Demons

1: Instead of an Introduction

A few details from the biography of the much esteemed Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky

I

In setting out to describe the recent and very strange events that took place in our town, hitherto not remarkable for anything, I am forced, for want of skill, to begin somewhat far back—namely, with some biographical details concerning the talented and much esteemed Stepan Trofimovich Verkhovensky. Let these details serve merely as an introduction to the chronicle presented here, while the story itself, which I am intending to relate, still lies ahead.

I will say straight off: Stepan Trofimovich constantly played a certain special and, so to speak, civic role among us, and loved this role to the point of passion—so much so that it even seems to me he would have been unable to live without it. Not that I equate him with a stage actor: God forbid, particularly as I happen to respect him. It could all have been a matter of habit, or, better, of a ceaseless and noble disposition, from childhood on, towards a pleasant dream of his beautiful civic stance. He was, for example, greatly enamored of his position as a "persecuted" man and, so to speak, an "exile."^[1] There is a sort of classical luster to these two little words that seduced him once and for all, and, later raising him gradually in his own estimation over the course of so many years, brought him finally to some sort of pedestal, rather lofty and gratifying to his vanity. In a satirical English novel of the last century, a certain Gulliver, having returned from the land of the Lilliputians, where people were only some three inches tall, had grown so accustomed to considering himself a giant among them that even when walking in the streets of London, he could not help shouting at passers-by and carriages to move aside and take care that he not somehow crush them, imagining that he was still a giant and they were little. For which people laughed at him and abused him, and rude coachmen even struck the giant with their whips—but was that fair? What will habit not do to a man? Habit brought Stepan Trofimovich to much the same thing, but in a still more innocent and inoffensive form, if one may put it so, for he was a most excellent man.

I even think that towards the end he was forgotten by everyone everywhere; but it is by no means possible to say that he had been completely unknown earlier as well. It is unquestionable that he, too, belonged for a while to the famous pleiad of some renowned figures of our previous generation, and for a time—though only for one brief little moment—his name was uttered by many hurrying people of that day almost on a par with the names of Chaadaev, Belinsky, Granovsky, and Herzen, who was just beginning abroad.^[2] But Stepan Trofimovich's activity ended almost the moment it began—due, so to speak, to a "whirlwind of concurrent circumstances."^[3] And just think! It turned out later that there had been not only no "whirlwind" but not even any "circumstances," at least not on that occasion. Just the other day I learned, to my great surprise, but now with perfect certainty, that Stepan Trofimovich had lived among us, in our province, not only not in exile, as we used to think, but that he had never even been under surveillance. Such, then, is the power of one's own imagination! He himself sincerely believed all his life that he was a cause of constant apprehension in certain spheres, that his steps were ceaselessly known and numbered, and that each of the three governors who succeeded one another over the past twenty years, in coming to rule our province, brought along a certain special and worrisome idea of him, inspired from above and before all, upon taking over the province. Had someone then convinced the most honest Stepan Trofimovich, on irrefutable evidence, that he had nothing at all to fear, he would no doubt have been offended. And yet he was such an intelligent man, such a gifted man, even, so to speak, a scholar—though as a scholar, however... well, in a word, he did very little as a scholar, nothing at all, apparently. But with scholars here in Russia that is ever and always the case.

He returned from abroad and shone briefly as a lecturer at the university back at the end of the forties. But he managed to give only a few lectures, apparently on the Arabians; he also managed to defend a brilliant thesis on the nearly emerged civic and Hanseatic importance of the German town of Hanau, in the period between 1413 and 1428,^[4] together with the peculiar and vague reasons why that importance never took place. This thesis cleverly and painfully needled the Slavophils^[5] of the day, and instantly gained him numerous and infuriated enemies among them. Later—though by then he had already lost his lectureship—he managed to publish (in revenge, so to speak, and to show them just whom they had lost), in a monthly and progressive journal, which translated Dickens and preached George Sand,^[6] the beginning of a most profound study—having to do, apparently, with the reasons for the remarkable moral nobility of some knights in some epoch, or something of the sort. At any rate, some lofty and remarkably noble idea was upheld in it. Afterwards it was said that the sequel of the study was promptly forbidden, and that the progressive journal even suffered for having printed the first part. That could very well have happened, because what did not happen back then? But in the present case it is more likely that nothing happened, and that the author himself was too lazy to finish the study. And he stopped his lectures on the Arabians because someone (evidently from among his retrograde enemies) somehow intercepted a letter to someone giving an account of some "circumstances," as a result of which someone demanded some explanations from him. I do not know if it is true, but it was also asserted that in Petersburg at the same time they unearthed a vast anti-natural, anti-state society of some thirteen members which all but shook the foundations. It was said that they supposedly intended to translate Fourier himself.^[7] As if by design, at the same time in Moscow they seized a poem by Stepan Trofimovich, written six years earlier in Berlin, in his first youth, which circulated in manuscript among two amateurs and one student. This poem is now also sitting in my desk drawer; I received it just last year, in a quite recent copy, handwritten by Stepan Trofimovich himself, with his inscription, and bound in magnificent red morocco. Incidentally, it is not lacking in poetry, or even in a certain talent; it is a strange piece, but in those days (that is, more precisely, in the thirties) that kind of thing was not uncommon. I find it difficult to give the plot, because to tell the truth I understand nothing of it. It is some sort of allegory, in lyrical-dramatic form, resembling the second part of Faust.^[8] The scene opens with a chorus of women, then a chorus of men, then of some powers, and it all ends with a chorus of souls that have not lived yet but would very much like to live a little. All these choruses sing about something very indefinite, mostly about somebody's curse, but with a tinge of higher humor. Then suddenly the scene changes and some sort of "Festival of Life" begins, in which even insects sing, a turtle appears with some sort of sacramental Latin words, and, if I remember, a mineral—that is, an altogether inanimate object—also gets to sing about something. Generally, everyone sings incessantly, and if they speak, they squabble somehow indefinitely, but again with a tinge of higher meaning. Finally, the scene changes again, and a wild place appears, where a civilized young man wanders among the rocks picking and sucking at some wild herbs, and when a fairy asks him why he is sucking these herbs, he responds that he feels an overabundance of life in himself, is seeking oblivion, and finds it in the juice of these herbs, but that his greatest desire is to lose his reason as quickly as possible (a perhaps superfluous desire). Suddenly a youth of indescribable beauty rides in on a black horse, followed by a terrible multitude of all the nations. The youth represents death, and all the nations yearn for it. Finally, in the very last scene, the Tower of Babel suddenly appears and some athletes finally finish building it with a song of new hope, and when they have built to the very top, the proprietor of, shall we say, Olympus flees in comical fashion, and quick-witted mankind takes over his place and at once begins a new life with a new perception of things. Well, this is the poem that was found so dangerous then. Last year I proposed to Stepan Trofimovich to publish it, in view of its perfect innocence nowadays, but he declined the proposal with obvious displeasure. My opinion as to its perfect innocence he did not like, and I even ascribe to it a certain coolness towards me on his part, which lasted for a whole two months. And just think! Suddenly, almost at the same time as I proposed publishing it here, our poem was published there—that is, abroad, in one of the revolutionary miscellanies, and absolutely without Stepan Trofimovich's knowledge. He was frightened at first, rushed to the governor, and wrote a most noble letter of vindication to Petersburg, read it to me twice, but did not send it, not knowing to whom to address it. In short, he was worried for a whole month; but I am convinced that in the hidden turnings of his heart he was remarkably flattered. He all but slept with the copy of the miscellany that had been sent to him, hid it under the mattress during the day, and even would not allow the woman to make his bed, and though he expected any day some telegram from somewhere, his look was haughty. No telegram came. And then he reconciled with me, which testifies to the extreme kindness of his gentle and unresentful heart.

II

I am by no means claiming that he never suffered at all; only I am now fully convinced that he could have gone on with his Arabians as much as he liked, if he had simply given the necessary explanations. But at the time he made a grand gesture, and with particular hastiness took care to convince himself once and for all that his career had been ruined for the whole of his life by a "whirlwind of circumstances." Though, if one were to tell the whole truth, the real reason for this change of career was a most delicate offer, made once before and now renewed by Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, the wife of a lieutenant general and a woman of considerable wealth, to take upon himself the upbringing and the whole intellectual development of her only son, in the capacity of a superior pedagogue and friend, to say nothing of a splendid remuneration. This offer had first been made to him in Berlin, and precisely at the time when he had first been left a widower. His first wife was a flighty girl from our province whom he had married in his very first and still reckless youth, and it seems he suffered much grief from this—incidentally attractive—person, for lack of means to support her, and for other, somewhat delicate reasons as well. She died in Paris, having been separated from him for the previous three years, leaving him a five-year-old son, "the fruit of a first, joyful, and still unclouded love," as once escaped the sorrowing Stepan Trofimovich in my presence. The nestling was from the very start sent back to Russia, where he was brought up all the while in the hands of some distant aunts, somewhere in a remote corner. Stepan Trofimovich had declined Varvara Petrovna's offer at that time and quickly got married again, even before the year was out, to a taciturn little German woman from Berlin, and that, moreover, without any special need. But there turned out to be other reasons, besides, for declining the position of tutor: he was tempted by the then resounding glory of one unforgettable professor, and in his turn flew to the chair for which he had been preparing himself, to try out his own eagle's wings. And so now, with his wings singed, he naturally recalled the offer that had already once made him hesitate. The sudden death of his second wife, who did not live even a year with him, finally settled it all. I will say straight out: it was all resolved through Varvara Petrovna's fervent sympathy and precious, so to speak, classical friendship for him, if one may thus express oneself about friendship. He threw himself into the embrace of this friendship, and the thing got set for more than twenty years. I have used the expression "threw himself into the embrace," but God forbid that anyone should think anything idle and unwarranted; this embrace should be understood only in the highest moral sense. The most subtle and delicate bond united these two so remarkable beings forever.

The position of tutor was accepted also because the bit of an estate left by Stepan Trofimovich's first wife—a very small one—happened to be just next to Skvoreshniki, the splendid suburban estate of the Stavrogins in our province. Moreover, it was always possible, in the quiet of one's study and no longer distracted by the vastness of university employment, to dedicate oneself to the cause of learning and enrich the literature of one's fatherland with the most profound research. No research resulted; but what did result instead was the possibility of standing for the rest of his life, for more than twenty years, as, so to speak, a "reproach incarnate" to his fatherland, to use the expression of a people's poet:^[9]

Reproach incarnate you did stand

Before the fatherland, a liberal idealist.

Perhaps the person of whom the people's poet so expressed himself did have the right to pose all his life in this vein, if he wanted, boring though it is. But our Stepan Trofimovich in truth was only an imitator compared with such persons; then, too, he used to get tired of standing and would often recline. But, even then, the incarnateness of the reproach was still preserved in that reclining position—the more so, speaking in all fairness, as even that was quite sufficient for our province. You should have seen him when he sat down to play cards in our club. His whole look seemed to say: "Cards! Me sit down to play whist with you! Is it compatible? Who must answer for it? Who broke up my activity and turned it into whist? Ah, perish Russia!" and he would trump majestically with a heart.

And to tell the truth he was terribly fond of a little game of cards, for which, especially of late, he had frequent and unpleasant skirmishes with Varvara Petrovna, the more so as he was forever losing. But of that later. I will merely note that he was even a man of tender conscience (sometimes, that is) and therefore often sorrowful. In the course of his twenty-year-long friendship with Varvara Petrovna he used to fall regularly, three or four times a year, into a state known among us as "civic grief"^[10]—that is, simply a fit of spleen, but our much respected Varvara Petrovna liked the expression. Later on, besides civic grief, he also began falling into champagne; but the alert Varvara Petrovna guarded him all his life against all trivial inclinations. And he did need a nurse, because he would sometimes become quite strange: in the midst of the loftiest grief he would suddenly start laughing in a most plebeian manner. Moments came over him when he would start talking about himself in a humorous vein. And there was nothing Varvara Petrovna feared more than a humorous vein. This was a woman-classic, a woman-Maecenas, whose acts presupposed only the loftiest considerations. Supreme was the twenty-year-long influence of this lofty lady upon her poor friend. One ought to speak of her separately, and so I will.

III

There are strange friendships: two friends are almost ready to eat each other, they live like that all their lives, and yet they cannot part. Parting is even impossible: the friend who waxes capricious and breaks it off will be the first to fall sick and die, perhaps, if it should happen. I know positively that several times, occasionally even after his most intimate outpourings tête-à-tête with Varvara Petrovna, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly jumped up from the sofa when she had gone and started pounding the wall with his fists.

This occurred without a trace of allegory, so that once he even broke some plaster from the wall. Perhaps I shall be asked how I could have learned of such a fine detail. And what if I myself witnessed it? What if Stepan Trofimovich himself sobbed many a time on my shoulder while portraying in vivid colors all his innermost secrets? (And what, oh, what did he not tell me then!) But here is what almost always happened after such weepings: the very next day he would be ready to crucify himself for his ingratitude; he would hurriedly send for me, or come running to me himself, with the sole purpose of announcing to me that Varvara Petrovna was "an angel of honor and delicacy, while he was just the opposite." He not only came running to me, but he described it more than once to her in the most eloquent letters, and confessed, over his full signature, that no more than a day ago, for instance, he had been telling some outsider that she kept him out of vanity, that she envied his learning and talents, that she hated him and was only afraid to show her hatred openly for fear he would leave her and thereby damage her literary reputation; that he despised himself on account of that and had resolved to die a violent death, and was only waiting for a last word from her that would decide it all, and so on, and so on, in the same vein. You can imagine after that how hysterical the nervous outbursts of this most innocent of all fifty-year-old infants could become! I once read one of these letters, after some quarrel between them, venomously acted out, though the cause was a trifling one. I was horrified and implored him not to send the letter.

"Impossible... honor... duty ... I shall die if I do not confess everything to her, everything!" he answered all but deliriously, and he did send the letter.

And here lay the difference between them—Varvara Petrovna would never have sent such a letter. True, he loved writing to distraction, wrote to her even while living in the same house, and on hysterical occasions even two letters a day. I know positively that she always read these letters in a most attentive way, even in the event of two letters a day, and, having read them, lay them away in a special drawer, marked and sorted; what's more, she laid them up in her heart. Then, having kept her friend all day without an answer, she would meet him as if nothing had happened, as if nothing special had taken place the day before. She gradually drilled him so well that he himself did not dare to remind her of the previous day and only kept peeking into her eyes for some time. But she forgot nothing, and he sometimes forgot much too quickly, and, often that same day, encouraged by her composure, would laugh and frolic over the champagne, if friends stopped by. What venom there must have been in her eyes at those moments, yet he noticed nothing! Maybe after a week, or a month, or even half a year, at some special moment, having chanced to recall some expression from such a letter, and then the whole letter with all its circumstances, he would suddenly burn with shame, and suffered so much that he would come down with one of his attacks of cholerine. These special attacks of his, resembling cholerine, were on certain occasions the usual outcome of his nervous shocks and represented a certain rather interesting peculiarity of his organism.

Indeed, Varvara Petrovna undoubtedly and quite frequently hated him; but there was one thing he failed to notice in her to the very end, that for her he finally became her son, her creation, even, one might say, her invention, became flesh of her flesh, and that she maintained and sustained him not at all out of "envy of his talents" alone. And how insulted she must have been by such suppositions! Some unbearable love for him lay hidden in her, in the midst of constant hatred, jealousy, and contempt. She protected him from every speck of dust, fussed over him for twenty-two years, would lie awake whole nights from worry if his reputation as a poet, scholar, or civic figure were in question. She invented him, and she was the first to believe in her invention. He was something like a sort of dream of hers... But for that she indeed demanded a lot of him, sometimes even slavery. And she was incredibly resentful. Here, incidentally, I will relate two anecdotes.

IV

Once, back in the time of the first rumors about the emancipation of the serfs,^[11]when the whole of Russia suddenly became exultant and all ready to be reborn, Varvara Petrovna was visited by a traveling Petersburg baron, a man with the highest connections and who stood quite close to these matters. Varvara Petrovna greatly valued such visits, because her connections with high society had grown weaker and weaker since her husband's death, and finally had ceased altogether. The baron stayed for an hour and had tea. No one else was there, but Varvara Petrovna invited Stepan Trofimovich and put him on display. The baron had even heard something about him before, or pretended he had, but he spoke little with him over tea. Of course, Stepan Trofimovich could not fall on his face, and his manners were most refined. Though his origins, it seems, were not high, it so happened that he had been brought up from a very early age in an aristocratic house in Moscow, and, therefore, decently; he spoke French like a Parisian. Thus the baron was to understand from the very first glance what sort of people Varvara Petrovna surrounded herself with, even in provincial seclusion. However, it did not turn out that way. When the baron positively confirmed the complete reliability of the first rumors then just spreading about the great reform, Stepan Trofimovich suddenly could not restrain himself and shouted "Hurrah!" and even made some sort of gesture with his hand signifying delight. His shout was not loud and was even elegant; it may even be that the delight was premeditated and the gesture was rehearsed on purpose in front of the mirror half an hour before tea; but something here must not have come out right, so that the baron allowed himself a little smile, though he at once, with remarkable courtesy, put in a phrase about the general and appropriate tender feeling of all Russian hearts in view of the great event. He left shortly after that and, as he was leaving, did not forget to hold out two fingers to Stepan Trofimovich as well. On returning to the drawing room, Varvara Petrovna remained silent for about three minutes, as if she were looking for something on the table; then she turned suddenly to Stepan Trofimovich, pale, her eyes flashing, and whispered through her teeth:

"I will never forgive you for that!"

The next day she met her friend as if nothing had happened; she never recalled the incident. But thirteen years later, at a tragic moment, she did recollect it, and she reproached him and became pale in just the same way as thirteen years before, when she had reproached him the first time. Only twice in her whole life did she say to him: "I will never forgive you for that!" The occasion with the baron was already the second occasion; the first occasion, for its part, was so characteristic and, it seems, had such significance in Stepan Trofimovich's destiny, that I am resolved to mention it as well.

It was the year 'fifty-five, in springtime, the month of May, just after news reached Skvoreshniki of the demise of Lieutenant General Stavrogin, a frivolous old man who had died of a stomach disorder on his way to the Crimea, where he was hastening on assignment to active duty. Varvara Petrovna was left a widow and clad herself in deep mourning. True, she could not have grieved very much, because for the last four years she had lived completely separately from her husband, owing to the dissimilarity of their characters, and had provided him with an allowance. (The lieutenant general himself had only a hundred and fifty souls and his salary, along with nobility and connections; all the wealth and Skvoreshniki belonged to Varvara Petrovna, the only daughter of a very rich tax farmer.) Nevertheless, she was shaken by the suddenness of the news and withdrew into complete seclusion. Of course, Stepan Trofimovich never left her side.

May was in full bloom; the evenings were remarkable. The bird cherry was blossoming. The two friends came together in the garden every evening and stayed until nightfall in the gazebo, pouring out their feelings and thoughts to each other. There were poetic moments. Under the effect of the change in her destiny, Varvara Petrovna talked more than usual. She seemed to be clinging to her friend's heart, and so it continued for several evenings. A strange thought suddenly dawned on Stepan Trofimovich: "Is the inconsolable widow not counting on him and expecting a proposal from him at the end of the year of mourning?" A cynical thought; but loftiness of constitution sometimes even fosters an inclination towards cynical thoughts, if only because of the versatility of one's development. He began to go more deeply into it and concluded that it did look that way. "True, it's an immense fortune," he pondered, "but. . ." Indeed, Varvara Petrovna in no way resembled a beauty: she was a tall, yellow, bony woman with an exceedingly long face recalling something horselike. Stepan Trofimovich hesitated more and more; he was tortured by doubts, and even shed a few tears now and then from indecision (he wept rather often). But in the evenings—that is, in the gazebo—his face somehow involuntarily began to express something capricious and mocking, something coquettish and at the same time haughty. This happens somehow inadvertently, involuntarily, and is all the more noticeable the nobler the person is. God knows how to judge here, but most likely nothing was awakening in Varvara Petrovna's heart that could fully have justified Stepan Trofimovich's suspicions. And she would not have exchanged her name of Stavrogin for his name, however glorious it might be. Perhaps it was only a feminine game on her part, the manifestation of an unconscious feminine need, so natural on certain extraordinary feminine occasions. However, I would not vouch for it; inscrutable even to this day are the depths of the feminine heart. But, to continue.

One may suppose that within herself she soon understood the strange expression on her friend's face; she was alert and observant, whereas he was sometimes too innocent. But the evenings went on as before, and the conversations were as poetic and interesting. And then once, as night was falling, after a most animated and poetic conversation, they parted in a friendly manner, warmly shaking hands at the porch of the cottage Stepan Trofimovich occupied. Every summer he moved from the huge manor house of Skvoreshniki to this little cottage which stood almost in the garden. He had just walked into his room and, having taken a cigar, before he managed to light it, troubled by thoughts, had stopped, weary and motionless, by the open window, observing some white clouds, light as down, gliding past the bright crescent moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made him start and turn around. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four minutes earlier, was again standing before him. Her yellow face was almost blue, her lips were pressed together and twitched at the corners. For a full ten seconds she looked silently into his eyes with a firm, implacable gaze, and then suddenly whispered rapidly:

"I will never forgive you for that!"

When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovich told me this sad story in a whisper, having locked the door first, he swore he had been so dumbfounded then and there that he had not heard or seen how Varvara Petrovna disappeared. Since she never once alluded afterwards to what had taken place, and everything went on as if nothing had happened, he was inclined all his life to think it was just a hallucination before illness, all the more so as he actually did fall ill that same night for two whole weeks—which, incidentally, also put an end to the meetings in the gazebo.

But despite his fancy about the hallucination, he seemed every day of his life to be waiting for the sequel and, so to speak, the denouement of this event. He did not believe it could have ended just like that! And if so, what strange looks he must sometimes have given his friend.

V

She herself even invented a costume for him, in which he went about all his life. It was an elegant and characteristic costume: a long-skirted black frock coat, buttoned almost to the top, but with a dapper look; a soft hat (a straw one for summer) with a wide brim; a white batiste cravat with a big knot and hanging ends; a cane with a silver knob; and shoulder-length hair to go with it all. His hair was dark brown and only recently had begun to go a bit gray. He shaved his beard and moustache. He was said to have been extremely handsome as a young man. But, in my opinion, as an old man he was also remarkably imposing. And how old is fifty-three? Still, out of a certain civic coquetry, he not only did not try to look younger, but seemed to flaunt the solidity of his years, and in his costume, tall, lean, with hair falling to his shoulders, he resembled a patriarch, as it were, or, more precisely, the portrait of the poet Kukolnik^[12] in a lithograph from some edition of the thirties, especially when he sat in the garden in summer, on a bench, under a flowering lilac bush, leaning with both hands on his cane, an open book beside him, poetically pondering the sunset. Speaking of books, I will note that towards the end he began somehow to withdraw from reading. That, however, was towards the very end. The newspapers and magazines Varvara Petrovna subscribed to in great numbers, he read constantly. He was also constantly interested in the successes of Russian literature, though without in the least losing his dignity. At some point he became involved in a study of the higher modern politics of our internal and external affairs, but soon abandoned the enterprise with a wave of the hand. And there was this, too: he would take Tocqueville with him to the garden, but with Paul de Kock tucked in his side pocket.'^[13] That, however, is a trifle.

I will also note parenthetically about Kukolnik's portrait, that Varvara Petrovna had first chanced upon this picture while still a young girl at an upper-class boarding school in Moscow. She at once fell in love with the portrait, as is customary for all young girls in boarding schools, who fall in love with anything at all including their teachers, mainly of drawing and calligraphy. What is curious here is not the young girl's feelings, but that even at the age of fifty Varvara Petrovna still kept this picture among her most intimate treasures, so that perhaps only because of it had she invented a costume for Stepan Trofimovich somewhat resembling the one in the picture. But, of course, that is also a small thing.

For the first years, or, more precisely, for the first half of his residence at Varvara Petrovna's, Stepan Trofimovich still had thoughts of some sort of a work, and was seriously preparing every day to write it. But for the second half he must even have forgotten what it had all been about. More and more often he would say to us: "It seems I'm ready to work, the materials have all been collected, yet the work doesn't come! Nothing gets done!" And he would hang his head dejectedly. No doubt this was supposed to give him even more grandeur in our eyes as a martyr of learning; but he himself wanted something else. "I'm forgotten, no one needs me!" escaped him more than once. This intense spleen took particular hold of him at the end of the fifties. Varvara Petrovna finally understood that it was a serious matter. And she also could not bear the thought that her friend was forgotten and not needed. To distract him, and to patch up his fame at the same time, she then took him to Moscow, where she had a few refined literary and learned connections; but, as it turned out, Moscow was not satisfactory either.

It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the former tranquillity, something quite strange, but felt everywhere, even in Skvoreshniki. Various rumors arrived. The facts were generally more or less known, but it was obvious that, besides the facts, certain accompanying ideas also appeared, and, what's more, in exceeding numbers. That was what was bewildering: there was no way to adapt and find out just exactly what these ideas meant. Varvara Petrovna, owing to the feminine makeup of her character, certainly wanted to suppose some secret in them. She herself began reading newspapers and magazines, prohibited foreign publications, and even the tracts that were beginning then (she had it all sent to her); but it only made her head spin. She started writing letters: the replies were few, and the longer it went on, the more incomprehensible they became. Stepan Trofimovich was solemnly invited to explain "all these ideas" to her once and for all; but she remained positively displeased with his explanations. Stepan Trofimovich's view of the general movement was scornful in the highest degree; with him it all came down to his being forgotten and not needed by anyone. Finally he, too, was remembered, first in foreign publications, as an exiled martyr, and immediately after that in Petersburg, as a former star in a noted constellation; he was even compared for some reason with Radishchev.^[14]Then someone printed that he had died, and promised an obituary. Stepan Trofimovich instantly resurrected and reassumed his majesty. All the scornfulness of his views of his contemporaries dropped away at once, and a dream began burning in him: to join the movement and show his powers. Varvara Petrovna instantly believed again and in everything, and started bustling about terribly. It was decided that they should go to Petersburg without the least delay, to find out everything in reality, to go into it all personally, and, if possible, to involve themselves wholly and undividedly in the new activity. Among other things, she announced that she was prepared to found her own magazine and dedicate her whole life to it from then on. Seeing it had even come to that, Stepan Trofimovich became more scornful than ever, and during the trip began treating Varvara Petrovna almost patronizingly, which she immediately laid up in her heart. However, she also had another quite important reason for going—namely, the renewal of her high connections. She needed as far as possible to remind the world of herself, or at least to make the attempt. And the avowed pretext for the trip was a meeting with her only son, who was then finishing his studies at a Petersburg lycée.

VI

They went and stayed in Petersburg for almost the whole winter season. By Lent, however, everything burst like an iridescent soap bubble. The dreams scattered, and the jumble not only was not clarified, but became even more repellent. First, the high connections all but failed, except perhaps in microscopic form, and with humiliating strain. The insulted Varvara Petrovna threw herself wholly into the "new ideas" and began holding evenings. She invited writers, and they were immediately brought to her in great numbers. Afterwards they took to coming on their own, without invitation, each one bringing another. Never before had she seen such writers. They were impossibly vain, but quite openly so, as if thereby fulfilling a duty. Some (though by no means all) even came drunk, but it was as if they perceived some special, just-yesterday-discovered beauty in it. They were all proud of something to the point of strangeness. It was written on all their faces that they had just discovered some extremely important secret. They were abusive, and considered it to their credit. It was rather difficult to find out precisely what they had written; but there were critics, novelists, playwrights, satirists, exposers among them. Stepan Trofimovich even penetrated their highest circle, the place from which the movement was directed. It was an immensely steep climb to reach the directors, but they met him cordially, though none of them, of course, knew or had heard anything about him except that he "represented an idea." He maneuvered among them so far that he even managed to invite them a couple of times to Varvara Petrovna's salon, despite all their olympianity. These were very serious and very polite people; they bore themselves well; the others were evidently afraid of them; but it was obvious that they had no time. Two or three former literary celebrities who then happened to be in Petersburg, and with whom Varvara Petrovna had long maintained the most refined relations, also came. But, to her surprise, these real and indisputable celebrities were meek as lambs, and some of them simply clung to all this new rabble and fawned on them shamefully. At first Stepan Trofimovich was in luck; they seized on him and began displaying him at public literary gatherings. When he came out on the platform for the first time as a reader at one of these public literary readings, there was a burst of wild applause that continued for about five minutes. He recalled it with tears nine years later—rather more because of his artistic nature than out of gratitude. "I swear to you and will wager," he himself said to me (but only to me, and as a secret), "that no one in that whole audience knew a blessed thing about me!" A remarkable confession: indeed he must have possessed keen intelligence if he could understand his position so clearly, right there on the platform, despite all his rapture; and indeed he must not have possessed very keen intelligence if even nine years later he could not recall it without feeling offended. He was made to sign two or three collective protests (against what, he himself did not know); he signed. Varvara Petrovna was also made to sign some "outrageous act," and she signed.^[15] However, though the majority of these new people had been Varvara Petrovna's guests, they for some reason considered it their duty to look upon her with contempt and unconcealed derision. Stepan Trofimovich hinted to me afterwards, in bitter moments, that it was then that she had begun to envy him. Of course, she understood that she ought not to associate with these people, but still she received them avidly, with all of a woman's hysterical impatience, and, above all, kept expecting something. At her evenings she spoke little, though she could speak, but rather listened. They talked about the abolition of censorship, about spelling reform, about replacing Russian letters with Roman, about someone's exile the day before, about some scandal in the Passage, about the advantages of dividing Russia into a free federation of nationalities, about abolishing the army and navy, about restoring Poland up to the Dnieper, about peasant reform and tracts, about the abolition of inheritance, the family, children, and priests, about women's rights, about Kraevsky's house, for which no one would ever forgive Mr. Kraevsky, and so on and so forth.^[16] It was clear that among this rabble of new people there were many swindlers, but it was also unquestionable that there were many honest and even quite attractive persons, despite certain nonetheless surprising nuances. The honest ones were far more incomprehensible than the rude and dishonest ones; but it was not clear who was making use of whom. When Varvara Petrovna announced her idea of publishing a magazine, still more people came flocking to her, but accusations also immediately flew in her face that she was a capitalist and an exploiter of labor. The unceremoniousness of the accusations was equaled only by their unexpectedness. The elderly general Ivan Ivanovich Drozdov, a former friend and fellow officer of the late general Stavrogin, a most worthy man (though in his own way), known to all of us here, extremely obstinate and irritable, who ate terribly much and was terribly afraid of atheism, began arguing at one of Varvara Petrovna's evenings with a famous young man. The latter said straight off: "Well, you're a general if you talk like that," meaning that he could not even find any worse abuse than a general. Ivan Ivanovich got extremely fired up: "Yes, sir, I am a general, a lieutenant general, and I've served my sovereign, and you, sir, are a brat and an atheist!" An impossible scandal took place. Next day the incident was exposed in the press and signatures were gathered under a collective letter against the "outrageous act" of Varvara Petrovna in not wishing to throw the general out at once. A caricature appeared in an illustrated magazine, caustically portraying Varvara Petrovna, the general, and Stepan Trofimovich together as three retrograde cronies; the picture was accompanied by some verses written by a people's poet solely for the occasion. I will add, for my part, that in fact many persons with the rank of general have the habit of saying ludicrously: "I have served my sovereign..." as if they did not have the same sovereign as the rest of us, the sovereign's ordinary subjects, but their own special one.

To remain any longer in Petersburg was, of course, impossible, the more so in that Stepan Trofimovich also suffered a final fiasco. He could not help himself and started proclaiming the rights of art, and they started laughing at him all the louder. At his last reading he decided to employ civic eloquence, fancying he would touch people's hearts and counting on their respect for his "exile." He unquestioningly agreed that the word "fatherland" was useless and comical; he also agreed with the notion of the harmfulness of religion; but he loudly and firmly proclaimed that boots are lower than Pushkin, even very much so.^[17] He was hissed so mercilessly that he burst into tears right there, publicly, before he even got off the platform. Varvara Petrovna brought him home more dead than alive. "On m'a traité comme un vieux bonnet de coton!"^[i] he babbled senselessly. She spent the whole night looking after him, gave him laurel water, and kept telling him until dawn: "You are still useful; you will still make your appearance; you will be appreciated... elsewhere."

The very next day, early in the morning, five writers called on Varvara Petrovna, three of them complete strangers whom she had never set eyes on before. They announced to her with stern faces that they had looked into the case of her magazine and had brought her their decision about it. Varvara Petrovna had decidedly never asked anyone to look into or decide anything about her magazine. The decision was that, after founding the magazine, she should at once turn it over to them, along with the capital, under the rights of a free co-operative; and she herself should leave for Skvoreshniki, and not forget to take along Stepan Trofimovich, "who was obsolete." From delicacy they agreed to acknowledge her right of ownership and to send her one sixth of the net income annually. Most touching of all was that, of these five people, four certainly had no mercenary motive, but were busying themselves only for the sake of the "common cause."

"We left as if in a daze," Stepan Trofimovich used to say. "I was unable to sort anything out and, I remember, kept muttering to the click-clack of the wheels:

Vek and Vek and Lev Kambek, Lev Kambek and Vek and Vek…^[18] and devil knows what else, all the way to Moscow. It was only in Moscow that I came to my senses—as if indeed I could have found anything different there! Oh, my friends," he sometimes exclaimed, inspired, "you cannot imagine what sorrow and anger seize one's whole soul when a great idea, which one has long and piously revered, is picked up by some bunglers and dragged into the street, to more fools like themselves, and one suddenly meets it in the flea market, unrecognizable, dirty, askew, absurdly presented, without proportion, without harmony, a toy for stupid children! No! It was not so in our day, that is not what we strove for. No, no, not that at all. I recognize nothing... Our day will come once more, and once more turn all this wavering, all this present, onto a firm path. Otherwise what will there be?..."

VII

Immediately after their return from Petersburg, Varvara Petrovna sent her friend abroad—to "rest"; besides, they needed to be apart for a time, so she felt. Stepan Trofimovich was delighted to go. "I shall resurrect there!" he kept exclaiming. "There I shall finally take up my studies!" But with his first letters from Berlin he struck his perennial note. "My heart is broken," he wrote to Varvara Petrovna. "I can forget nothing! Here in Berlin everything reminds me of the old days, of my past, my first raptures, and my first torments. Where is she? Where are they both? Where are you, my two angels, of whom I was never worthy? Where is my son, my beloved son? Where, finally, am I, I myself, my former self, strong as steel and unshakable as rock, while now some Andrejeff, un Orthodox clown in a beard, peut briser mon existence en deux,"^[ii] etc., etc. As for Stepan Trofimovich's son, he had seen him only twice in his life, the first time when he was born, and the second time recently in Petersburg, where the young man was preparing to enter the university. The boy, as has already been mentioned, had been brought up all his life by his aunts (at Varvara Petrovna's keeping), in —— province, five hundred miles from Skvoreshniki. And as for Andrejeff—that is, Andreev—he was simply one of our local merchants, a shopkeeper, a great eccentric, a self-taught archaeologist and passionate collector of Russian antiquities, who had occasional altercations with Stepan Trofimovich on learned matters, but above all to do with trends. This venerable merchant, with a gray beard and big silver spectacles, still owed Stepan Trofimovich four hundred roubles for the purchase of several acres of timber on his little estate (near Skvoreshniki). Though Varvara Petrovna lavishly provided her friend with means on sending him to Berlin, Stepan Trofimovich had still been counting especially on getting those four hundred roubles before he left, probably for his secret expenses, and nearly wept when Andrejeff asked him to wait a month—which, by the way, he had the right to do, since he had paid the first installment almost half a year ahead of time, because Stepan Trofimovich had had special need of it then. Varvara Petrovna read this first letter greedily and, having underlined in pencil the exclamation: "Where are you both?" dated it and locked it away in a box. He was, of course, recalling his two deceased wives. In the second letter that came from Berlin there was a variation in the tune: "I work twelve hours a day ["Or maybe just eleven," Varvara Petrovna grumbled], burrowing in the libraries, checking, taking notes, rushing about; have called on professors. Renewed my acquaintance with the excellent Dundasov family. How charming Nadezhda Nikolaevna is, even now! She sends her regards. Her young husband and all three nephews are in Berlin. In the evenings I converse with the young people till dawn, and we have almost Athenian nights,^[19] though only in terms of refinement and elegance; it is all quite noble: there is a lot of music, Spanish airs, dreams of universal renewal, the idea of eternal beauty, the Sistine Madonna,^[20] a light shot through with darkness, but then there are spots even on the sun! Oh, my friend, my noble, faithful friend! In my heart I am with you and am yours, always with you alone, en tout pays, even dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux,^[iii] of which you remember we so often spoke, trembling, in Petersburg, before our departure. I recall it with a smile. Having crossed the border, I felt myself safe—a strange, new feeling, the first time after so many years..." etc., etc.

"Well, it's all nonsense!" Varvara Petrovna decided, folding up this letter, too. "If it's Athenian nights until dawn, then he's not sitting twelve hours over books. Was he drunk when he wrote it, or what? This Dundasov woman, how dare she send me her regards? Oh, well, let him have a good time..."

The phrase "dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux" meant: "where Makar never drove his calves."^[21] Stepan Trofimovich sometimes deliberately translated Russian proverbs and popular sayings into French in a most stupid way, though he undoubtedly understood and could have translated them better. He did it from a special sort of chic, and found it witty.

But his good time was not long. He did not hold out even four months, and came rushing back to Skvoreshniki. His last letters consisted of nothing but outpourings of the most tenderhearted love for his absent friend and were literally wet with the tears of separation. There are natures that become extremely attached to home, like lap-dogs. The reunion of the two friends was rapturous. In two days everything was back the old way, and even more boring than the old way. "My friend," Stepan Trofimovich told me two weeks later, as the greatest secret, "my friend, I've discovered something new and... terrible for me: je suis un mere sponger et rien de plus! Mais r-r-rien de plus!"^[iv]

VIII

Then came a lull which continued almost unbroken for all these nine years. Hysterical outbursts and weepings on my shoulder, which regularly recurred, did not hinder our prosperity in the least. I am surprised how it could have been that Stepan Trofimovich did not put on weight during that time. His nose only became a little redder, and he grew more benign. Gradually a circle of friends established itself around him, though a perpetually small one. Varvara Petrovna, who had little contact with this circle, was nevertheless acknowledged by us all as our patroness. After the Petersburg lesson, she settled herself permanently in our town; the winters she spent in her town house, and the summers on her suburban estate. Never before had she enjoyed so much importance and influence in our provincial society as during the last seven years, that is, right up to the appointment of our present governor. Our former governor, the mild and unforgettable Ivan Osipovich, was a close relation of hers and had once been the object of her benefactions. His wife trembled at the very thought of displeasing Varvara Petrovna, and the reverence of provincial society even went so far as to resemble something sinful. It was, consequently, good for Stepan Trofimovich as well. He was a member of the club, lost majestically at cards, and earned himself esteem, though many looked upon him as merely a "scholar." Later on, when Varvara Petrovna permitted him to live in a separate house, we felt even more free. We gathered at his place about twice a week; it used to get quite merry, especially when he was generous with the champagne. The wine came from the shop of that same Andreev. Varvara Petrovna paid the bill every six months, and the day of payment was almost always a day of cholerine.

The most long-standing member of the circle was Liputin, a provincial official, no longer a young man, a great liberal and known around town as an atheist. He got married for the second time to a young and pretty woman, took her dowry, and had, besides, three adolescent daughters. He kept his whole family in fear of God and under lock and key, was exceedingly stingy, and had set aside a little house and some capital for himself from his service. He was a restless person, and of low rank besides, little respected in town, and not received in higher circles. Moreover, he was an undisguised gossip and had more than once been punished, and punished painfully, for it—once by some officer, and another time by a landowner, the respectable head of a family. But we loved his sharp wit, his inquisitiveness, his peculiar wicked gaiety. Varvara Petrovna did not like him, but somehow he was always able to get in good with her.

She also did not like Shatov, who became a member of the circle only in the last year. Shatov had been a student, but was expelled from the university after some student incident; as a child he had been Stepan Trofimovich's pupil, and he had been born Varvara Petrovna's serf, the son of her late valet Pavel Fyodorov, and had been the object of her benefactions. She disliked him for his pride and ingratitude, and simply could not forgive him for not coming to her at once after he was expelled from the university; on the contrary, he did not even reply to the letter she specially sent him then, and preferred putting himself in bondage to some civilized merchant as teacher of his children. He went abroad with this merchant's family, more as a baby-sitter than as a tutor; but at the time he wanted very much to go abroad. The children had a governess as well, a pert Russian girl who also joined the household just before their departure and was taken mainly for her cheapness. About two months later the merchant threw her out for "free thoughts." Shatov went trudging after her and soon married her in Geneva. They lived together for about three weeks, and then parted as free people not bound by anything; also, of course, because of poverty. For a long time afterwards he wandered around Europe alone, living God knows how; they say he shined shoes in the streets and worked as a stevedore in some port. Finally, about a year ago, he came back to his own nest here and stayed with an old aunt, whom he buried within a month. His communications with his sister Dasha, who was also Varvara Petrovna's ward and lived with her as her favorite on the most noble footing, were very rare and distant. With us he was perpetually glum and taciturn; but occasionally, when his convictions were touched upon, he became morbidly irritated and quite unrestrained in his language. "Shatov should be tied up before you try reasoning with him," Stepan Trofimovich sometimes joked; yet he loved him. Abroad, Shatov had radically changed some of his former socialist convictions and leaped to the opposite extreme. He was one of those ideal Russian beings who can suddenly be so struck by some strong idea that it seems to crush them then and there, sometimes even forever. They are never strong enough to master it, but they are passionate believers, and so their whole life afterwards is spent in some last writhings, as it were, under the stone that has fallen on them and already half crushed them. In appearance Shatov corresponded completely to his convictions: he was clumsy, blond, shaggy, short, with broad shoulders, thick lips, bushy, beetling white eyebrows, a scowling forehead, and unfriendly eyes stubbornly downcast and as if ashamed of something. There was this one lock of his hair that simply refused to lie flat and was eternally sticking up. He was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. "It no longer surprises me that his wife ran away from him," Varvara Petrovna once allowed, after studying him intently. He tried to dress neatly, despite his extreme poverty. He again refused to turn to Varvara Petrovna for help, but got by on whatever God sent him; he also had some doings with shopkeepers. One time he sat in a shop; then he almost left altogether on a trading ship as a salesman's assistant, but fell ill just before the departure. It is hard to imagine what poverty he was able to endure without even giving it a thought. After his illness, Varvara Petrovna secretly and anonymously sent him a hundred roubles. He found out the secret, however, pondered, accepted the money, and went to Varvara Petrovna to thank her. She received him warmly, but here, too, he shamefully deceived her expectations: he sat for only five minutes, silent, staring dully at the floor and smiling stupidly, and suddenly, without letting her finish speaking and at the most interesting point of the conversation, got up, bowed somehow sideways, hulkily, dissolved in shame, incidentally brushed against her expensive inlaid worktable, which went crashing to the floor and broke, and walked out nearly dead from disgrace. Liputin later upbraided him strongly, not only for accepting the hundred roubles instead of rejecting them with contempt as coming from his former despot-landowner, but for dragging himself there to thank her on top of it. He lived solitarily on the outskirts of town, and did not like it when anyone, even one of us, stopped to see him. He regularly came to Stepan Trofimovich's evenings, and borrowed newspapers and books to read from him.

There was yet another young man who used to come to the evenings, a certain Virginsky, a local official, who bore some resemblance to Shatov, though he was also apparently his complete opposite in all respects; but he was a "family man" as well. A pathetic and extremely quiet young man, already about thirty, however, with considerable education, but mainly self-taught. He was poor, married, in the civil service, and supported his wife's sister and an aunt. His spouse and all the ladies were of the latest convictions, but with them it all came out somewhat crudely—here, precisely, was "an idea that ended up in the street," as Stepan Trofimovich put it once on a different occasion. They got everything out of books, and even at the first rumor from our progressive corners in the capital were prepared to throw anything whatsoever out the window, provided they were advised to throw it out. Madame Virginsky practiced the profession of midwife in our town; as a young girl, she had lived for a long time in Petersburg. Virginsky himself was a man of rare purity of heart, and rarely have I encountered a more honest flame of the soul. "Never, never shall I abandon these bright hopes," he used to say to me, his eyes shining.

Of these "bright hopes" he always spoke softly, with sweetness, in a half-whisper, as if secretly. He was quite tall but extremely skinny and narrow-shouldered, and had remarkably thin hair of a reddish hue. He bore meekly all of Stepan Trofimovich's scornful jibes at some of his opinions, and his objections to him were sometimes very serious and in many ways nonplussed him. Stepan Trofimovich treated him benignly, and generally took a fatherly attitude towards us all.

"You are all 'half-baked,’” he observed jokingly to Virginsky, "all your sort; though in you, Virginsky, I have not noticed that nar-row-mind-ed-ness that I met with in Petersburg chez ces séminaristes,^[v][22]but still you're 'half-baked.' Shatov would very much prefer to have been fully baked, but he, too, is half-baked."

"And me?" asked Liputin.

"And you are simply the golden mean that will get along anywhere ... in your own fashion."

Liputin was offended.

It was told of Virginsky, unfortunately on quite good grounds, that his wife, after less than a year of lawful wedlock, suddenly announced to him that he was being retired and that she preferred Lebyadkin. This Lebyadkin, who was some sort of transient, later turned out to be a rather suspicious character, and was even not a retired captain at all, as he styled himself. He only knew how to twirl his moustaches, drink, and spout the most uncouth nonsense imaginable. The man quite indelicately moved in with them at once, being glad of another man's bread, ate and slept with them, and finally began treating the master of the house with condescension. It was asserted that when his wife announced his retirement, Virginsky said to her: "My friend, up to now I have only loved you, but now I respect you," but it is hardly possible that such an ancient Roman utterance was actually spoken; on the contrary, they say he wept and sobbed.^[23] Once, about two weeks after his retirement, all of them, the whole "family," went to a grove in the countryside to have tea with friends. Virginsky was somehow feverishly merry and took part in the dancing; but suddenly and without any preliminary quarrel he seized the giant Lebyadkin—who was dancing a cancan solo - by the hair with both hands, bent him down, and began dragging him around with shrieks, shouts, and tears. The giant was so frightened that he did not even defend himself and hardly broke silence all the while he was being dragged around; but after the dragging he became offended with all the fervor of a noble man. Virginsky spent the whole night on his knees begging his wife's forgiveness; but forgiveness was not granted, since he still would not consent to go and apologize to Lebyadkin; he was denounced, besides, for paucity of convictions and stupidity—the latter because he knelt while talking with a woman. The captain soon vanished and reappeared in our town only quite recently, with his sister and with new purposes; but more will be said of him later. No wonder the poor "family man" needed our company to ease his heart. Though he never spoke of his domestic affairs with us. Only one time, as we were returning together from Stepan Trofimovich's, did he begin speaking remotely about his situation, but at once, seizing me by the hand, he exclaimed ardently:

"It's nothing; it's just a particular case; in no way, in no way will it hinder the 'common cause'!"

Chance guests used to visit our circle; a little Jew named Lyamshin used to come. Captain Kartuzov used to come. For a while we had a certain inquisitive old man, but he died. Liputin started bringing an exiled Polish priest named Slonzevsky, and for a time we received him on principle, but later we even stopped receiving him.

IX

For a while there was talk of us around town, that our circle was a hotbed of freethinking, depravity, and godlessness; and this rumor has always persisted. Yet what we had was only the most innocent, nice, perfectly Russian, jolly liberal chatter. "Higher liberalism" and the "higher liberal"—that is, a liberal without any aim—are possible only in Russia. Stepan Trofimovich, like any witty man, needed a listener, and, besides, he needed an awareness that he was fulfilling the high duty of the propaganda of ideas. And, finally, one also needs someone to drink champagne with, over the wine exchanging jolly little thoughts of a certain sort about Russia and the "Russian spirit,” about God in general and the "Russian God" in particular; for the hundredth time repeating scandalous Russian anecdotes known to everyone and repeated by everyone. We were not above local gossip either, and here sometimes reached the point of stern and highly moral verdicts. We also fell into general human things, sternly discussed the future destiny of Europe and of mankind, prophesied doctrinarily that after Caesarism France would fall at once to the level of a secondary state, which we were quite sure could come about terribly quickly and easily. For the Pope we had long ago prophesied the role of mere metropolitan in a united Italy, and were quite convinced that this whole thousand-year-old question was, in our age of humaneness, industry, and railroads, but a trifling matter. Indeed, "higher Russian liberalism" has no other way of treating things. Stepan Trofimovich sometimes used to speak about art, and rather well, too, though somewhat abstractly. He sometimes recalled the friends of his youth—all noted persons in the history of our development—recalled them with tenderness and reverence, but somewhat enviously, as it were. If things got too boring, the little Jew Lyamshin (a petty postal clerk), a good hand at the piano, would sit down to play, and in the intermissions would do mimicries of a pig, a thunderstorm, a mother giving birth with the first cry of the baby, and so on and so forth; that was the sole reason for inviting him. If there was too much tippling—and it did happen, though not often—we would grow rapturous, and once even sang the "Marseillaise"^[24] in chorus to Lyamshin's accompaniment, though I do not know that it came out very well. The great day of February nineteenth^[25] we celebrated with raptures and even began emptying toasts in its honor way ahead of time. That was long, long ago when there was as yet no Shatov and no Virginsky, and Stepan Trofimovich still lived in the same house with Varvara Petrovna. Some time prior to the great day, Stepan Trofimovich took to muttering to himself the well-known though somewhat unnatural verses, written most likely by some former liberal landowner:

Peasants come, they're bringing axes, Something terrible will happen.^[26]

I believe it went something like that, I do not remember it literally. Varvara Petrovna overheard it once, shouted "Nonsense! Nonsense!" at him, and angrily walked out. Liputin, who happened to be present, remarked caustically to Stepan Trofimovich:

"What a pity if the former serfs get so joyful as to really cause some unpleasantness for their gentleman landowners."

And he drew his index finger across his throat.

"Cher ami," Stepan Trofimovich remarked to him good-humoredly, "believe me, this" (he repeated the gesture across his throat) "will be of no use whatsoever either to our landowners or to the rest of us in general. Even without heads, we will not be able to arrange anything, though it's our heads that hinder our understanding most of all."

I should note that many among us thought something extraordinary, such as Liputin predicted, would take place on the day of the proclamation, and they were all so-called knowers of the people and the state. It seems Stepan Trofimovich also shared these thoughts, so much so that almost on the eve of the great day he suddenly began asking Varvara Petrovna to let him go abroad; in short, he began to worry. But the great day went by, and more time went by, and the scornful smile again appeared on Stepan Trofimovich's lips. In our presence he gave utterance to several remarkable thoughts on the character of the Russian man in general and of the Russian peasant in particular.

"We, being hasty people, were in too great a hurry with our dear little peasants," he concluded his series of remarkable thoughts. "We brought them into fashion, and for several years in a row the whole literary sector fussed over them as over some newly discovered treasure. We placed laurels upon lousy heads. In all its thousand years, the Russian village has given us only the 'komarinsky.'^[27] A remarkable Russian poet, and one not wanting in wit, when he saw the great Rachel^[28] on stage for the first time, exclaimed in rapture: 'I'd never trade Rachel for a peasant!' I am prepared to go further: I will trade all Russian peasants for one Rachel. It is time to take a more sober look and stop mixing our lumpish native tar with bouquet de l'impératrice."^[29]

Liputin agreed at once, but observed that for the moment it was still necessary to play the hypocrite and praise peasants for the sake of the trend; that even high-society ladies flooded themselves with tears reading Anton the Wretch,^[30] and some even wrote from Paris to their managers in Russia that henceforth they were to treat the peasants with all possible humaneness.

And, as if by design, just after the rumors about Anton Petrov,^[31] it so happened that in our province, too, and only ten miles from Skvoreshniki, a certain misunderstanding occurred, so that in the heat of the moment troops had to be sent. This time Stepan Trofimovich became so excited that he even frightened us. He shouted in the club that more troops were needed, that they should be summoned by telegraph from another district; he ran to the governor and assured him that he had nothing to do with it, begged that he not be somehow mixed up in the affair by force of habit, and suggested that his statement be communicated at once to the proper quarters in Petersburg. It was good that it all passed quickly and ended in nothing; but at the time I simply marveled at Stepan Trofimovich.

About three years later, as everyone knows, there began to be talk of nationhood, and "public opinion" was born. Stepan Trofimovich had a good laugh.

"My friends," he would instruct us, "if our nationhood has indeed been 'born,' as they assure us nowadays in the newspapers, it is still sitting at school, in some German Peterschule,^[32] over a German book, grinding out its eternal German lesson, and its German teacher makes it go on its knees when necessary. All praise to the German teacher; but most likely nothing has happened, and nothing of the sort has been born, and everything is still going on as before, that is, by the grace of God. In my opinion, that should be enough for Russia, pour notre sainte Russie.^[vi] Besides, all these panslavisms and nationhoods—it's all too old to be new. Nationhood, if you like, has never appeared among us otherwise than as a gentlemen's clubroom fancy—a Moscow one at that! To be sure, I'm not talking about Igor's time.^[33] And, finally, it all comes of idleness. With us everything comes of idleness, even what is fine and good. It all comes of our dear, cultivated, whimsical, gentlemanly idleness. I've been repeating it for thirty thousand years. We are unable to live by our own labor. And what is all this fuss nowadays about some public opinion being 'born'—did it just drop from the sky, suddenly, for no rhyme or reason? Don't they understand that in order to acquire an opinion what is needed first of all is labor, one's own labor, one's own initiative and experience! Nothing can ever be acquired gratis. If we labor, we shall have our own opinion. And since we shall never labor, those who have been working for us all along will have the opinion instead—that is, Europe again, the Germans again, our teachers from two hundred years back. Besides, Russia is too great a misunderstanding for us to resolve ourselves, without the Germans and without labor. For twenty years now I've been ringing the alarm and calling to labor! I've given my life to this call, and—madman—I believed! Now I no longer believe, but I still ring and shall go on ringing to the end, to my grave; I shall pull on the rope until the bells ring for my funeral!"

Alas, we simply yessed him! We applauded our teacher, and with what ardor! But after all, gentlemen, even now do we not at times hear all around us the same "dear," "intelligent," "liberal" old Russian nonsense?

Our teacher believed in God. "I do not understand why everyone here makes me out to be a godless man," he used to say occasionally. "I believe in God, mais distinguons,^[vii] I believe as in a being who is conscious of himself in me. Why, I cannot go believing like my Nastasya" (the servingwoman) "or like some grand sir who believes 'just in case'—or like our dear Shatov—but, no, Shatov doesn't count, Shatov believes perforce, like a Moscow Slavophil. So far as Christianity is concerned, for all my sincere respect for it, I am not a Christian. I am rather an ancient pagan, like the great Goethe,^[34] or like an ancient Greek. Take this one thing alone, that Christianity has never understood woman—as has been so splendidly developed by George Sand in one of her brilliant novels.^[35] As for the bowings, the fasts, and the rest of it, I do not see why anyone should care about me. However our informers may bustle about here, I have no wish to become a Jesuit. In the year 'forty-seven Belinsky, while abroad, sent his famous letter in Gogol, in which he hotly reproached him with believing 'in some sort of God.'^[36] Entre nous soit dit,^[viii] I can imagine nothing more comical than the moment when Gogol (the Gogol of that time!) read this expression and... the whole letter! But, ridiculousness aside, since I still agree with the essence of the matter, I will point to them and proclaim: These were men! They knew how to love their people, they knew how to suffer for them, they knew how to sacrifice everything for them, and they knew at the same time how to disagree with them when necessary, not to indulge them in certain notions. Indeed, Belinsky could hardly seek salvation in Lenten oil or turnips and peas! ..."

But here Shatov would interrupt.

"These men of yours never loved the people, never suffered for them or sacrificed anything for them, no matter what they themselves imagined for their own good pleasure!" he growled gloomily, looking down and turning impatiently on his chair.

"Never loved the people, did they!" Stepan Trofimovich yelled. "Oh, how they loved Russia!"

"Neither Russia nor the people!" Shatov also yelled, flashing his eyes. "One cannot love what one does not know, and they understood nothing about the Russian people! All of them, and you along with them, turned a blind eye and overlooked the Russian people, and Belinsky especially; it's clear in that same letter to Gogol. Belinsky was just like Krylov's Inquisitive Man,^[37] who didn't notice the elephant in the museum, but gave all his attention to French socialist bugs; and that's where he ended up. Yet he was maybe more intelligent than all of you! Not only have you overlooked the people—you have treated them with loathsome contempt, which is enough to say that by people you meant only the French people, and even then only the Parisians, and were ashamed that the Russian people are not like them. And this is the naked truth! And those who have no people, have no God! You may be sure that all those who cease to understand their people and lose their connection with them, at once, in the same measure, also lose the faith of their fathers, and become either atheists or indifferent. It's right, what I'm saying! The fact will be borne out. That is why all of you, and all of us now, are either vile atheists or indifferent, depraved trash, and nothing more! And you, too, Stepan Trofimovich, I do not exclude you in the least, I've even said it on your account, be it known to you!"

Usually, after delivering such a monologue (and this often happened with him), Shatov would seize his cap and rush to the door, completely certain that it was all over now and that he had broken his friendly relations with Stepan Trofimovich utterly and forever. But the latter always managed to stop him in time.

"Why not make peace, Shatov, after all these nice little words?" he would say, offering his hand good-naturedly from his chair.

Clumsy but bashful Shatov did not like tendernesses. On the surface he was a crude man, but inwardly, it seems, a most delicate one. Though he often lost his sense of measure, he was the first to suffer for it. Having growled something under his nose to Stepan Trofimovich's appeal, and shuffling in place like a bear, he would suddenly grin, lay his cap aside, and sit down in his former chair, stubbornly staring at the ground. Of course, wine would be brought out, and Stepan Trofimovich would pronounce some appropriate toast—say, for example, to the memory of one of the old activists.