribly afraid and respectful of me then. Afterwards I enjoyed meeting his eyes once or twice in the corridor. But quickly got bored.

As soon as three days passed, I went back to Gorokhovy Street. The mother was going out somewhere with a bundle; the tradesman was, of course, not there. Matryosha and I remained. The windows were open. The tenants of the house were all craftsmen, and all day long there was a tapping of hammers and singing coming from all the floors. We had been there an hour already. Matryosha sat in her closet on a low bench, back to me, pottering over something with her needle. At last she suddenly started to sing softly, very softly; she sometimes did that. I took out my watch and looked at the time—it was two. My heart was beginning to pound. But then I suddenly asked myself again: could I stop? and answered at once that I could. I got up and began stealing towards her. They had a lot of geraniums in the window, and the sun was shining terribly brightly. I quietly sat down on the floor next to her. She gave a start and at first was unbelievably frightened and jumped up. I took her hand and softly kissed it, pulling her back down onto the bench, and began looking into her eyes. The fact that I had kissed her hand suddenly made her laugh like a child, but only for one second, because she impetuously jumped up again, now so frightened that a spasm passed over her face. She looked at me with horribly fixed eyes, and her lips began to twitch, as if on the verge of tears, but all the same she did not cry out. I began to kiss her hands again and, taking her on my knees, kissed her face and her feet. When I kissed her feet, she recoiled all over and smiled as if in shame, but with some crooked smile. Her whole face flushed with shame. I kept whispering something to her. Finally, there suddenly occurred an odd thing, which I will never forget and which caused me astonishment: the girl threw her arms around my neck and suddenly began kissing me terribly herself. Her face expressed complete admiration. I almost got up and left—so unpleasant was it in such a tiny child—out of pity. But I overcame the sudden sensation of my fear and stayed.

When it was all over, she was embarrassed. I didn't try to reassure her and no longer caressed her. She looked at me, smiling timidly. Her face suddenly seemed stupid to me. Embarrassment quickly came over her more and more with every moment. At last, she covered her face with her hands and stood in the corner motionlessly, turned to the wall. I was afraid she was going to get frightened again, as she had earlier, and silently left the house.

I suppose everything that had happened finally had to appear to her as a boundless outrage, with mortal horror. Despite the Russian curses she must have been hearing since she was in diapers, and all sorts of strange conversations, I have the full conviction that she still understood nothing. Most likely it seemed to her in the end that she had committed an unbelievable crime and was mortally guilty for it—that she had "killed God."

That night I had the fight in the pot-house which I have mentioned fleetingly. But I woke up in my rooms the next morning, Lebyadkin had brought me. My first thought on waking up was of whether she had told or not; this was a moment of real fear, though not very strong yet. I was very cheerful that morning and terribly kind to everyone, and the whole crowd was very pleased with me. But I dropped them all and went to Gorokhovy Street. I met her downstairs in the entry-way. She was coming back from the shop where she had been sent to buy chicory. When she saw me, she shot up the stairs in terrible fear. When I came in, her mother had already slapped her twice in the face for having run in "headlong," which also covered the real reason for her fright. And so, for the time being everything was quiet. She hid somewhere and never came in while I was there. I stayed for about an hour and then left.

Towards evening I again felt fear, but this time it was incomparably stronger. Of course, I could deny it, but they could also expose me. I kept imagining hard labor. I had never felt any fear, and, apart from this occasion in my life, was never afraid of anything either before or since. Especially not of Siberia, though I could have been sent there more than once. But this time I was frightened and really felt fear, I do not know why, for the first time in my life—a very tormenting sensation. Besides that, in the evening, in my rooms, I came to hate her so much that I decided to kill her. My chief hatred was at the remembrance of her smile. Contempt together with boundless revulsion would spring up in me for the way she had rushed into the corner after it all and covered herself with her hands; I was seized by an inexplicable rage; then came a chill, and when fever began to set in towards morning, I was again overcome by fear, but so strong this time that I have never known a stronger torment. But I no longer hated the girl; at least it did not reach such a paroxysm as the evening before. I observed that strong fear utterly drives out hatred and vengeful feeling.

I woke up around noon, healthy and even surprised at some of yesterday's feelings. I was nonetheless in a bad humor, and again felt compelled to go to Gorokhovy Street, despite all my revulsion. I remember wanting terribly at that moment to have a quarrel with someone, only a real one. But on coming to Gorokhovy Street, I suddenly found Nina Savelyevna in my room, the maid, who had already been waiting for me for about an hour. I was not at all in love with the girl, so that she had come a bit afraid that I might be angry at the uninvited visit. But I was suddenly very glad to see her. She was not bad-looking, but modest and with the sort of manners common people like, so that my landlady had long been praising her to me. I found them together over coffee, and the landlady was greatly enjoying the pleasant conversation. In the corner of the room I noticed Matryosha. She stood and gazed fixedly at her mother and the visitor. When I came in, she did not hide as before, and did not run away. Only it seemed to me that she had become very thin and that she had a fever. I was tender with Nina and closed the door to the landlady's room, something I hadn't done for a long time, so that Nina left perfectly pleased. I myself took her out and for two days did not go to Gorokhovy Street. I was already sick of it.

I decided to finish it all, to give up the apartment and leave Petersburg. But when I came to give up the apartment, I found the landlady worried and distressed: for three days Matryosha had been sick, lying every night in a fever and raving all night. Of course, I asked what she was raving about (we were talking in a whisper in my room). She whispered to me that she was raving "something terrible," saying "I killed God." I offered to bring a doctor at my own expense, but she did not want to: "God willing, it'll just go away, she doesn't lie down all the time, she goes out during the day, she just ran to the store." I decided to find Matryosha when she was alone, and since the landlady had let on that she had to go to the Petersburg side by five o'clock,^[220]I decided to come back in the evening.

I had dinner in a tavern. Came back at exactly five-fifteen. I always let myself in with my own key. There was no one there but Matryosha. She was lying in their closet, behind the screen, on her mother's bed, and I saw her peek out; but I pretended not to notice. All the windows were open. The air was warm, it was even hot. I walked about the room and sat down on the sofa. I remember it all to the last minute. It decidedly gave me pleasure not to start talking with Matryosha. I waited and sat there for a whole hour, and suddenly she herself jumped from behind the screen. I heard her two feet hit the floor as she jumped off the bed, then rather quick steps, and then she was standing on the threshold of my room. She looked at me silently. In the three or four days since that time, during which I had never once seen her up close, she had indeed become very thin. Her face was as if dried up and her head must have been hot. Her eyes had grown big and looked at me fixedly, as if with dull curiosity—so it seemed to me at first. I was sitting on the corner of the sofa, looked at her, and did not budge. And then I suddenly felt hatred again. But very soon I noticed that she was not frightened of me at all, but was perhaps more likely delirious. But she was not delirious either. She suddenly began shaking her head rapidly at me, as people do when they reproach very much, and suddenly she raised her little fist at me and began threatening me with it from where she stood. For the first moment this gesture seemed funny to me, but I could not stand it for long; I got up and moved nearer to her. There was despair in her face, such as was impossible to see on the face of a child. She kept brandishing her little fist at me threateningly and shaking her head in reproach. I came close and cautiously began to speak, but saw that she would not understand. Then suddenly she covered her face impetuously with both hands, like before, walked over and stood by the window, back to me. I left her, returned to my room, and sat by my own window. I have no idea why I did not leave then, but stayed as if I were waiting. Soon I heard her hurrying steps again, she walked out the door onto the wooden gallery, from which a stairway went down, and I at once ran to my door, opened it a bit, and had just time to spy Matryosha going into a tiny shed, like a chicken coop, next to the other place. A strange thought flashed in my mind. I closed the door and—back to the window. Of course, it was impossible to believe a fleeting thought; "and yet..." (I remember everything.)

A minute later I looked at my watch and made note of the time. Evening was coming. A fly was buzzing over me and kept landing on my face. I caught it, held it in my fingers, and let it go out the window. Very loudly a cart rolled into the courtyard below. Very loudly (and for long now) an artisan, a tailor, had been singing a song in the corner of the yard, in his window. He was sitting over his work, and I could see him. It occurred to me that since no one had met me when I came through the gateway and went upstairs, so no one had better meet me going downstairs now, and I moved the chair away from the window. Then I picked up a book, threw it down again, began watching a tiny red spider on a geranium leaf, and became oblivious. I remember everything to the last moment.

I suddenly snatched out my watch. It was twenty minutes since she went out. My guess was assuming the shape of a probability. But I decided to wait another quarter of an hour. It also occurred to me that she might have come back and that I perhaps had not heard; but that could not be: there was dead silence and I could hear the whine of every little fly. Suddenly my heart began to pound. I took out my watch: three minutes to go; I sat them out, though my heart was pounding so that it hurt. Then I got up, covered myself with my hat, buttoned my coat, and glanced around the room to make sure everything was in place and there were no signs that I had come. I moved the chair closer to the window, as it had stood before. Finally, I quietly opened the door, locked it with my key, and went to the shed. The door was closed, but not locked; I knew it could not be locked, yet I did not want to open it, but got up on tiptoe and began looking through the crack. At that very moment, as I was getting up on tiptoe, I recalled that when I was sitting by the window looking at the little red spider and became oblivious, I was thinking of how I would get up on tiptoe and reach that crack with my eyes. By putting in this trifle here, I want to prove with certainty to what degree of clarity I was in possession of my mental faculties. I looked through that crack for a long time, it was dark inside, but not totally. At last I made out what I needed ... I wanted to be totally sure.

I decided finally that I could leave, and went downstairs. I did not meet anyone. About three hours later we were all in our shirtsleeves, drinking tea in my rooms and playing a friendly game of cards. Lebyadkin was reciting poetry. Many stories were told and, as if by design, they were all successful and funny, not stupid as usual. Kirillov was also there. No one drank, and though a bottle of rum was standing there, only Lebyadkin kept nipping from it. Prokhor Malov observed that "when Nikolai Vsevolodovich is pleased and not moping, all our boys are cheerful and talk cleverly." It sank into my mind right then.

But by around eleven o'clock the caretaker's girl came running from the landlady, from Gorokhovy Street, bringing me the news that Matryosha had hanged herself. I went with the girl and saw that the landlady did not know herself why she had sent for me. She was howling and thrashing, there was turmoil, a lot of people, police. I stood in the entryway for a while and then left.

I was hardly inconvenienced, though they did ask the appropriate questions. But apart from the fact that the girl had been sick and occasionally delirious over the past few days, so that for my part I had offered a doctor at my own expense, I had decidedly nothing to give as evidence. They also asked me about the penknife; I said that the landlady had given the girl a whipping, but that it was nothing. No one found out that I had come in the evening. I heard nothing about the results of the medical examination.

For a week or so I did not go back there. I went when they had long since buried her, in order to give up the apartment. The landlady was still crying, though she was already pottering with her rags and sewing as before. "It was on account of your knife that I offended her," she said to me, but without great reproach. I paid her off on the pretext that I really could no longer remain in such an apartment and receive Nina Savelyevna in it. She praised Nina Savelyevna once more on parting. As I left I gave her five roubles on top of what I owed for the apartment.

And generally I was bored with life then, to the point of stupefaction. Once the danger was past, I all but completely forgot the incident on Gorokhovy Street, like everything else then, except that for some time I remembered spitefully how I had turned coward. I vented my spite on whomever I could. At the same time, but not at all for any reason or other, I conceived the notion of somehow maiming my life, only in as repulsive a way as possible. For a year already I had been thinking of shooting myself; something better turned up. Once, looking at the lame Marya Timofeevna Lebyadkin, who was something of a servant in those corners, not yet crazy then, but simply an ecstatic idiot, and secretly madly in love with me (as our boys spied out), I decided suddenly to marry her. The thought of Stavrogin marrying such a last being tickled my nerves. Nothing uglier could be imagined. But I will not venture to decide whether my decisiveness included at least unconsciously (of course, unconsciously!) my spite at the base cowardice that had come over me after the thing with Matryosha. I do not think so, really; but in any case I went to the altar not just because of "a bet for wine after a drunken dinner." The witnesses to the marriage were Kirillov and Pyotr Verkhovensky, who happened to be in Petersburg then; and, finally, Lebyadkin himself, and Prokhor Malov (now dead). No one else ever learned of it, and these gave their word to be silent. This silence has always seemed to me a vile thing, as it were, but so far it has not been broken, though I had the intention of announcing it; I announce it now, along with everything else.

After the wedding, I left for the province to see my mother. I went for distraction, because it was unbearable. In our town I left the idea that I was crazy—an idea not eradicated even now, and undoubtedly harmful to me, as I will explain further on. I then went abroad and stayed for four years.

I was in the East, I stood through eight-hour vigils on Mount Athos,^[221] was in Egypt, lived in Switzerland, even went to Iceland; sat out a whole yearlong course in Gottingen. During the last year I became very close with one noble Russian family in Paris and two Russian girls in Switzerland. About two years ago, in Frankfurt, passing by a stationer's shop, I noticed among the photographs on display a small picture of a girl, dressed in an elegant child's costume, but very much resembling Matryosha. I bought the picture at once and, coming to my hotel, placed it on the mantelpiece. There it stayed untouched for about a week, and I never once glanced at it; when I left Frankfurt, I forgot to take it with me.

I am setting this down precisely in order to prove the extent of my power over my memories, and how unfeeling for them I had become. I would reject them all in a mass, and the whole mass would obediently disappear each time the moment I wanted it to. I have always felt bored remembering the past, and was never able to talk about the past, as almost everyone does. As for Matryosha, I even forgot her picture on the mantelpiece.

About a year ago, in the spring, traveling through Germany, I absentmindedly missed the station where I should have changed for my direction, and got onto a different branch. They let me off at the next station; it was three o'clock in the afternoon, a bright day. It was a tiny German town. A hotel was pointed out to me. I had to wait: the next train came through at eleven o'clock at night. I was even pleased with the adventure, because I was not in any hurry. The hotel turned out to be trashy and small, but all sunk in greenery and completely surrounded with flower beds. They gave me a cramped little room. I had a nice meal, and since I had spent the whole night on the train, I fell asleep excellently after dinner, at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I had a dream which for me was totally unexpected, because I had never before had one like it. In Dresden, in the gallery, there exists a painting by Claude Lorrain—"Acis and Galatea,"^[222]I think, according to the catalogue, but I always called it "The Golden Age," I do not know why myself. I had seen it before, but now, three days earlier, I had noticed it once again as I was passing through. It was this painting that I saw in my dream, though not as a painting, but as if it were some kind of verity.

A corner of the Greek archipelago; blue, caressing waves, islands and rocks, a luxuriant coastline, a magic panorama in the distance, an inviting sunset—words cannot express it. Here European mankind remembered its cradle, here were the first scenes from mythology, its earthly paradise... Here beautiful people lived! They rose and lay down to sleep happy and innocent; the groves were filled with their merry songs, the great abundance of their untapped forces went into love, into simplehearted joy. The sun poured down its rays upon these islands and this sea, rejoicing over its beautiful children. A wondrous dream, a lofty delusion! The most incredible vision of all that have ever been, to which mankind throughout its life has given all its forces, for which it has sacrificed everything, for which prophets have died on crosses and been killed, without which people do not want to live and cannot even die. It was as if I lived through this whole sensation in my dream; I don't know precisely what I dreamed about, but the rocks and sea, the slanting rays of the setting sun—it was as if I still saw it all when I woke up and opened my eyes, for the first time in my life literally wet with tears. A feeling of happiness, as yet unknown to me, went through my heart even till it hurt. It was already full evening; in the window of my little room, through the foliage of the flowers in the window, a whole sheaf of bright slanting rays of the setting sun was bursting and flooding me with light. I quickly closed my eyes again, as if straining to return to the departed dream, but suddenly, as if in the midst of the bright, bright light, I saw some tiny dot. It was taking some shape, and suddenly appeared distinctly to me as a tiny red spider. I recalled it at once on the geranium leaf, when the slanting rays of the setting sun had been pouring in just as they were now. It was as though something pierced me, I raised myself and sat up on the bed... (This was how it all happened then!)

I saw before me (oh, not in reality! and if only, if only it had been a real vision!), I saw Matryosha, wasted and with feverish eyes, exactly the same as when she had stood on my threshold and, shaking her head, had raised her tiny little fist at me. And nothing had ever seemed so tormenting to me! The pitiful despair of a helpless ten-year-old being with a still unformed mind, who was threatening me (with what? what could she do to me?), but, of course, blaming only herself! Nothing like it had ever happened to me. I sat until nightfall, not moving and forgetting about time. Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps even to this moment I do not loathe the memory of the act itself. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No—what is unbearable to me is only this image alone, and precisely on the threshold, with its raised and threatening little fist, only that look alone, only that minute alone, only that shaking head. This is what I cannot bear, because since then it appears to me almost every day. It does not appear on its own, but I myself evoke it, and cannot help evoking it, even though I cannot live with it. Oh, if only I could ever see her really, at least in a hallucination!

I have other old memories, perhaps even better than this one. I behaved worse with one woman, and she died from it. In duels I have taken the lives of two men who were innocent before me. Once I was mortally insulted and did not take revenge on my adversary. There is one poisoning to my account—intentional and successful and unknown to anyone. (If need be, I'll tell about it all.)

But why is it that none of these memories evokes anything of the kind in me? Only hatred, perhaps, and that caused by my present situation, while before I would cold-bloodedly forget it and keep it away.

After that I wandered about for almost this whole year trying to occupy myself. I know I can remove the girl even now, whenever I wish. As before, I am in perfect control of my will. But the whole point is that I have never wanted to do it, I myself do not want to and will not want to; that I do know. And so it will go on, right up to my madness.

In Switzerland, two months ago, I was able to fall in love with one girl, or, better to say, I felt a fit of the same passion, with the same sort of violent impulse, as used to happen only long ago, in the beginning. I felt a terrible temptation for a new crime—that is, to commit bigamy (since I was already married); but I fled, following the advice of another girl to whom I confided almost everything. Besides, this new crime would in no way have rid me of Matryosha.

So it is that I have decided to print these pages and bring them to Russia in three hundred copies. When the time comes, I will send them to the police and the local authorities; simultaneously, I will send them to the editorial offices of all the newspapers, requesting that they be made public, and to my numerous acquaintances in Petersburg and in Russia. They will equally appear in translation abroad. I know that legally I will perhaps not be inconvenienced, at least not considerably; I am making this statement on my own, and have no accuser; besides, there are very few if any proofs. Finally, there is the deeply rooted idea that my mind is deranged, and the efforts my family will certainly make to use this idea to stifle any legal prosecution that might be dangerous for me. I state this incidentally, to prove that I am fully in my right mind and understand my position. But there will remain for me those who know everything and who will look at me, and I at them. And the more of them the better. Whether this will make it any easier for me—I do not know. I am doing it as a last resort.

Once again: a good search through the Petersburg police records might turn something up. The tradespeople might still be in Petersburg. The house will, of course, be remembered. It was light blue. As for me, I won't be going anywhere, and for some time (a year or two) I can always be found at Skvoreshniki, my mother's estate. If I'm summoned, I'll appear anywhere.

Nikolai Stavrogin

The reading took about an hour. Tikhon read slowly and perhaps reread some passages a second time. Stavrogin sat all the while silent and motionless. Strangely, the shade of impatience, distraction, and as if delirium that had been on his face all that morning almost disappeared, giving way to calm and as if a sort of sincerity, which lent him an air almost of dignity. Tikhon removed his glasses and began first, somewhat cautiously.

"And might it be possible to make some corrections in this document?"

"What for? I wrote it sincerely," replied Stavrogin.

"To touch up the style a little."

"I forgot to warn you that all your words will be in vain; I will not put off my intention; don't bother talking me out of it."

"You did not forget to warn me of that earlier, before the reading."

"Never mind, I repeat again: no matter how strong your objections, I will not leave off my intention. Note that by this unfortunate phrase, or fortunate—think what you like—I am in no way inviting you to quickly start objecting to me and entreating me," he added, as if unable to help himself, again suddenly falling for a moment into the former tone, but he at once smiled sadly at his own words.

"I would not even be able to object or to entreat you especially to give up your intention. This thought is a great thought, and there is no way to express a Christian thought more fully. Repentance cannot go any further than the astonishing deed you are contemplating, if only ..."

"If only what?"

"If only it is indeed repentance and indeed a Christian thought."

"These are fine points, it seems to me; does it make any difference? I wrote it sincerely."

"It is as if you purposely want to portray yourself as coarser than your heart would wish ..." Tikhon was growing more and more bold. Obviously, the "document" had made a strong impression on him.

“‘Portray'? I tell you again: I was not 'portraying myself and especially was not 'posturing.’”

Tikhon quickly lowered his eyes.

"This document comes straight from the need of a mortally wounded heart—do I understand correctly?" he went on insistently and with extraordinary ardor. "Yes, it is repentance and the natural need for it that have overcome you, and you have struck upon a great path, a path of an unheard-of sort. But it is as if you already hate beforehand all those who will read what is described here and are challenging them to battle. If you are not ashamed to confess the crime, why are you ashamed of repentance? Let them look at me, you say; well, and you yourself, how are you going to look at them? Certain places in your account are stylistically accentuated; as if you admire your own psychology and seize upon every little detail just to astonish the reader with an unfeelingness that is not in you. What is that if not the proud challenge of a guilty man to his judge?"

"Where is there any challenge? I eliminated all personal reasoning."

Tikhon held his peace. Color even spread over his pale cheeks.

"Let's leave that," Stavrogin brought it abruptly to a halt. "Allow me instead to make you a question: here it is already five minutes that we've been talking after that" (he nodded to the pages) "and I don't see any expression of loathing or shame in you... you're not squeamish, it seems! ..."

He did not finish and grinned.

"That is, you wish I'd quickly voice my contempt for you," Tikhon rounded off firmly. "I won't conceal anything from you: I was horrified at this great idle force being spent deliberately on abomination. As for the crime itself, many people sin in the same way, and live in peace and quiet with their conscience, even regarding it as one of the inevitable trespasses of youth. There are old men who sin in the same way, even contentedly and playfully. The whole world is filled with all these horrors. But you have felt the whole depth of it, something which rarely happens to such an extent."

"You haven't taken to respecting me after these pages?" Stavrogin grinned crookedly.

"To that I shall not respond directly. But, of course, there is not and cannot be any greater and more terrible crime than your act with the maiden."

"Let's quit putting a yardstick to it. I'm somewhat surprised at your opinion about other people and the ordinariness of such a crime. Perhaps I don't suffer nearly as much as I've written here, and perhaps I've really heaped too many lies on myself," he added unexpectedly.

Tikhon once more held his peace. Stavrogin was not even thinking of leaving; on the contrary, he again began to lapse at moments into deep pensiveness.

"And this girl," Tikhon began again, very timidly, "with whom you broke off in Switzerland, is, if I may ask ... where is she at the present moment?"

"Here."

Again silence.

"Perhaps I was indeed heaping lies on myself," Stavrogin repeated insistently once more. "However, what of it if I'm challenging them by the coarseness of my confession, since you did notice the challenge? I'll make them hate me even more, that's all. And so much the easier for me."

"That is, their hatred will evoke yours, and, hating, it will be easier for you than if you were to accept their pity?"

"You're right. You know," he suddenly laughed, "I may well be called a Jesuit and a pious hypocrite, ha, ha, ha! Right?"

"Of course, there will be such an opinion. And how soon do you hope to carry out this intention?"

"Today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, how do I know? Only very soon. You're right: I think what's precisely going to happen is that I'll make it public unexpectedly and precisely at some vengeful, hateful moment, when I'm hating them most of all."

"Answer one question, but sincerely, for me alone, only me: if someone forgave you for that" (Tikhon pointed to the pages), "and not someone of those you respect or fear, but a stranger, a man you will never know, silently, reading your terrible confession to himself, would this thought make it easier for you, or would it make no difference?"

"Easier," Stavrogin replied in a soft voice, lowering his eyes. "If you were to forgive me, it would be much easier for me," he added unexpectedly and in a half-whisper.

"And you me, as well," Tikhon said in a deeply moved voice.

"What for? what have you done to me? Ah, yes, it's a monastery formula?"

"For my sins both voluntary and involuntary.^[223] In sinning, each man sins against all, and each man is at least partly guilty for another's sin. There is no isolated sin. And I am a great sinner, perhaps more than you are."

"I'll tell you the whole truth: I wish you to forgive me, and another with you, and a third, but the rest—the rest had better hate me. But I wish it in order to endure with humility..."

"And universal pity you would not be able to endure with the same humility?"

"Perhaps I wouldn't. You picked that up very nicely. But. . . why are you doing this?"

"I feel the degree of your sincerity and, of course, am much to blame for not knowing how to approach people. I've always felt it to be my greatest failing," Tikhon said sincerely and feelingly, looking straight into Stavrogin's eyes. "It's only because I fear for you," he added, "there is an almost impassible abyss before you."

"That I won't endure? that I won't endure their hatred with humility?"

"Not only their hatred."

"And what else?"

"Their laughter," escaped from Tikhon, almost as if despite himself and in a half-whisper.

Stavrogin became embarrassed; uneasiness showed in his face.

"I anticipated that," he said. "So, then, I appeared as a very comical character to you on reading my 'document,' in spite of the whole tragedy? Don't worry, don't be put out ... I did anticipate it."

"There will be horror on all sides, and, of course, more false than sincere. People fear only what directly threatens their personal interests. I'm not speaking of the pure souls: they will be horrified and will blame themselves, but they will not be noticeable. The laughter, however, will be universal."

"Add to that the thinker's observation that there is always something pleasing in another man's calamity."

"A correct thought."

"You, however ... you yourself... I'm surprised at how badly you think of people, with what loathing," Stavrogin said, looking somewhat resentful.

"And yet, believe me, I said it judging more by myself than about other people," Tikhon exclaimed.

"Really? Can there indeed be at least something in your soul that finds amusement here in my calamity?"

"Who knows, perhaps there is. Oh, perhaps there is!"

"Enough. Show me, then, precisely what makes me ridiculous in my manuscript? I know what, but I want you to point your finger to it. And say it nice and cynically, say it with all the sincerity you're capable of. And I'll also tell you again that you are a terribly odd man."

"Even the form of this truly great repentance has something ridiculous in it. Oh, do not believe that you will not win!" he suddenly exclaimed almost in ecstasy. "Even this form will win" (he pointed to the pages), "if only you sincerely accept the beating and the spitting.^[224]In the end it has always been that the most disgraceful cross becomes a great glory and a great power, if the humility of the deed is sincere.

It may even be that you will be comforted in your own lifetime! ..."

"So, in the form alone, in the style, you find something ridiculous?" Stavrogin persisted.

"And in the essence. The uncomeliness will kill it," Tikhon whispered, lowering his eyes.

"What, sir? Uncomeliness? The uncomeliness of what?"

"Of the crime. There are crimes that are truly uncomely. With crimes, whatever they may be, the more blood, the more horror there is, the more imposing they are, the more picturesque, so to speak; but there are crimes that are shameful, disgraceful, all horror aside, so to speak, even far too ungracious..."

Tikhon did not finish.

"That is," Stavrogin picked up in agitation, "you find I made quite a ridiculous figure when I was kissing the dirty little girl's foot... and all that I said about my temperament and... well, and all the rest ... I understand. I understand you very well. And you despair of me precisely because it is uncomely, vile, no, not really vile, but shameful, ridiculous, and you think it's this, rather than anything else, that I won't be able to endure?"

Tikhon was silent.

"Yes, you do know people, that is, you know that I, precisely I, will not be able to endure ... I understand why you asked about the young lady from Switzerland, whether she was here."

"You're not prepared, not tempered," Tikhon whispered timidly, with lowered eyes.

"Listen, Father Tikhon: I want to forgive myself, and that is my chief goal, my whole goal!" Stavrogin said suddenly, with grim rapture in his eyes. "I know that only then will the apparition vanish. That is why I am seeking boundless suffering, seeking it myself. So do not frighten me."

"If you believe that you can forgive yourself and can attain to this forgiveness in this world, then you believe everything!" Tikhon exclaimed rapturously. "How is it that you say you do not believe in God?"

Stavrogin made no reply.

"God will forgive your unbelief, for you venerate the Holy Spirit without knowing him."

"Christ, incidentally, will not forgive," Stavrogin asked, and a light shade of irony could be heard in the tone of the question, "for it is said in the book: 'Whoso shall offend one of these little ones'—remember? According to the Gospel, there is not and cannot be any greater crime.^[225] In this book!"

He pointed to the Gospel.

"I have glad tidings for you about that," Tikhon spoke with tender feeling. "Christ, too, will forgive, if only you attain to forgiving yourself ... Oh, no, no, do not believe that I have spoken a blasphemy: even if you do not attain to reconciliation with yourself and forgiveness of yourself, even then He will forgive you for your intention and for your great suffering... for there are no words or thoughts in human language to express all the ways and reasons of the Lamb, 'until his ways are openly revealed to us.'^[226] Who can embrace him who is unembraceable, who can grasp the whole of him who is infinite!"

The corners of his mouth twitched as before, and a barely noticeable spasm again passed over his face. He restrained himself for a moment and then, unable to stand it, quickly lowered his eyes.

Stavrogin took his hat from the sofa.

"I'll come again sometime," he said with an air of great fatigue, "you and I ... I appreciate only too well the pleasure of the conversation and the honor... and your feelings. Believe me, I understand why there are some who love you so. I ask your prayers from Him whom you love so much ..."

"And you're leaving already?" Tikhon also rose quickly, as though not at all expecting such a speedy farewell. "And I..." he was as if at a loss, "I was about to present you with a request of my own, but ... I don't know how... and now I'm afraid."

"Ah, kindly do." Stavrogin sat down at once, his hat in his hand. Tikhon looked at this hat, at this pose, the pose of a man suddenly turned worldly, both agitated and half crazy, who was granting him five minutes to finish his business—and became still more abashed.

"My whole request is merely that you... now you must admit, Nikolai Vsevolodovich (that is your name, I believe?), that if you make your pages public, you will spoil your fate ... in the sense of a career, for example, and ... in the sense of all the rest."

"Career?" Nikolai Vsevolodovich scowled unpleasantly.

"Why should you spoil it? Why, as it seems, such inflexibility?" Tikhon concluded almost pleadingly, obviously aware of his own awkwardness. A pained impression showed on the face of Nikolai Vsevolodovich.

"I have already asked you and will ask you again: all your words will be superfluous... and in general all our talk is beginning to be unbearable."

He turned significantly in his chair.

"You don't understand me, hear me out and don't be annoyed. You know my opinion: your deed, if done in humility, would be the greatest Christian deed, if you could endure it. Even if you were unable to endure it, all the same the Lord would count your initial sacrifice. Everything will be counted: not a word, not a movement of the soul, not a half thought will be in vain. But I am offering you, instead of this deed, another still greater one, something unquestionably great..."

Nikolai Vsevolodovich was silent.

"You are in the grip of a desire for martyrdom and self-sacrifice; conquer this desire as well, set aside your pages and your intention— and then you will overcome everything. You will put to shame all your pride and your demon! You will win, you will attain freedom..."

His eyes lit up; he pressed his hands together pleadingly.

"You quite simply want very much to avoid a scandal, and you are setting a trap for me, good Father Tikhon," Stavrogin mumbled casually and with vexation, making as if to get up. "In short, you would like me to settle down, perhaps get married, and end my life as a member of the local club, visiting your monastery on every feast day. What a penance! Although, being a reader of human hearts, you may even foresee that this will undoubtedly be so, and the only thing now is to beg me nicely, for the sake of decency, since this is what I myself am longing for—right?"

He laughed contortedly.

"No, not that penance, I am preparing a different one!" Tikhon continued ardently, not paying the least attention to Stavrogin's laughter or remark. "I know an elder, not here, but not far from here, a hermit and monk, and of such Christian wisdom as you and I cannot even understand. He will heed my requests. I will tell him all about you. Put yourself under obedience to him, under his orders, for some five or seven years, for as long as you yourself find necessary afterwards. Make a vow to yourself, and with this great sacrifice you will buy everything that you long for, and even what you do not expect, for you cannot understand now what you will receive!"

Stavrogin heard out his last suggestion seriously, even very seriously.

"You are quite simply suggesting that I become a monk in that monastery? Much though I respect you, that is precisely what I should have expected. Well, I shall even confess to you that the thought has already flashed in me at moments of faintheartedness: to hide away from people in a monastery, at least for a time, once I had made these pages public. But I immediately blushed at such baseness. But to take monastic vows—that never entered my head even in moments of the most fainthearted fear."

"You needn't be in a monastery, you needn't take vows, just be a novice secretly, unapparently, it may even be done so that you live entirely in the world..."

"Stop it, Father Tikhon," Stavrogin interrupted squeamishly and rose from the chair. Tikhon rose, too.

"What's the matter with you?" he suddenly cried out, peering at Tikhon almost in fright. The man stood before him, his hands pressed together in front of him, and a painful spasm, as if from the greatest fear, passed momentarily over his face.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" Stavrogin repeated, rushing to support him. It seemed to him that the man was about to fall over.

"I see ... I see as in reality," Tikhon exclaimed in a soul-penetrating voice and with an expression of the most intense grief, "that you, poor, lost youth, have never stood so close to the most terrible crime as at this moment!"

"Calm yourself!" Stavrogin kept repeating, decidedly alarmed for him. "I may still put it off... you're right, I may not be able to endure it, and in my spite I'll commit a new crime ... all that is so... you're right, I'll put it off."

"No, not after the publication, but before the publication of the pages, a day, maybe an hour before the great step, you will throw yourself into a new crime as a way out, only to avoid publishing these pages!"

Stavrogin even trembled with wrath and almost with fear.

"Cursed psychologist!" he broke off suddenly in a rage and, without looking back, left the cell.