Title:      A Raw Youth
Author:     Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
	    [Translated by Constance Garnett (1861-1946)]
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Language:   English
Date first posted: October 2001
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Title: A Raw Youth
Author: Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
        [Translated by Constance Garnett (1861-1946)]





PART I


CHAPTER I


1


I cannot resist sitting down to write the history of the first steps
in my career, though I might very well abstain from doing so. . . .
I know one thing for certain: I shall never again sit down to
write my autobiography even if I live to be a hundred.  One must
be too disgustingly in love with self to be able without shame to
write about oneself.  I can only excuse myself on the ground that I
am not writing with the same object with which other people write,
that is, to win the praise of my readers.  It has suddenly occurred
to me to write out word for word all that has happened to me during
this last year, simply from an inward impulse, because I am so
impressed by all that has happened.  I shall simply record the
incidents, doing my utmost to exclude everything extraneous,
especially all literary graces.  The professional writer writes for
thirty years, and is quite unable to say at the end why he has been
writing for all that time.  I am not a professional writer and
don't want to be, and to drag forth into the literary market-place
the inmost secrets of my soul and an artistic description of my
feelings I should regard as indecent and contemptible.  I foresee,
however, with vexation, that it will be impossible to avoid
describing feelings altogether and making reflections (even,
perhaps, cheap ones), so corrupting is every sort of literary
pursuit in its effect, even if it be undertaken only for one's own
satisfaction.  The reflections may indeed be very cheap, because
what is of value for oneself may very well have no value for
others.  But all this is beside the mark.  It will do for a
preface, however.  There will be nothing more of the sort.  Let us
get to work, though there is nothing more difficult than to begin
upon some sorts of work--perhaps any sort of work.


2


I am beginning--or rather, I should like to begin--these notes from
the 19th of September of last year, that is, from the very day I
first met . . .

But to explain so prematurely who it was I met before anything else
is known would be cheap; in fact, I believe my tone is cheap.  I
vowed I would eschew all literary graces, and here at the first
sentence I am being seduced by them.  It seems as if writing
sensibly can't be done simply by wanting to.  I may remark, also,
that I fancy writing is more difficult in Russian than in any other
European language.  I am now reading over what I have just written,
and I see that I am much cleverer than what I have written.  How is
it that what is expressed by a clever man is much more stupid than
what is left in him?  I have more than once during this momentous
year noticed this with myself in my relations with people, and have
been very much worried by it.

Although I am beginning from the 19th of September, I must put in a
word or two about who I am and where I had been till then, and what
was consequently my state of mind on the morning of that day, to
make things clearer to the reader, and perhaps to myself also.


3


I have passed the leaving examination at the grammar school, and
now I am in my twenty-first year.  My surname is Dolgoruky, and my
legal father is Makar Ivanov Dolgoruky, formerly a serf in the
household of the Versilovs.  In this way I am a legitimate son,
although I am, as a matter of fact, conspicuously illegitimate,
and there is not the faintest doubt about my origin.

The facts are as follows.  Twenty-two years ago Versilov (that is
my father), being twenty-five years old, visited his estate in the
province of Tula.  I imagine that at that time his character was
still quite unformed.  It is curious that this man who, even in my
childhood, made such an impression upon me, who had such a crucial
influence on the whole bent of my mind, and who perhaps has even
cast his shadow over the whole of my future, still remains, even
now, a complete enigma to me in many respects.  Of this, more
particulars later.  There is no describing him straight off.  My
whole manuscript will be full of this man, anyway.

He had just been left a widower at that time, that is, when he was
twenty-five.  He had married one of the Fanariotovs--a girl of high
rank but without much money--and by her he had a son and a
daughter.  The facts that I have gathered about this wife whom he
lost so early are somewhat scanty, and are lost among my materials,
and, indeed, many of the circumstances of Versilov's private life
have eluded me, for he has always been so proud, disdainful,
reserved and casual with me, in spite of a sort of meekness towards
me which was striking at times.  I will mention, however, to make
things clear beforehand, that he ran through three fortunes in his
lifetime, and very big ones too, of over fourteen hundred souls,
and maybe more.  Now, of course, he has not a farthing.

He went to the village on that occasion, "God knows why," so at
least he said to me afterwards.  His young children were, as usual,
not with him but with relations.  This was always his method with
his children, legitimate and illegitimate alike.  The house-serfs
on this estate were rather numerous, and among them was a gardener
called Makar Ivanov Dolgoruky.  Here I will note in parenthesis, to
relieve my mind once and for all, I doubt whether anyone can ever
have raged against his surname as I have all my life; this is
stupid, of course, but so it has been.  Every time I entered a
school or met persons whom I had to treat with respect as my
elders, every wretched little teacher, tutor, priest--anyone you
like--on asking my name and hearing it was Dolgoruky, for some
reason invariably thought fitting to add, "Prince Dolgoruky?"  And
every single time I was forced to explain to these futile people,
"No, SIMPLY Dolgoruky."

That SIMPLY began to drive me mad at last.  Here I note as a
curious phenomenon that I don't remember a single exception; every
one asked the question.  For some it was apparently quite
superfluous, and indeed I don't know how the devil it could have
been necessary for anyone.  But all, every one of them asked it. 
On hearing that I was SIMPLY Dolgoruky, the questioner usually
looked me up and down with a blank and stupidly apathetic stare
that betrayed that he did not know why he had asked the question. 
Then he would walk away.  My comrades and schoolfellows were the
most insulting of all.  How do schoolboys question a new-comer? 
The new boy, abashed and confused on the first day of entering a
school (whatever school it may be), is the victim of all; they
order him about, they tease him, and treat him like a lackey.  A
stout, chubby urchin suddenly stands still before his victim and
watches him persistently for some moments with a stern and haughty
stare.  The new boy stands facing him in silence, looks at him out
of the corner of his eyes, and, if he is not a coward, waits to see
what is going to happen.

"What's your name?"

"Dolgoruky."

"Prince Dolgoruky?"

"No, simply Dolgoruky."

"Ah, simply!  Fool."

And he was right; nothing could be more foolish than to be called
Dolgoruky without being a prince.  I have to bear the burden of
that foolishness through no fault of my own.  Later on, when I
began to get very cross about it, I always answered the question
"Are you a prince?" by saying, "No, I'm the son of a servant,
formerly a serf."

At last, when I was roused to the utmost pitch of fury, I
resolutely answered:

"No, simply Dolgoruky, the illegitimate son of my former owner."

I thought of this when I was in the sixth form of the grammar
school, and though I was very soon after thoroughly convinced that
I was stupid, I did not at once give up being so.  I remember that
one of the teachers opined--he was alone in his opinion, however--
that I was "filled with ideas of vengeance and civic rights."  As a
rule this reply was received with a sort of meditative pensiveness,
anything but flattering to me.

At last one of my schoolfellows, a very sarcastic boy, to whom I
hardly talked once in a year, said to me with a serious
countenance, looking a little away:

"Such sentiments do you credit, of course, and no doubt you have
something to be proud of; but if I were in your place I should not
be too festive over being illegitimate . . . you seem to expect
congratulations!"

From that time forth I dropped BOASTING of being illegitimate.

I repeat, it is very difficult to write in Russian: here I have
covered three pages with describing how furious I have been all my
life with my surname, and after all the reader will, no doubt,
probably have deduced that I was really furious at not being a
prince but simply Dolgoruky.  To explain again and defend myself
would be humiliating.


4


And so among the servants, of whom there were a great number
besides Makar Ivanitch, there was a maid, and she was eighteen when
Makar Dolgoruky, who was fifty, suddenly announced his intention of
marrying her.  In the days of serfdom marriages of house-serfs, as
every one knows, only took place with the sanction of their
masters, and were sometimes simply arranged by the latter.  At that
time "auntie" was living on the estate; not that she was my aunt,
though: she had, in fact, an estate of her own; but, I don't know
why, every one knew her all her life as "auntie"--not mine in
particular but an aunt in general, even in the family of Versilov,
to whom she can hardly have been related.  Her name was Tatyana
Pavlovna Prutkov, In those days she still had, in the same province
and district, a property of thirty-five serfs of her own.  She
didn't exactly administer Versilov's estate (of five hundred
serfs), but, being so near a neighbour, she kept a vigilant eye on
it, and her superintendence, so I have heard, was as efficient as
that of any trained steward.  However, her efficiency is nothing to
do with me.  But, to dispose of all suspicion of cringing or
flattery on my part, I should like to add that this Tatyana
Pavlovna was a generous and even original person.

Well, far from checking the gloomy Makar Dolgoruky's matrimonial
inclinations (I am told he was gloomy in those days), she gave them
the warmest encouragement.

Sofia Andreyevna, the serf-girl of eighteen (that is, my mother),
had been for some years fatherless and motherless.  Her father,
also a serf, who had a great respect for Makar Dolgoruky and was
under some obligation to him, had six years before, on his death-
bed, beckoned to the old gardener and, pointing significantly to
his daughter, had, in the presence of the priest and all the
servants, bequeathed her to him, saying, "When she's grown up,
marry her."  This was, so they say, a quarter of an hour before he
expired, so that it might, if need be, have been put down to
delirium; besides which, he had no right to dispose of property,
being a serf.  Every one heard his words.  As for Makar Ivanovitch,
I don't know in what spirit he afterwards entered upon the
marriage, whether with great eagerness or simply as the fulfilment
of a duty.  Probably he preserved an appearance of complete
indifference.  He was a man who even at that time knew how to "keep
up his dignity."  It was not that he was a particularly well-
educated or reading man (though he knew the whole of the church
service and some lives of the saints, but this was only from
hearing them).  It was not that he was a sort of backstairs
philosopher; it was simply that he was a man of obstinate, and even
at times rash character, was conceited in his talk, autocratic in
his judgment, and "respectful in his life," to use his own
surprising expression; that is what he was like at that time.  Of
course, he was universally respected, but, I am told, disliked by
every one.  It was a different matter when he ceased to be a house-
serf; then he was spoken about as a saint and a man who had
suffered much.  That I know for a fact.

As for my mother, Tatyana Pavlovna had kept her till the age of
eighteen in her house, although the steward had urged that the girl
should be sent to Moscow to be trained.  She had given the orphan
some education, that is, taught her sewing and cutting out clothes,
ladylike deportment, and even a little reading.  My mother was
never able to write decently.  She looked upon this marriage with
Makar Ivanovitch as something settled long ago, and everything that
happened to her in those days she considered very good and all for
the best.  She went to her wedding looking as unmoved as anyone
could on such an occasion, so much so that even Tatyana Pavlovna
called her a fish.  All this about my mother's character at that
time I heard from Tatyana Pavlovna herself.  Versilov arrived just
six months after this wedding.


5


I only want to say that I have never been able to find out or to
guess to my own satisfaction what led up to everything between him
and my mother.  I am quite ready to believe, as he himself assured
me last year with a flushed face, though he talked of all this with
the most unconstrained and flippant air, that there was no romance
about it at all, that it had just happened.  I believe that it did
just happen, and that little phrase JUST HAPPENED is delightful,
yet I always wanted to know how it could have come about.  I have
always hated that sort of nastiness all my life and always shall. 
It's not simply a disgraceful curiosity on my part, of course.  I
may remark that I knew absolutely nothing of my mother till a year
ago.  For the sake of Versilov's comfort I was sent away to
strangers, but of that later, and so I can never picture what she
looked like at that time.  If she had not been at all pretty, what
could a man such as Versilov was then have found attractive in her? 
This question is of importance to me because it throws a light on
an extremely interesting side of that man's character.  It is for
that reason I ask it and not from depravity.  Gloomy and reserved
as he always was, he told me himself on one occasion, with that
charming candour which he used to produce (from the devil knows
where--it seemed to come out of his pocket when he saw it was
indispensable) that at that time he was a "very silly young puppy";
not that he was exactly sentimental, but just that he had lately
read "Poor Anton" and "Polinka Sachs," two literary works which
exerted an immense, humanizing influence on the younger generation
of that day.  He added that it was perhaps through "Poor Anton"
that he went to the country, and he added it with the utmost
gravity.  How did that "silly puppy" begin at first with my mother? 
I have suddenly realized that if I had a single reader he would
certainly be laughing at me as a most ridiculous raw youth, still
stupidly innocent, putting himself forward to discuss and criticize
what he knows nothing about.  It is true that I know nothing about
it, though I recognize that not at all with pride, for I know how
stupid such inexperience is in a great dolt of twenty; only I would
tell such a gentleman that he knows nothing about it himself, and I
will prove it to him.  It is true that I know nothing about women,
and I don't want to either, for I shall always despise that sort of
thing, and I have sworn I will all my life.

But I know for certain, though, that some women fascinate by their
beauty, or by anything you like, all in a minute, while you may
ruminate over another for six months before you understand what is
in her; and that to see through and love such a woman it is not
enough to look at her, it is not enough to be simply ready for
anything, one must have a special gift besides.  Of that I am
convinced, although I do know nothing about it: and if it were not
true it would mean degrading all women to the level of domestic
animals, and only keeping them about one as such; possibly this is
what very many people would like.

I know from several sources that my mother was by no means a
beauty, though I have never seen the portrait of her at that age
which is in existence.  So it was impossible to have fallen in love
with her at first sight.  Simply to "amuse himself" Versilov might
have pitched on some one else, and there was some one else in the
house, an unmarried girl too, Anfisa Konstantinovna Sapozhkov, a
housemaid.  To a man who had brought "Poor Anton" with him to the
country it must have seemed shameful to take advantage of his
seignorial rights to violate the sanctity of a marriage, even that
of his serf, for I repeat, he spoke with extreme seriousness of
this "Poor Anton" only a few months ago, that is, twenty years
after the event.  Why, "Poor Anton" only had his horse taken from
him, but this was a wife!  So there must have been something
peculiar in this case, and Mlle. Sapozhkov was the loser by it (or
rather, I should say, the gainer).  I attacked him with all these
questions once or twice last year when it was possible to talk to
him (for it wasn't always possible to talk to him).  And, in spite
of all his society polish and the lapse of twenty years, I noticed
that he winced.  But I persisted.  On one occasion, anyway,
although he maintained the air of worldly superciliousness which he
invariably thought fit to assume with me, he muttered strangely
that my mother was one of those "defenceless" people whom one does
not fall in love with--quite the contrary, in fact--but whom one
suddenly pities for their gentleness, perhaps, though one cannot
tell what for.  That no one ever knows, but one goes on pitying
them, one pities them and grows fond of them.  "In fact, my dear
boy, there are cases when one can't shake it off."  That was what
he told me.  And if that was how it really happened I could not
look upon him as the "silly puppy" he had proclaimed himself.  That
is just what I wanted.

He went on to assure me, however, that my mother loved him "through
servility."  He positively pretended it was because he was her
master!  He lied, thinking this was chic!  He lied against his
conscience, against all honour and generosity.

I have said all this, of course, as it were to the credit of my
mother.  But I have explained already that I knew nothing whatever
of her as she was then.  What is more, I know the rigidity of her
environment, and the pitiful ideas in which she had become set from
her childhood and to which she remained enslaved for the rest of
her life.  The misfortune happened, nevertheless.  I must correct
myself, by the way.  Letting my fancy run away with me, I have
forgotten the fact which I ought to have stated first of all, that
is, that the misfortune happened at the very outset (I hope that
the reader will not be too squeamish to understand at once what I
mean).  In fact, it began with his exercising his seignorial
rights, although Mlle. Sapozhkov was passed over.  But here, in
self-defence, I must declare at once that I am not contradicting
myself.  For--good Lord!--what could a man like Versilov have
talked about at that date with a person like my mother even if he
had felt the most overwhelming love for her?  I have heard from
depraved people that men and women very often come together without
a word being uttered, which is, of course, the last extreme of
monstrous loathsomeness.  Nevertheless, I do not see how Versilov
could have begun differently with my mother if he had wanted to. 
Could he have begun by expounding "Polinka Sachs" to her?  And
besides, they had no thoughts to spare for Russian literature; on
the contrary, from what he said (he let himself go once), they used
to hide in corners, wait for each other on the stairs, fly apart
like bouncing balls, with flushed cheeks if anyone passed by, and
the "tyrant slave-owner" trembled before the lowest scrubbing-maid,
in spite of his seignorial rights.  And although it was at first an
affair of master and servant, it was that and yet not that, and
after all, there is no really explaining it.  In fact, the more you
go into it the more obscure it seems.  The very depth and duration
of their love makes it more mysterious, for it is a leading
characteristic of such men as Versilov to abandon as soon as their
object is attained.  That did not happen, though.  To transgress
with an attractive, giddy flirt who was his serf (and my mother was
not a flirt) was not only possible but inevitable for a depraved
young puppy (and they were all depraved, every one of them, the
progressives as well as the reactionaries), especially considering
his romantic position as a young widower and his having nothing to
do.  But to love her all his life is too much.  I cannot guarantee
that he did love her, but he has dragged her about with him all his
life--that's certain.

I put a great many questions to my mother, but there is one, most
important, which, I may remark, I did not venture to ask her
directly, though I got on such familiar terms with her last year;
and, what is more, like a coarse, ungrateful puppy, considering she
had wronged me, I did not spare her feelings at all.  This was the
question: how she after six months of marriage, crushed by her
ideas of the sanctity of wedlock, crushed like some helpless fly,
respecting her Makar Ivanovitch as though he had been a god--how
she could have brought herself in about a fortnight to such a sin? 
Was my mother a depraved woman, perhaps?  On the contrary, I may
say now at once that it is difficult to imagine anyone more pure-
hearted than she was then and has been all her life.  The
explanation may be, perhaps, that she scarcely knew what she was
doing (I don't mean in the sense in which lawyers nowadays urge
this in defence of their thieves and murderers), but was carried
away by a violent emotion, which sometimes gains a fatal and tragic
ascendancy when the victim is of a certain degree of simplicity. 
There is no telling: perhaps she fell madly in love with . . . the
cut of his clothes, the Parisian style in which he parted his hair,
his French accent--yes, French, though she didn't understand a word
of it--the song he sang at the piano; she fell in love with
something she had never seen or heard of (and he was very
handsome), and fell in love with him straight away, once for all,
hopelessly, fell in love with him altogether--manners, song, and
all.  I have heard that this did sometimes happen to peasant girls
in the days of serfdom, and to the most virtuous, too.  I
understand this, and the man is a scoundrel who puts it down to
nothing but servility.  And so perhaps this young man may have had
enough direct power of fascination to attract a creature who had
till then been so pure and who was of a different species, of an
utterly different world, and to lead her on to such evident ruin. 
That it was to her ruin my mother, I hope, realized all her life;
only probably when she went to it she did not think of ruin at all;
but that is how it always is with these "defenceless" creatures,
they know it is ruin and they rush upon it.

Having sinned, they promptly repented.  He told me flippantly that
he sobbed on the shoulder of Makar Ivanovitch, whom he sent for to
his study expressly for the purpose, and she--she meanwhile was
lying unconscious in some little back room in the servants'
quarters. . . .


6


But enough of questions and scandalous details.  After paying Makar
Ivanovitch a sum of money for my mother, Versilov went away shortly
afterwards, and ever since, as I have mentioned already, he dragged
her about with him, almost everywhere he went, except at certain
times when he absented himself for a considerable period.  Then, as
a rule, he left her in the care of "auntie," that is, of Tatyana
Pavlovna Prutkov, who always turned up on such occasions.  They
lived in Moscow, and also in other towns and villages, even abroad,
and finally in Petersburg.  Of all that later, though perhaps it is
not worth recording.  I will only mention that a year after my
mother left Makar Ivanovitch, I made my appearance, and a year
later my sister, and ten or eleven years afterwards a sickly child,
my younger brother, who died a few months later.  My mother's
terrible confinement with this baby was the end of her good looks,
so at least I was told: she began rapidly to grow older and
feebler.

But a correspondence with Makar Ivanovitch was always kept up. 
Wherever the Versilovs were, whether they lived for some years in
the same place, or were moving about, Makar Ivanovitch never failed
to send news of himself to the "family."  Strange relations grew
up, somewhat ceremonious and almost solemn.  Among the gentry there
is always an element of something comic in such relations, I know. 
But there was nothing of the sort in this case.  Letters were
exchanged twice a year, never more nor less frequently, and they
were extraordinarily alike.  I have seen them.  There was scarcely
anything personal in them.  On the contrary, they were practically
nothing but ceremonious statements of the most public incidents,
and the most public sentiments, if one may use such an expression
of sentiments; first came news of his own health, and inquiries
about their health, then ceremonious hopes, greetings and
blessings--that was all.

I believe that this publicity and impersonality is looked upon as
the essence of propriety and good breeding among the peasants.  "To
our much esteemed and respected spouse, Sofia Andreyevna, we send
our humblest greetings. . . ."  "We send to our beloved children,
our fatherly blessing, ever unalterable."  The children were
mentioned by name, including me.  I may remark here that Makar
Ivanovitch had so much wit as never to describe "His high-born most
respected master, Andrey Petrovitch" as his "benefactor"; though he
did invariably, in each letter, send him his most humble greetings,
beg for the continuance of his favour, and call down upon him the
blessing of God.  The answers to Makar Ivanovitch were sent shortly
after by my mother, and were always written in exactly the same
style.  Versilov, of course, took no part in the correspondence. 
Makar Ivanovitch wrote from all parts of Russia, from the towns and
monasteries in which he sometimes stayed for a considerable time. 
He had become a pilgrim, as it is called.  He never asked for
anything; but he invariably turned up at home once in three years
on a holiday, and stayed with my mother, who always, as it
happened, had her own lodgings apart from Versilov's.  Of this I
shall have to say more later, here I will only mention that Makar
Ivanovitch did not loll on the sofa in the drawing-room, but always
sat discreetly somewhere in the background.  He never stayed for
long: five days or a week.

I have omitted to say that he had the greatest affection and
respect for his surname, "Dolgoruky."  Of course this was ludicrous
stupidity.  And what was most stupid was that he prized his name
just because there were princes of the name.  A strange, topsy-
turvy idea.

I have said that the family were always together, but I mean except
for me, of course.  I was like an outcast, and, almost from my
birth, had been with strangers.  But this was done with no special
design, but simply because it had happened so.  When I was born my
mother was still young and good-looking, and therefore necessary to
Versilov; and a screaming child, of course, was always a nuisance,
especially when they were travelling.  That was how it happened
that until I was nineteen I had scarcely seen my mother except on
two or three brief occasions.  It was not due to my mother's
wishes, but to Versilov's lofty disregard for people.


7


Now for something quite different.  A month earlier, that is a
month before the 19th of September, I had made up my mind in Moscow
to renounce them all, and to retire into my own idea, finally.  I
record that expression "retire into my own idea" because that
expression may explain my leading motive, my object in life.  What
that "idea" of mine is, of that there will be only too much said
later.  In the solitary years of my dreamy life in Moscow it sprang
up in my mind before I had left the sixth form of the grammar
school, and from that time perhaps never left me for an instant. 
It absorbed my whole existence.  Till then I had lived in dreams;
from my childhood upwards I have lived in the world of dreams,
always of a certain colour.  But after this great and all-absorbing
idea turned up, my dreams gained in force, took a definite shape;
and became rational instead of foolish.  School did not hinder my
dreams, and it did not hinder the idea either.  I must add,
however, that I came out badly in the leaving exam, though I had
always been one of the first in all the forms up to the seventh,
and this was a result of that same idea, a result of a false
deduction from it perhaps.  So it was not school work that hindered
the idea, but the idea that hindered school work, and it hindered
university work too.  When I left school I intended at once not
only to cut myself off from my family completely, but from all the
world if necessary, though I was only nineteen at the time.  I
wrote through a suitable person to tell them to leave me entirely
alone, not to send me any more money for my maintenance, and, if
possible, to forget me altogether (that is if they ever did
remember me), and finally "nothing would induce" me to enter the
university.  An alternative presented itself from which there was
no escaping: to refuse to enter the university and go on with my
education, or to defer putting my idea into practice for another
four years.  I went for the idea without faltering, for I was
absolutely resolved about it.  In answer to my letter, which had
not been addressed to him, Versilov, my father, whom I had only
seen once for a moment when I was a boy of ten (though even in that
moment he made a great impression upon me), summoned me to
Petersburg in a letter written in his own hand, promising me a
private situation.  This cold, proud man, careless and disdainful
of me, after bringing me into the world and packing me off to
strangers, knew nothing of me at all and had never even regretted
his conduct; who knows, perhaps he had only a vague and confused
idea of my existence, for it appeared afterwards that the money for
my maintenance in Moscow had not been furnished by him but by other
people.  Yet the summons of this man who so suddenly remembered me
and deigned to write to me with his own hand, by flattering me,
decided my fate.  Strange to say, what pleased me in his note (one
tiny sheet of paper) was that he said not a word about the
university, did not ask me to change my mind, did not blame me for
not wanting to continue my studies, did not, in fact, trot out any
parental flourishes of the kind usual in such cases, and yet this
was wrong of him since it betrayed more than anything his lack of
interest in me.  I resolved to go, the more readily because it
would not hinder my great idea.  "I'll see what will come of it," I
argued, "in any case I shall associate with them only for a time;
possibly a very short time.  But as soon as I see that this step,
tentative and trifling as it is, is keeping me from the GREAT
OBJECT, I shall break off with them, throw up everything and
retreat into my shell."  Yes, into my shell!  "I shall hide in it
like a tortoise."  This comparison pleased me very much.  "I shall
not be alone," I went on musing, as I walked about Moscow those
last days like one possessed.  "I shall never be alone as I have
been for so many awful years till now; I shall have my idea to
which I will never be false, even if I like them all there, and
they make me happy, and I live with them for ten years!"  It was,
I may remark beforehand, just that impression, that is, just the
twofold nature of the plans and objects definitely formed before
leaving Moscow, and never out of my mind for one instant in
Petersburg (for I hardly think there was a day in Petersburg which
I had not fixed on beforehand as the final date for breaking off
with them and going away), it was this, I say, that was, I believe,
one of the chief causes of many of the indiscretions I have been
guilty of during this year, many nasty things, many even low
things, and stupid ones of course.  To be sure, a father, something
I had never had before, had appeared upon the scene.  This thought
intoxicated me as I made my preparations in Moscow and sat in the
railway carriage.  That he was my father would be nothing.  I was
not fond of sentimentality, but this man had humiliated me and had
not cared to know me, while all those years I had been chewing away
at my dreams of him, if one may use such an expression.  From my
childhood upward, my dreams were all coloured by him; all hovered
about him as the final goal.  I don't know whether I hated him or
loved him; but his figure dominated the future and all my schemes
of life.  And this happened of itself.  It grew up with me.

Another thing which influenced me in leaving Moscow was a
tremendous circumstance, a temptation which even then, three months
before my departure (before Petersburg had been mentioned), set my
heart leaping and throbbing.  I was drawn to this unknown ocean by
the thought that I could enter it as the lord and master of other
people's destinies, and what people, too!  But the feelings that
were surging in my heart were generous and not despotic--I hasten
to declare it that my words may not be mistaken.  Moreover,
Versilov might think (if he ever deigned to think of me) that a
small boy who had just left school, a raw youth, was coming who
would be agape with wonder at everything.  And meanwhile I knew all
his private life, and had about me a document of the utmost
importance, for which (I know that now for a fact) he would have
given some years of his life, if I had told him the secret at the
time.  But I notice that I am talking in riddles.  One cannot
describe feelings without facts.  Besides which, there will be
enough about all this in its proper place; it is with that object I
have taken up my pen.  Writing like this is like a cloud of words
or the ravings of delirium.


8


Finally, to pass once for all to the 19th of September, I will
observe briefly and, so to say, cursorily, that I found them all,
that is Versilov, my mother and my sister (the latter I saw for the
first time in my life) in difficult circumstances, almost
destitute, or at least, on the verge of destitution.  I knew of
this before leaving Moscow, but yet I was not prepared for what I
saw.  I had been accustomed from childhood to imagine this man,
this "future father of mine" in brilliant surroundings, and could
not picture him except as the leading figure everywhere.  Versilov
had never shared the same lodgings with my mother, but had always
taken rooms for her apart.  He did this, of course, out of regard
for their very contemptible "proprieties."  But here they were all
living together in a little wooden lodge in a back street in the
Semyonovsky Polk.  All their things were in pawn, so that, without
Versilov's knowledge, I gave my mother my secret sixty roubles. 
SECRET, because I had saved them up in the course of two years out
of my pocket money, which was five roubles a month.  I had begun
saving from the very day I had conceived my "idea," and so Versilov
must know nothing about the money.  I trembled at the thought of
that.

My help was like a drop in the ocean.  My mother worked hard and my
sister too took in sewing.  Versilov lived in idleness, indulged
his whims and kept up a number of his former rather expensive
habits.  He grumbled terribly, especially at dinner, and he was
absolutely despotic in all his ways.  But my mother, my sister,
Tatyana Pavlovna and the whole family of the late Andronikov (the
head of some department who used also to manage Versilov's affairs
and had died three months before), consisting of innumerable women,
grovelled before him as though he were a fetish.  I had not
imagined this.  I may remark that nine years before he had been
infinitely more elegant.  I have said already that I had kept the
image of him in my dreams surrounded by a sort of brilliance, and
so I could not conceive how it was possible after only nine years
for him to look so much older and to be so worn out; I felt at once
sad, sorry, ashamed.  The sight of him was one of the most painful
of my first impressions on my arrival.  Yet he was by no means an
old man, he was only forty-five.  Looking at him more closely I
found in his handsome face something even more striking than what I
had kept in my memory.  There was less of the brilliance of those
days, less external beauty, less elegance even; but life had, as it
were, stamped on that face something far more interesting than
before.

Meanwhile poverty was not the tenth or twentieth fraction of his
misfortunes, and I knew that.  There was something infinitely more
serious than poverty, apart from the fact that there was still a
hope that Versilov might win the lawsuit he had been contesting for
the last year with the Princes Sokolsky and might in the immediate
future come into an estate to the value of seventy thousand or
more.  I have said above that Versilov had run through three
fortunes in his life, and here another fortune was coming to his
rescue again!  The case was to be settled very shortly.  It was
just then that I arrived.  It is true that no one would lend him
money on his expectations, there was nowhere he could borrow, and
meanwhile they had to suffer.

Versilov visited no one, though he sometimes was out for the whole
day.  It was more than a year since he had been BANISHED from
society.  In spite of all my efforts, this scandal remained for the
most part a mystery though I had been a whole month in Petersburg. 
Was Versilov guilty or not guilty--that was what mattered to me,
that is what I had come to Petersburg for!  Every one had turned
against him--among others all the influential and distinguished
people with whom he had been particularly clever in maintaining
relations all his life--in consequence of rumours of an extremely
low and--what was much worse in the eyes of the "world"--scandalous
action which he was said to have committed more than a year ago in
Germany.  It was even reported that he had received a slap in the
face from Prince Sokolsky (one of those with whom he was now in
litigation) and had not followed it by a challenge.  Even his
children (the legitimate ones), his son and daughter, had turned
against him and were holding aloof.  It is true that through the
influence of the Fanariotovs and old Prince Sokolsky (who had been
a friend of Versilov) the son and daughter moved in the very
highest circles.  Yet, watching him all that month, I saw a haughty
man who had rather cast off "society" than been cast off by it, so
independent was his air.  But had he the right to look like that--
that was the question that agitated me.  I absolutely had to find
out the whole truth at the earliest possible date, for I had come--
to judge this man.  I still kept my power hidden from him, but I
had either to accept him or to reject him altogether.  But that
would have been too painful to me and I was in torment.  I will
confess it frankly at last: the man was dear to me!

And meanwhile I was living in the same flat with him, working, and
scarcely refraining from being rude.  In fact I did not refrain. 
After spending a month with him I became more convinced every day
that I could not possibly appeal to him for a full explanation. 
This man in his pride remained an enigma to me, while he wounded me
deeply.  He was positively charming to me, and jested with me, but
I should have liked quarrels better than such jests.  There was a
certain note of ambiguity about all my conversations with him, or
more simply, a strange irony on his part.  From our first meeting,
on my arrival from Moscow, he did not treat me seriously.  I never
could make out why he took up this line.  It is true that by this
means he succeeded in remaining impenetrable, but I would not have
humbled myself so far as to ask him to treat me seriously. 
Besides, he had certain wonderful and irresistible ways which I did
not know how to deal with.  In short he behaved to me as though I
were the greenest of raw youths, which I was hardly able to endure,
though I knew it would be so.  I, too, gave up talking seriously in
consequence, and waited; in fact, I almost gave up talking
altogether.  I waited for a person on whose arrival in Petersburg I
might finally learn the truth; that was my last hope.  In any case
I prepared myself for a final rupture, and had already taken all
necessary measures.  I was sorry for my mother but--"either him or
me," that was the choice I meant to offer her and my sister.  I had
even fixed on the day; and meanwhile I went to my work.



CHAPTER II


1


On that 19th of September I was also to receive my first salary for
the first month of my work in Petersburg in my "private" situation. 
They did not ask me about this job but simply handed me over to it,
I believe, on the very first day of my arrival.  This was very
unmannerly, and it was almost my duty to protest.  The job turned
out to be a situation in the household of old Prince Sokolsky.  But
to protest then would have meant breaking off relations on the
spot, and though I was not in the least afraid of that, it would
have hindered the attainment of my primary objects; and so in
silence I accepted the job for the time, maintaining my dignity by
silence.  I must explain from the very first that this Prince
Sokolsky, a wealthy man and a privy councillor, was no relation at
all of the Moscow princes of that name (who had been poor and
insignificant for several generations past) with whom Versilov was
contesting his lawsuit.  It was only that they had the same name. 
Yet the old prince took a great interest in them, and was
particularly fond of one of them who was, so to speak, the head of
the family--a young officer.  Versilov had till recently had an
immense influence in this old man's affairs and had been his
friend, a strange sort of friend, for the poor old prince, as I
detected, was awfully afraid of him, not only at the time when I
arrived on the scene, but had apparently been always afraid of him
all through their friendship.  They had not seen each other for a
long time, however.  The dishonourable conduct of which Versilov
was accused concerned the old prince's family.  But Tatyana
Pavlovna had intervened and it was through her that I was placed in
attendance on the old prince, who wanted a "young man" in his
study.  At the same time it appeared that he was very anxious to do
something to please Versilov, to make, so to speak, the first
advance to him, and Versilov ALLOWED it.  The old man had made the
arrangement in the absence of his daughter, the widow of a general,
who would certainly not have permitted him to take this step.  Of
this later, but I may remark that the strangeness of his relations
with Versilov impressed me in the latter's favour.  It occurred to
the imagination that if the head of the injured family still
cherished a respect for Versilov, the rumours of Versilov's
scoundrelly behaviour must be absurd, or at least exaggerated, and
might have more than one explanation.  It was partly this
circumstance which kept me from protesting against the situation;
in accepting it I hoped to verify all this.

Tatyana Pavlovna was playing a strange part at the time when I
found her in Petersburg.  I had almost forgotten her, and had not
at all expected to find her possessed of such influence.  She had
met me three or four times during my life in Moscow, and had always
turned up, goodness knows where from, sent by some one or other
whenever I needed fitting out--to go into Touchard's boarding
school, or two and a half years later, when I was being transferred
to the grammar school and sent to board with Nikolay Semyonovitch,
a friend I shall never forget.  She used to spend the whole day
with me and inspect my linen and my clothes.  She drove about the
town with me, took me to Kuznetsky Street, bought me what was
necessary, provided me with a complete outfit, in fact, down to the
smallest box and penknife.  All the while she nagged at me, scolded
me, reproached me, cross-examined me, quoting as examples to me
various phantom boys among her relations and acquaintances who were
all said to be better than I was.  She even pinched me and actually
gave me several vicious pokes.  After fitting me out and installing
me, she would disappear completely for several years.  On this
occasion, too, she turned up at once on my arrival to instal me
again.  She was a spare little figure with a sharp nose like a
beak, and sharp little eyes like a bird's.  She waited on Versilov
like a slave, and grovelled before him as though he were the Pope,
but she did it through conviction.  But I soon noticed with
surprise that she was respected by all and, what was more, known
to every one everywhere.  Old Prince Sokolsky treated her with
extraordinary deference; it was the same thing with his family;
the same with Versilov's haughty children; the same with the
Fanariotovs; and yet she lived by taking in sewing, and washing
lace, and fetched work from the shops.  She and I fell out at the
first word, for she thought fit to begin nagging at me just as she
had done six years before.  And from that time forward we
quarrelled every day, but that did not prevent us from sometimes
talking, and I must confess that by the end of the month I began to
like her: for her independent character, I believe.  But I did not
tell her so.

I realized at once that I had only been given this post at the old
invalid prince's in order to "amuse" him, and that that was my
whole duty.  Naturally this was humiliating, and I should at once
have taken steps, but the queer old fellow soon made an unexpected
impression upon me.  I felt something like compassion for him, and
by the end of the month I had become strangely attached to him;
anyway I gave up my intention of being rude.  He was not more than
sixty, however, but there had been a great to-do with him a year
and a half before, when he suddenly had a fit.  He was travelling
somewhere and went mad on the way, so there was something of a
scandal of which people talked in Petersburg.  As is usual in such
cases, he was instantly taken abroad, but five months later he
suddenly reappeared perfectly well, though he gave up the service. 
Versilov asserted seriously (and with noticeable heat) that he had
not been insane at all, but had only had some sort of nervous fit. 
I promptly made a note of Versilov's warmth about it.  I may
observe, however, that I was disposed to share his opinion.  The
old man only showed perhaps an excessive frivolity at times, not
quite appropriate to his years, of which, so they say, there was no
sign in him before.  It was said that in the past he had been a
councillor of some sort, and on one occasion had quite distinguished
himself in some commission with which he had been charged.  After
knowing him for a whole month, I should never have supposed he
could have any special capacity as a councillor. People observed
(though I saw nothing of it) that after his fit he developed a
marked disposition to rush into matrimony, and it was said that he
had more than once reverted to this idea during the last eighteen
months, that it was known in society and a subject of interest.
But as this weakness by no means fell in with the interests of
certain persons of the prince's circle, the old man was guarded on
all sides.  He had not a large family of his own; he had been a
widower for twenty years, and had only one daughter, the general's
widow, who was now daily expected from Moscow.  She was a young
person whose strength of will was evidently a source of apprehension
to the old man.  But he had masses of distant relatives, principally
through his wife, who were all almost beggars, besides a multitude
of protégés of all sorts, male and female, all of whom expected to
be mentioned in his will, and so they all supported the general's
widow in keeping watch over the old man.  He had, moreover, had one
strange propensity from his youth up (I don't know whether it was
ridiculous or not) for making matches for poor girls.  He had been
finding husbands for the last twenty-five years--for distant
relations, for the step-daughters of his wife's cousins, for his
god-daughters; he even found a husband for the daughter of his
house porter.  He used to take his protégées into his house when
they were little girls, provide them with governesses and French
mademoiselles, then have them educated in the best boarding
schools, and finally marry them off with a dowry. The calls upon
him were continually increasing.  When his protégées were married
they naturally produced more little girls and all these little
girls became his protégées.  He was always having to stand as
god-father.  The whole lot turned up to congratulate him on his
birthdays, and it was all very agreeable to him.

I noticed at once that the old man had lurking in his mind a
painful conviction (it was impossible to avoid noticing it, indeed)
that every one had begun to look at him strangely, that every one
had begun to behave to him not as before, not as to a healthy man. 
This impression never left him even at the liveliest social
functions.  The old man had become suspicious, had begun to detect
something in every one's eyes.  He was evidently tormented by the
idea that every one suspected him of being mad.  He sometimes
looked mistrustfully even at me.  And if he had found out that some
one was spreading or upholding such rumours, the benevolent old man
would have become his implacable foe.  I beg that this circumstance
may be noted.  I may add that it was what decided me from the first
day not to be rude to him; in fact, I was glad if I were able
sometimes to amuse or entertain him; I don't think that this
confession can cast any slur on my dignity.

The greater part of his money was invested.  He had since his
illness become a partner in a large joint stock enterprise, a very
safe one, however.  And though the management was in other hands he
took a great interest in it, too, attended the shareholders'
meetings, was appointed a director, presided at the board-meetings,
opposed motions, was noisy and obviously enjoyed himself.  He was
very fond of making speeches: every one could judge of his brain
anyway.  And in general he developed a great fancy for introducing
profound reflections and bon mots in his conversation, even in the
intimacy of private life.  I quite understand it.

On the ground floor of his house there was something like a private
office where a single clerk kept the books and accounts and also
managed the house.  This clerk was quite equal to the work alone,
though he had some government job as well, but by the prince's own
wish I was engaged to assist him; but I was immediately transferred
to the prince's study, and often had no work before me, not even
books or papers to keep up appearances.  I am writing now sobered
by time; and about many things feel now almost like an outsider;
but how can I describe the depression (I recall it vividly at this
moment) that weighed down my heart in those days, and still more,
the excitement which reached such a pitch of confused feverishness
that I did not sleep at night--all due to my impatience, to the
riddles I had set myself to solve.


2


To ask for money, even a salary, is a most disgusting business,
especially if one feels in the recesses of one's conscience that
one has not quite earned it.  Yet the evening before, my mother had
been whispering to my sister apart from Versilov ("so as not to
worry Andrey Petrovitch") that she intended to take the ikon
which for some reason was particularly precious to her to the
pawnbroker's.  I was to be paid fifty roubles a month, but I had no
idea how I should receive the money; nothing had been said to me
about it.

Meeting the clerk downstairs three days before, I inquired of him
whom one was to ask for one's salary.  He looked at me with a smile
as though of astonishment (he did not like me).

"Oh, you get a salary?"

I thought that on my answering he would add:

"What for?"

But he merely answered drily, that he "knew nothing about it," and
buried himself in the ruled exercise book into which he was copying
accounts from some bills.

He was not unaware, however, that I did something.  A fortnight
before I had spent four days over work he had given me, making a
fair copy, and as it turned out, almost a fresh draft of something. 
It was a perfect avalanche of "ideas" of the prince's which he was
preparing to present to the board of directors.  These had to be
put together into a whole and clothed in suitable language.  I
spent a whole day with the prince over it afterwards, and he argued
very warmly with me, but was well satisfied in the end.  But I
don't know whether he read the paper or not.  I say nothing of the
two or three letters, also about business, which I wrote at his
request.

It was annoying to me to have to ask for my salary because I had
already decided to give up my situation, foreseeing that I should
be obliged through unavoidable circumstances to go away.  When I
waked up and dressed that morning in my garret upstairs, I felt
that my heart was beating, and though I pooh-poohed it, yet I was
conscious of the same excitement as I walked towards the prince's
house.  That morning there was expected a woman, whose presence I
was reckoning upon for the explanation of all that was tormenting
me!  This was the prince's daughter, the young widow of General
Ahmakov, of whom I have spoken already and who was bitterly hostile
to Versilov.  At last I have written that name!  I had never seen
her, of course, and could not imagine how I should speak to her or
whether I should speak, but I imagined (perhaps on sufficient
grounds) that with her arrival there would be some light thrown on
the darkness surrounding Versilov in my eyes.  I could not remain
unmoved.  It was frightfully annoying that at the very outset I
should be so cowardly and awkward; it was awfully interesting, and,
still more, sickening--three impressions at once.  I remember every
detail of that day!

My old prince knew nothing of his daughter's probable arrival, and
was not expecting her to return from Moscow for a week.  I had
learnt this the evening before quite by chance: Tatyana Pavlovna,
who had received a letter from Mme. Ahmakov, let it out to my
mother.  Though they were whispering and spoke in veiled allusions,
I guessed what was meant.  Of course I was not eavesdropping, I
simply could not avoid listening when I saw how agitated my mother
was at the news of this woman's arrival.  Versilov was not in the
house.

I did not want to tell the old prince because I could not help
noticing all that time how he was dreading her arrival.  He had
even let drop three days before, though only by a timid and remote
hint, that he was afraid of her coming on my account; that is that
he would have trouble about me.  I must add, however, that in his
own family he preserved his independence and was still master in
his own house, especially in money matters.  My first judgment of
him was that he was a regular old woman, but I was afterwards
obliged to revise my opinion, and to recognize that, if he were an
old woman, there was still a fund of obstinacy, if not of real
manliness, in him.  There were moments when one could hardly do
anything with him in spite of his apprehensive and yielding
character.  Versilov explained this to me more fully later.  I
recall now with interest that the old prince and I scarcely ever
spoke of his daughter, we seemed to avoid it: I in particular
avoided it, while he, on his side, avoided mentioning Versilov, and
I guessed that he would not answer if I were to ask him one of the
delicate questions which interested me so much.

If anyone cares to know what we did talk about all that month I
must answer that we really talked of everything in the world,
but always of the queerest things.  I was delighted with the
extraordinary simplicity with which he treated me.  Sometimes I
looked with extreme astonishment at the old man and wondered how he
could ever have presided at meetings.  If he had been put into our
school and in the fourth class too, what a nice schoolfellow he
would have made.  More than once, too, I was surprised by his face;
it was very serious-looking, almost handsome and thin; he had thick
curly grey hair, wide-open eyes; and he was besides slim and well
built; but there was an unpleasant, almost unseemly, peculiarity
about his face, it would suddenly change from excessive gravity to
an expression of exaggerated playfulness, which was a complete
surprise to a person who saw him for the first time.  I spoke of
this to Versilov, who listened with curiosity; I fancy that he had
not expected me to be capable of making such observations; he
observed casually that this had come upon the prince since his
illness and probably only of late.

We used to talk principally of two abstract subjects--of God and
of His existence, that is, whether there was a God or not--and of
women.  The prince was very religious and sentimental.  He had in
his study a huge stand of ikons with a lamp burning before them. 
But something seemed to come over him--and he would begin
expressing doubts of the existence of God and would say astounding
things, obviously challenging me to answer.  I was not much
interested in the question, speaking generally, but we both got
very hot about it and quite genuinely.  I recall all those
conversations even now with pleasure.  But what he liked best was
gossiping about women, and he was sometimes positively disappointed
at my disliking this subject of conversation, and making such a
poor response to it.

He began talking in that style as soon as I went in that morning. 
I found him in a jocose mood, though I had left him the night
before extremely melancholy.  Meanwhile it was absolutely necessary
for me to settle the matter of the salary--before the arrival of
certain persons.  I reckoned that that morning we should certainly
be interrupted (it was not for nothing my heart was beating) and
then perhaps I should not be able to bring myself to speak of
money.  But I did not know how to begin about money and I was
naturally angry at my stupidity.  And, as I remember now in my
vexation at some too jocular question of his, I blurted out my
views on women point-blank and with great vigour.

And this led him to be more expansive with me than ever.


3


"I don't like women because they've no manners, because they are
awkward, because they are not self-reliant, and because they wear
unseemly clothes!"  I wound up my long tirade incoherently.

"My dear boy, spare us!" he cried, immensely delighted, which
enraged me more than ever.

I am ready to give way and be trivial only about trifles.  I never
give way in things that are really important.  In trifles, in
little matters of etiquette, you can do anything you like with me,
and I curse this peculiarity in myself.  From a sort of putrid
good nature I've sometimes been ready to knuckle under to some
fashionable snob, simply flattered by his affability, or I've
let myself be drawn into argument with a fool, which is more
unpardonable than anything.  All this is due to lack of self-
control, and to my having grown up in seclusion, but next day it
would be the same thing again: that's why I was sometimes taken for
a boy of sixteen.  But instead of gaining self-control I prefer
even now to bottle myself up more tightly than ever in my shell--
"I may be clumsy--but good-bye!"--however misanthropic that may
seem.  I say that seriously and for good.  But I don't write
this with reference to the prince or even with reference to that
conversation.

"I'm not speaking for your entertainment," I almost shouted at him. 
"I am speaking from conviction."

"But how do you mean that women have no manners and are unseemly in
their dress?  That's something new."

"They have no manners.  Go to the theatre, go for a walk.  Every
man knows the right side of the road, when they meet they step
aside, he keeps to the right, I keep to the right.  A woman, that
is a lady--it's ladies I'm talking about--dashes straight at you as
though she doesn't see you, as though you were absolutely bound to
skip aside and make way for her.  I'm prepared to make way for her
as a weaker creature, but why has she the right, why is she so sure
it's my duty--that's what's offensive.  I always curse when I meet
them.  And after that they cry out that they're oppressed and
demand equality; a fine sort of equality when she tramples me under
foot and fills my mouth with sand."

"With sand?"

"Yes, because they're not decently dressed--it's only depraved
people don't notice it.  In the law-courts they close the doors
when they're trying cases of indecency.  Why do they allow it in
the streets, where there are more people?  They openly hang bustles
on behind to look as though they had fine figures; openly!  I can't
help noticing; the young lad notices it too; and the child that's
growing into a boy notices it too; it's abominable.  Let old rakes
admire them and run after them with their tongues hanging out, but
there is such a thing as the purity of youth which must be
protected.  One can only despise them.  They walk along the parade
with trains half a yard long behind them, sweeping up the dust. 
It's a pleasant thing to walk behind them: you must run to get in
front of them, or jump on one side, or they'll sweep pounds of dust
into your mouth and nose.  And what's more it's silk, and they'll
drag it over the stones for a couple of miles simply because it's
the fashion, when their husbands get five hundred roubles a year in
the Senate: that's where bribes come in!  I've always despised
them.  I've cursed them aloud and abused them."

Though I describe this conversation somewhat humorously in the
style that was characteristic of me at that time, my ideas are
still the same.

"And how do you come off?" the prince queried.

"I curse them and turn away.  They feel it, of course, but they
don't show it, they prance along majestically without turning their
heads.  But I only came to actual abuse on one occasion with two
females, both wearing tails on the parade; of course I didn't use
bad language, but I said aloud that long tails were offensive."

"Did you use that expression?"

"Of course I did.  To begin with, they trample upon the rules of
social life, and secondly, they raise the dust, and the parade is
meant for all.  I walk there, other men walk, Fyodor, Ivan, it's
the same for all.  So that's what I said.  And I dislike the way
women walk altogether, when you look at their back view; I told
them that too, but only hinted at it."

"But, my dear boy, you might get into serious trouble; they might
have hauled you off to the police station."

"They couldn't do anything.  They had nothing to complain of: a man
walks beside them talking to himself.  Every one has the right to
express his convictions to the air.  I spoke in the abstract
without addressing them.  They began wrangling with me of
themselves; they began to abuse me, they used much worse language
than I did; they called me milksop, said I ought to go without my
dinner, called me a nihilist, and threatened to hand me over to the
police; said that I'd attacked them because they were alone and
weak women, but if there'd been a man with them I should soon sing
another tune.  I very coolly told them to leave off annoying me,
and I would cross to the other side of the street.  And to show
them that I was not in the least afraid of their men, and was ready
to accept their challenge, I would follow them to their house,
walking twenty paces behind them, then I would stand before the
house and wait for their men.  And so I did."

"You don't say so?"

"Of course it was stupid, but I was roused.  They dragged me over
two miles in the heat, as far as the 'institutions,' they went into
a wooden house of one storey--a very respectable-looking one I must
admit--one could see in at the windows a great many flowers, two
canaries, three pug-dogs and engravings in frames.  I stood for
half an hour in the street facing the house.  They peeped out two
or three times, then pulled down all the blinds.  Finally an
elderly government clerk came out of the little gate; judging from
his appearance he had been asleep and had been waked up on purpose;
he was not actually in a dressing-gown, but he was in a very
domestic-looking attire.  He stood at the gate, folded his hands
behind him, and proceeded to stare at me--I at him.  Then he looked
away, then gazed at me again, and suddenly began smiling at me.
I turned and walked away."

"My dear boy, how Schilleresque!  I've always wondered at you; with
your rosy cheeks, your face blooming with health, and such an
aversion, one may say, for women!  How is it possible that woman
does not make a certain impression on you at your age?  Why, when I
was a boy of eleven, mon cher, my tutor used to notice that I
looked too attentively at the statues in the Summer Gardens."

"You would like me to take up with some Josephine here, and come
and tell you all about it!  Rather not; I saw a woman completely
naked when I was thirteen; I've had a feeling of disgust ever
since."

"Do you mean it?  But, cher enfant, about a fresh, beautiful woman
there's a scent of apples; there's nothing disgusting."

"In the little boarding school I was at before I went to the
grammar school, there was a boy called Lambert.  He was always
thrashing me, for he was three years older than I was, and I used
to wait on him, and take off his boots.  When he was going to be
confirmed an abbé, called Rigaud, came to congratulate him on his
first communion, and they dissolved in tears on each other's necks,
and the abbé hugged him tightly to his bosom.  I shed tears, too,
and felt very envious.  He left school when his father died, and
for two years I saw nothing of him.  Then I met him in the street. 
He said he would come and see me.  By that time I was at the
grammar school and living at Nikolay Semyonovitch's.  He came in
the morning, showed me five hundred roubles, and told me to go with
him.  Though he had thrashed me two years before, he had always
wanted my company, not simply to take off his boots, but because he
liked to tell me things.  He told me that he had taken the money
that day out of his mother's desk, to which he had made a false
key, for legally all his father's money was his, and so much the
worse for her if she wouldn't give it to him.  He said that the
Abbé Rigaud had been to lecture him the day before, that he'd come
in, stood over him, begun whimpering, and described all sorts of
horrors, lifting up his hands to heaven.  "And I pulled out a knife
and told him I'd cut his throat" (he pronounced it 'thr-r-roat'). 
We went to Kuznetsky Street.  On the way he informed me that his
mother was the abbé's mistress, and that he'd found it out, and he
didn't care a hang for anything, and that all they said about the
sacrament was rubbish.  He said a great deal more, and I felt
frightened.  In Kuznetsky Street he bought a double-barrelled gun,
a game bag, cartridges, a riding-whip, and afterwards a pound of
sweets.  We were going out into the country to shoot, and on the
way we met a bird-catcher with cages of birds.  Lambert bought a
canary from him.  In a wood he let the canary go, as it couldn't
fly far after being in the cage, and began shooting at it, but did
not hit it.  It was the first time in his life he had fired off a
gun, but he had wanted to buy a gun years before; at Touchard's
even we were dreaming of one.  He was almost choking with
excitement.  His hair was black, awfully black, his face was white
and red, like a mask, he had a long aquiline nose, such as are
common with Frenchmen, white teeth and black eyes.  He tied the
canary by a thread to a branch, and an inch away fired off both
barrels, and the bird was blown into a hundred feathers.  Then we
returned, drove to an hotel, took a room, and began eating, and
drinking champagne; a lady came in. . . .  I remember being awfully
impressed by her being so splendidly dressed; she wore a green silk
dress.  It was then I saw . . . all that I told you about. . . . 
Afterwards, when we had begun drinking, he began taunting and
abusing her; she was sitting with nothing on, he took away her
clothes and when she began scolding and asking for her clothes to
dress again, he began with all his might beating her with the
riding-whip on her bare shoulders.  I got up, seized him by the
hair, and so neatly that I threw him on the ground at once.  He
snatched up a fork and stuck it in my leg.  Hearing the outcry,
people ran in, and I had time to run away.  Ever since then it's
disgusted me to think of nakedness; and, believe me, she was a
beauty."

As I talked, the prince's face changed from a playful expression to
one of great sadness.

"Mon pauvre enfant!  I have felt convinced all along that there
have been very many unhappy days in your childhood."

"Please don't distress yourself!"

"But you were alone, you told me so yourself, but for that Lambert;
you have described it so well, that canary, the confirmation and
shedding tears on the abbé's breast, and only a year or so later
saying that of his mother and the abbé! . . .  Oh, mon cher, the
question of childhood in our day is truly awful; for a time those
golden heads, curly and innocent, flutter before one and look at
one with their clear eyes like angels of God, or little birds, and
afterwards . . . and afterwards it turns out that it would have
been better if they had not grown up at all!"

"How soft you are, prince!  It's as though you had little children
of your own.  Why, you haven't any and never will have."

"Tiens!"  His whole face was instantly transformed, "that's just
what Alexandra Petrovna said--the day before yesterday, he-he!--
Alexandra Petrovna Sinitsky--you must have met her here three weeks
ago--only fancy, the day before yesterday, in reply to my jocular
remark that if I do get married now I could set my mind at rest,
there'd be no children, she suddenly said, and with such spite, 'On
the contrary, there certainly would be; people like you always have
them, they'll arrive the very first year, you'll see.'  He-he!  And
they've all taken it into their heads, for some reason, that I'm
going to get married; but though it was spiteful I admit it was--
witty!"

"Witty--but insulting!"

"Oh, cher enfant, one can't take offence at some people.  There's
nothing I prize so much in people as wit, which is evidently
disappearing among us; though what Alexandra Petrovna said--can
hardly be considered wit."

"What?  What did you say?" I said, catching at his words--"one
can't take offence at some people.  That's just it!  Some people
are not worth noticing--an excellent principle!  Just the one I
need.  I shall make a note of it.  You sometimes say the most
delightful things, prince."

He beamed all over.

"N'est ce pas?  Cher enfant, true wit is vanishing; the longer one
lives the more one sees it.  Eh, mais . . . c'est moi qui connait
les femmes!  Believe me, the life of every woman, whatever she may
profess, is nothing but a perpetual search for some one to submit
to . . . so to speak a thirst for submission.  And mark my words,
there's not a single exception."

"Perfectly true!  Magnificent!" I cried rapturously.  Another time
we should have launched into philosophical disquisitions on this
theme, lasting for an hour, but suddenly I felt as though something
had bitten me, and I flushed all over.  I suddenly imagined that in
admiring his bon mots I was flattering him as a prelude to asking
for money, and that he would certainly think so as soon as I began
to ask for it.  I purposely mention this now.

"Prince, I humbly beg you to pay me at once the fifty roubles you
owe me for the month," I fired off like a shot, in a tone of
irritability that was positively rude.

I remember (for I remember every detail of that morning) that there
followed between us then a scene most disgusting in its realistic
truth.  For the first minute he did not understand me, stared at me
for some time without understanding what money I was talking about. 
It was natural that he should not realize I was receiving a salary--
and indeed, why should I?  It is true that he proceeded to assure
me afterwards that he had forgotten, and when he grasped the
meaning of my words, he instantly began taking out fifty roubles,
but he was flustered and turned crimson.  Seeing how things stood,
I got up and abruptly announced that I could not take the money
now, that in what I had been told about a salary they had made a
mistake, or deceived me to induce me to accept the situation, and
that I saw only too well now, that I did nothing to earn one, for I
had no duties to perform.  The prince was alarmed and began
assuring me that I was of the greatest use to him, that I should be
still more useful to him in the future, and that fifty roubles was
so little that he should certainly add to it, for he was bound to
do so, and that he had made the arrangement himself with Tatyana
Pavlovna, but had "unpardonably forgotten it."  I flushed crimson
and declared resolutely that it was degrading for me to receive a
salary for telling scandalous stories of how I had followed two
draggle-tails to the 'institutions,' that I had not been engaged to
amuse him but to do work, and that if there was no work I must stop
it, and so on, and so on.  I could never have imagined that anyone
could have been so scared as he was by my words.  Of course it
ended in my ceasing to protest, and his somehow pressing the fifty
roubles into my hand: to this day I recall with a blush that I took
it.  Everything in the world always ends in meanness, and what was
worst of all, he somehow succeeded in almost proving to me that I
had unmistakably earned the money, and I was so stupid as to
believe it, and so it was absolutely impossible to avoid taking it.

"Cher, cher enfant!" he cried, kissing and embracing me (I must
admit I was on the point of tears myself, goodness knows why,
though I instantly restrained myself, and even now I blush as I
write it).  "My dear boy, you're like one of the family to me now;
in the course of this month you've won a warm place in my heart! 
In 'society' you get 'society' and nothing else.  Katerina
Nikolaevna (that was his daughter's name) is a magnificent woman
and I'm proud of her, but she often, my dear boy, very often,
wounds me.  And as for these girls (elles sont charmantes) and
their mothers who come on my birthday, they merely bring their
embroidery and never know how to tell one anything.  I've
accumulated over sixty cushions embroidered by them, all dogs and
stags.  I like them very much, but with you I feel as if you were
my own--not son, but brother, and I particularly like it when you
argue against me; you're literary, you have read, you can be
enthusiastic. . . ."

"I have read nothing, and I'm not literary at all.  I used to read
what I came across, but I've read nothing for two years and I'm not
going to read."

"Why aren't you going to?"

"I have other objects."

"Cher . . . it's a pity if at the end of your life you say, like
me, 'Je sais tout, mais je ne sais rien de bon.'  I don't know in
the least what I have lived in this world for!  But . . . I'm so
much indebted to you . . . and I should like, in fact . . ."

He suddenly broke off, and with an air of fatigue sank into
brooding.  After any agitation (and he might be overcome by
agitation at any minute, goodness knows why) he generally seemed
for some time to lose his faculties and his power of self-control,
but he soon recovered, so that it really did not matter.  We sat
still for a few minutes.  His very full lower lip hung down . . .
what surprised me most of all was that he had suddenly spoken of
his daughter, and with such openness too.  I put it down, of
course, to his being upset.

"Cher enfant, you don't mind my addressing you so familiarly, do
you?" broke from him suddenly.

"Not in the least.  I must confess that at the very first I was
rather offended by it and felt inclined to address you in the same
way, but I saw it was stupid because you didn't speak like that to
humiliate me."

But he had forgotten his question and was no longer listening.

"Well, how's your FATHER?" he said, suddenly raising his eyes and
looking dreamily at me.

I winced.  In the first place he called Versilov my FATHER, which
he had never permitted himself to do before, and secondly, he began
of himself to speak of Versilov, which he had never done before.

"He sits at home without a penny and is very gloomy," I answered
briefly, though I was burning with curiosity.

"Yes, about money.  His lawsuit is being decided to-day, and I'm
expecting Prince Sergay as soon as he arrives.  He promised to come
straight from the court to me.  Their whole future turns on it. 
It's a question of sixty or seventy thousand.  Of course, I've
always wished well to Andrey Petrovitch" (Versilov's name), "and I
believe he'll win the suit, and Prince Sergay has no case.  It's a
point of law."

"The case will be decided to-day?" I cried, amazed.  The thought
that Versilov had not deigned to tell me even that was a great
shook to me.  "Then he hasn't told my mother, perhaps not anyone,"
it suddenly struck me.  "What strength of will!"

"Then is Prince Sokolsky in Petersburg?" was another idea that
occurred to me immediately.

"He arrived yesterday.  He has come straight from Berlin expressly
for this day."

That too was an extremely important piece of news for me.  And he
would be here to-day, that man who had given HIM a slap in the
face!

"Well, what then?"  The old prince's face suddenly changed again. 
"He'll preach religion as before and . . . and . . . maybe run
after little girls, unfledged girls, again.  He-he!  There's a very
funny little story about that going about even now. . . .  He-he!"

"Who will preach?  Who will run after little girls?"

"Andrey Petrovitch!  Would you believe it, he used to pester us all
in those days.  'Where are we going?' he would say.  'What are we
thinking about?'  That was about it, anyway.  He frightened and
chastened us.  'If you're religious,' he'd say, 'why don't you
become a monk?'  That was about what he expected.  Mais quelle
idée!  If it's right, isn't it too severe?  He was particularly
fond of frightening me with the Day of Judgment--me of all people!"

"I've noticed nothing of all this, and I've been living with him a
month," I answered, listening with impatience.  I felt fearfully
vexed that he hadn't pulled himself together and was rambling on so
incoherently.

"It's only that he doesn't talk about that now, but, believe me, it
was so.  He's a clever man, and undoubtedly very learned; but is
his intellect quite sound?  All this happened to him after his
three years abroad.  And I must own he shocked me very much and
shocked every one.  Cher enfant, j'aime le bon Dieu. . . .  I
believe, I believe as much as I can, but I really was angry at the
time.  Supposing I did put on a frivolous manner, I did it on
purpose because I was annoyed--and besides, the basis of my
objection was as serious as it has been from the beginning of the
world.  'If there is a higher Being,' I said, 'and He has a
PERSONAL existence, and isn't some sort of diffused spirit for
creation, some sort of fluid (for that's even more difficult to
understand), where does He live?'  C'etait bête, no doubt, my dear
boy, but, you know, all the arguments come to that.  Un domicile is
an important thing.  He was awfully angry.  He had become a
Catholic out there."

"I've heard that too.  But it was probably nonsense."

"I assure you by everything that's sacred.  You've only to look at
him. . . .  But you say he's changed.  But in those days how he
used to worry us all!  Would you believe it, he used to behave as
though he were a saint and his relics were being displayed.  He
called us to account for our behaviour, I declare he did!  Relics! 
En voilà un autre!  It's all very well for a monk or a hermit, but
here was a man going about in a dress-coat and all the rest of it,
and then he sets up as a saint!  A strange inclination in a man in
good society, and a curious taste, I admit.  I say nothing about
that; no doubt all that's sacred, and anything may happen. . . . 
Besides, this is all l'inconnu, but it's positively unseemly for a
man in good society.  If anything happened to me and the offer were
made me I swear I should refuse it.  I go and dine to-day at the
club and then suddenly make a miraculous appearance as a saint! 
Why, I should be ridiculous.  I put all that to him at the
time. . . .  He used to wear chains."

I turned red with anger.

"Did you see the chains yourself?"

"I didn't see them myself but . . ."

"Then let me tell you that all that is false, a tissue of loathsome
fabrications, the calumny of enemies, that is, of one chief and
inhuman enemy--for he has only one enemy--your daughter!"

The old prince flared up in his turn.

"Mon cher, I beg and insist that from this time forth you never
couple with that revolting story the name of my daughter."

I stood up.  He was beside himself.  His chin was quivering.

"Cette histoire infame! . . . .  I did not believe it, I never
would believe it, but . . . they tell me, believe it, believe it,
I . . ."

At that instant a footman came in and announced visitors.  I
dropped into my chair again.


4


Two ladies came in.  They were both young and unmarried.  One was a
stepdaughter of a cousin of the old prince's deceased wife or
something of the sort, a protégée of his for whom he had already
set aside a dowry, and who (I mention it with a view to later
events) had money herself: the other was Anna Andreyevna Versilov,
the daughter of Versilov, three years older than I.  She lived with
her brother in the family of Mme. Fanariotov.  I had only seen her
once before in my life, for a minute in the street, though I had
had an encounter, also very brief, with her brother in Moscow.  (I
may very possibly refer to this encounter later--if I have space,
that is, for it is hardly worth recording.)  Anna Andreyevna had
been from childhood a special favourite of the old prince
(Versilov's acquaintance with the prince dated from very long ago). 
I was so overcome by what had just happened that I did not even
stand up on their entrance, though the old prince rose to greet
them.  Afterwards I thought it would be humiliating to get up, and
I remained where I was.  What overwhelmed me most was the prince's
having shouted at me like that three minutes before, and I did not
know whether to go away or not.  But the old man, as usual, had
already forgotten everything, and was all pleasure and animation at
sight of the young ladies.  At the very moment of their entrance he
hurriedly whispered to me, with a rapid change of expression and a
mysterious wink:

"Look at Olympiada, watch her, watch her; I'll tell you why
after. . . ."

I did look at her rather carefully, but I saw nothing special about
her.  She was a plump, not very tall young lady, with exceedingly
red cheeks.  Her face was rather pleasing, of the sort that
materialists like.  She had an expression of kindness, perhaps, but
with a touch of something different.  She could not have been very
brilliant intellectually--that is, not in the higher sense--for one
could see cunning in her eyes.  She was not more than nineteen.  In
fact, there was nothing remarkable about her.  In our school we
should have called her a cushion.  (I only give this minute
description of her because it will be useful later on.)

Indeed, all I have written hitherto with, apparently, such
unnecessary detail is all leading up to what is coming and is
necessary for it.  It will all come in in its proper place; I
cannot avoid it; and if it is dull, pray don't read it.

Versilov's daughter was a very different person.  She was tall and
somewhat slim, with a long and strikingly pale face and splendid
black hair.  She had large dark eyes with an earnest expression, a
small mouth, and most crimson lips.  She was the first woman who
did not disgust me by her horrid way of walking.  She was thin and
slender, however.  Her expression was not altogether good-natured,
but was dignified.  She was twenty-two.  There was hardly a trace
of resemblance to Versilov in her features, and yet, by some
miracle, there was an extraordinary similarity of expression.  I do
not know whether she was pretty; that is a matter of taste.  They
were both very simple in their dress, so that it is not worth while
to describe it.  I expected to be at once insulted by some glance
or gesture of Mlle. Versilov, and I was prepared for it.  Her
brother had insulted me in Moscow the first time we ever met.  She
could hardly know me by sight, but no doubt she had heard I was in
attendance on the prince.  Whatever the prince did or proposed to
do at once aroused interest and was looked upon as an event in the
whole gang of his relations and expectant beneficiaries, and this
was especially so with his sudden partiality for me.  I knew for a
fact that the old prince was particularly solicitous for Anna
Andreyevna's welfare and was on the look-out for a husband for her. 
But it was more difficult to find a suitor for Mlle. Versilov than
for the ladies who embroidered on canvas.

And, lo and behold! contrary to all my expectations, after shaking
hands with the prince and exchanging a few light, conventional
phrases with him, she looked at me with marked curiosity, and,
seeing that I too was looking at her, bowed to me with a smile.  It
is true that she had only just come into the room, and so might
naturally bow to anyone in it, but her smile was so friendly that
it was evidently premeditated; and, I remember, it gave me a
particularly pleasant feeling.

"And this . . . this is my dear young friend Arkady Andreyevitch
Dol . . ."  The prince faltered, noticing that she bowed to me
while I remained sitting--and he suddenly broke off; perhaps he was
confused at introducing me to her (that is, in reality, introducing
a brother to a sister).  The "cushion" bowed to me too; but I
suddenly leapt up with a clumsy scrape of my chair: it was a rush
of simulated pride, utterly senseless, all due to vanity.

"Excuse me, prince, I am not Arkady Andreyevitch but Arkady
Makarovitch!" I rapped out abruptly, utterly forgetting that I
ought to have bowed to the ladies.  Damnation take that unseemly
moment!

"Mais tiens!" cried the prince, tapping his forehead with his
finger.

"Where have you studied?" I heard the stupid question drawled by
the "cushion," who came straight up to me.

"In Moscow, at the grammar school."

"Ah! so I have heard.  Is the teaching good there?"

"Very good."

I remained standing and answered like a soldier reporting himself.

The young lady's questions were certainly not appropriate, but she
did succeed in smoothing over my stupid outbreak and relieving the
embarrassment of the prince, who was meanwhile listening with an
amused smile to something funny Mlle. Versilov was whispering in
his ear, evidently not about me.  But I wondered why this girl, who
was a complete stranger to me, should put herself out to smooth
over my stupid behaviour and all the rest of it.  At the same time,
it was impossible to imagine that she had addressed me quite
casually; it was obviously premeditated.  She looked at me with too
marked an interest; it was as though she wanted me, too, to notice
her as much as possible.  I pondered over all this later, and I was
not mistaken.

"What, surely not to-day?" the prince cried suddenly, jumping up
from his seat.

"Why, didn't you know?" Mlle. Versilov asked in surprise. 
"Olympie! the prince didn't know that Katerina Nikolaevna would be
here to-day.  Why, it's to see her we've come.  We thought she'd
have arrived by the morning train and have been here long ago.  She
has just driven up to the steps; she's come straight from the
station, and she told us to come up and she would be here in a
minute. . . .  And here she is!"

The side-door opened and--THAT WOMAN WALKED IN!

I knew her face already from the wonderful portrait of her that
hung in the prince's study.  I had been scrutinizing the portrait
all that month.  I spent three minutes in the study in her
presence, and I did not take my eyes off her face for a second. 
But if I had not known her portrait and had been asked, after those
three minutes, what she was like, I could not have answered, for
all was confusion within me.

I only remember from those three minutes the image of a really
beautiful woman, whom the prince was kissing and signing with the
cross, and who looked quickly at once--the very minute she came in--
at me.  I distinctly heard the prince muttering something, with a
little simper, about his new secretary and mentioning my name,
evidently pointing at me.  Her face seemed to contract; she threw a
vicious glance at me, and smiled so insolently that I took a sudden
step forward, went up to the prince, and muttered, trembling all
over and unable to finish my words (I believe my teeth were
chattering):

"From this time I . . . I've business of my own. . . .  I'm going."

And I turned and went out.  No one said a word to me, not even the
prince; they all simply stared.  The old prince told me afterwards
that I turned so white that he "was simply frightened."

But there was no need.



CHAPTER III


1


Indeed there was no need: a higher consideration swallowed up all
petty feelings, and one powerful emotion made up to me for
everything.  I went out in a sort of ecstasy.  As I stepped into
the street I was ready to sing aloud.  To match my mood it was an
exquisite morning, sunshine, people out walking, noise, movement,
joyousness, and crowds.  Why, had not that woman insulted me?  From
whom would I have endured that look and that insolent smile without
instant protest however stupid it might be.  I did not mind about
that.  Note that she had come expressly to insult me as soon as she
could, although she had never seen me.  In her eyes I was an "envoy
from Versilov," and she was convinced at that time, and for long
afterwards, that Versilov held her fate in his hands and could ruin
her at once if he wanted to, by means of a certain document; she
suspected that, anyway.  It was a duel to the death.  And yet--I
was not offended!  It was an insult, but I did not feel it.  How
should I?  I was positively glad of it; though I had come here to
hate her I felt I was beginning to love her.

I don't know whether the spider perhaps does not hate the fly he
has marked and is snaring.  Dear little fly!  It seems to me that
the victim is loved, or at least may be loved.  Here I love my
enemy; I am delighted, for instance, that she is so beautiful.  I
am delighted, madam, that you are so haughty and majestic.  If you
were meeker it would not be so delightful.  You have spat on me--
and I am triumphant.  If you were literally to spit in my face I
should really not be angry because you--are my victim; MINE and not
HIS.  How fascinating was that idea!  Yes, the secret consciousness
of power is more insupportably delightful than open domination.  If
I were a millionaire I believe I should take pleasure in going
about in the oldest clothes and being taken for a destitute man,
almost a beggar, being jostled and despised.  The consciousness of
the truth would be enough for me.

That is how I should interpret my thoughts and happiness, and much
of what I was feeling that day.  I will only add that in what I
have just written there is too much levity; in reality my feeling
was deeper and more modest.  Perhaps even now I am more modest in
myself than in my words and deeds--God grant it may be so!

Perhaps I have done amiss in sitting down to write at all. 
Infinitely more remains hidden within than comes out in words. 
Your thought, even if it is an evil one, is always deeper while it
is in your mind; it becomes more absurd and dishonourable when it
is put into words.  Versilov once said to me that the opposite was
true only with horrid people, they simply tell lies, it is easy for
them; but I am trying to write the whole truth, and that's
fearfully difficult!


2


On that 19th of September I took one other "step."

For the first time since I arrived I had money in my pocket, for
the sixty roubles I had saved up in two years I had given to my
mother, as I mentioned before.  But, a few days before, I had
determined that on the day I received my salary I would make an
"experiment" of which I had long been dreaming.  The day before I
had cut out of the paper an address; it was an advertisement that
on the 19th of September at twelve o'clock in the morning, in such-
and-such a street, at number so-and-so, there would be a sale by
the local police authority of the effects of Mme. Lebrecht, and
that the catalogue, valuation, and property for sale could be
inspected on the day of the auction, and so on.

It was just past one.  I hurried to the address on foot.  I had not
taken a cab for more than two years--I had taken a vow not to (or I
should never have saved up my sixty roubles).  I had never been to
an auction, I had never ALLOWED myself this indulgence.  And though
my present step was only an EXPERIMENT yet I had made up my mind
not to take even that step till I had left the grammar school, when
I should break off with everything, hide myself in my shell, and
become perfectly free.  It is true that I was far from being in my
shell and far from being free yet, but then I was only taking this
step by way of an experiment--simply to look into it, as it were to
indulge a fancy, and after that not to recur to it perhaps for a
long while, till the time of beginning seriously.  For every one
else this was only a stupid little auction, but for me it was the
first plank in the ship in which a Columbus would set out to
discover his America.  That was my feeling then.

When I arrived I went into the furthest corner of the yard of the
house mentioned in the advertisement, and entered Mme. Lebrecht's
flat, which consisted of an entry and four small low-pitched rooms. 
In the first room there was a crowd of about thirty persons, half
of them people who had come to bargain, while the rest, judging
from their appearance, were either inquisitive outsiders, or
connoisseurs, or representatives of Mme. Lebrecht.  There were
merchants and Jews gloating over the objects made of gold, and a
few people of the well-dressed class.  The very faces of some of
these gentlemen remain stamped in my memory.  In the doorway
leading to the room on the right there was placed a table so that
it was impossible to pass; on it lay the things catalogued for
sale.  There was another room on the left, but the door into it was
closed, though it was continually being opened a little way, and
some one could be seen peeping through the crack, no doubt some one
of the numerous family of Mme. Lebrecht, who must have been feeling
very much ashamed at the time.  At the table between the doors,
facing the public, sat the warrant officer, to judge by his badge,
presiding over the sale.  I found the auction half over; I squeezed
my way up to the table as soon as I went in.  Some bronze
candlesticks were being sold.  I began looking at the things.

I looked at the things and wondered what I could buy, and what I
could do with bronze candlesticks, and whether my object would be
attained, and how the thing would be done, and whether my project
would be successful, and whether my project were not childish.  All
this I wondered as I waited.  It was like the sensation one has at
the gambling table at the moment before one has put down a card,
though one has come to do so, feeling, "if I like I'll put it down,
if I don't I'll go away--I'm free to choose!"  One's heart does not
begin to throb at that point, but there is a faint thrill and
flutter in it--a sensation not without charm.  But indecision soon
begins to weigh painfully upon one: one's eyes grow dizzy, one
stretches out one's hand, picks up a card, but mechanically, almost
against one's will, as though some one else were directing one's
hand.  At last one has decided and thrown down the card--then the
feeling is quite different--immense.  I am not writing about the
auction; I am writing about myself; who else would feel his heart
throbbing at an auction?

Some were excited, some were waiting in silence, some had bought
things and were regretting it.  I felt no sympathy with a gentleman
who, misunderstanding what was said, bought an electro-plated milk-
jug in mistake for a silver one for five roubles instead of two; in
fact it amused me very much.  The warrant officer passed rapidly
from one class of objects to another: after the candlesticks,
displayed earrings, after earrings an embroidered leather cushion,
then a money-box--probably for the sake of variety, or to meet the
wishes of the purchasers.  I could not remain passive even for ten
minutes.  I went up to the cushion, and afterwards to the cash-box,
but at the critical moment my tongue failed me: these objects
seemed to me quite out of the question.  At last I saw an album in
the warrant officer's hand.

"A family album in real morocco, second-hand, with sketches in
water-colour and crayon, in a carved ivory case with silver clasps--
priced two roubles!"

I went up: it looked an elegant article, but the carving was
damaged in one place.  I was the only person who went up to look at
it, all were silent; there was no bidding for it.  I might have
undone the clasps and taken the album out of the case to look at
it, but I did not make use of my privilege, and only waved a
trembling hand as though to say "never mind."

"Two roubles, five kopecks," I said.  I believe my teeth were
chattering again.

The album was knocked down to me.  I at once took out the money,
paid for it, snatched up the album, and went into a corner of the
room.  There I took it out of its case, and began looking through
it with feverish haste--it was the most trumpery thing possible--a
little album of the size of a piece of notepaper, with rubbed gilt
edges, exactly like the albums girls used to keep in former days
when they left school.  There were crayon and colour sketches of
temples on mountain-sides, Cupids, a lake with floating swans;
there were verses:


          On a far journey I am starting,
          From Moscow I am departing,
          From my dear ones I am parting.
          And with post-horses flying South.


They are enshrined in my memory!

I made up my mind that I had made a mess of it; if there ever was
anything no one could possibly want it was this.

"Never mind," I decided, "one's bound to lose the first card; it's
a good omen, in fact."

I felt thoroughly light-hearted.

"Ach, I'm too late; is it yours?  You have bought it?"  I suddenly
heard beside me the voice of a well-dressed, presentable-looking
gentleman in a blue coat.  He had come in late.

"I am too late.  Ach, what a pity!  How much was it?"

"Two roubles, five kopecks."

"Ach, what a pity!  Would you give it up?"

"Come outside," I whispered to him, in a tremor.

We went out on the staircase.

"I'll let you have it for ten roubles," I said, feeling a shiver
run down my back.

"Ten roubles!  Upon my word!"

"As you like."

He stared at me open-eyed.  I was well dressed, not in the least
like a Jew or a second-hand dealer.

"Mercy on us--why it's a wretched old album, what use is it to
anyone?  The case isn't worth anything certainly.  You certainly
won't sell it to anyone."

"I see you will buy it."

"But that's for a special reason.  I only found out yesterday.  I'm
the only one who would.  Upon my word, what are you thinking
about!"

"I ought to have asked twenty-five roubles, but as there was, after
all, a risk you might draw back, I only asked for ten to make sure
of it.  I won't take a farthing less."

I turned and walked away.

"Well, take four roubles," he said, overtaking me in the yard,
"come, five!"

I strode on without speaking.

"Well, take it then!"

He took out ten roubles.  I gave him the album.

"But you must own it's not honest!  Two roubles--and then ten, eh?"

"Why not honest?  It's a question of market."

"What do you mean by market!"  He grew angry.

"When there's a demand one has a market--if you hadn't asked for it
I shouldn't have sold it for forty kopecks."

Though I was serious and didn't burst out laughing I was laughing
inwardly--not from delight--I don't know why myself, I was almost
breathless.

"Listen," I muttered, utterly unable to restrain myself, but
speaking in a friendly way and feeling quite fond of him.  "Listen,
when as a young man the late James Rothschild, the Parisian one,
who left seventeen hundred million francs (he nodded), heard of the
murder of the Duc de Berri some hours before anybody else he sent
the news to the proper quarter, and by that one stroke in an
instant made several millions--that's how people get on!"

"So you're a Rothschild, are you?" he cried as though indignant
with me for being such a fool.

I walked quickly out of the house.  One step, and I had made seven
roubles ninety-five kopecks.  It was a senseless step, a piece of
child's play I admit, but it chimed in with my theories, and I
could not help being deeply stirred by it.  But it is no good
describing one's feelings.  My ten roubles were in my waistcoat
pocket, I thrust in two fingers to feel it--and walked along
without taking my hand out.  After walking a hundred yards along
the street I took the note out to look at it, I looked at it and
felt like kissing it.  A carriage rumbled up to the steps of a
house.  The house porter opened the door and a lady came out to get
into the carriage.  She was young, handsome and wealthy-looking,
gorgeously dressed in silk and velvet, with a train more than two
yards long.  Suddenly a pretty little portfolio dropped out of her
hand and fell on the ground; she got into the carriage.  The
footman stooped down to pick the thing up, but I flew up quickly,
picked it up and handed it to the lady, taking off my hat.  (The
hat was a silk one, I was suitably dressed for a young man.)  With
a very pleasant smile, though with an air of reserve, the lady said
to me:  "Merci, m'sieu!"  The carriage rolled away.  I kissed the
ten-rouble note.


3


That same day I was to go and see Efim Zvyerev, one of my old
schoolfellows at the grammar school, who had gone to a special
college in Petersburg.  He is not worth describing, and I was not
on particularly friendly terms with him; but I looked him up in
Petersburg.  He might (through various circumstances which again
are not worth relating) be able to give me the address of a man
called Kraft, whom it was very important for me to see as soon as
he returned from Vilna.  Efim was expecting him that day or the
next, as he had let me know two days before.  I had to go to the
Petersburg Side, but I did not feel tired.

I found Efim (who was also nineteen) in the yard of his aunt's
house, where he was staying for the time.  He had just had dinner
and was walking about the yard on stilts.  He told me at once that
Kraft had arrived the day before, and was staying at his old
lodgings close by, and that he was anxious to see me as soon as
possible, as he had something important to tell me.

"He's going off somewhere again," added Efim.

As in the present circumstances it was of great importance to see
Kraft I asked Efim to take me round at once to his lodging, which
it appeared was in a back street only a few steps away.  But Efim
told me that he had met him an hour ago and that he was on his way
to Dergatchev's.

"But come along to Dergatchev's.  Why do you always cry off?  Are
you afraid?"

Kraft might as a fact stay on at Dergatchev's, and in that case
where could I wait for him?  I was not afraid of going to
Dergatchev's, but I did not want to go to his house, though Efim
had tried to get me there three times already.  And on each
occasion had asked "Are you afraid?" with a very nasty smile at my
expense.  It was not a case of fear I must state at once; if I was
afraid it was of something quite different.  This time I made up my
mind to go.  Dergatchev's, too, was only a few steps away.  On the
way I asked Efim if he still meant to run away to America.

"Maybe I shall wait a bit," he answered with a faint smile.

I was not particularly fond of him; in fact I did not like him at
all.  He had fair hair, and a full face of an excessive fairness,
an almost unseemly childish fairness, yet he was taller than I was,
but he would never have been taken for more than seventeen.  I had
nothing to talk to him about.

"What's going on there?  Is there always a crowd?" I asked.

"But why are you always so frightened?" he laughed again.

"Go to hell!" I said, getting angry.

"There won't be a crowd at all.  Only friends come, and they're all
his own set.  Don't worry yourself."

"But what the devil is it to me whether they're his set or not! 
I'm not one of his set.  How can they be sure of me?"

"I am bringing you and that's enough.  They've heard of you
already.  Kraft can answer for you, too."

"I say, will Vassin be there?"

"I don't know."

"If he is, give me a poke and point him out as soon as we go in. 
As soon as we go in.  Do you hear?"

I had heard a good deal about Vassin already, and had long been
interested in him.

Dergatchev lived in a little lodge in the courtyard of a wooden
house belonging to a merchant's wife, but he occupied the whole of
it.  There were only three living rooms.  All the four windows had
the blinds drawn down.  He was a mechanical engineer, and did work
in Petersburg.  I had heard casually that he had got a good private
berth in the provinces, and that he was just going away to it.

As soon as we stepped into the tiny entry we heard voices.  There
seemed to be a heated argument and some one shouted:

"Quae medicamenta non sanant, ferrum sanat, quae ferrum non sanat--
ignis sanat!"

I certainly was in some uneasiness.  I was, of course, not
accustomed to society of any kind.  At school I had been on
familiar terms with my schoolfellows, but I was scarcely friends
with anyone; I made a little corner for myself and lived in it. 
But this was not what disturbed me.  In any case I vowed not to let
myself be drawn into argument and to say nothing beyond what was
necessary, so that no one could draw any conclusions about me;
above all--to avoid argument.

In the room, which was really too small, there were seven men;
counting the ladies, ten persons.  Dergatchev was five-and-twenty,
and was married.  His wife had a sister and another female
relation, who lived with them.  The room was furnished after a
fashion, sufficiently though, and was even tidy.  There was a
lithographed portrait on the wall, but a very cheap one; in the
corner there was an ikon without a setting, but with a lamp burning
before it.

Dergatchev came up to me, shook hands and asked me to sit down.

"Sit down; they're all our own set here."

"You're very welcome," a rather nice-looking, modestly dressed
young woman added immediately, and making me a slight bow she at
once went out of the room.  This was his wife, and she, too, seemed
to have been taking part in the discussion, and went away to nurse
the baby.  But there were two other ladies left in the room; one
very short girl of about twenty, wearing a black dress, also rather
nice-looking, and the other a thin, keen-eyed lady of thirty.  They
sat listening eagerly, but not taking part in the conversation. 
All the men were standing except Kraft, Vassin and me.  Efim
pointed them out to me at once, for I had never seen Kraft before,
either.  I got up and went up to make their acquaintance.  Kraft's
face I shall never forget.  There was no particular beauty about
it, but a positive excess of mildness and delicacy, though personal
dignity was conspicuous in everything about him.  He was twenty-
six, rather thin, above medium height, fair-haired, with an earnest
but soft face; there was a peculiar gentleness about his whole
personality.  And yet if I were asked I would not have changed my
own, possibly very commonplace, countenance for his, which struck
me as so attractive.  There was something in his face I should not
have cared to have in mine, too marked a calm (in a moral sense)
and something like a secret, unconscious pride.  But I probably
could not have actually formed this judgment at the time.  It seems
so to me now, in the light of later events.

"I'm very glad you've come," said Kraft.  "I have a letter which
concerns you.  We'll stay here a little and then go home."

Dergatchev was a strong, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned man
of medium height, with a big beard.  His eyes showed acuteness,
habitual reserve, and a certain incessant watchfulness; though
he was for the most part silent, he evidently controlled the
conversation.  Vassin's face did not impress me much, though I had
heard of him as extraordinarily intelligent: he had fair hair,
large light grey eyes, and a very open face.  But at the same time
there was something, as it were, too hard in it; one had a
presentiment that he would not be communicative, but he looked
undeniably clever, cleverer than Dergatchev, of a more profound
intellect--cleverer than anyone in the room.  But perhaps I am
exaggerating.  Of the other young men I only recall two; one a
tall, dark man of twenty-seven, with black whiskers, who talked a
great deal, a teacher or something of the sort; the other was a
fellow of my own age, with good lines in his face, wearing a
Russian tunic without sleeves.  He was silent, and listened
attentively.  He turned out afterwards to be a peasant.

"No, that's not the way to put it," the black-whiskered teacher
began, obviously continuing the previous discussion.  He talked
more than anyone in the room.

"I'm not talking of mathematical proofs, but that idea which I am
prepared to believe without mathematical proof . . ."

"Wait a bit, Tihomirov," Dergatchev interrupted loudly, "the new-
comers don't understand.  You see," he suddenly addressed himself
to me alone (and I confess if he intended to put me as a novice
through an examination or to make me speak, it was adroitly done on
his part; I felt it and prepared myself) "it's all our friend
Kraft, who is well known to us all for his character and the
solidity of his convictions.  From a very ordinary fact he has
deduced a very extraordinary conviction that has surprised us all. 
He has deduced that the Russians are a second-rate people . . ."

"Third-rate," shouted some one.

"A second-rate people destined to serve as the raw material for a
nobler race, and not to play an independent part in the history of
humanity.  In view of this theory of his, which is perhaps correct,
Kraft has come to the conclusion that the activity of every Russian
must in the future be paralysed by this idea, that all, so to
speak, will fold their hands and . . ."

"Excuse me, Dergatchev, that's not the way to put it," Tihomirov
interrupted impatiently again (Dergatchev at once gave way),
"considering that Kraft has made a serious study of the subject,
has made on a physiological basis deductions which he regards as
mathematically proved, and has spent perhaps two years on his idea
(which I should be prepared a priori to accept with equanimity),
considering all this, that is considering Kraft's excitement and
earnestness, the case must be considered as a phenomenon.  All this
leads up to a question which Kraft cannot understand, and that's
what we must attend to--I mean, Kraft's not understanding it, for
that's the phenomenon.  We must decide whether this phenomenon
belongs to the domain of pathology as a solitary instance, or
whether it is an occurrence which may be normally repeated in
others; that's what is of interest for the common cause.  I believe
Kraft about Russia, and I will even say that I am glad of it,
perhaps; if this idea were assimilated by all it would free many
from patriotic prejudice and untie their hands . . ."

"I am not influenced by patriotism," said Kraft, speaking with a
certain stiffness.  All this debate seemed distasteful to him.

"Whether patriotism or not we need not consider," observed Vassin,
who had been very silent.

"But how, tell me, please, could Kraft's deduction weaken the
impulse to the cause of humanity," shouted the teacher.  (He was
the only one shouting.  All the others spoke in a low voice.)  "Let
Russia be condemned to second-rateness, but we can still work and
not for Russia alone.  And, what's more, how can Kraft be a patriot
if he has ceased to believe in Russia?"

"Besides being a German," a voice interrupted again.

"I am a Russian," said Kraft.

"That's a question that has no direct bearing on the subject,"
observed Dergatchev to the speaker who had interrupted.

"Take a wider view of your idea," cried Tihomirov, heeding nothing. 
"If Russia is only the material for nobler races why shouldn't she
serve as such material?  It's a sufficiently attractive part for
her to play.  Why not accept the idea calmly, considering how it
enlarges the task?  Humanity is on the eve of its regeneration,
which is already beginning.  None but the blind deny the task
before us.  Let Russia alone, if you've lost faith in her, and work
for the future, for the future unknown people that will be formed
of all humanity without distinction of race.  Russia would perish
some time, anyway; even the most gifted peoples exist for fifteen
hundred or at the most two thousand years.  Isn't it all the same
whether it's two thousand or two hundred?  The Romans did not last
fifteen hundred years as a vital force, they too have turned into
material.  They ceased to exist long ago, but they've left an idea,
and it has become an element in the future of mankind.  How can one
tell a man there's nothing to be done?  I can't conceive of a
position in which there ever could be nothing to do!  Work for
humanity and don't trouble about the rest.  There's so much to do
that life isn't long enough if you look into it more closely."

"One must live in harmony with the laws of nature and truth," Mme.
Dergatchev observed from the doorway.  The door was slightly ajar
and one could see that she was standing there, listening eagerly,
with the baby at her breast which was covered.

Kraft listened with a faint smile and brought out at last with a
somewhat harassed face, but with earnest sincerity:

"I don't understand how, if one is under the influence of some
over-mastering idea which completely dominates one's mind and one's
heart, one can live for something else which is outside that idea."

"But if it is logically, mathematically proved to you that your
deduction is erroneous--that your whole idea is erroneous, that you
have not the slightest right to exclude yourself from working for
the welfare of humanity simply because Russia is predestined to a
second-rate part, if it is pointed out to you, that in place of
your narrow horizon infinity lies open before you, that instead of
your narrow idea of patriotism . . ."

"Ah!" Kraft waved his hand gently, "I've told you there is no
question of patriotism."

"There is evidently a misunderstanding," Vassin interposed
suddenly, "the mistake arises from the fact that Kraft's conclusion
is not a mere logical theory but, so to say, a theory that has been
transmuted into a feeling.  All natures are not alike; in some men
a logical deduction is sometimes transmuted into a very powerful
emotion which takes possession of the whole being, and is sometimes
very difficult to dislodge or alter.  To cure such a man the
feeling itself must be changed, which is only possible by replacing
it by another, equally powerful one.  That's always difficult, and
in many cases impossible."

"That's a mistake," roared the argumentative teacher, "a logical
proof of itself will dissipate prejudices.  A rational conviction
will give rise to feeling, too.  Thought arises from feeling, and
dominating a man in its turn formulates new feeling."

"People are very different.  Some change their feelings readily,
while for others it's hard to do so," responded Vassin, as though
disinclined to continue the argument; but I was delighted by his
idea.

"That's perfectly true what you say," I said, turning to him, all
at once breaking the ice and suddenly beginning to speak; "that to
change a feeling one must replace it by another.  Four years ago a
general in Moscow . . . I didn't know him, you see, but . . .
Perhaps he couldn't have inspired respect of himself . . . And the
fact itself may seem irrational but . . . But he had lost a child,
that's to say two little girls who had died one after another of
scarlatina.  And he was utterly crushed, and did nothing but
grieve, so that one couldn't bear to go and look at him, and he
ended by dying scarcely six months later.  It's a fact that he died
of it!  What could have saved him?  The answer is--a feeling of
equal strength.  One would have had to dig those two little girls
out of the grave and give them back to him--that would have been
the only thing, I mean in that way.  And he died.  Yet one might
have presented him with excellent reflections: that life is
transitory, that all are mortal; one might have produced statistics
to show how many children do die of scarlatina . . . he was on the
retired list. . . ."

I stopped, out of breath, and looked round.

"That's nothing to do with it," said some one.

"The instance you have quoted, though it's not quite in the same
category, is very similar and illustrates the subject," said
Vassin, turning to me.


4


Here I must confess why I was so delighted with what Vassin had
said about the "idea transmuted into feeling," and at the same time
I must confess to a fiendish disgrace.  Yes, I was afraid to go to
Dergatchev's, though not for the reason Efim imagined.  I dreaded
going because I had been afraid of them even before I left Moscow. 
I knew that they (or some of their sort, it's all the same) were
great in argument and would perhaps shatter "my idea."  I was
firmly resolved in myself that I wouldn't give away my idea or say
a word to them about it; but they (or again some of their sort)
might easily say something to me which would destroy my faith in my
"idea," even though I might not utter a syllable about it.  There
were questions connected with my "idea" which I had not settled,
but I did not want anyone to settle them but myself.  For the last
two years I had even given up reading for fear of meeting with some
passage opposed to my "idea" which might shake me.  And all at once
Vassin had solved the difficulty and reassured me on the most
essential point.  Alter all, what was I afraid of and what could
they do to me, whatever skill in argument they might have?  I
perhaps was the only one who understood what Vassin meant by "an
idea transformed into an emotion."  It's not enough to refute a
fine idea, one must replace it by something fine of equal strength;
or else, refusing absolutely to part with my feeling, in my heart I
should refute the refutation, however strong the argument might be,
whatever they might say.  And what could they give me in place of
it?  And therefore I might be braver, I was bound to be more manly. 
While I was delighted with Vassin, I felt ashamed, and felt myself
an insignificant child.

Then there followed fresh ignominy.  It was not a contemptible
desire to show off my intelligence that made me break the ice and
speak, it was an impulse to "throw myself on his neck."  The
impulse to throw myself on people's necks that they might think
well of me and take me to their hearts or something of the sort
(pure beastliness, in fact) I look upon as the most abject of my
weaknesses, and I suspected it in myself long ago; in fact, when I
was in the corner in which I entrenched myself for so many years,
though I don't regret doing so, I knew I ought to behave in company
with more austerity.  What comforted me after every such
ignominious scene was that my "idea" was as great a secret as ever,
and that I hadn't given it away.  With a sinking at my heart I
sometimes imagined that when I did let out my idea to some one I
should suddenly have nothing left, that I should become like every
one else, and perhaps I should give up the idea; and so I was on my
guard and preserved it, and trembled at the thought of chattering. 
And now at Dergatchev's, almost at the first contact with anyone, I
broke down.  I hadn't betrayed anything, of course, but I had
chattered unpardonably; it was ignominious.  It is a horrid thing
to remember!  No, I must not associate with people.  I think so
even now.  Forty years hence I will speak.  My idea demands a
corner.


5


As soon as Vassin expressed approval I felt irresistibly impelled
to talk.

"I consider that every one has a right to have his own feelings . . .
if they are from conviction . . . and that no one should reproach
him with them," I went on, addressing Vassin.  Though I spoke
boldly, it was as though I was not speaking, not my own tongue
moving in my mouth.

"Re-all-ly?" the same voice which had interrupted Dergatchev and
shouted at Kraft that he was a German interposed with an ironical
drawl.  Regarding the speaker as a complete nonentity, I addressed
the teacher as though he had called out to me.

"It's my conviction that I should not dare to judge anyone," I
said, quivering, and conscious that I was going to make a fool of
myself.

"Why so mysterious?" cried the voice of the nonentity again.

"Every man has his own idea," I went on, gazing persistently at the
teacher, who for his part held his tongue and looked at me with a
smile.

"Yours is?" cried the nonentity.

"Too long to describe. . . .  But part of my idea is that I
should be left alone.  As long as I've two roubles I want to be
independent of every one (don't excite yourself, I know the
objection that will be made) and to do nothing--not even to work
for that grand future of humanity which Mr. Kraft is invited to
work for.  Personal freedom, that is, my own, is the first thing,
and I don't care about anything else."

My mistake was that I lost my temper.

"In other words you advocate the tranquillity of the well-fed cow?"

"So be it.  Cows don't hurt anyone.  I owe no one anything.  I pay
society in the form of taxes that I may not be robbed, killed or
assaulted, and no one dare demand anything more.  I personally,
perhaps, may have other ideas, and if I want to serve humanity I
shall, and perhaps ten times as much as those who preach about it;
only I want no one to dare to demand it of me, to force me to it
like Mr. Kraft.  I must be perfectly free not to lift a finger if I
like.  But to rush and 'fall on everybody's neck' from love to
humanity, and dissolve in tears of emotion--is only a fashion.  And
why should I be bound to love my neighbour, or your future humanity
which I shall never see, which will never know anything about me,
and which will in its turn disappear and leave no trace (time
counts for nothing in this) when the earth in its turn will be
changed into an iceberg, and will fly off into the void with an
infinite multitude of other similar icebergs; it's the most
senseless thing one could possibly imagine.  That's your teaching. 
Tell me why I am bound to be so noble, especially if it all lasts
only for a moment?"

"P-pooh!" cried a voice.

I had fired off all this with nervous exasperation, throwing off
all restraint.  I knew that I was making a fool of myself, but I
hurried on, afraid of being interrupted.  I felt that my words were
pouring out like water through a sieve, incoherently, nineteen to
the dozen, but I hurried on to convince them and get the better of
them.  It was a matter of such importance to me.  I had been
preparing for it for three years.  But it was remarkable that they
were all suddenly silent, they said absolutely nothing, every one
was listening.  I went on addressing my remarks to the teacher.

"That's just it.  A very clever man has said that nothing is more
difficult than to answer the question 'Why we must be honourable.' 
You know there are three sorts of scoundrels in the world; naïve
scoundrels, that is, convinced that their villany is the highest
virtue; scoundrels who are ashamed, that is, ashamed of their own
villany, though they fully intend to persevere with it; and lastly
simple scoundrels, pure-bred scoundrels.  For example I had a
schoolfellow called Lambert who told me at sixteen that when he
came into his fortune it would be his greatest satisfaction to feed
on meat and bread while the children of the poor were dying of
hunger; and when they had no fuel for their fires he would buy up a
whole woodstack, build it up in a field and set fire to it there,
and not give any of it to the poor.  Those were his feelings!  Tell
me, what am I to say to a pure-blooded scoundrel like that if he
asks me why he should be honourable?  Especially now in these times
which you have so transformed, for things have never been worse
than they are now.  Nothing is clear in our society.  You deny God,
you see, deny heroism.  What blind, deaf, dull-witted stagnation of
mind can force me to act in one way, if it's more to my advantage
to do the opposite?  You say 'a rational attitude to humanity is to
your own advantage, too'; but what if I think all these rational
considerations irrational, and dislike all these socialist barracks
and phalanxes?  What the devil do I care for them or for the future
when I shall only live once on earth!  Allow me to judge of my
advantage for myself; it's more amusing.  What does it matter to me
what will happen in a thousand years to your humanity if, on your
principles, I'm to get for it neither love, nor future life, nor
recognition of my heroism?  No, if that's how it is I'd rather live
in the most ignorant way for myself and let them all go to
perdition!"

"An excellent sentiment!"

"Though I'm always ready to go with them."