"Notes from the Underground\n\nFYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY\n\n\n\n\n\nPART I\n\nUnderground*\n\n     *The author of the diary and the diary itself\n     are, of course, imaginary.  Nevertheless it is clear\n     that such persons as the writer of these notes\n     not only may, but positively must, exist in our\n     society, when we consider the circumstances in\n     the midst of which our society is formed.  I have\n     tried to expose to the view of the public more\n     distinctly than is commonly done, one of the\n     characters of the recent past.  He is one of the\n     representatives of a generation still living.  In this\n     fragment, entitled \"Underground,\" this person\n     introduces himself and his views, and, as it were,\n     tries to explain the causes owing to which he has\n     made his appearance and was bound to make his\n     appearance in our midst.  In the second fragment\n     there are added the actual notes of this person\n     concerning certain events in his life.--AUTHOR'S NOTE.\n\n\n\nI\n\nI am a sick man....  I am a spiteful man.  I am an unattractive man.  I\nbelieve my liver is diseased.  However, I know nothing at all about my\ndisease, and do not know for certain what ails me.  I don't consult a\ndoctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and\ndoctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to\nrespect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be\nsuperstitious, but I am superstitious).  No, I refuse to consult a\ndoctor from spite.  That you probably will not understand.  Well, I\nunderstand it, though.  Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely\nthat I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well\naware that I cannot \"pay out\" the doctors by not consulting them; I\nknow better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and\nno one else.  But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite.\nMy liver is bad, well--let it get worse!\n\nI have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years.  Now I am\nforty.  I used to be in the government service, but am no longer.  I\nwas a spiteful official.  I was rude and took pleasure in being so.  I\ndid not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in\nthat, at least.  (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out.  I wrote\nit thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself\nthat I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch\nit out on purpose!)\n\nWhen petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I\nsat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when\nI succeeded in making anybody unhappy.  I almost did succeed.  For the\nmost part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.\nBut of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not\nendure.  He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a\ndisgusting way.  I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over\nthat sword.  At last I got the better of him.  He left off clanking it.\nThat happened in my youth, though.\n\nBut do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite?\nWhy, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that\ncontinually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly\nconscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an\nembittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and\namusing myself by it.  I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll\nto play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should\nbe appeased.  I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I\nshould grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with\nshame for months after.  That was my way.\n\nI was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official.  I was\nlying from spite.  I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and\nwith the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful.  I was\nconscious every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely\nopposite to that.  I felt them positively swarming in me, these\nopposite elements. I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life\nand craving some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not\nlet them, purposely would not let them come out.  They tormented me\ntill I was ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at\nlast, how they sickened me!  Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that\nI am expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your\nforgiveness for something?  I am sure you are fancying that ...\nHowever, I assure you I do not care if you are....\n\nIt was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to\nbecome anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an\nhonest man, neither a hero nor an insect.  Now, I am living out my life\nin my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation\nthat an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is\nonly the fool who becomes anything.  Yes, a man in the nineteenth\ncentury must and morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless\ncreature; a man of character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited\ncreature.  That is my conviction of forty years.  I am forty years old\nnow, and you know forty years is a whole lifetime; you know it is\nextreme old age.  To live longer than forty years is bad manners, is\nvulgar, immoral.  Who does live beyond forty?  Answer that, sincerely\nand honestly I will tell you who do: fools and worthless fellows.  I\ntell all old men that to their face, all these venerable old men, all\nthese silver-haired and reverend seniors!  I tell the whole world that\nto its face!  I have a right to say so, for I shall go on living to\nsixty myself.  To seventy!  To eighty! ...  Stay, let me take breath\n...\n\nYou imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you.  You are\nmistaken in that, too.  I am by no means such a mirthful person as you\nimagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble\n(and I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I\nam--then my answer is, I am a collegiate assessor.  I was in the\nservice that I might have something to eat (and solely for that\nreason), and when last year a distant relation left me six thousand\nroubles in his will I immediately retired from the service and settled\ndown in my corner.  I used to live in this corner before, but now I\nhave settled down in it.  My room is a wretched, horrid one in the\noutskirts of the town.  My servant is an old country-woman, ill-natured\nfrom stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty smell about her.\nI am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and that with my\nsmall means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg.  I know all\nthat better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and\nmonitors....  But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away\nfrom Petersburg!  I am not going away because ... ech!  Why, it is\nabsolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.\n\nBut what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?\n\nAnswer: Of himself.\n\nWell, so I will talk about myself.\n\n\n\nII\n\nI want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not,\nwhy I could not even become an insect.  I tell you solemnly, that I\nhave many times tried to become an insect.  But I was not equal even to\nthat.  I swear, gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a\nreal thorough-going illness.  For man's everyday needs, it would have\nbeen quite enough to have the ordinary human consciousness, that is,\nhalf or a quarter of the amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated\nman of our unhappy nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal\nill-luck to inhabit Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional\ntown on the whole terrestrial globe.  (There are intentional and\nunintentional towns.)  It would have been quite enough, for instance,\nto have the consciousness by which all so-called direct persons and men\nof action live.  I bet you think I am writing all this from\naffectation, to be witty at the expense of men of action; and what is\nmore, that from ill-bred affectation, I am clanking a sword like my\nofficer.  But, gentlemen, whoever can pride himself on his diseases and\neven swagger over them?\n\nThough, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves on\ntheir diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone.  We will not\ndispute it; my contention was absurd.  But yet I am firmly persuaded\nthat a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in\nfact, is a disease.  I stick to that.  Let us leave that, too, for a\nminute.  Tell me this: why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the\nvery moments when I am most capable of feeling every refinement of all\nthat is \"sublime and beautiful,\" as they used to say at one time, it\nwould, as though of design, happen to me not only to feel but to do\nsuch ugly things, such that ... Well, in short, actions that all,\nperhaps, commit; but which, as though purposely, occurred to me at the\nvery time when I was most conscious that they ought not to be\ncommitted.  The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was\n\"sublime and beautiful,\" the more deeply I sank into my mire and the\nmore ready I was to sink in it altogether.  But the chief point was\nthat all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as though it\nwere bound to be so.  It was as though it were my most normal\ncondition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last\nall desire in me to struggle against this depravity passed.  It ended\nby my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was\nperhaps my normal condition.  But at first, in the beginning, what\nagonies I endured in that struggle!  I did not believe it was the same\nwith other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a\nsecret.  I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the\npoint of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in\nreturning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night,\nacutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action\nagain, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly\ngnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at\nlast the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness,\nand at last--into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into\nenjoyment!  I insist upon that.  I have spoken of this because I keep\nwanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment?  I\nwill explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness\nof one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had\nreached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not\nbe otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could\nbecome a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you\nto change into something different you would most likely not wish to\nchange; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because\nperhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.\n\nAnd the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in\naccord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness,\nand with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that\nconsequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely\nnothing.  Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,\nthat one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any\nconsolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he\nactually is a scoundrel.  But enough....  Ech, I have talked a lot of\nnonsense, but what have I explained?  How is enjoyment in this to be\nexplained?  But I will explain it.  I will get to the bottom of it!\nThat is why I have taken up my pen....\n\nI, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE.  I am as suspicious\nand prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf.  But upon my word I\nsometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in the\nface I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it.  I say, in\nearnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that\na peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but\nin despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one\nis very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.  And\nwhen one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being\nrubbed into a pulp would positively overwhelm one.  The worst of it is,\nlook at it which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the\nmost to blame in everything.  And what is most humiliating of all, to\nblame for no fault of my own but, so to say, through the laws of\nnature.  In the first place, to blame because I am cleverer than any of\nthe people surrounding me.  (I have always considered myself cleverer\nthan any of the people surrounding me, and sometimes, would you believe\nit, have been positively ashamed of it.  At any rate, I have all my\nlife, as it were, turned my eyes away and never could look people\nstraight in the face.)  To blame, finally, because even if I had had\nmagnanimity, I should only have had more suffering from the sense of\nits uselessness.  I should certainly have never been able to do\nanything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive, for my assailant\nwould perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature, and one cannot\nforgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were owing to\nthe laws of nature, it is insulting all the same.  Finally, even if I\nhad wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the contrary\nto revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged myself on\nany one for anything because I should certainly never have made up my\nmind to do anything, even if I had been able to.  Why should I not have\nmade up my mind?  About that in particular I want to say a few words.\n\n\n\nIII\n\nWith people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for\nthemselves in general, how is it done?  Why, when they are possessed,\nlet us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is\nnothing else but that feeling left in their whole being.  Such a\ngentleman simply dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull\nwith its horns down, and nothing but a wall will stop him.  (By the\nway: facing the wall, such gentlemen--that is, the \"direct\" persons and\nmen of action--are genuinely nonplussed.  For them a wall is not an\nevasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is\nnot an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very\nglad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule.  No, they\nare nonplussed in all sincerity.  The wall has for them something\ntranquillising, morally soothing, final--maybe even something\nmysterious ... but of the wall later.)\n\nWell, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his\ntender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him\ninto being on the earth.  I envy such a man till I am green in the\nface.  He is stupid.  I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal\nman should be stupid, how do you know?  Perhaps it is very beautiful,\nin fact.  And I am the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can\ncall it so, by the fact that if you take, for instance, the antithesis\nof the normal man, that is, the man of acute consciousness, who has\ncome, of course, not out of the lap of nature but out of a retort (this\nis almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I suspect this, too), this\nretort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in the presence of his\nantithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness he genuinely\nthinks of himself as a mouse and not a man.  It may be an acutely\nconscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and\ntherefore, et caetera, et caetera.  And the worst of it is, he himself,\nhis very own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do\nso; and that is an important point.  Now let us look at this mouse in\naction.  Let us suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and\nit almost always does feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too.\nThere may even be a greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME\nDE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE.  The base and nasty desire to vent that\nspite on its assailant rankles perhaps even more nastily in it than in\nL'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA VERITE.  For through his innate stupidity\nthe latter looks upon his revenge as justice pure and simple; while in\nconsequence of his acute consciousness the mouse does not believe in\nthe justice of it.  To come at last to the deed itself, to the very act\nof revenge.  Apart from the one fundamental nastiness the luckless\nmouse succeeds in creating around it so many other nastinesses in the\nform of doubts and questions, adds to the one question so many\nunsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort of\nfatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of\nthe contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand\nsolemnly about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their\nhealthy sides ache.  Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss\nall that with a wave of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt\nin which it does not even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its\nmouse-hole.  There in its nasty, stinking, underground home our\ninsulted, crushed and ridiculed mouse promptly becomes absorbed in\ncold, malignant and, above all, everlasting spite.  For forty years\ntogether it will remember its injury down to the smallest, most\nignominious details, and every time will add, of itself, details still\nmore ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting itself with its own\nimagination.  It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings, but yet it\nwill recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will\ninvent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things\nmight happen, and will forgive nothing.  Maybe it will begin to revenge\nitself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind\nthe stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to\nvengeance, or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its\nefforts at revenge it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom\nit revenges itself, while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.\nOn its deathbed it will recall it all over again, with interest\naccumulated over all the years and ...\n\nBut it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in\nthat conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for\nforty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful\nhopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires\nturned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined\nfor ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that\nstrange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies.  It is so subtle, so\ndifficult of analysis, that persons who are a little limited, or even\nsimply persons of strong nerves, will not understand a single atom of\nit.  \"Possibly,\" you will add on your own account with a grin, \"people\nwill not understand it either who have never received a slap in the\nface,\" and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,\nperhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and\nso I speak as one who knows.  I bet that you are thinking that.  But\nset your minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the\nface, though it is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you\nmay think about it. Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given\nso few slaps in the face during my life.  But enough ... not another\nword on that subject of such extreme interest to you.\n\nI will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do not\nunderstand a certain refinement of enjoyment.  Though in certain\ncircumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though\nthis, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have\nsaid already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once.  The\nimpossible means the stone wall!  What stone wall?  Why, of course, the\nlaws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics.  As\nsoon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a\nmonkey, then it is no use scowling, accept it for a fact.  When they\nprove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to\nyou than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this\nconclusion is the final solution of all so-called virtues and duties\nand all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it,\nthere is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics.  Just\ntry refuting it.\n\n\"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a\ncase of twice two makes four!  Nature does not ask your permission, she\nhas nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or\ndislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently\nall her conclusions.  A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so\non.\"\n\nMerciful Heavens!  but what do I care for the laws of nature and\narithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact\nthat twice two makes four?  Of course I cannot break through the wall\nby battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to\nknock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because\nit is a stone wall and I have not the strength.\n\nAs though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did\ncontain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as\ntwice two makes four.  Oh, absurdity of absurdities!  How much better\nit is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the\nimpossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of\nthose impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be\nreconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical\ncombinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting\ntheme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame,\nthough again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least,\nand therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into\nluxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for\nyou to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never\nwill have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a\nbit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no\nknowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these\nuncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the\nmore you do not know, the worse the ache.\n\n\n\nIV\n\n\"Ha, ha, ha!  You will be finding enjoyment in toothache next,\" you\ncry, with a laugh.\n\n\"Well, even in toothache there is enjoyment,\" I answer.  I had\ntoothache for a whole month and I know there is.  In that case, of\ncourse, people are not spiteful in silence, but moan; but they are not\ncandid moans, they are malignant moans, and the malignancy is the whole\npoint.  The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans;\nif he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan.  It is a good\nexample, gentlemen, and I will develop it.  Those moans express in the\nfirst place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating\nto your consciousness; the whole legal system of nature on which you\nspit disdainfully, of course, but from which you suffer all the same\nwhile she does not.  They express the consciousness that you have no\nenemy to punish, but that you have pain; the consciousness that in\nspite of all possible Wagenheims you are in complete slavery to your\nteeth; that if someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and\nif he does not, they will go on aching another three months; and that\nfinally if you are still contumacious and still protest, all that is\nleft you for your own gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your\nwall with your fist as hard as you can, and absolutely nothing more.\nWell, these mortal insults, these jeers on the part of someone unknown,\nend at last in an enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest degree\nof voluptuousness.  I ask you, gentlemen, listen sometimes to the moans\nof an educated man of the nineteenth century suffering from toothache,\non the second or third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan,\nnot as he moaned on the first day, that is, not simply because he has\ntoothache, not just as any coarse peasant, but as a man affected by\nprogress and European civilisation, a man who is \"divorced from the\nsoil and the national elements,\" as they express it now-a-days.  His\nmoans become nasty, disgustingly malignant, and go on for whole days\nand nights.  And of course he knows himself that he is doing himself no\nsort of good with his moans; he knows better than anyone that he is\nonly lacerating and harassing himself and others for nothing; he knows\nthat even the audience before whom he is making his efforts, and his\nwhole family, listen to him with loathing, do not put a ha'porth of\nfaith in him, and inwardly understand that he might moan differently,\nmore simply, without trills and flourishes, and that he is only amusing\nhimself like that from ill-humour, from malignancy.  Well, in all these\nrecognitions and disgraces it is that there lies a voluptuous pleasure.\nAs though he would say: \"I am worrying you, I am lacerating your\nhearts, I am keeping everyone in the house awake.  Well, stay awake\nthen, you, too, feel every minute that I have toothache.  I am not a\nhero to you now, as I tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person,\nan impostor.  Well, so be it, then!  I am very glad that you see\nthrough me.  It is nasty for you to hear my despicable moans: well, let\nit be nasty; here I will let you have a nastier flourish in a\nminute....\"  You do not understand even now, gentlemen?  No, it seems\nour  development and our consciousness must go further to understand\nall the intricacies of this pleasure.  You laugh?  Delighted.  My\njests, gentlemen, are of course in bad taste, jerky, involved, lacking\nself-confidence.  But of course that is because I do not respect\nmyself.  Can a man of perception respect himself at all?\n\n\n\nV\n\nCome, can a man who attempts to find enjoyment in the very feeling of\nhis own degradation possibly have a spark of respect for himself?  I am\nnot saying this now from any mawkish kind of remorse.  And, indeed, I\ncould never endure saying, \"Forgive me, Papa, I won't do it again,\" not\nbecause I am incapable of saying that--on the contrary, perhaps just\nbecause I have been too capable of it, and in what a way, too.  As\nthough of design I used to get into trouble in cases when I was not to\nblame in any way.  That was the nastiest part of it.  At the same time\nI was genuinely touched and penitent, I used to shed tears and, of\ncourse, deceived myself, though I was not acting in the least and there\nwas a sick feeling in my heart at the time....  For that one could not\nblame even the laws of nature, though the laws of nature have\ncontinually all my life offended me more than anything.  It is\nloathsome to remember it all, but it was loathsome even then.  Of\ncourse, a minute or so later I would realise wrathfully that it was all\na lie, a revolting lie, an affected lie, that is, all this penitence,\nthis emotion, these vows of reform.  You will ask why did I worry\nmyself with such antics: answer, because it was very dull to sit with\none's hands folded, and so one began cutting capers.  That is really\nit.  Observe yourselves more carefully, gentlemen, then you will\nunderstand that it is so. I invented adventures for myself and made up\na life, so as at least to live in some way.  How many times it has\nhappened to me--well, for instance, to take offence simply on purpose,\nfor nothing; and one knows oneself, of course, that one is offended at\nnothing; that one is putting it on, but yet one brings oneself at last\nto the point of being really offended. All my life I have had an\nimpulse to play such pranks, so that in the end I could not control it\nin myself.  Another time, twice, in fact, I tried hard to be in love.\nI suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you.  In the depth of my heart\nthere was no faith in my suffering, only a faint stir of mockery, but\nyet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I was jealous, beside\nmyself ... and it was all from ENNUI, gentlemen, all from ENNUI;\ninertia overcame me.  You know the direct, legitimate fruit of\nconsciousness is inertia, that is, conscious\nsitting-with-the-hands-folded.  I have referred to this already.  I\nrepeat, I repeat with emphasis: all \"direct\" persons and men of action\nare active just because they are stupid and limited.  How explain that?\nI will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate\nand secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade\nthemselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have\nfound an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are\nat ease and you know that is the chief thing.  To begin to act, you\nknow, you must first have your mind completely at ease and no trace of\ndoubt left in it.  Why, how am I, for example, to set my mind at rest?\nWhere are the primary causes on which I am to build?  Where are my\nfoundations?  Where am I to get them from?  I exercise myself in\nreflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws\nafter itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity.  That\nis just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection.  It\nmust be a case of the laws of nature again.  What is the result of it\nin the end?  Why, just the same.  Remember I spoke just now of\nvengeance.  (I am sure you did not take it in.)  I said that a man\nrevenges himself because he sees justice in it. Therefore he has found\na primary cause, that is, justice.  And so he is at rest on all sides,\nand consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and successfully,\nbeing persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing.  But I see no\njustice in it, I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently\nif I attempt to revenge myself, it is only out of spite.  Spite, of\ncourse, might overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve\nquite successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is\nnot a cause.  But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began\nwith that just now, you know).  In consequence again of those accursed\nlaws of consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical\ndisintegration.  You look into it, the object flies off into air, your\nreasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes\nnot a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no\none is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left\nagain--that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can.  So you give it up\nwith a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause.\nAnd try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly,\nwithout reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at\nleast for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands\nfolded.  The day after tomorrow, at the latest, you will begin\ndespising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself.  Result: a\nsoap-bubble and inertia.  Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I\nconsider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have\nbeen able neither to begin nor to finish anything.  Granted I am a\nbabbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us.  But what is to\nbe done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is\nbabble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?\n\n\n\nVI\n\nOh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness!  Heavens, how I should\nhave respected myself, then.  I should have respected myself because I\nshould at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least\nhave been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could\nhave believed myself.  Question:  What is he?  Answer:  A sluggard; how\nvery pleasant it would have been to hear that of oneself!  It would\nmean that I was positively defined, it would mean that there was\nsomething to say about me. \"Sluggard\"--why, it is a calling and\nvocation, it is a career.  Do not jest, it is so.  I should then be a\nmember of the best club by right, and should find my occupation in\ncontinually respecting myself.  I knew a gentleman who prided himself\nall his life on being a connoisseur of Lafitte.  He considered this as\nhis positive virtue, and never doubted himself.  He died, not simply\nwith a tranquil, but with a triumphant conscience, and he was quite\nright, too.  Then I should have chosen a career for myself, I should\nhave been a sluggard and a glutton, not a simple one, but, for\ninstance, one with sympathies for everything sublime and beautiful.\nHow do you like that?  I have long had visions of it.  That \"sublime\nand beautiful\" weighs heavily on my mind at forty But that is at forty;\nthen--oh, then it would have been different!  I should have found for\nmyself a form of activity in keeping with it, to be precise, drinking\nto the health of everything \"sublime and beautiful.\"  I should have\nsnatched at every opportunity to drop a tear into my glass and then to\ndrain it to all that is \"sublime and beautiful.\"  I should then have\nturned everything into the sublime and the beautiful; in the nastiest,\nunquestionable trash, I should have sought out the sublime and the\nbeautiful.  I should have exuded tears like a wet sponge.  An artist,\nfor instance, paints a picture worthy of Gay.  At once I drink to the\nhealth of the artist who painted the picture worthy of Gay, because I\nlove all that is \"sublime and beautiful.\"  An author has written AS YOU\nWILL: at once I drink to the health of \"anyone you will\" because I love\nall that is \"sublime and beautiful.\"\n\nI should claim respect for doing so.  I should persecute anyone who\nwould not show me respect.  I should live at ease, I should die with\ndignity, why, it is charming, perfectly charming!  And what a good\nround belly I should have grown, what a treble chin I should have\nestablished, what a ruby nose I should have coloured for myself, so\nthat everyone would have said, looking at me: \"Here is an asset!  Here\nis something real and solid!\"  And, say what you like, it is very\nagreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this negative age.\n\n\n\nVII\n\nBut these are all golden dreams.  Oh, tell me, who was it first\nannounced, who was it first proclaimed, that man only does nasty things\nbecause he does not know his own interests; and that if he were\nenlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man\nwould at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and\nnoble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage,\nhe would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else, and we all\nknow that not one man can, consciously, act against his own interests,\nconsequently, so to say, through necessity, he would begin doing good?\nOh, the babe!  Oh, the pure, innocent child!  Why, in the first place,\nwhen in all these thousands of years has there been a time when man has\nacted only from his own interest?  What is to be done with the millions\nof facts that bear witness that men, CONSCIOUSLY, that is fully\nunderstanding their real interests, have left them in the background\nand have rushed headlong on another path, to meet peril and danger,\ncompelled to this course by nobody and by nothing, but, as it were,\nsimply disliking the beaten track, and have obstinately, wilfully,\nstruck out another difficult, absurd way, seeking it almost in the\ndarkness.  So, I suppose, this obstinacy and perversity were pleasanter\nto them than any advantage....  Advantage! What is advantage?  And will\nyou take it upon yourself to define with perfect accuracy in what the\nadvantage of man consists?  And what if it so happens that a man's\nadvantage, SOMETIMES, not only may, but even must, consist in his\ndesiring in certain cases what is harmful to himself and not\nadvantageous.  And if so, if there can be such a case, the whole\nprinciple falls into dust.  What do you think--are there such cases?\nYou laugh; laugh away, gentlemen, but only answer me: have man's\nadvantages been reckoned up with perfect certainty?  Are there not some\nwhich not only have not been included but cannot possibly be included\nunder any classification?  You see, you gentlemen have, to the best of\nmy knowledge, taken your whole register of human advantages from the\naverages of statistical figures and politico-economical formulas.  Your\nadvantages are prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace--and so on, and so\non. So that the man who should, for instance, go openly and knowingly\nin opposition to all that list would to your thinking, and indeed mine,\ntoo, of course, be an obscurantist or an absolute madman: would not he?\nBut, you know, this is what is surprising: why does it so happen that\nall these statisticians, sages and lovers of humanity, when they reckon\nup human advantages invariably leave out one?  They don't even take it\ninto their reckoning in the form in which it should be taken, and the\nwhole reckoning depends upon that.  It would be no greater matter, they\nwould simply have to take it, this advantage, and add it to the list.\nBut the trouble is, that this strange advantage does not fall under any\nclassification and is not in place in any list.  I have a friend for\ninstance ...  Ech! gentlemen, but of course he is your friend, too; and\nindeed there is no one, no one to whom he is not a friend!  When he\nprepares for any undertaking this gentleman immediately explains to\nyou, elegantly and clearly, exactly how he must act in accordance with\nthe laws of reason and truth.  What is more, he will talk to you with\nexcitement and passion of the true normal interests of man; with irony\nhe will upbraid the short-sighted fools who do not understand their own\ninterests, nor the true significance of virtue; and, within a quarter\nof an hour, without any sudden outside provocation, but simply through\nsomething inside him which is stronger than all his interests, he will\ngo off on quite a different tack--that is, act in direct opposition to\nwhat he has just been saying about himself, in opposition to the laws\nof reason, in opposition to his own advantage, in fact in opposition to\neverything ...  I warn you that my friend is a compound personality and\ntherefore it is difficult to blame him as an individual.  The fact is,\ngentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to\nalmost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical)\nthere is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which\nwe spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than\nall other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready\nto act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason,\nhonour, peace, prosperity--in fact, in opposition to all those\nexcellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental,\nmost advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all.  \"Yes, but\nit's advantage all the same,\" you will retort.  But excuse me, I'll\nmake the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What\nmatters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that\nit breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every\nsystem constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind.  In\nfact, it upsets everything.  But before I mention this advantage to\nyou, I want to compromise myself personally, and therefore I boldly\ndeclare that all these fine systems, all these theories for explaining\nto mankind their real normal interests, in order that inevitably\nstriving to pursue these interests they may at once become good and\nnoble--are, in my opinion, so far, mere logical exercises!  Yes,\nlogical exercises.  Why, to maintain this theory of the regeneration of\nmankind by means of the pursuit of his own advantage is to my mind\nalmost the same thing ... as to affirm, for instance, following Buckle,\nthat through civilisation mankind becomes softer, and consequently less\nbloodthirsty and less fitted for warfare.  Logically it does seem to\nfollow from his arguments. But man has such a predilection for systems\nand abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth\nintentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to\njustify his logic.  I take this example because it is the most glaring\ninstance of it.  Only look about you: blood is being spilt in streams,\nand in the merriest way, as though it were champagne.  Take the whole\nof the nineteenth century in which Buckle lived.  Take Napoleon--the\nGreat and also the present one.  Take North America--the eternal union.\nTake the farce of Schleswig-Holstein.... And what is it that\ncivilisation softens in us?  The only gain of civilisation for mankind\nis the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely\nnothing more.  And through the development of this many-sidedness man\nmay come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed.  In fact, this has already\nhappened to him.  Have you noticed that it is the most civilised\ngentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas\nand Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so\nconspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they\nare so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to\nus.  In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more\nbloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty.  In\nold days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace\nexterminated those he thought proper.  Now we do think bloodshed\nabominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy\nthan ever. Which is worse?  Decide that for yourselves.  They say that\nCleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking\ngold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from\ntheir screams and writhings.  You will say that that was in the\ncomparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too,\nbecause also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that\nthough man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages,\nhe is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would\ndictate.  But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn\nwhen he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and\nscience have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a\nnormal direction.  You are confident that then man will cease from\nINTENTIONAL error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set\nhis will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say,\nscience itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous\nluxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own,\nand that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the\nstop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws\nof nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it,\nbut is done of itself, by the laws of nature.  Consequently we have\nonly to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to\nanswer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him.\nAll human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these\nlaws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and\nentered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain\nedifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which\neverything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will\nbe no more incidents or adventures in the world.\n\nThen--this is all what you say--new economic relations will be\nestablished, all ready-made and worked out with mathematical\nexactitude, so that every possible question will vanish in the\ntwinkling of an eye, simply because every possible answer to it will be\nprovided.  Then the \"Palace of Crystal\" will be built.  Then ...  In\nfact, those will be halcyon days.  Of course there is no guaranteeing\n(this is my comment) that it will not be, for instance, frightfully\ndull then (for what will one have to do when everything will be\ncalculated and tabulated), but on the other hand everything will be\nextraordinarily rational.  Of course boredom may lead you to anything.\nIt is boredom sets one sticking golden pins into people, but all that\nwould not matter.  What is bad (this is my comment again) is that I\ndare say people will be thankful for the gold pins then.  Man is\nstupid, you know, phenomenally stupid; or rather he is not at all\nstupid, but he is so ungrateful that you could not find another like\nhim in all creation.  I, for instance, would not be in the least\nsurprised if all of a sudden, A PROPOS of nothing, in the midst of\ngeneral prosperity a gentleman with an ignoble, or rather with a\nreactionary and ironical, countenance were to arise and, putting his\narms akimbo, say to us all: \"I say, gentleman, hadn't we better kick\nover the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to\nsend these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more\nat our own sweet foolish will!\" That again would not matter, but what\nis annoying is that he would be sure to find followers--such is the\nnature of man.  And all that for the most foolish reason, which, one\nwould think, was hardly worth mentioning: that is, that man everywhere\nand at all times, whoever he may be, has preferred to act as he chose\nand not in the least as his reason and advantage dictated.  And one may\nchoose what is contrary to one's own interests, and sometimes one\nPOSITIVELY OUGHT (that is my idea).  One's own free unfettered choice,\none's own caprice, however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at\ntimes to frenzy--is that very \"most advantageous advantage\" which we\nhave overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which\nall systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms.  And\nhow do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice?\nWhat has made them conceive that man must want a rationally\nadvantageous choice?  What man wants is simply INDEPENDENT choice,\nwhatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.  And\nchoice, of course, the devil only knows what choice.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\n\"Ha! ha! ha!  But you know there is no such thing as choice in reality,\nsay what you like,\" you will interpose with a chuckle.  \"Science has\nsucceeded in so far analysing man that we know already that choice and\nwhat is called freedom of will is nothing else than--\"\n\nStay, gentlemen, I meant to begin with that myself I confess, I was\nrather frightened.  I was just going to say that the devil only knows\nwhat choice depends on, and that perhaps that was a very good thing,\nbut I remembered the teaching of science ... and pulled myself up.  And\nhere you have begun upon it.  Indeed, if there really is some day\ndiscovered a formula for all our desires and caprices--that is, an\nexplanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they\ndevelop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on,\nthat is a real mathematical formula--then, most likely, man will at\nonce cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to.  For who\nwould want to choose by rule?  Besides, he will at once be transformed\nfrom a human being into an organ-stop or something of the sort; for\nwhat is a man without desires, without free will and without choice, if\nnot a stop in an organ?  What do you think?  Let us reckon the\nchances--can such a thing happen or not?\n\n\"H'm!\" you decide.  \"Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view\nof our advantage.  We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our\nfoolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a\nsupposed advantage.  But when all that is explained and worked out on\npaper (which is perfectly possible, for it is contemptible and\nsenseless to suppose that some laws of nature man will never\nunderstand), then certainly so-called desires will no longer exist.\nFor if a desire should come into conflict with reason we shall then\nreason and not desire, because it will be impossible retaining our\nreason to be SENSELESS in our desires, and in that way knowingly act\nagainst reason and desire to injure ourselves. And as all choice and\nreasoning can be really calculated--because there will some day be\ndiscovered the laws of our so-called free will--so, joking apart, there\nmay one day be something like a table constructed of them, so that we\nreally shall choose in accordance with it.  If, for instance, some day\nthey calculate and prove to me that I made a long nose at someone\nbecause I could not help making a long nose at him and that I had to do\nit in that particular way, what FREEDOM is left me, especially if I am\na learned man and have taken my degree somewhere?  Then I should be\nable to calculate my whole life for thirty years beforehand.  In short,\nif this could be arranged there would be nothing left for us to do;\nanyway, we should have to understand that.  And, in fact, we ought\nunwearyingly to repeat to ourselves that at such and such a time and in\nsuch and such circumstances nature does not ask our leave; that we have\ngot to take her as she is and not fashion her to suit our fancy, and if\nwe really aspire to formulas and tables of rules, and well, even ... to\nthe chemical retort, there's no help for it, we must accept the retort\ntoo, or else it will be accepted without our consent....\"\n\nYes, but here I come to a stop!  Gentlemen, you must excuse me for\nbeing over-philosophical; it's the result of forty years underground!\nAllow me to indulge my fancy.  You see, gentlemen, reason is an\nexcellent thing, there's no disputing that, but reason is nothing but\nreason and satisfies only the rational side of man's nature, while will\nis a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life\nincluding reason and all the impulses. And although our life, in this\nmanifestation of it, is often worthless, yet it is life and not simply\nextracting square roots.  Here I, for instance, quite naturally want to\nlive, in order to satisfy all my capacities for life, and not simply my\ncapacity for reasoning, that is, not simply one twentieth of my\ncapacity for life.  What does reason know?  Reason only knows what it\nhas succeeded in learning (some things, perhaps, it will never learn;\nthis is a poor comfort, but why not say so frankly?) and human nature\nacts as a whole, with everything that is in it, consciously or\nunconsciously, and, even if it goes wrong, it lives.  I suspect,\ngentlemen, that you are looking at me with compassion; you tell me\nagain that an enlightened and developed man, such, in short, as the\nfuture man will be, cannot consciously desire anything disadvantageous\nto himself, that that can be proved mathematically.  I thoroughly\nagree, it can--by mathematics.  But I repeat for the hundredth time,\nthere is one case, one only, when man may consciously, purposely,\ndesire what is injurious to himself, what is stupid, very\nstupid--simply in order to have the right to desire for himself even\nwhat is very stupid and not to be bound by an obligation to desire only\nwhat is sensible.  Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of\nours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than\nanything else on earth, especially in certain cases.  And in particular\nit may be more advantageous than any advantage even when it does us\nobvious harm, and contradicts the soundest conclusions of our reason\nconcerning our advantage--for in any circumstances it preserves for us\nwhat is most precious and most important--that is, our personality, our\nindividuality.  Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most\nprecious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in\nagreement with reason; and especially if this be not abused but kept\nwithin bounds.  It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy.  But\nvery often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly\nopposed to reason ... and ... and ... do you know that that, too, is\nprofitable, sometimes even praiseworthy?  Gentlemen, let us suppose\nthat man is not stupid.  (Indeed one cannot refuse to suppose that, if\nonly from the one consideration, that, if man is stupid, then who is\nwise?)  But if he is not stupid, he is monstrously ungrateful!\nPhenomenally ungrateful.  In fact, I believe that the best definition\nof man is the ungrateful biped.  But that is not all, that is not his\nworst defect; his worst defect is his perpetual moral obliquity,\nperpetual--from the days of the Flood to the Schleswig-Holstein period.\nMoral obliquity and consequently lack of good sense; for it has long\nbeen accepted that lack of good sense is due to no other cause than\nmoral obliquity.  Put it to the test and cast your eyes upon the\nhistory of mankind.  What will you see?  Is it a grand spectacle?\nGrand, if you like.  Take the Colossus of Rhodes, for instance, that's\nworth something.  With good reason Mr. Anaevsky testifies of it that\nsome say that it is the work of man's hands, while others maintain that\nit has been created by nature herself.  Is it many-coloured?  May be it\nis many-coloured, too: if one takes the dress uniforms, military and\ncivilian, of all peoples in all ages--that alone is worth something,\nand if you take the undress uniforms you will never get to the end of\nit; no historian would be equal to the job.  Is it monotonous? May be\nit's monotonous too: it's fighting and fighting; they are fighting now,\nthey fought first and they fought last--you will admit, that it is\nalmost too monotonous.  In short, one may say anything about the\nhistory of the world--anything that might enter the most disordered\nimagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational.  The\nvery word sticks in one's throat.  And, indeed, this is the odd thing\nthat is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life\nmoral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it\ntheir object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as\npossible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in\norder to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally\nin this world.  And yet we all know that those very people sooner or\nlater have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a\nmost unseemly one.  Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he\nis a being endowed with strange qualities?  Shower upon him every\nearthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but\nbubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic\nprosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat\ncakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even\nthen out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some\nnasty trick.  He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately\ndesire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply\nto introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic\nelement.  It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he\nwill desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though\nthat were so necessary--that men still are men and not the keys of a\npiano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that\nsoon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.  And that\nis not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if\nthis were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then\nhe would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something\nperverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point.  And if\nhe does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will\ncontrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!  He will\nlaunch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his\nprivilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may\nbe by his curse alone he will attain his object--that is, convince\nhimself that he is a man and not a piano-key!  If you say that all\nthis, too, can be calculated and tabulated--chaos and darkness and\ncurses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand\nwould stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would\npurposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!  I\nbelieve in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems\nto consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a\nman and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be\nby cannibalism!  And this being so, can one help being tempted to\nrejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on\nsomething we don't know?\n\nYou will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one\nis touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my\nwill should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own\nnormal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic.\n\nGood heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to\ntabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make\nfour?  Twice two makes four without my will.  As if free will meant\nthat!\n\n\n\nIX\n\nGentlemen, I am joking, and I know myself that my jokes are not\nbrilliant, but you know one can take everything as a joke.  I am,\nperhaps, jesting against the grain.  Gentlemen, I am tormented by\nquestions; answer them for me.  You, for instance, want to cure men of\ntheir old habits and reform their will in accordance with science and\ngood sense. But how do you know, not only that it is possible, but also\nthat it is DESIRABLE to reform man in that way?  And what leads you to\nthe conclusion that man's inclinations NEED reforming?  In short, how\ndo you know that such a reformation will be a benefit to man?  And to\ngo to the root of the matter, why are you so positively convinced that\nnot to act against his real normal interests guaranteed by the\nconclusions of reason and arithmetic is certainly always advantageous\nfor man and must always be a law for mankind?  So far, you know, this\nis only your supposition.  It may be the law of logic, but not the law\nof humanity.  You think, gentlemen, perhaps that I am mad?  Allow me to\ndefend myself.  I agree that man is pre-eminently a creative animal,\npredestined to strive consciously for an object and to engage in\nengineering--that is, incessantly and eternally to make new roads,\nWHEREVER THEY MAY LEAD.  But the reason why he wants sometimes to go\noff at a tangent may just be that he is PREDESTINED to make the road,\nand perhaps, too, that however stupid the \"direct\" practical man may\nbe, the thought sometimes will occur to him that the road almost always\ndoes lead SOMEWHERE, and that the destination it leads to is less\nimportant than the process of making it, and that the chief thing is to\nsave the well-conducted child from despising engineering, and so giving\nway to the fatal idleness, which, as we all know, is the mother of all\nthe vices.  Man likes to make roads and to create, that is a fact\nbeyond dispute. But why has he such a passionate love for destruction\nand chaos also?  Tell me that!  But on that point I want to say a\ncouple of words myself.  May it not be that he loves chaos and\ndestruction (there can be no disputing that he does sometimes love it)\nbecause he is instinctively afraid of attaining his object and\ncompleting the edifice he is constructing?  Who knows, perhaps he only\nloves that edifice from a distance, and is by no means in love with it\nat close quarters; perhaps he only loves building it and does not want\nto live in it, but will leave it, when completed, for the use of LES\nANIMAUX DOMESTIQUES--such as the ants, the sheep, and so on.  Now the\nants have quite a different taste.  They have a marvellous edifice of\nthat pattern which endures for ever--the ant-heap.\n\nWith the ant-heap the respectable race of ants began and with the\nant-heap they will probably end, which does the greatest credit to\ntheir perseverance and good sense.  But man is a frivolous and\nincongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the\nprocess of the game, not the end of it.  And who knows (there is no\nsaying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind\nis striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other\nwords, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must\nalways be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four,\nand such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of\ndeath.  Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical\ncertainty, and I am afraid of it now.  Granted that man does nothing\nbut seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices\nhis life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I\nassure you.  He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing\nfor him to look for.  When workmen have finished their work they do at\nleast receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to\nthe police-station--and there is occupation for a week.  But where can\nman go?  Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when\nhe has attained such objects.  He loves the process of attaining, but\ndoes not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very\nabsurd.  In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind\nof jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all,\nsomething insufferable.  Twice two makes four seems to me simply a\npiece of insolence.  Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands\nwith arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.  I admit that twice\ntwo makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything\nits due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.\n\nAnd why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the\nnormal and the positive--in other words, only what is conducive to\nwelfare--is for the advantage of man?  Is not reason in error as\nregards advantage?  Does not man, perhaps, love something besides\nwell-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering?  Perhaps suffering\nis just as great a benefit to him as well-being?  Man is sometimes\nextraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a\nfact.  There is no need to appeal to universal history to prove that;\nonly ask yourself, if you are a man and have lived at all.  As far as\nmy personal opinion is concerned, to care only for well-being seems to\nme positively ill-bred.  Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very\npleasant, too, to smash things.  I hold no brief for suffering nor for\nwell-being either.  I am standing for ... my caprice, and for its being\nguaranteed to me when necessary.  Suffering would be out of place in\nvaudevilles, for instance; I know that.  In the \"Palace of Crystal\" it\nis unthinkable; suffering means doubt, negation, and what would be the\ngood of a \"palace of crystal\" if there could be any doubt about it?\nAnd yet I think man will never renounce real suffering, that is,\ndestruction and chaos.  Why, suffering is the sole origin of\nconsciousness.  Though I did lay it down at the beginning that\nconsciousness is the greatest misfortune for man, yet I know man prizes\nit and would not give it up for any satisfaction.  Consciousness, for\ninstance, is infinitely superior to twice two makes four.  Once you\nhave mathematical certainty there is nothing left to do or to\nunderstand.  There will be nothing left but to bottle up your five\nsenses and plunge into contemplation.  While if you stick to\nconsciousness, even though the same result is attained, you can at\nleast flog yourself at times, and that will, at any rate, liven you up.\nReactionary as it is, corporal punishment is better than nothing.\n\n\n\nX\n\nYou believe in a palace of crystal that can never be destroyed--a\npalace at which one will not be able to put out one's tongue or make a\nlong nose on the sly.  And perhaps that is just why I am afraid of this\nedifice, that it is of crystal and can never be destroyed and that one\ncannot put one's tongue out at it even on the sly.\n\nYou see, if it were not a palace, but a hen-house, I might creep into\nit to avoid getting wet, and yet I would not call the hen-house a\npalace out of gratitude to it for keeping me dry.  You laugh and say\nthat in such circumstances a hen-house is as good as a mansion.  Yes, I\nanswer, if one had to live simply to keep out of the rain.\n\nBut what is to be done if I have taken it into my head that that is not\nthe only object in life, and that if one must live one had better live\nin a mansion?  That is my choice, my desire.  You will only eradicate\nit when you have changed my preference.  Well, do change it, allure me\nwith something else, give me another ideal.  But meanwhile I will not\ntake a hen-house for a mansion.  The palace of crystal may be an idle\ndream, it may be that it is inconsistent with the laws of nature and\nthat I have invented it only through my own stupidity, through the\nold-fashioned irrational habits of my generation.  But what does it\nmatter to me that it is inconsistent?  That makes no difference since\nit exists in my desires, or rather exists as long as my desires exist.\nPerhaps you are laughing again? Laugh away; I will put up with any\nmockery rather than pretend that I am satisfied when I am hungry.  I\nknow, anyway, that I will not be put off with a compromise, with a\nrecurring zero, simply because it is consistent with the laws of nature\nand actually exists.  I will not accept as the crown of my desires a\nblock of buildings with tenements for the poor on a lease of a thousand\nyears, and perhaps with a sign-board of a dentist hanging out. Destroy\nmy desires, eradicate my ideals, show me something better, and I will\nfollow you.  You will say, perhaps, that it is not worth your trouble;\nbut in that case I can give you the same answer.  We are discussing\nthings seriously; but if you won't deign to give me your attention, I\nwill drop your acquaintance.  I can retreat into my underground hole.\n\nBut while I am alive and have desires I would rather my hand were\nwithered off than bring one brick to such a building!  Don't remind me\nthat I have just rejected the palace of crystal for the sole reason\nthat one cannot put out one's tongue at it.  I did not say because I am\nso fond of putting my tongue out.  Perhaps the thing I resented was,\nthat of all your edifices there has not been one at which one could not\nput out one's tongue.  On the contrary, I would let my tongue be cut\noff out of gratitude if things could be so arranged that I should lose\nall desire to put it out.  It is not my fault that things cannot be so\narranged, and that one must be satisfied with model flats.  Then why am\nI made with such desires?  Can I have been constructed simply in order\nto come to the conclusion that all my construction is a cheat?  Can\nthis be my whole purpose?  I do not believe it.\n\nBut do you know what: I am convinced that we underground folk ought to\nbe kept on a curb.  Though we may sit forty years underground without\nspeaking, when we do come out into the light of day and break out we\ntalk and talk and talk....\n\n\n\nXI\n\nThe long and the short of it is, gentlemen, that it is better to do\nnothing! Better conscious inertia!  And so hurrah for underground!\nThough I have said that I envy the normal man to the last drop of my\nbile, yet I should not care to be in his place such as he is now\n(though I shall not cease envying him).  No, no; anyway the underground\nlife is more advantageous. There, at any rate, one can ...  Oh, but\neven now I am lying!  I am lying because I know myself that it is not\nunderground that is better, but something different, quite different,\nfor which I am thirsting, but which I cannot find!  Damn underground!\n\nI will tell you another thing that would be better, and that is, if I\nmyself believed in anything of what I have just written.  I swear to\nyou, gentlemen, there is not one thing, not one word of what I have\nwritten that I really believe.  That is, I believe it, perhaps, but at\nthe same time I feel and suspect that I am lying like a cobbler.\n\n\"Then why have you written all this?\" you will say to me.  \"I ought to\nput you underground for forty years without anything to do and then\ncome to you in your cellar, to find out what stage you have reached!\nHow can a man be left with nothing to do for forty years?\"\n\n\"Isn't that shameful, isn't that humiliating?\" you will say, perhaps,\nwagging your heads contemptuously.  \"You thirst for life and try to\nsettle the problems of life by a logical tangle.  And how persistent,\nhow insolent are your sallies, and at the same time what a scare you\nare in!  You talk nonsense and are pleased with it; you say impudent\nthings and are in continual alarm and apologising for them.  You\ndeclare that you are afraid of nothing and at the same time try to\ningratiate yourself in our good opinion.  You declare that you are\ngnashing your teeth and at the same time you try to be witty so as to\namuse us.  You know that your witticisms are not witty, but you are\nevidently well satisfied with their literary value.  You may, perhaps,\nhave really suffered, but you have no respect for your own suffering.\nYou may have sincerity, but you have no modesty; out of the pettiest\nvanity you expose your sincerity to publicity and ignominy.  You\ndoubtlessly mean to say something, but hide your last word through\nfear, because you have not the resolution to utter it, and only have a\ncowardly impudence.  You boast of consciousness, but you are not sure\nof your ground, for though your mind works, yet your heart is darkened\nand corrupt, and you cannot have a full, genuine consciousness without\na pure heart.  And how intrusive you are, how you insist and grimace!\nLies, lies, lies!\"\n\nOf course I have myself made up all the things you say.  That, too, is\nfrom underground.  I have been for forty years listening to you through\na crack under the floor.  I have invented them myself, there was\nnothing else I could invent.  It is no wonder that I have learned it by\nheart and it has taken a literary form....\n\nBut can you really be so credulous as to think that I will print all\nthis and give it to you to read too?  And another problem: why do I\ncall you \"gentlemen,\" why do I address you as though you really were my\nreaders? Such confessions as I intend to make are never printed nor\ngiven to other people to read.  Anyway, I am not strong-minded enough\nfor that, and I don't see why I should be.  But you see a fancy has\noccurred to me and I want to realise it at all costs.  Let me explain.\n\nEvery man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but\nonly to his friends.  He has other matters in his mind which he would\nnot reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in\nsecret.  But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even\nto himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored\naway in his mind. The more decent he is, the greater the number of such\nthings in his mind.  Anyway, I have only lately determined to remember\nsome of my early adventures.  Till now I have always avoided them, even\nwith a certain uneasiness.  Now, when I am not only recalling them, but\nhave actually decided to write an account of them, I want to try the\nexperiment whether one can, even with oneself, be perfectly open and\nnot take fright at the whole truth.  I will observe, in parenthesis,\nthat Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility,\nand that man is bound to lie about himself.  He considers that Rousseau\ncertainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even\nintentionally lied, out of vanity.  I am convinced that Heine is right;\nI quite understand how sometimes one may, out of sheer vanity,\nattribute regular crimes to oneself, and indeed I can very well\nconceive that kind of vanity.  But Heine judged of people who made\ntheir confessions to the public.  I write only for myself, and I wish\nto declare once and for all that if I write as though I were addressing\nreaders, that is simply because it is easier for me to write in that\nform.  It is a form, an empty form--I shall never have readers.  I have\nmade this plain already ...\n\nI don't wish to be hampered by any restrictions in the compilation of\nmy notes.  I shall not attempt any system or method.  I will jot things\ndown as I remember them.\n\nBut here, perhaps, someone will catch at the word and ask me: if you\nreally don't reckon on readers, why do you make such compacts with\nyourself--and on paper too--that is, that you won't attempt any system\nor method, that you jot things down as you remember them, and so on,\nand so on?  Why are you explaining?  Why do you apologise?\n\nWell, there it is, I answer.\n\nThere is a whole psychology in all this, though.  Perhaps it is simply\nthat I am a coward.  And perhaps that I purposely imagine an audience\nbefore me in order that I may be more dignified while I write.  There\nare perhaps thousands of reasons.  Again, what is my object precisely\nin writing?  If it is not for the benefit of the public why should I\nnot simply recall these incidents in my own mind without putting them\non paper?\n\nQuite so; but yet it  is more imposing on paper.  There is something\nmore impressive in it; I shall be better able to criticise myself and\nimprove my style.  Besides, I shall perhaps obtain actual relief from\nwriting. Today, for instance, I am particularly oppressed by one memory\nof a distant past.  It came back vividly to my mind a few days ago, and\nhas remained haunting me like an annoying tune that one cannot get rid\nof. And yet I must get rid of it somehow.  I have hundreds of such\nreminiscences; but at times some one stands out from the hundred and\noppresses me. For some reason I believe that if I write it down I\nshould get rid of it. Why not try?\n\nBesides, I am bored, and I never have anything to do.  Writing will be\na sort of work.  They say work makes man kind-hearted and honest.\nWell, here is a chance for me, anyway.\n\nSnow is falling today, yellow and dingy.  It fell yesterday, too, and a\nfew days ago.  I fancy it is the wet snow that has reminded me of that\nincident which I cannot shake off now.  And so let it be a story A\nPROPOS of the falling snow.\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\nA Propos of the Wet Snow\n\n  When from dark error's subjugation\n  My words of passionate exhortation\n    Had wrenched thy fainting spirit free;\n  And writhing prone in thine affliction\n  Thou didst recall with malediction\n    The vice that had encompassed thee:\n  And when thy slumbering conscience, fretting\n    By recollection's torturing flame,\n  Thou didst reveal the hideous setting\n    Of thy life's current ere I came:\n  When suddenly I saw thee sicken,\n    And weeping, hide thine anguished face,\n  Revolted, maddened, horror-stricken,\n    At memories of foul disgrace.\n            NEKRASSOV\n            (translated by Juliet Soskice).\n\n\n\nI\n\nAT THAT TIME I was only twenty-four.  My life was even then gloomy,\nill-regulated, and as solitary as that of a savage.  I made friends\nwith no one and positively avoided talking, and buried myself more and\nmore in my hole.  At work in the office I never looked at anyone, and\nwas perfectly well aware that my companions looked upon me, not only as\na queer fellow, but even looked upon me--I always fancied this--with a\nsort of loathing.  I sometimes wondered why it was that nobody except\nme fancied that he was looked upon with aversion?  One of the clerks\nhad a most repulsive, pock-marked face, which looked positively\nvillainous.  I believe I should not have dared to look at anyone with\nsuch an unsightly countenance.  Another had such a very dirty old\nuniform that there was an unpleasant odour in his proximity.  Yet not\none of these gentlemen showed the slightest self-consciousness--either\nabout their clothes or their countenance or their character in any way.\nNeither of them ever imagined that they were looked at with repulsion;\nif they had imagined it they would not have minded--so long as their\nsuperiors did not look at them in that way.  It is clear to me now\nthat, owing to my unbounded vanity and to the high standard I set for\nmyself, I often looked at myself with furious discontent, which verged\non loathing, and so I inwardly attributed the same feeling to everyone.\nI hated my face, for instance: I thought it disgusting, and even\nsuspected that there was something base in my expression, and so every\nday when I turned up at the office I tried to behave as independently\nas possible, and to assume a lofty expression, so that I might not be\nsuspected of being abject.  \"My face may be ugly,\" I thought, \"but let\nit be lofty, expressive, and, above all, EXTREMELY intelligent.\"  But I\nwas positively and painfully certain that it was impossible for my\ncountenance ever to express those qualities.  And what was worst of\nall, I thought it actually stupid looking, and I would have been quite\nsatisfied if I could have looked intelligent.  In fact, I would even\nhave put up with looking base if, at the same time, my face could have\nbeen thought strikingly intelligent.\n\nOf course, I hated my fellow clerks one and all, and I despised them\nall, yet at the same time I was, as it were, afraid of them.  In fact,\nit happened at times that I thought more highly of them than of myself.\nIt somehow happened quite suddenly that I alternated between despising\nthem and thinking them superior to myself.  A cultivated and decent man\ncannot be vain without setting a fearfully high standard for himself,\nand without despising and almost hating himself at certain moments.\nBut whether I despised them or thought them superior I dropped my eyes\nalmost every time I met anyone.  I even made experiments whether I\ncould face so and so's looking at me, and I was always the first to\ndrop my eyes.  This worried me to distraction.  I had a sickly dread,\ntoo, of being ridiculous, and so had a slavish passion for the\nconventional in everything external.  I loved to fall into the common\nrut, and had a whole-hearted terror of any kind of eccentricity in\nmyself.  But how could I live up to it?  I was morbidly sensitive as a\nman of our age should be.  They were all stupid, and as like one\nanother as so many sheep.  Perhaps I was the only one in the office who\nfancied that I was a coward and a slave, and I fancied it just because\nI was more highly developed.  But it was not only that I fancied it, it\nreally was so. I was a coward and a slave.  I say this without the\nslightest embarrassment. Every decent man of our age must be a coward\nand a slave.  That is his normal condition.  Of that I am firmly\npersuaded.  He is made and constructed to that very end.  And not only\nat the present time owing to some casual circumstances, but always, at\nall times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave.  It is the\nlaw of nature for all decent people all over the earth.  If anyone of\nthem happens to be valiant about something, he need not be comforted\nnor carried away by that; he would show the white feather just the same\nbefore something else.  That is how it invariably and inevitably ends.\nOnly donkeys and mules are valiant, and they only till they are pushed\nup to the wall.  It is not worth while to pay attention to them for\nthey really are of no consequence.\n\nAnother circumstance, too, worried me in those days: that there was no\none like me and I was unlike anyone else.  \"I am alone and they are\nEVERYONE,\" I thought--and pondered.\n\nFrom that it is evident that I was still a youngster.\n\nThe very opposite sometimes happened.  It was loathsome sometimes to go\nto the office; things reached such a point that I often came home ill.\nBut all at once, A PROPOS of nothing, there would come a phase of\nscepticism and indifference (everything happened in phases to me), and\nI would laugh myself at my intolerance and fastidiousness, I would\nreproach myself with being ROMANTIC.  At one time I was unwilling to\nspeak to anyone, while at other times I would not only talk, but go to\nthe length of contemplating making friends with them.  All my\nfastidiousness would suddenly, for no rhyme or reason, vanish.  Who\nknows, perhaps I never had really had it, and it had simply been\naffected, and got out of books.  I have not decided that question even\nnow.  Once I quite made friends with them, visited their homes, played\npreference, drank vodka, talked of promotions....  But here let me\nmake a digression.\n\nWe Russians, speaking generally, have never had those foolish\ntranscendental \"romantics\"--German, and still more French--on whom\nnothing produces any effect; if there were an earthquake, if all France\nperished at the barricades, they would still be the same, they would\nnot even have the decency to affect a change, but would still go on\nsinging their transcendental songs to the hour of their death, because\nthey are fools.  We, in Russia, have no fools; that is well known.\nThat is what distinguishes us from foreign lands.  Consequently these\ntranscendental natures are not found amongst us in their pure form.\nThe idea that they are is due to our \"realistic\" journalists and\ncritics of that day, always on the look out for Kostanzhoglos and Uncle\nPyotr Ivanitchs and foolishly accepting them as our ideal; they have\nslandered our romantics, taking them for the same transcendental sort\nas in Germany or France.  On the contrary, the characteristics of our\n\"romantics\" are absolutely and directly opposed to the transcendental\nEuropean type, and no European standard can be applied to them.  (Allow\nme to make use of this word \"romantic\"--an old-fashioned and much\nrespected word which has done good service and is familiar to all.)\nThe characteristics of our romantic are to understand everything, TO\nSEE EVERYTHING AND TO SEE IT OFTEN INCOMPARABLY MORE CLEARLY THAN OUR\nMOST REALISTIC MINDS SEE IT; to refuse to accept anyone or anything,\nbut at the same time not to despise anything; to give way, to yield,\nfrom policy; never to lose sight of a useful practical object (such as\nrent-free quarters at the government expense, pensions, decorations),\nto keep their eye on that object through all the enthusiasms and\nvolumes of lyrical poems, and at the same time to preserve \"the sublime\nand the beautiful\" inviolate within them to the hour of their death,\nand to preserve themselves also, incidentally, like some precious jewel\nwrapped in cotton wool if only for the benefit of \"the sublime and the\nbeautiful.\"  Our \"romantic\" is a man of great breadth and the greatest\nrogue of all our rogues, I assure you....  I can assure you from\nexperience, indeed.  Of course, that is, if he is intelligent.  But\nwhat am I saying!  The romantic is always intelligent, and I only meant\nto observe that although we have had foolish romantics they don't\ncount, and they were only so because in the flower of their youth they\ndegenerated into Germans, and to preserve their precious jewel more\ncomfortably, settled somewhere out there--by preference in Weimar or\nthe Black Forest.\n\nI, for instance, genuinely despised my official work and did not openly\nabuse it simply because I was in it myself and got a salary for it.\nAnyway, take note, I did not openly abuse it.  Our romantic would\nrather go out of his mind--a thing, however, which very rarely\nhappens--than take to open abuse, unless he had some other career in\nview; and he is never kicked out.  At most, they would take him to the\nlunatic asylum as \"the King of Spain\" if he should go very mad.  But it\nis only the thin, fair people who go out of their minds in Russia.\nInnumerable \"romantics\" attain later in life to considerable rank in\nthe service.  Their many-sidedness is remarkable!  And what a faculty\nthey have for the most contradictory sensations!  I was comforted by\nthis thought even in those days, and I am of the same opinion now.\nThat is why there are so many \"broad natures\" among us who never lose\ntheir ideal even in the depths of degradation; and though they never\nstir a finger for their ideal, though they are arrant thieves and\nknaves, yet they tearfully cherish their first ideal and are\nextraordinarily honest at heart.  Yes, it is only among us that the\nmost incorrigible rogue can be absolutely and loftily honest at heart\nwithout in the least ceasing to be a rogue.  I repeat, our romantics,\nfrequently, become such accomplished rascals (I use the term \"rascals\"\naffectionately), suddenly display such a sense of reality and practical\nknowledge that their bewildered superiors and the public generally can\nonly ejaculate in amazement.\n\nTheir many-sidedness is really amazing, and goodness knows what it may\ndevelop into later on, and what the future has in store for us.  It is\nnot a poor material!  I do not say this from any foolish or boastful\npatriotism. But I feel sure that you are again imagining that I am\njoking.  Or perhaps it's just the contrary and you are convinced that I\nreally think so.  Anyway, gentlemen, I shall welcome both views as an\nhonour and a special favour. And do forgive my digression.\n\nI did not, of course, maintain friendly relations with my comrades and\nsoon was at loggerheads with them, and in my youth and inexperience I\neven gave up bowing to them, as though I had cut off all relations.\nThat, however, only happened to me once.  As a rule, I was always alone.\n\nIn the first place I spent most of my time at home, reading.  I tried\nto stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of\nexternal impressions.  And the only external means I had was reading.\nReading, of course, was a great help--exciting me, giving me pleasure\nand pain.  But at times it bored me fearfully.  One longed for movement\nin spite of everything, and I plunged all at once into dark,\nunderground, loathsome vice of the pettiest kind.  My wretched passions\nwere acute, smarting, from my continual, sickly irritability I had\nhysterical impulses, with tears and convulsions.  I had no resource\nexcept reading, that is, there was nothing in my surroundings which I\ncould respect and which attracted me. I was overwhelmed with\ndepression, too; I had an hysterical craving for incongruity and for\ncontrast, and so I took to vice.  I have not said all this to justify\nmyself....  But, no!  I am lying.  I did want to justify myself.  I\nmake that little observation for my own benefit, gentlemen.  I don't\nwant to lie.  I vowed to myself I would not.\n\nAnd so, furtively, timidly, in solitude, at night, I indulged in filthy\nvice, with a feeling of shame which never deserted me, even at the most\nloathsome moments, and which at such moments nearly made me curse.\nAlready even then I had my underground world in my soul.  I was\nfearfully afraid of being seen, of being met, of being recognised.  I\nvisited various obscure haunts.\n\nOne night as I was passing a tavern I saw through a lighted window some\ngentlemen fighting with billiard cues, and saw one of them thrown out\nof the window.  At other times I should have felt very much disgusted,\nbut I was in such a mood at the time, that I actually envied the\ngentleman thrown out of the window--and I envied him so much that I\neven went into the tavern and into the billiard-room.  \"Perhaps,\" I\nthought, \"I'll have a fight, too, and they'll throw me out of the\nwindow.\"\n\nI was not drunk--but what is one to do--depression will drive a man to\nsuch a pitch of hysteria?  But nothing happened.  It seemed that I was\nnot even equal to being thrown out of the window and I went away\nwithout having my fight.\n\nAn officer put me in my place from the first moment.\n\nI was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up\nthe way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without\na word--without a warning or explanation--moved me from where I was\nstanding to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me.\nI could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved\nme without noticing me.\n\nDevil knows what I would have given for a real regular quarrel--a more\ndecent, a more LITERARY one, so to speak.  I had been treated like a\nfly.  This officer was over six foot, while I was a spindly little\nfellow.  But the quarrel was in my hands.  I had only to protest and I\ncertainly would have been thrown out of the window.  But I changed my\nmind and preferred to beat a resentful retreat.\n\nI went out of the tavern straight home, confused and troubled, and the\nnext night I went out again with the same lewd intentions, still more\nfurtively, abjectly and miserably than before, as it were, with tears\nin my eyes--but still I did go out again.  Don't imagine, though, it\nwas cowardice made me slink away from the officer; I never have been a\ncoward at heart, though I have always been a coward in action.  Don't\nbe in a hurry to laugh--I assure you I can explain it all.\n\nOh, if only that officer had been one of the sort who would consent to\nfight a duel!  But no, he was one of those gentlemen (alas, long\nextinct!) who preferred fighting with cues or, like Gogol's Lieutenant\nPirogov, appealing to the police.  They did not fight duels and would\nhave thought a duel with a civilian like me an utterly unseemly\nprocedure in any case--and they looked upon the duel altogether as\nsomething impossible, something free-thinking and French.  But they\nwere quite ready to bully, especially when they were over six foot.\n\nI did not slink away through cowardice, but through an unbounded\nvanity.  I was afraid not of his six foot, not of getting a sound\nthrashing and being thrown out of the window; I should have had\nphysical courage enough, I assure you; but I had not the moral courage.\nWhat I was afraid of was that everyone present, from the insolent\nmarker down to the lowest little stinking, pimply clerk in a greasy\ncollar, would jeer at me and fail to understand when I began to protest\nand to address them in literary language. For of the point of\nhonour--not of honour, but of the point of honour (POINT\nD'HONNEUR)--one cannot speak among us except in literary language.  You\ncan't allude to the \"point of honour\" in ordinary language. I was fully\nconvinced (the sense of reality, in spite of all my romanticism!) that\nthey would all simply split their sides with laughter, and that the\nofficer would not simply beat me, that is, without insulting me, but\nwould certainly prod me in the back with his knee, kick me round the\nbilliard-table, and only then perhaps have pity and drop me out of the\nwindow.\n\nOf course, this trivial incident could not with me end in that.  I\noften met that officer afterwards in the street and noticed him very\ncarefully.  I am not quite sure whether he recognised me, I imagine\nnot; I judge from certain signs.  But I--I stared at him with spite and\nhatred and so it went on ... for several years!  My resentment grew\neven deeper with years.  At first I began making stealthy inquiries\nabout this officer.  It was difficult for me to do so, for I knew no\none.  But one day I heard someone shout his surname in the street as I\nwas following him at a distance, as though I were tied to him--and so I\nlearnt his surname.  Another time I followed him to his flat, and for\nten kopecks learned from the porter where he lived, on which storey,\nwhether he lived alone or with others, and so on--in fact, everything\none could learn from a porter.  One morning, though I had never tried\nmy hand with the pen, it suddenly occurred to me to write a satire on\nthis officer in the form of a novel which would unmask his villainy.  I\nwrote the novel with relish.  I did unmask his villainy, I even\nexaggerated it; at first I so altered his surname that it could easily\nbe recognised, but on second thoughts I changed it, and sent the story\nto the OTETCHESTVENNIYA ZAPISKI.  But at that time such attacks were\nnot the fashion and my story was not printed.  That was a great\nvexation to me.\n\nSometimes I was positively choked with resentment.  At last I\ndetermined to challenge my enemy to a duel.  I composed a splendid,\ncharming letter to him, imploring him to apologise to me, and hinting\nrather plainly at a duel in case of refusal.  The letter was so\ncomposed that if the officer had had the least understanding of the\nsublime and the beautiful he would certainly have flung himself on my\nneck and have offered me his friendship.  And how fine that would have\nbeen!  How we should have got on together!  \"He could have shielded me\nwith his higher rank, while I could have improved his mind with my\nculture, and, well ... my ideas, and all sorts of things might have\nhappened.\"  Only fancy, this was two years after his insult to me, and\nmy challenge would have been a ridiculous anachronism, in spite of all\nthe ingenuity of my letter in disguising and explaining away the\nanachronism.  But, thank God (to this day I thank the Almighty with\ntears in my eyes) I did not send the letter to him.  Cold shivers run\ndown my back when I think of what might have happened if I had sent it.\n\nAnd all at once I revenged myself in the simplest way, by a stroke of\ngenius!  A brilliant thought suddenly dawned upon me.  Sometimes on\nholidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four\no'clock in the afternoon.  Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a\nseries of innumerable miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no\ndoubt that was just what I wanted.  I used to wriggle along in a most\nunseemly fashion, like an eel, continually moving aside to make way for\ngenerals, for officers of the guards and the hussars, or for ladies.\nAt such minutes there used to be a convulsive twinge at my heart, and I\nused to feel hot all down my back at the mere thought of the\nwretchedness of my attire, of the wretchedness and abjectness of my\nlittle scurrying figure.  This was a regular martyrdom, a continual,\nintolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an incessant\nand direct sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this\nworld, a nasty, disgusting fly--more intelligent, more highly\ndeveloped, more refined in feeling than any of them, of course--but a\nfly that was continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured\nby everyone. Why I inflicted this torture upon myself, why I went to\nthe Nevsky, I don't know.  I felt simply drawn there at every possible\nopportunity.\n\nAlready then I began to experience a rush of the enjoyment of which I\nspoke in the first chapter.  After my affair with the officer I felt\neven more drawn there than before: it was on the Nevsky that I met him\nmost frequently, there I could admire him.  He, too, went there chiefly\non holidays, He, too, turned out of his path for generals and persons\nof high rank, and he too, wriggled between them like an eel; but\npeople, like me, or even better dressed than me, he simply walked over;\nhe made straight for them as though there was nothing but empty space\nbefore him, and never, under any circumstances, turned aside.  I\ngloated over my resentment watching him and ... always resentfully made\nway for him.  It exasperated me that even in the street I could not be\non an even footing with him.\n\n\"Why must you invariably be the first to move aside?\" I kept asking\nmyself in hysterical rage, waking up sometimes at three o'clock in the\nmorning.  \"Why is it you and not he?  There's no regulation about it;\nthere's no written law.  Let the making way be equal as it usually is\nwhen refined people meet; he moves half-way and you move half-way; you\npass with mutual respect.\"\n\nBut that never happened, and I always moved aside, while he did not\neven notice my making way for him.  And lo and behold a bright idea\ndawned upon me!  \"What,\" I thought, \"if I meet him and don't move on\none side?  What if I don't move aside on purpose, even if I knock up\nagainst him?  How would that be?\" This audacious idea took such a hold\non me that it gave me no peace.  I was dreaming of it continually,\nhorribly, and I purposely went more frequently to the Nevsky in order\nto picture more vividly how I should do it when I did do it.  I was\ndelighted.  This intention seemed to me more and more practical and\npossible.\n\n\"Of course I shall not really push him,\" I thought, already more\ngood-natured in my joy.  \"I will simply not turn aside, will run up\nagainst him, not very violently, but just shouldering each other--just\nas much as decency permits.  I will push against him just as much as he\npushes against me.\"  At last I made up my mind completely.  But my\npreparations took a great deal of time.  To begin with, when I carried\nout my plan I should need to be looking rather more decent, and so I\nhad to think of my get-up.  \"In case of emergency, if, for instance,\nthere were any sort of public scandal (and the public there is of the\nmost RECHERCHE: the Countess walks there; Prince D. walks there; all\nthe literary world is there), I must be well dressed; that inspires\nrespect and of itself puts us on an equal footing in the eyes of the\nsociety.\"\n\nWith this object I asked for some of my salary in advance, and bought\nat Tchurkin's a pair of black gloves and a decent hat.  Black gloves\nseemed to me both more dignified and BON TON than the lemon-coloured\nones which I had contemplated at first.  \"The colour is too gaudy, it\nlooks as though one were trying to be conspicuous,\" and I did not take\nthe lemon-coloured ones.  I had got ready long beforehand a good shirt,\nwith white bone studs; my overcoat was the only thing that held me\nback.  The coat in itself was a very good one, it kept me warm; but it\nwas wadded and it had a raccoon collar which was the height of\nvulgarity.  I had to change the collar at any sacrifice, and to have a\nbeaver one like an officer's.  For this purpose I began visiting the\nGostiny Dvor and after several attempts I pitched upon a piece of cheap\nGerman beaver.  Though these German beavers soon grow shabby and look\nwretched, yet at first they look exceedingly well, and I only needed it\nfor the occasion.  I asked the price; even so, it was too expensive.\nAfter thinking it over thoroughly I decided to sell my raccoon collar.\nThe rest of the money--a considerable sum for me, I decided to borrow\nfrom Anton Antonitch Syetotchkin, my immediate superior, an unassuming\nperson, though grave and judicious.  He never lent money to anyone, but\nI had, on entering the service, been specially recommended to him by an\nimportant personage who had got me my berth.  I was horribly worried.\nTo borrow from Anton Antonitch seemed to me monstrous and shameful.  I\ndid not sleep for two or three nights.  Indeed, I did not sleep well at\nthat time, I was in a fever; I had a vague sinking at my heart or else\na sudden throbbing, throbbing, throbbing!  Anton Antonitch was\nsurprised at first, then he frowned, then he reflected, and did after\nall lend me the money, receiving from me a written authorisation to\ntake from my salary a fortnight later the sum that he had lent me.\n\nIn this way everything was at last ready.  The handsome beaver replaced\nthe mean-looking raccoon, and I began by degrees to get to work.  It\nwould never have done to act offhand, at random; the plan had to be\ncarried out skilfully, by degrees.  But I must confess that after many\nefforts I began to despair: we simply could not run into each other.  I\nmade every preparation, I was quite determined--it seemed as though we\nshould run into one another directly--and before I knew what I was\ndoing I had stepped aside for him again and he had passed without\nnoticing me.  I even prayed as I approached him that God would grant me\ndetermination. One time I had made up my mind thoroughly, but it ended\nin my stumbling and falling at his feet because at the very last\ninstant when I was six inches from him my courage failed me.  He very\ncalmly stepped over me, while I flew on one side like a ball.  That\nnight I was ill again, feverish and delirious.\n\nAnd suddenly it ended most happily.  The night before I had made up my\nmind not to carry out my fatal plan and to abandon it all, and with\nthat object I went to the Nevsky for the last time, just to see how I\nwould abandon it all.  Suddenly, three paces from my enemy, I\nunexpectedly made up my mind--I closed my eyes, and we ran full tilt,\nshoulder to shoulder, against one another!  I did not budge an inch and\npassed him on a perfectly equal footing!  He did not even look round\nand pretended not to notice it; but he was only pretending, I am\nconvinced of that.  I am convinced of that to this day!  Of course, I\ngot the worst of it--he was stronger, but that was not the point.  The\npoint was that I had attained my object, I had kept up my dignity, I\nhad not yielded a step, and had put myself publicly on an equal social\nfooting with him.  I returned home feeling that I was fully avenged for\neverything.  I was delighted.  I was triumphant and sang Italian arias.\nOf course, I will not describe to you what happened to me three days\nlater; if you have read my first chapter you can guess for yourself.\nThe officer was afterwards transferred; I have not seen him now for\nfourteen years.  What is the dear fellow doing now? Whom is he walking\nover?\n\n\n\nII\n\nBut the period of my dissipation would end and I always felt very sick\nafterwards.  It was followed by remorse--I tried to drive it away; I\nfelt too sick.  By degrees, however, I grew used to that too.  I grew\nused to everything, or rather I voluntarily resigned myself to enduring\nit.  But I had a means of escape that reconciled everything--that was\nto find refuge in \"the sublime and the beautiful,\" in dreams, of\ncourse.  I was a terrible dreamer, I would dream for three months on\nend, tucked away in my corner, and you may believe me that at those\nmoments I had no resemblance to the gentleman who, in the perturbation\nof his chicken heart, put a collar of German beaver on his great-coat.\nI suddenly became a hero.  I would not have admitted my six-foot\nlieutenant even if he had called on me.  I could not even picture him\nbefore me then.  What were my dreams and how I could satisfy myself\nwith them--it is hard to say now, but at the time I was satisfied with\nthem.  Though, indeed, even now, I am to some extent satisfied with\nthem.  Dreams were particularly sweet and vivid after a spell of\ndissipation; they came with remorse and with tears, with curses and\ntransports.  There were moments of such positive intoxication, of such\nhappiness, that there was not the faintest trace of irony within me, on\nmy honour.  I had faith, hope, love.  I believed blindly at such times\nthat by some miracle, by some external circumstance, all this would\nsuddenly open out, expand; that suddenly a vista of suitable\nactivity--beneficent, good, and, above all, READY MADE (what sort of\nactivity I had no idea, but the great thing was that it should be all\nready for me)--would rise up before me--and I should come out into the\nlight of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel.\nAnything but the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and\nfor that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the lowest in\nreality.  Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud--there was\nnothing between.  That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I\ncomforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and\nthe hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful\nto defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and\nso he might defile himself.  It is worth noting that these attacks of\nthe \"sublime and the beautiful\" visited me even during the period of\ndissipation and just at the times when I was touching the bottom.  They\ncame in separate spurts, as though reminding me of themselves, but did\nnot banish the dissipation by their appearance. On the contrary, they\nseemed to add a zest to it by contrast, and were only sufficiently\npresent to serve as an appetising sauce.  That sauce was made up of\ncontradictions and sufferings, of agonising inward analysis, and all\nthese pangs and pin-pricks gave a certain piquancy, even a significance\nto my dissipation--in fact, completely answered the purpose of an\nappetising sauce.  There was a certain depth of meaning in it.  And I\ncould hardly have resigned myself to the simple, vulgar, direct\ndebauchery of a clerk and have endured all the filthiness of it.  What\ncould have allured me about it then and have drawn me at night into the\nstreet?  No, I had a lofty way of getting out of it all.\n\nAnd what loving-kindness, oh Lord, what loving-kindness I felt at times\nin those dreams of mine!  in those \"flights into the sublime and the\nbeautiful\"; though it was fantastic love, though it was never applied\nto anything human in reality, yet there was so much of this love that\none did not feel afterwards even the impulse to apply it in reality;\nthat would have been superfluous.  Everything, however, passed\nsatisfactorily by a lazy and fascinating transition into the sphere of\nart, that is, into the beautiful forms of life, lying ready, largely\nstolen from the poets and novelists and adapted to all sorts of needs\nand uses.  I, for instance, was triumphant over everyone; everyone, of\ncourse, was in dust and ashes, and was forced spontaneously to\nrecognise my superiority, and I forgave them all.  I was a poet and a\ngrand gentleman, I fell in love; I came in for countless millions and\nimmediately devoted them to humanity, and at the same time I confessed\nbefore all the people my shameful deeds, which, of course, were not\nmerely shameful, but had in them much that was \"sublime and beautiful\"\nsomething in the Manfred style.  Everyone would kiss me and weep (what\nidiots they would be if they did not), while I should go barefoot and\nhungry preaching new ideas and fighting a victorious Austerlitz against\nthe obscurantists.  Then the band would play a march, an amnesty would\nbe declared, the Pope would agree to retire from Rome to Brazil; then\nthere would be a ball for the whole of Italy at the Villa Borghese on\nthe shores of Lake Como, Lake Como being for that purpose transferred\nto the neighbourhood of Rome; then would come a scene in the bushes,\nand so on, and so on--as though you did not know all about it?  You\nwill say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into\npublic after all the tears and transports which I have myself\nconfessed.  But why is it contemptible?  Can you imagine that I am\nashamed of it all, and that it was stupider than anything in your life,\ngentlemen?  And I can assure you that some of these fancies were by no\nmeans badly composed....  It did not all happen on the shores of Lake\nComo.  And yet you are right--it really is vulgar and contemptible.\nAnd most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify\nmyself to you.  And even more contemptible than that is my making this\nremark now.  But that's enough, or there will be no end to it; each\nstep will be more contemptible than the last....\n\nI could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time\nwithout feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society.  To\nplunge into society meant to visit my superior at the office, Anton\nAntonitch Syetotchkin.  He was the only permanent acquaintance I have\nhad in my life, and I wonder at the fact myself now.  But I only went\nto see him when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached\nsuch a point of bliss that it became essential at once to embrace my\nfellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one\nhuman being, actually existing.  I had to call on Anton Antonitch,\nhowever, on Tuesday--his at-home day; so I had always to time my\npassionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a\nTuesday.\n\nThis Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five\nCorners, in four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a\nparticularly frugal and sallow appearance.  He had two daughters and\ntheir aunt, who used to pour out the tea.  Of the daughters one was\nthirteen and another fourteen, they both had snub noses, and I was\nawfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling\ntogether.  The master of the house usually sat in his study on a\nleather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman,\nusually a colleague from our office or some other department.  I never\nsaw more than two or three visitors there, always the same.  They\ntalked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about\nsalaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of\npleasing him, and so on. I had the patience to sit like a fool beside\nthese people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without\nknowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word.  I became\nstupefied, several times I felt myself perspiring, I was overcome by a\nsort of paralysis; but this was pleasant and good for me.  On returning\nhome I deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind.\n\nI had however one other acquaintance of a sort, Simonov, who was an old\nschoolfellow.  I had a number of schoolfellows, indeed, in Petersburg,\nbut I did not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them\nin the street.  I believe I had transferred into the department I was\nin simply to avoid their company and to cut off all connection with my\nhateful childhood.  Curses on that school and all those terrible years\nof penal servitude!  In short, I parted from my schoolfellows as soon\nas I got out into the world.  There were two or three left to whom I\nnodded in the street.  One of them was Simonov, who had in no way been\ndistinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I\ndiscovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty\nI don't even suppose that he was particularly stupid.  I had at one\ntime spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not\nlasted long and had somehow been suddenly clouded over.  He was\nevidently uncomfortable at these reminiscences, and was, I fancy,\nalways afraid that I might take up the same tone again.  I suspected\nthat he had an aversion for me, but still I went on going to see him,\nnot being quite certain of it.\n\nAnd so on one occasion, unable to endure my solitude and knowing that\nas it was Thursday Anton Antonitch's door would be closed, I thought of\nSimonov.  Climbing up to his fourth storey I was thinking that the man\ndisliked me and that it was a mistake to go and see him.  But as it\nalways happened that such reflections impelled me, as though purposely,\nto put myself into a false position, I went in.  It was almost a year\nsince I had last seen Simonov.\n\n\n\nIII\n\nI found two of my old schoolfellows with him.  They seemed to be\ndiscussing an important matter.  All of them took scarcely any notice\nof my entrance, which was strange, for I had not met them for years.\nEvidently they looked upon me as something on the level of a common\nfly.  I had not been treated like that even at school, though they all\nhated me. I knew, of course, that they must despise me now for my lack\nof success in the service, and for my having let myself sink so low,\ngoing about badly dressed and so on--which seemed to them a sign of my\nincapacity and insignificance.  But I had not expected such contempt.\nSimonov was positively surprised at my turning up.  Even in old days he\nhad always seemed surprised at my coming.  All this disconcerted me: I\nsat down, feeling rather miserable, and began listening to what they\nwere saying.\n\nThey were engaged in warm and earnest conversation about a farewell\ndinner which they wanted to arrange for the next day to a comrade of\ntheirs called Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was going away to a\ndistant province.  This Zverkov had been all the time at school with me\ntoo.  I had begun to hate him particularly in the upper forms.  In the\nlower forms he had simply been a pretty, playful boy whom everybody\nliked.  I had hated him, however, even in the lower forms, just because\nhe was a pretty and playful boy.  He was always bad at his lessons and\ngot worse and worse as he went on; however, he left with a good\ncertificate, as he had powerful interests.  During his last year at\nschool he came in for an estate of two hundred serfs, and as almost all\nof us were poor he took up a swaggering tone among us.  He was vulgar\nin the extreme, but at the same time he was a good-natured fellow, even\nin his swaggering.  In spite of superficial, fantastic and sham notions\nof honour and dignity, all but very few of us positively grovelled\nbefore Zverkov, and the more so the more he swaggered.  And it was not\nfrom any interested motive that they grovelled, but simply because he\nhad been favoured by the gifts of nature.  Moreover, it was, as it\nwere, an accepted idea among us that Zverkov was a specialist in regard\nto tact and the social graces.  This last fact particularly infuriated\nme.  I hated the abrupt self-confident tone of his voice, his\nadmiration of his own witticisms, which were often frightfully stupid,\nthough he was bold in his language; I hated his handsome, but stupid\nface (for which I would, however, have gladly exchanged my intelligent\none), and the free-and-easy military manners in fashion in the\n\"'forties.\" I hated the way in which he used to talk of his future\nconquests of women (he did not venture to begin his attack upon women\nuntil he had the epaulettes of an officer, and was looking forward to\nthem with impatience), and boasted of the duels he would constantly be\nfighting.  I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly fastened\nupon Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his\nschoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as\nsportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would\nnot leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was\nhis DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, and that if the peasants dared to protest he\nwould have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded\nrascals.  Our servile rabble applauded, but I attacked him, not from\ncompassion for the girls and their fathers, but simply because they\nwere applauding such an insect.  I got the better of him on that\noccasion, but though Zverkov was stupid he was lively and impudent, and\nso laughed it off, and in such a way that my victory was not really\ncomplete; the laugh was on his side.  He got the better of me on\nseveral occasions afterwards, but without malice, jestingly, casually.\nI remained angrily and contemptuously silent and would not answer him.\nWhen we left school he made advances to me; I did not rebuff them, for\nI was flattered, but we soon parted and quite naturally.  Afterwards I\nheard of his barrack-room success as a lieutenant, and of the fast life\nhe was leading.  Then there came other rumours--of his successes in the\nservice. By then he had taken to cutting me in the street, and I\nsuspected that he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a\npersonage as insignificant as me.  I saw him once in the theatre, in\nthe third tier of boxes.  By then he was wearing shoulder-straps.  He\nwas twisting and twirling about, ingratiating himself with the\ndaughters of an ancient General.  In three years he had gone off\nconsiderably, though he was still rather handsome and adroit.  One\ncould see that by the time he was thirty he would be corpulent.  So it\nwas to this Zverkov that my schoolfellows were going to give a dinner\non his departure.  They had kept up with him for those three years,\nthough privately they did not consider themselves on an equal footing\nwith him, I am convinced of that.\n\nOf Simonov's two visitors, one was Ferfitchkin, a Russianised German--a\nlittle fellow with the face of a monkey, a blockhead who was always\nderiding everyone, a very bitter enemy of mine from our days in the\nlower forms--a vulgar, impudent, swaggering fellow, who affected a most\nsensitive feeling of personal honour, though, of course, he was a\nwretched little coward at heart.  He was one of those worshippers of\nZverkov who made up to the latter from interested motives, and often\nborrowed money from him.  Simonov's other visitor, Trudolyubov, was a\nperson in no way remarkable--a tall young fellow, in the army, with a\ncold face, fairly honest, though he worshipped success of every sort,\nand was only capable of thinking of promotion.  He was some sort of\ndistant relation of Zverkov's, and this, foolish as it seems, gave him\na certain importance among us.  He always thought me of no consequence\nwhatever; his behaviour to me, though not quite courteous, was\ntolerable.\n\n\"Well, with seven roubles each,\" said Trudolyubov, \"twenty-one roubles\nbetween the three of us, we ought to be able to get a good dinner.\nZverkov, of course, won't pay.\"\n\n\"Of course not, since we are inviting him,\" Simonov decided.\n\n\"Can you imagine,\" Ferfitchkin interrupted hotly and conceitedly, like\nsome insolent flunkey boasting of his master the General's decorations,\n\"can you imagine that Zverkov will let us pay alone?  He will accept\nfrom delicacy, but he will order half a dozen bottles of champagne.\"\n\n\"Do we want half a dozen for the four of us?\" observed Trudolyubov,\ntaking notice only of the half dozen.\n\n\"So the three of us, with Zverkov for the fourth, twenty-one roubles,\nat the Hotel de Paris at five o'clock tomorrow,\" Simonov, who had been\nasked to make the arrangements, concluded finally.\n\n\"How twenty-one roubles?\" I asked in some agitation, with a show of\nbeing offended; \"if you count me it will not be twenty-one, but\ntwenty-eight roubles.\"\n\nIt seemed to me that to invite myself so suddenly and unexpectedly\nwould be positively graceful, and that they would all be conquered at\nonce and would look at me with respect.\n\n\"Do you want to join, too?\" Simonov observed, with no appearance of\npleasure, seeming to avoid looking at me.  He knew me through and\nthrough.\n\nIt infuriated me that he knew me so thoroughly.\n\n\"Why not?  I am an old schoolfellow of his, too, I believe, and I must\nown I feel hurt that you have left me out,\" I said, boiling over again.\n\n\"And where were we to find you?\" Ferfitchkin put in roughly.\n\n\"You never were on good terms with Zverkov,\" Trudolyubov added,\nfrowning.\n\nBut I had already clutched at the idea and would not give it up.\n\n\"It seems to me that no one has a right to form an opinion upon that,\"\nI retorted in a shaking voice, as though something tremendous had\nhappened. \"Perhaps that is just my reason for wishing it now, that I\nhave not always been on good terms with him.\"\n\n\"Oh, there's no making you out ... with these refinements,\" Trudolyubov\njeered.\n\n\"We'll put your name down,\" Simonov decided, addressing me. \"Tomorrow\nat five-o'clock at the Hotel de Paris.\"\n\n\"What about the money?\" Ferfitchkin began in an undertone, indicating\nme to Simonov, but he broke off, for even Simonov was embarrassed.\n\n\"That will do,\" said Trudolyubov, getting up.  \"If he wants to come so\nmuch, let him.\"\n\n\"But it's a private thing, between us friends,\" Ferfitchkin said\ncrossly, as he, too, picked up his hat.  \"It's not an official\ngathering.\"\n\n\"We do not want at all, perhaps ...\"\n\nThey went away.  Ferfitchkin did not greet me in any way as he went\nout, Trudolyubov barely nodded.  Simonov, with whom I was left\nTETE-A-TETE, was in a state of vexation and perplexity, and looked at\nme queerly. He did not sit down and did not ask me to.\n\n\"H'm ... yes ... tomorrow, then.  Will you pay your subscription now?\nI just ask so as to know,\" he muttered in embarrassment.\n\nI flushed crimson, as I did so I remembered that I had owed Simonov\nfifteen roubles for ages--which I had, indeed, never forgotten, though\nI had not paid it.\n\n\"You will understand, Simonov, that I could have no idea when I came\nhere....  I am very much vexed that I have forgotten....\"\n\n\"All right, all right, that doesn't matter.  You can pay tomorrow after\nthe dinner.  I simply wanted to know....  Please don't...\"\n\nHe broke off and began pacing the room still more vexed.  As he walked\nhe began to stamp with his heels.\n\n\"Am I keeping you?\" I asked, after two minutes of silence.\n\n\"Oh!\" he said, starting, \"that is--to be truthful--yes.  I have to go\nand see someone ... not far from here,\" he added in an apologetic\nvoice, somewhat abashed.\n\n\"My goodness, why didn't you say so?\" I cried, seizing my cap, with an\nastonishingly free-and-easy air, which was the last thing I should have\nexpected of myself.\n\n\"It's close by ... not two paces away,\" Simonov repeated, accompanying\nme to the front door with a fussy air which did not suit him at all.\n\"So five o'clock, punctually, tomorrow,\" he called down the stairs\nafter me. He was very glad to get rid of me.  I was in a fury.\n\n\"What possessed me, what possessed me to force myself upon them?\" I\nwondered, grinding my teeth as I strode along the street, \"for a\nscoundrel, a pig like that Zverkov!  Of course I had better not go; of\ncourse, I must just snap my fingers at them.  I am not bound in any\nway.  I'll send Simonov a note by tomorrow's post....\"\n\nBut what made me furious was that I knew for certain that I should go,\nthat I should make a point of going; and the more tactless, the more\nunseemly my going would be, the more certainly I would go.\n\nAnd there was a positive obstacle to my going: I had no money.  All I\nhad was nine roubles, I had to give seven of that to my servant,\nApollon, for his monthly wages.  That was all I paid him--he had to\nkeep himself.\n\nNot to pay him was impossible, considering his character.  But I will\ntalk about that fellow, about that plague of mine, another time.\n\nHowever, I knew I should go and should not pay him his wages.\n\nThat night I had the most hideous dreams.  No wonder; all the evening I\nhad been oppressed by memories of my miserable days at school, and I\ncould not shake them off.  I was sent to the school by distant\nrelations, upon whom I was dependent and of whom I have heard nothing\nsince--they sent me there a forlorn, silent boy, already crushed by\ntheir reproaches, already troubled by doubt, and looking with savage\ndistrust at everyone.  My schoolfellows met me with spiteful and\nmerciless jibes because I was not like any of them.  But I could not\nendure their taunts; I could not give in to them with the ignoble\nreadiness with which they gave in to one another.  I hated them from\nthe first, and shut myself away from everyone in timid, wounded and\ndisproportionate pride.  Their coarseness revolted me.  They laughed\ncynically at my face, at my clumsy figure; and yet what stupid faces\nthey had themselves.  In our school the boys' faces seemed in a special\nway to degenerate and grow stupider.  How many fine-looking boys came\nto us!  In a few years they became repulsive. Even at sixteen I\nwondered at them morosely; even then I was struck by the pettiness of\ntheir thoughts, the stupidity of their pursuits, their games, their\nconversations.  They had no understanding of such essential things,\nthey took no interest in such striking, impressive subjects, that I\ncould not help considering them inferior to myself.  It was not wounded\nvanity that drove me to it, and for God's sake do not thrust upon me\nyour hackneyed remarks, repeated to nausea, that \"I was only a\ndreamer,\" while they even then had an understanding of life.  They\nunderstood nothing, they had no idea of real life, and I swear that\nthat was what made me most indignant with them.  On the contrary, the\nmost obvious, striking reality they accepted with fantastic stupidity\nand even at that time were accustomed to respect success.  Everything\nthat was just, but oppressed and looked down upon, they laughed at\nheartlessly and shamefully. They took rank for intelligence; even at\nsixteen they were already talking about a snug berth.  Of course, a\ngreat deal of it was due to their stupidity, to the bad examples with\nwhich they had always been surrounded in their childhood and boyhood.\nThey were monstrously depraved. Of course a great deal of that, too,\nwas superficial and an assumption of cynicism; of course there were\nglimpses of youth and freshness even in their depravity; but even that\nfreshness was not attractive, and showed itself in a certain\nrakishness.  I hated them horribly, though perhaps I was worse than any\nof them.  They repaid me in the same way, and did not conceal their\naversion for me.  But by then I did not desire their affection: on the\ncontrary, I continually longed for their humiliation.  To escape from\ntheir derision I purposely began to make all the progress I could with\nmy studies and forced my way to the very top. This impressed them.\nMoreover, they all began by degrees to grasp that I had already read\nbooks none of them could read, and understood things (not forming part\nof our school curriculum) of which they had not even heard.  They took\na savage and sarcastic view of it, but were morally impressed,\nespecially as the teachers began to notice me on those grounds.  The\nmockery ceased, but the hostility remained, and cold and strained\nrelations became permanent between us.  In the end I could not put up\nwith it: with years a craving for society, for friends, developed in\nme. I attempted to get on friendly terms with some of my schoolfellows;\nbut somehow or other my intimacy with them was always strained and soon\nended of itself.  Once, indeed, I did have a friend.  But I was already\na tyrant at heart; I wanted to exercise unbounded sway over him; I\ntried to instil into him a contempt for his surroundings; I required of\nhim a disdainful and complete break with those surroundings.  I\nfrightened him with my passionate affection; I reduced him to tears, to\nhysterics.  He was a simple and devoted soul; but when he devoted\nhimself to me entirely I began to hate him immediately and repulsed\nhim--as though all I needed him for was to win a victory over him, to\nsubjugate him and nothing else.  But I could not subjugate all of them;\nmy friend was not at all like them either, he was, in fact, a rare\nexception.  The first thing I did on leaving school was to give up the\nspecial job for which I had been destined so as to break all ties, to\ncurse my past and shake the dust from off my feet....  And goodness\nknows why, after all that, I should go trudging off to Simonov's!\n\nEarly next morning I roused myself and jumped out of bed with\nexcitement, as though it were all about to happen at once.  But I\nbelieved that some radical change in my life was coming, and would\ninevitably come that day.  Owing to its rarity, perhaps, any external\nevent, however trivial, always made me feel as though some radical\nchange in my life were at hand.  I went to the office, however, as\nusual, but sneaked away home two hours earlier to get ready.  The great\nthing, I thought, is not to be the first to arrive, or they will think\nI am overjoyed at coming.  But there were thousands of such great\npoints to consider, and they all agitated and overwhelmed me.  I\npolished my boots a second time with my own hands; nothing in the world\nwould have induced Apollon to clean them twice a day, as he considered\nthat it was more than his duties required of him.  I stole the brushes\nto clean them from the passage, being careful he should not detect it,\nfor fear of his contempt.  Then I minutely examined my clothes and\nthought that everything looked old, worn and threadbare.  I had let\nmyself get too slovenly.  My uniform, perhaps, was tidy, but I could\nnot go out to dinner in my uniform.  The worst of it was that on the\nknee of my trousers was a big yellow stain.  I had a foreboding that\nthat stain would deprive me of nine-tenths of my personal dignity.  I\nknew, too, that it was very poor to think so.  \"But this is no time for\nthinking: now I am in for the real thing,\" I thought, and my heart\nsank.  I knew, too, perfectly well even then, that I was monstrously\nexaggerating the facts.  But how could I help it?  I could not control\nmyself and was already shaking with fever.  With despair I pictured to\nmyself how coldly and disdainfully that \"scoundrel\" Zverkov would meet\nme; with what dull-witted, invincible contempt the blockhead\nTrudolyubov would look at me; with what impudent rudeness the insect\nFerfitchkin would snigger at me in order to curry favour with Zverkov;\nhow completely Simonov would take it all in, and how he would despise\nme for the abjectness of my vanity and lack of spirit--and, worst of\nall, how paltry, UNLITERARY, commonplace it would all be.  Of course,\nthe best thing would be not to go at all.  But that was most impossible\nof all: if I feel impelled to do anything, I seem to be pitchforked\ninto it.  I should have jeered at myself ever afterwards: \"So you\nfunked it, you funked it, you funked the REAL THING!\" On the contrary,\nI passionately longed to show all that \"rabble\" that I was by no means\nsuch a spiritless creature as I seemed to myself. What is more, even in\nthe acutest paroxysm of this cowardly fever, I dreamed of getting the\nupper hand, of dominating them, carrying them away, making them like\nme--if only for my \"elevation of thought and unmistakable wit.\"  They\nwould abandon Zverkov, he would sit on one side, silent and ashamed,\nwhile I should crush him.  Then, perhaps, we would be reconciled and\ndrink to our everlasting friendship; but what was most bitter and\nhumiliating for me was that I knew even then, knew fully and for\ncertain, that I needed nothing of all this really, that I did not\nreally want to crush, to subdue, to attract them, and that I did not\ncare a straw really for the result, even if I did achieve it.  Oh, how\nI prayed for the day to pass quickly!  In unutterable anguish I went to\nthe window, opened the movable pane and looked out into the troubled\ndarkness of the thickly falling wet snow.  At last my wretched little\nclock hissed out five.  I seized my hat and, trying not to look at\nApollon, who had been all day expecting his month's wages, but in his\nfoolishness was unwilling to be the first to speak about it, I slipped\nbetween him and the door and, jumping into a high-class sledge, on\nwhich I spent my last half rouble, I drove up in grand style to the\nHotel de Paris.\n\n\n\nIV\n\nI had been certain the day before that I should be the first to arrive.\nBut it was not a question of being the first to arrive.  Not only were\nthey not there, but I had difficulty in finding our room.  The table\nwas not laid even.  What did it mean?  After a good many questions I\nelicited from the waiters that the dinner had been ordered not for\nfive, but for six o'clock. This was confirmed at the buffet too.  I\nfelt really ashamed to go on questioning them.  It was only twenty-five\nminutes past five.  If they changed the dinner hour they ought at least\nto have let me know--that is what the post is for, and not to have put\nme in an absurd position in my own eyes and ... and even before the\nwaiters.  I sat down; the servant began laying the table; I felt even\nmore humiliated when he was present. Towards six o'clock they brought\nin candles, though there were lamps burning in the room.  It had not\noccurred to the waiter, however, to bring them in at once when I\narrived.  In the next room two gloomy, angry-looking persons were\neating their dinners in silence at two different tables.  There was a\ngreat deal of noise, even shouting, in a room further away; one could\nhear the laughter of a crowd of people, and nasty little shrieks in\nFrench: there were ladies at the dinner.  It was sickening, in fact. I\nrarely passed more unpleasant moments, so much so that when they did\narrive all together punctually at six I was overjoyed to see them, as\nthough they were my deliverers, and even forgot that it was incumbent\nupon me to show resentment.\n\nZverkov walked in at the head of them; evidently he was the leading\nspirit.  He and all of them were laughing; but, seeing me, Zverkov drew\nhimself up a little, walked up to me deliberately with a slight, rather\njaunty bend from the waist.  He shook hands with me in a friendly, but\nnot over-friendly, fashion, with a sort of circumspect courtesy like\nthat of a General, as though in giving me his hand he were warding off\nsomething.  I had imagined, on the contrary, that on coming in he would\nat once break into his habitual thin, shrill laugh and fall to making\nhis insipid jokes and witticisms.  I had been preparing for them ever\nsince the previous day, but I had not expected such condescension, such\nhigh-official courtesy.  So, then, he felt himself ineffably superior\nto me in every respect!  If he only meant to insult me by that\nhigh-official tone, it would not matter, I thought--I could pay him\nback for it one way or another.  But what if, in reality, without the\nleast desire to be offensive, that sheepshead had a notion in earnest\nthat he was superior to me and could only look at me in a patronising\nway?  The very supposition made me gasp.\n\n\"I was surprised to hear of your desire to join us,\" he began, lisping\nand drawling, which was something new.  \"You and I seem to have seen\nnothing of one another.  You fight shy of us.  You shouldn't.  We are\nnot such terrible people as you think.  Well, anyway, I am glad to\nrenew our acquaintance.\"\n\nAnd he turned carelessly to put down his hat on the window.\n\n\"Have you been waiting long?\" Trudolyubov inquired.\n\n\"I arrived at five o'clock as you told me yesterday,\" I answered aloud,\nwith an irritability that threatened an explosion.\n\n\"Didn't you let him know that we had changed the hour?\" said\nTrudolyubov to Simonov.\n\n\"No, I didn't.  I forgot,\" the latter replied, with no sign of regret,\nand without even apologising to me he went off to order the HORS\nD'OEUVRE.\n\n\"So you've been here a whole hour?  Oh, poor fellow!\" Zverkov cried\nironically, for to his notions this was bound to be extremely funny.\nThat rascal Ferfitchkin followed with his nasty little snigger like a\npuppy yapping. My position struck him, too, as exquisitely ludicrous\nand embarrassing.\n\n\"It isn't funny at all!\" I cried to Ferfitchkin, more and more\nirritated. \"It wasn't my fault, but other people's.  They neglected to\nlet me know.  It was ... it was ... it was simply absurd.\"\n\n\"It's not only absurd, but something else as well,\" muttered\nTrudolyubov, naively taking my part.  \"You are not hard enough upon it.\nIt was simply rudeness--unintentional, of course.  And how could\nSimonov ... h'm!\"\n\n\"If a trick like that had been played on me,\" observed Ferfitchkin, \"I\nshould ...\"\n\n\"But you should have ordered something for yourself,\" Zverkov\ninterrupted, \"or simply asked for dinner without waiting for us.\"\n\n\"You will allow that I might have done that without your permission,\" I\nrapped out.  \"If I waited, it was ...\"\n\n\"Let us sit down, gentlemen,\" cried Simonov, coming in.  \"Everything is\nready; I can answer for the champagne; it is capitally frozen....  You\nsee, I did not know your address, where was I to look for you?\" he\nsuddenly turned to me, but again he seemed to avoid looking at me.\nEvidently he had something against me.  It must have been what happened\nyesterday.\n\nAll sat down; I did the same.  It was a round table.  Trudolyubov was\non my left, Simonov on my right, Zverkov was sitting opposite,\nFerfitchkin next to him, between him and Trudolyubov.\n\n\"Tell me, are you ... in a government office?\" Zverkov went on\nattending to me.  Seeing that I was embarrassed he seriously thought\nthat he ought to be friendly to me, and, so to speak, cheer me up.\n\n\"Does he want me to throw a bottle at his head?\" I thought, in a fury.\nIn my novel surroundings I was unnaturally ready to be irritated.\n\n\"In the N---- office,\" I answered jerkily, with my eyes on my plate.\n\n\"And ha-ave you a go-od berth?  I say, what ma-a-de you leave your\noriginal job?\"\n\n\"What ma-a-de me was that I wanted to leave my original job,\" I drawled\nmore than he, hardly able to control myself.  Ferfitchkin went off into\na guffaw.  Simonov looked at me ironically.  Trudolyubov left off\neating and began looking at me with curiosity.\n\nZverkov winced, but he tried not to notice it.\n\n\"And the remuneration?\"\n\n\"What remuneration?\"\n\n\"I mean, your sa-a-lary?\"\n\n\"Why are you cross-examining me?\" However, I told him at once what my\nsalary was.  I turned horribly red.\n\n\"It is not very handsome,\" Zverkov observed majestically.\n\n\"Yes, you can't afford to dine at cafes on that,\" Ferfitchkin added\ninsolently.\n\n\"To my thinking it's very poor,\" Trudolyubov observed gravely.\n\n\"And how thin you have grown!  How you have changed!\" added Zverkov,\nwith a shade of venom in his voice, scanning me and my attire with a\nsort of insolent compassion.\n\n\"Oh, spare his blushes,\" cried Ferfitchkin, sniggering.\n\n\"My dear sir, allow me to tell you I am not blushing,\" I broke out at\nlast; \"do you hear?  I am dining here, at this cafe, at my own expense,\nnot at other people's--note that, Mr. Ferfitchkin.\"\n\n\"Wha-at?  Isn't every one here dining at his own expense?  You would\nseem to be ...\"  Ferfitchkin flew out at me, turning as red as a\nlobster, and looking me in the face with fury.\n\n\"Tha-at,\" I answered, feeling I had gone too far, \"and I imagine it\nwould be better to talk of something more intelligent.\"\n\n\"You intend to show off your intelligence, I suppose?\"\n\n\"Don't disturb yourself, that would be quite out of place here.\"\n\n\"Why are you clacking away like that, my good sir, eh?  Have you gone\nout of your wits in your office?\"\n\n\"Enough, gentlemen, enough!\" Zverkov cried, authoritatively.\n\n\"How stupid it is!\" muttered Simonov.\n\n\"It really is stupid.  We have met here, a company of friends, for a\nfarewell dinner to a comrade and you carry on an altercation,\" said\nTrudolyubov, rudely addressing himself to me alone.  \"You invited\nyourself to join us, so don't disturb the general harmony.\"\n\n\"Enough, enough!\" cried Zverkov.  \"Give over, gentlemen, it's out of\nplace.  Better let me tell you how I nearly got married the day before\nyesterday....\"\n\nAnd then followed a burlesque narrative of how this gentleman had\nalmost been married two days before.  There was not a word about the\nmarriage, however, but the story was adorned with generals, colonels\nand kammer-junkers, while Zverkov almost took the lead among them.  It\nwas greeted with approving laughter; Ferfitchkin positively squealed.\n\nNo one paid any attention to me, and I sat crushed and humiliated.\n\n\"Good Heavens, these are not the people for me!\" I thought.  \"And what\na fool I have made of myself before them!  I let Ferfitchkin go too\nfar, though.  The brutes imagine they are doing me an honour in letting\nme sit down with them.  They don't understand that it's an honour to\nthem and not to me!  I've grown thinner!  My clothes!  Oh, damn my\ntrousers! Zverkov noticed the yellow stain on the knee as soon as he\ncame in....  But what's the use!  I must get up at once, this very\nminute, take my hat and simply go without a word ... with contempt!\nAnd tomorrow I can send a challenge.  The scoundrels!  As though I\ncared about the seven roubles.  They may think....  Damn it!  I don't\ncare about the seven roubles.  I'll go this minute!\"\n\nOf course I remained.  I drank sherry and Lafitte by the glassful in my\ndiscomfiture.  Being unaccustomed to it, I was quickly affected.  My\nannoyance increased as the wine went to my head.  I longed all at once\nto insult them all in a most flagrant manner and then go away.  To\nseize the moment and show what I could do, so that they would say,\n\"He's clever, though he is absurd,\" and ... and ... in fact, damn them\nall!\n\nI scanned them all insolently with my drowsy eyes.  But they seemed to\nhave forgotten me altogether.  They were noisy, vociferous, cheerful.\nZverkov was talking all the time.  I began listening.  Zverkov was\ntalking of some exuberant lady whom he had at last led on to declaring\nher love (of course, he was lying like a horse), and how he had been\nhelped in this affair by an intimate friend of his, a Prince Kolya, an\nofficer in the hussars, who had three thousand serfs.\n\n\"And yet this Kolya, who has three thousand serfs, has not put in an\nappearance here tonight to see you off,\" I cut in suddenly.\n\nFor one minute every one was silent.  \"You are drunk already.\"\nTrudolyubov deigned to notice me at last, glancing contemptuously in my\ndirection.  Zverkov, without a word, examined me as though I were an\ninsect. I dropped my eyes.  Simonov made haste to fill up the glasses\nwith champagne.\n\nTrudolyubov raised his glass, as did everyone else but me.\n\n\"Your health and good luck on the journey!\" he cried to Zverkov.  \"To\nold times, to our future, hurrah!\"\n\nThey all tossed off their glasses, and crowded round Zverkov to kiss\nhim.  I did not move; my full glass stood untouched before me.\n\n\"Why, aren't you going to drink it?\" roared Trudolyubov, losing\npatience and turning menacingly to me.\n\n\"I want to make a speech separately, on my own account ... and then\nI'll drink it, Mr. Trudolyubov.\"\n\n\"Spiteful brute!\" muttered Simonov.  I drew myself up in my chair and\nfeverishly seized my glass, prepared for something extraordinary,\nthough I did not know myself precisely what I was going to say.\n\n\"SILENCE!\" cried Ferfitchkin.  \"Now for a display of wit!\"\n\nZverkov waited very gravely, knowing what was coming.\n\n\"Mr. Lieutenant Zverkov,\" I began, \"let me tell you that I hate\nphrases, phrasemongers and men in corsets ... that's the first point,\nand there is a second one to follow it.\"\n\nThere was a general stir.\n\n\"The second point is: I hate ribaldry and ribald talkers.  Especially\nribald talkers!  The third point: I love justice, truth and honesty.\"\nI went on almost mechanically, for I was beginning to shiver with\nhorror myself and had no idea how I came to be talking like this.  \"I\nlove thought, Monsieur Zverkov; I love true comradeship, on an equal\nfooting and not ... H'm ... I love ... But, however, why not?  I will\ndrink your health, too, Mr. Zverkov.  Seduce the Circassian girls,\nshoot the enemies of the fatherland and ... and ... to your health,\nMonsieur Zverkov!\"\n\nZverkov got up from his seat, bowed to me and said:\n\n\"I am very much obliged to you.\"  He was frightfully offended and\nturned pale.\n\n\"Damn the fellow!\" roared Trudolyubov, bringing his fist down on the\ntable.\n\n\"Well, he wants a punch in the face for that,\" squealed Ferfitchkin.\n\n\"We ought to turn him out,\" muttered Simonov.\n\n\"Not a word, gentlemen, not a movement!\" cried Zverkov solemnly,\nchecking the general indignation.  \"I thank you all, but I can show him\nfor myself how much value I attach to his words.\"\n\n\"Mr.  Ferfitchkin, you will give me satisfaction tomorrow for your\nwords just now!\" I said aloud, turning with dignity to Ferfitchkin.\n\n\"A duel, you mean?  Certainly,\" he answered.  But probably I was so\nridiculous as I challenged him and it was so out of keeping with my\nappearance that everyone including Ferfitchkin was prostrate with\nlaughter.\n\n\"Yes, let him alone, of course!  He is quite drunk,\" Trudolyubov said\nwith disgust.\n\n\"I shall never forgive myself for letting him join us,\" Simonov\nmuttered again.\n\n\"Now is the time to throw a bottle at their heads,\" I thought to\nmyself. I picked up the bottle ... and filled my glass....  \"No, I'd\nbetter sit on to the end,\" I went on thinking; \"you would be pleased,\nmy friends, if I went away.  Nothing will induce me to go.  I'll go on\nsitting here and drinking to the end, on purpose, as a sign that I\ndon't think you of the slightest consequence.  I will go on sitting and\ndrinking, because this is a public-house and I paid my entrance money.\nI'll sit here and drink, for I look upon you as so many pawns, as\ninanimate pawns.  I'll sit here and drink ... and sing if I want to,\nyes, sing, for I have the right to ... to sing ...  H'm!\"\n\nBut I did not sing.  I simply tried not to look at any of them.  I\nassumed most unconcerned attitudes and waited with impatience for them\nto speak FIRST.  But alas, they did not address me!  And oh, how I\nwished, how I wished at that moment to be reconciled to them!  It\nstruck eight, at last nine.  They moved from the table to the sofa.\nZverkov stretched himself on a lounge and put one foot on a round\ntable.  Wine was brought there. He did, as a fact, order three bottles\non his own account.  I, of course, was not invited to join them.  They\nall sat round him on the sofa.  They listened to him, almost with\nreverence.  It was evident that they were fond of him.  \"What for?\nWhat for?\" I wondered.  From time to time they were moved to drunken\nenthusiasm and kissed each other.  They talked of the Caucasus, of the\nnature of true passion, of snug berths in the service, of the income of\nan hussar called Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew personally, and\nrejoiced in the largeness of it, of the extraordinary grace and beauty\nof a Princess D., whom none of them had ever seen; then it came to\nShakespeare's being immortal.\n\nI smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the\nroom, opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again.  I\ntried my very utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet\nI purposely made a noise with my boots, thumping with my heels.  But it\nwas all in vain.  They paid no attention.  I had the patience to walk\nup and down in front of them from eight o'clock till eleven, in the\nsame place, from the table to the stove and back again.  \"I walk up and\ndown to please myself and no one can prevent me.\"  The waiter who came\ninto the room stopped, from time to time, to look at me.  I was\nsomewhat giddy from turning round so often; at moments it seemed to me\nthat I was in delirium.  During those three hours I was three times\nsoaked with sweat and dry again.  At times, with an intense, acute pang\nI was stabbed to the heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years,\nforty years would pass, and that even in forty years I would remember\nwith loathing and humiliation those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most\nawful moments of my life. No one could have gone out of his way to\ndegrade himself more shamelessly, and I fully realised it, fully, and\nyet I went on pacing up and down from the table to the stove.  \"Oh, if\nyou only knew what thoughts and feelings I am capable of, how cultured\nI am!\" I thought at moments, mentally addressing the sofa on which my\nenemies were sitting.  But my enemies behaved as though I were not in\nthe room.  Once--only once--they turned towards me, just when Zverkov\nwas talking about Shakespeare, and I suddenly gave a contemptuous\nlaugh.  I laughed in such an affected and disgusting way that they all\nat once broke off their conversation, and silently and gravely for two\nminutes watched me walking up and down from the table to the stove,\nTAKING NO NOTICE OF THEM.  But nothing came of it: they said nothing,\nand two minutes later they ceased to notice me again.  It struck eleven.\n\n\"Friends,\" cried Zverkov getting up from the sofa, \"let us all be off\nnow, THERE!\"\n\n\"Of course, of course,\" the others assented.  I turned sharply to\nZverkov.  I was so harassed, so exhausted, that I would have cut my\nthroat to put an end to it.  I was in a fever; my hair, soaked with\nperspiration, stuck to my forehead and temples.\n\n\"Zverkov, I beg your pardon,\" I said abruptly and resolutely.\n\"Ferfitchkin, yours too, and everyone's, everyone's: I have insulted\nyou all!\"\n\n\"Aha!  A duel is not in your line, old man,\" Ferfitchkin hissed\nvenomously.\n\nIt sent a sharp pang to my heart.\n\n\"No, it's not the duel I am afraid of, Ferfitchkin!  I am ready to\nfight you tomorrow, after we are reconciled.  I insist upon it, in\nfact, and you cannot refuse.  I want to show you that I am not afraid\nof a duel.  You shall fire first and I shall fire into the air.\"\n\n\"He is comforting himself,\" said Simonov.\n\n\"He's simply raving,\" said Trudolyubov.\n\n\"But let us pass.  Why are you barring our way?  What do you want?\"\nZverkov answered disdainfully.\n\nThey were all flushed, their eyes were bright: they had been drinking\nheavily.\n\n\"I ask for your friendship, Zverkov; I insulted you, but ...\"\n\n\"Insulted?  YOU insulted ME?  Understand, sir, that you never, under\nany circumstances, could possibly insult ME.\"\n\n\"And that's enough for you.  Out of the way!\" concluded Trudolyubov.\n\n\"Olympia is mine, friends, that's agreed!\" cried Zverkov.\n\n\"We won't dispute your right, we won't dispute your right,\" the others\nanswered, laughing.\n\nI stood as though spat upon.  The party went noisily out of the room.\nTrudolyubov struck up some stupid song.  Simonov remained behind for a\nmoment to tip the waiters.  I suddenly went up to him.\n\n\"Simonov!  give me six roubles!\" I said, with desperate resolution.\n\nHe looked at me in extreme amazement, with vacant eyes.   He, too, was\ndrunk.\n\n\"You don't mean you are coming with us?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I've no money,\" he snapped out, and with a scornful laugh he went out\nof the room.\n\nI clutched at his overcoat.  It was a nightmare.\n\n\"Simonov, I saw you had money.  Why do you refuse me?  Am I a\nscoundrel?  Beware of refusing me: if you knew, if you knew why I am\nasking!  My whole future, my whole plans depend upon it!\"\n\nSimonov pulled out the money and almost flung it at me.\n\n\"Take it, if you have no sense of shame!\" he pronounced pitilessly, and\nran to overtake them.\n\nI was left for a moment alone.  Disorder, the remains of dinner, a\nbroken wine-glass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette ends, fumes of\ndrink and delirium in my brain, an agonising misery in my heart and\nfinally the waiter, who had seen and heard all and was looking\ninquisitively into my face.\n\n\"I am going there!\" I cried.  \"Either they shall all go down on their\nknees to beg for my friendship, or I will give Zverkov a slap in the\nface!\"\n\n\n\nV\n\n\"So this is it, this is it at last--contact with real life,\" I muttered\nas I ran headlong downstairs.  \"This is very different from the Pope's\nleaving Rome and going to Brazil, very different from the ball on Lake\nComo!\"\n\n\"You are a scoundrel,\" a thought flashed through my mind, \"if you laugh\nat this now.\"\n\n\"No matter!\" I cried, answering myself.  \"Now everything is lost!\"\n\nThere was no trace to be seen of them, but that made no difference--I\nknew where they had gone.\n\nAt the steps was standing a solitary night sledge-driver in a rough\npeasant coat, powdered over with the still falling, wet, and as it were\nwarm, snow.  It was hot and steamy.  The little shaggy piebald horse\nwas also covered with snow and coughing, I remember that very well.  I\nmade a rush for the roughly made sledge; but as soon as I raised my\nfoot to get into it, the recollection of how Simonov had just given me\nsix roubles seemed to double me up and I tumbled into the sledge like a\nsack.\n\n\"No, I must do a great deal to make up for all that,\" I cried.  \"But I\nwill make up for it or perish on the spot this very night.  Start!\"\n\nWe set off.  There was a perfect whirl in my head.\n\n\"They won't go down on their knees to beg for my friendship.  That is a\nmirage, cheap mirage, revolting, romantic and fantastical--that's\nanother ball on Lake Como.  And so I am bound to slap Zverkov's face!\nIt is my duty to.  And so it is settled; I am flying to give him a slap\nin the face. Hurry up!\"\n\nThe driver tugged at the reins.\n\n\"As soon as I go in I'll give it him.  Ought I before giving him the\nslap to say a few words by way of preface?  No. I'll simply go in and\ngive it him. They will all be sitting in the drawing-room, and he with\nOlympia on the sofa.  That damned Olympia!  She laughed at my looks on\none occasion and refused me.  I'll pull Olympia's hair, pull Zverkov's\nears!  No, better one ear, and pull him by it round the room.  Maybe\nthey will all begin beating me and will kick me out.  That's most\nlikely, indeed.  No matter! Anyway, I shall first slap him; the\ninitiative will be mine; and by the laws of honour that is everything:\nhe will be branded and cannot wipe off the slap by any blows, by\nnothing but a duel.  He will be forced to fight.  And let them beat me\nnow.  Let them, the ungrateful wretches!  Trudolyubov will beat me\nhardest, he is so strong; Ferfitchkin will be sure to catch hold\nsideways and tug at my hair.  But no matter, no matter!  That's what I\nam going for.  The blockheads will be forced at last to see the tragedy\nof it all! When they drag me to the door I shall call out to them that\nin reality they are not worth my little finger.  Get on, driver, get\non!\" I cried to the driver. He started and flicked his whip, I shouted\nso savagely.\n\n\"We shall fight at daybreak, that's a settled thing.  I've done with\nthe office.  Ferfitchkin made a joke about it just now.  But where can\nI get pistols?  Nonsense!  I'll get my salary in advance and buy them.\nAnd powder, and bullets?  That's the second's business.  And how can it\nall be done by daybreak?  and where am I to get a second?  I have no\nfriends. Nonsense!\" I cried, lashing myself up more and more.  \"It's of\nno consequence! The first person I meet in the street is bound to be my\nsecond, just as he would be bound to pull a drowning man out of water.\nThe most eccentric things may happen.  Even if I were to ask the\ndirector himself to be my second tomorrow, he would be bound to\nconsent, if only from a feeling of chivalry, and to keep the secret!\nAnton Antonitch....\"\n\nThe fact is, that at that very minute the disgusting absurdity of my\nplan and the other side of the question was clearer and more vivid to\nmy imagination than it could be to anyone on earth.  But ....\n\n\"Get on, driver, get on, you rascal, get on!\"\n\n\"Ugh, sir!\" said the son of toil.\n\nCold shivers suddenly ran down me.  Wouldn't it be better ... to go\nstraight home?  My God, my God!  Why did I invite myself to this dinner\nyesterday?  But no, it's impossible.  And my walking up and down for\nthree hours from the table to the stove?  No, they, they and no one\nelse must pay for my walking up and down!  They must wipe out this\ndishonour! Drive on!\n\nAnd what if they give me into custody?  They won't dare!  They'll be\nafraid of the scandal.  And what if Zverkov is so contemptuous that he\nrefuses to fight a duel?  He is sure to; but in that case I'll show\nthem ... I will turn up at the posting station when he's setting off\ntomorrow, I'll catch him by the leg, I'll pull off his coat when he\ngets into the carriage. I'll get my teeth into his hand, I'll bite him.\n\"See what lengths you can drive a desperate man to!\" He may hit me on\nthe head and they may belabour me from behind.  I will shout to the\nassembled multitude: \"Look at this young puppy who is driving off to\ncaptivate the Circassian girls after letting me spit in his face!\"\n\nOf course, after that everything will be over!  The office will have\nvanished off the face of the earth.  I shall be arrested, I shall be\ntried, I shall be dismissed from the service, thrown in prison, sent to\nSiberia. Never mind!  In fifteen years when they let me out of prison I\nwill trudge off to him, a beggar, in rags.  I shall find him in some\nprovincial town.  He will be married and happy.  He will have a\ngrown-up daughter.... I shall say to him: \"Look, monster, at my hollow\ncheeks and my rags!  I've lost everything--my career, my happiness,\nart, science, THE WOMAN I LOVED, and all through you.  Here are\npistols.  I have come to discharge my pistol and ... and I ... forgive\nyou.  Then I shall fire into the air and he will hear nothing more of\nme....\"\n\nI was actually on the point of tears, though I knew perfectly well at\nthat moment that all this was out of Pushkin's SILVIO and Lermontov's\nMASQUERADE. And all at once I felt horribly ashamed, so ashamed that I\nstopped the horse, got out of the sledge, and stood still in the snow\nin the middle of the street.  The driver gazed at me, sighing and\nastonished.\n\nWhat was I to do?  I could not go on there--it was evidently stupid,\nand I could not leave things as they were, because that would seem as\nthough ... Heavens, how could I leave things!  And after such insults!\n\"No!\" I cried, throwing myself into the sledge again.  \"It is ordained!\nIt is fate!  Drive on, drive on!\"\n\nAnd in my impatience I punched the sledge-driver on the back of the\nneck.\n\n\"What are you up to?  What are you hitting me for?\" the peasant\nshouted, but he whipped up his nag so that it began kicking.\n\nThe wet snow was falling in big flakes; I unbuttoned myself, regardless\nof it.  I forgot everything else, for I had finally decided on the\nslap, and felt with horror that it was going to happen NOW, AT ONCE,\nand that NO FORCE COULD STOP IT.  The deserted street lamps gleamed\nsullenly in the snowy darkness like torches at a funeral.  The snow\ndrifted under my great-coat, under my coat, under my cravat, and melted\nthere.  I did not wrap myself up--all was lost, anyway.\n\nAt last we arrived.  I jumped out, almost unconscious, ran up the steps\nand began knocking and kicking at the door.  I felt fearfully weak,\nparticularly in my legs and knees.  The door was opened quickly as\nthough they knew I was coming.  As a fact, Simonov had warned them that\nperhaps another gentleman would arrive, and this was a place in which\none had to give notice and to observe certain precautions.  It was one\nof those \"millinery establishments\" which were abolished by the police\na good time ago.  By day it really was a shop; but at night, if one had\nan introduction, one might visit it for other purposes.\n\nI walked rapidly through the dark shop into the familiar drawing-room,\nwhere there was only one candle burning, and stood still in amazement:\nthere was no one there.  \"Where are they?\" I asked somebody. But by\nnow, of course, they had separated.  Before me was standing a person\nwith a stupid smile, the \"madam\" herself, who had seen me before.  A\nminute later a door opened and another person came in.\n\nTaking no notice of anything I strode about the room, and, I believe, I\ntalked to myself.  I felt as though I had been saved from death and was\nconscious of this, joyfully, all over: I should have given that slap, I\nshould certainly, certainly have given it!  But now they were not here\nand ... everything had vanished and changed!  I looked round.  I could\nnot realise my condition yet.  I looked mechanically at the girl who\nhad come in: and had a glimpse of a fresh, young, rather pale face,\nwith straight, dark eyebrows, and with grave, as it were wondering,\neyes that attracted me at once; I should have hated her if she had been\nsmiling.  I began looking at her more intently and, as it were, with\neffort.  I had not fully collected my thoughts.  There was something\nsimple and good-natured in her face, but something strangely grave.  I\nam sure that this stood in her way here, and no one of those fools had\nnoticed her.  She could not, however, have been called a beauty, though\nshe was tall, strong-looking, and well built.  She was very simply\ndressed.  Something loathsome stirred within me.  I went straight up to\nher.\n\nI chanced to look into the glass.  My harassed face struck me as\nrevolting in the extreme, pale, angry, abject, with dishevelled hair.\n\"No matter, I am glad of it,\" I thought; \"I am glad that I shall seem\nrepulsive to her; I like that.\"\n\n\n\nVI\n\n...  Somewhere behind a screen a clock began wheezing, as though\noppressed by something, as though someone were strangling it.  After an\nunnaturally prolonged wheezing there followed a shrill, nasty, and as\nit were unexpectedly rapid, chime--as though someone were suddenly\njumping forward.  It struck two.  I woke up, though I had indeed not\nbeen asleep but lying half-conscious.\n\nIt was almost completely dark in the narrow, cramped, low-pitched room,\ncumbered up with an enormous wardrobe and piles of cardboard boxes and\nall sorts of frippery and litter.  The candle end that had been burning\non the table was going out and gave a faint flicker from time to time.\nIn a few minutes there would be complete darkness.\n\nI was not long in coming to myself; everything came back to my mind at\nonce, without an effort, as though it had been in ambush to pounce upon\nme again.  And, indeed, even while I was unconscious a point seemed\ncontinually to remain in my memory unforgotten, and round it my dreams\nmoved drearily.  But strange to say, everything that had happened to me\nin that day seemed to me now, on waking, to be in the far, far away\npast, as though I had long, long ago lived all that down.\n\nMy head was full of fumes.  Something seemed to be hovering over me,\nrousing me, exciting me, and making me restless.  Misery and spite\nseemed surging up in me again and seeking an outlet.  Suddenly I saw\nbeside me two wide open eyes scrutinising me curiously and\npersistently. The look in those eyes was coldly detached, sullen, as it\nwere utterly remote; it weighed upon me.\n\nA grim idea came into my brain and passed all over my body, as a\nhorrible sensation, such as one feels when one goes into a damp and\nmouldy cellar.  There was something unnatural in those two eyes,\nbeginning to look at me only now.  I recalled, too, that during those\ntwo hours I had not said a single word to this creature, and had, in\nfact, considered it utterly superfluous; in fact, the silence had for\nsome reason gratified me.  Now I suddenly realised vividly the hideous\nidea--revolting as a spider--of vice, which, without love, grossly and\nshamelessly begins with that in which true love finds its consummation.\nFor a long time we gazed at each other like that, but she did not drop\nher eyes before mine and her expression did not change, so that at last\nI felt uncomfortable.\n\n\"What is your name?\" I asked abruptly, to put an end to it.\n\n\"Liza,\" she answered almost in a whisper, but somehow far from\ngraciously, and she turned her eyes away.\n\nI was silent.\n\n\"What weather!  The snow ... it's disgusting!\" I said, almost to\nmyself, putting my arm under my head despondently, and gazing at the\nceiling.\n\nShe made no answer.  This was horrible.\n\n\"Have you always lived in Petersburg?\" I asked a minute later, almost\nangrily, turning my head slightly towards her.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Where do you come from?\"\n\n\"From Riga,\" she answered reluctantly.\n\n\"Are you a German?\"\n\n\"No, Russian.\"\n\n\"Have you been here long?\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\n\"In this house?\"\n\n\"A fortnight.\"\n\nShe spoke more and more jerkily.  The candle went out; I could no\nlonger distinguish her face.\n\n\"Have you a father and mother?\"\n\n\"Yes ... no ... I have.\"\n\n\"Where are they?\"\n\n\"There ... in Riga.\"\n\n\"What are they?\"\n\n\"Oh, nothing.\"\n\n\"Nothing?  Why, what class are they?\"\n\n\"Tradespeople.\"\n\n\"Have you always lived with them?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"How old are you?\"\n\n\"Twenty.\"\n\n\"Why did you leave them?\"\n\n\"Oh, for no reason.\"\n\nThat answer meant \"Let me alone; I feel sick, sad.\"\n\nWe were silent.\n\nGod knows why I did not go away.  I felt myself more and more sick and\ndreary.  The images of the previous day began of themselves, apart from\nmy will, flitting through my memory in confusion.  I suddenly recalled\nsomething I had seen that morning when, full of anxious thoughts, I was\nhurrying to the office.\n\n\"I saw them carrying a coffin out yesterday and they nearly dropped\nit,\" I suddenly said aloud, not that I desired to open the\nconversation, but as it were by accident.\n\n\"A coffin?\"\n\n\"Yes, in the Haymarket; they were bringing it up out of a cellar.\"\n\n\"From a cellar?\"\n\n\"Not from a cellar, but a basement.  Oh, you know ... down below ...\nfrom a house of ill-fame.  It was filthy all round ...  Egg-shells,\nlitter ... a stench.  It was loathsome.\"\n\nSilence.\n\n\"A nasty day to be buried,\" I began, simply to avoid being silent.\n\n\"Nasty, in what way?\"\n\n\"The snow, the wet.\"  (I yawned.)\n\n\"It makes no difference,\" she said suddenly, after a brief silence.\n\n\"No, it's horrid.\"  (I yawned again).  \"The gravediggers must have\nsworn at getting drenched by the snow.  And there must have been water\nin the grave.\"\n\n\"Why water in the grave?\" she asked, with a sort of curiosity, but\nspeaking even more harshly and abruptly than before.\n\nI suddenly began to feel provoked.\n\n\"Why, there must have been water at the bottom a foot deep.  You can't\ndig a dry grave in Volkovo Cemetery.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"Why?  Why, the place is waterlogged.  It's a regular marsh.  So they\nbury them in water.  I've seen it myself ... many times.\"\n\n(I had never seen it once, indeed I had never been in Volkovo, and had\nonly heard stories of it.)\n\n\"Do you mean to say, you don't mind how you die?\"\n\n\"But why should I die?\" she answered, as though defending herself.\n\n\"Why, some day you will die, and you will die just the same as that\ndead woman.  She was ... a girl like you.  She died of consumption.\"\n\n\"A wench would have died in hospital ...\"  (She knows all about it\nalready: she said \"wench,\" not \"girl.\")\n\n\"She was in debt to her madam,\" I retorted, more and more provoked by\nthe discussion; \"and went on earning money for her up to the end,\nthough she was in consumption.  Some sledge-drivers standing by were\ntalking about her to some soldiers and telling them so.  No doubt they\nknew her.  They were laughing.  They were going to meet in a pot-house\nto drink to her memory.\"\n\nA great deal of this was my invention.  Silence followed, profound\nsilence.  She did not stir.\n\n\"And is it better to die in a hospital?\"\n\n\"Isn't it just the same?  Besides, why should I die?\" she added\nirritably.\n\n\"If not now, a little later.\"\n\n\"Why a little later?\"\n\n\"Why, indeed?  Now you are young, pretty, fresh, you fetch a high\nprice.  But after another year of this life you will be very\ndifferent--you will go off.\"\n\n\"In a year?\"\n\n\"Anyway, in a year you will be worth less,\" I continued malignantly.\n\"You will go from here to something lower, another house; a year\nlater--to a third, lower and lower, and in seven years you will come to\na basement in the Haymarket.  That will be if you were lucky.  But it\nwould be much worse if you got some disease, consumption, say ... and\ncaught a chill, or something or other.  It's not easy to get over an\nillness in your way of life.  If you catch anything you may not get rid\nof it.  And so you would die.\"\n\n\"Oh, well, then I shall die,\" she answered, quite vindictively, and she\nmade a quick movement.\n\n\"But one is sorry.\"\n\n\"Sorry for whom?\"\n\n\"Sorry for life.\" Silence.\n\n\"Have you been engaged to be married?  Eh?\"\n\n\"What's that to you?\"\n\n\"Oh, I am not cross-examining you.  It's nothing to me.  Why are you so\ncross?  Of course you may have had your own troubles.  What is it to\nme?  It's simply that I felt sorry.\"\n\n\"Sorry for whom?\"\n\n\"Sorry for you.\"\n\n\"No need,\" she whispered hardly audibly, and again made a faint\nmovement.\n\nThat incensed me at once.  What!  I was so gentle with her, and she....\n\n\"Why, do you think that you are on the right path?\"\n\n\"I don't think anything.\"\n\n\"That's what's wrong, that you don't think.  Realise it while there is\nstill time.  There still is time.  You are still young, good-looking;\nyou might love, be married, be happy....\"\n\n\"Not all married women are happy,\" she snapped out in the rude abrupt\ntone she had used at first.\n\n\"Not all, of course, but anyway it is much better than the life here.\nInfinitely better.  Besides, with love one can live even without\nhappiness. Even in sorrow life is sweet; life is sweet, however one\nlives.  But here what is there but ... foulness?  Phew!\"\n\nI turned away with disgust; I was no longer reasoning coldly.  I began\nto feel myself what I was saying and warmed to the subject.  I was\nalready longing to expound the cherished ideas I had brooded over in my\ncorner. Something suddenly flared up in me.  An object had appeared\nbefore me.\n\n\"Never mind my being here, I am not an example for you.  I am, perhaps,\nworse than you are.  I was drunk when I came here, though,\" I hastened,\nhowever, to say in self-defence.  \"Besides, a man is no example for a\nwoman.  It's a different thing.  I may degrade and defile myself, but I\nam not anyone's slave.  I come and go, and that's an end of it.  I\nshake it off, and I am a different man.  But you are a slave from the\nstart.  Yes, a slave! You give up everything, your whole freedom.  If\nyou want to break your chains afterwards, you won't be able to; you\nwill be more and more fast in the snares.  It is an accursed bondage.\nI know it.  I won't speak of anything else, maybe you won't understand,\nbut tell me: no doubt you are in debt to your madam?  There, you see,\"\nI added, though she made no answer, but only listened in silence,\nentirely absorbed, \"that's a bondage for you! You will never buy your\nfreedom.  They will see to that.  It's like selling your soul to the\ndevil....  And besides ... perhaps, I too, am just as unlucky--how do\nyou know--and wallow in the mud on purpose, out of misery?  You know,\nmen take to drink from grief; well, maybe I am here from grief.  Come,\ntell me, what is there good here?  Here you and I ... came together ...\njust now and did not say one word to one another all the time, and it\nwas only afterwards you began staring at me like a wild creature, and I\nat you.  Is that loving?  Is that how one human being should meet\nanother?  It's hideous, that's what it is!\"\n\n\"Yes!\" she assented sharply and hurriedly.\n\nI was positively astounded by the promptitude of this \"Yes.\"  So the\nsame thought may have been straying through her mind when she was\nstaring at me just before.  So she, too, was capable of certain\nthoughts? \"Damn it all, this was interesting, this was a point of\nlikeness!\" I thought, almost rubbing my hands.  And indeed it's easy to\nturn a young soul like that!\n\nIt was the exercise of my power that attracted me most.\n\nShe turned her head nearer to me, and it seemed to me in the darkness\nthat she propped herself on her arm.  Perhaps she was scrutinising me.\nHow I regretted that I could not see her eyes.  I heard her deep\nbreathing.\n\n\"Why have you come here?\" I asked her, with a note of authority already\nin my voice.\n\n\"Oh, I don't know.\"\n\n\"But how nice it would be to be living in your father's house!  It's\nwarm and free; you have a home of your own.\"\n\n\"But what if it's worse than this?\"\n\n\"I must take the right tone,\" flashed through my mind.  \"I may not get\nfar with sentimentality.\"  But it was only a momentary thought.  I\nswear she really did interest me.  Besides, I was exhausted and moody.\nAnd cunning so easily goes hand-in-hand with feeling.\n\n\"Who denies it!\" I hastened to answer.  \"Anything may happen.  I am\nconvinced that someone has wronged you, and that you are more sinned\nagainst than sinning.  Of course, I know nothing of your story, but\nit's not likely a girl like you has come here of her own inclination....\"\n\n\"A girl like me?\" she whispered, hardly audibly; but I heard it.\n\nDamn it all, I was flattering her.  That was horrid.  But perhaps it\nwas a good thing....  She was silent.\n\n\"See, Liza, I will tell you about myself.  If I had had a home from\nchildhood, I shouldn't be what I am now.  I often think that.  However\nbad it may be at home, anyway they are your father and mother, and not\nenemies, strangers.  Once a year at least, they'll show their love of\nyou. Anyway, you know you are at home.  I grew up without a home; and\nperhaps that's why I've turned so ... unfeeling.\"\n\nI waited again.  \"Perhaps she doesn't understand,\" I thought, \"and,\nindeed, it is absurd--it's moralising.\"\n\n\"If I were a father and had a daughter, I believe I should love my\ndaughter more than my sons, really,\" I began indirectly, as though\ntalking of something else, to distract her attention.  I must confess I\nblushed.\n\n\"Why so?\" she asked.\n\nAh! so she was listening!\n\n\"I don't know, Liza.  I knew a father who was a stern, austere man, but\nused to go down on his knees to his daughter, used to kiss her hands,\nher feet, he couldn't make enough of her, really.  When she danced at\nparties he used to stand for five hours at a stretch, gazing at her.\nHe was mad over her: I understand that!  She would fall asleep tired at\nnight, and he would wake to kiss her in her sleep and make the sign of\nthe cross over her.  He would go about in a dirty old coat, he was\nstingy to everyone else, but would spend his last penny for her, giving\nher expensive presents, and it was his greatest delight when she was\npleased with what he gave her. Fathers always love their daughters more\nthan the mothers do.  Some girls live happily at home!  And I believe I\nshould never let my daughters marry.\"\n\n\"What next?\" she said, with a faint smile.\n\n\"I should be jealous, I really should.  To think that she should kiss\nanyone else!  That she should love a stranger more than her father!\nIt's painful to imagine it.  Of course, that's all nonsense, of course\nevery father would be reasonable at last.  But I believe before I\nshould let her marry, I should worry myself to death; I should find\nfault with all her suitors.  But I should end by letting her marry whom\nshe herself loved. The one whom the daughter loves always seems the\nworst to the father, you know.  That is always so.  So many family\ntroubles come from that.\"\n\n\"Some are glad to sell their daughters, rather than marrying them\nhonourably.\"\n\nAh, so that was it!\n\n\"Such a thing, Liza, happens in those accursed families in which there\nis neither love nor God,\" I retorted warmly, \"and where there is no\nlove, there is no sense either.  There are such families, it's true,\nbut I am not speaking of them.  You must have seen wickedness in your\nown family, if you talk like that.  Truly, you must have been unlucky.\nH'm! ... that sort of thing mostly comes about through poverty.\"\n\n\"And is it any better with the gentry?  Even among the poor, honest\npeople who live happily?\"\n\n\"H'm ... yes.  Perhaps.  Another thing, Liza, man is fond of reckoning\nup his troubles, but does not count his joys.  If he counted them up as\nhe ought, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for\nit. And what if all goes well with the family, if the blessing of God\nis upon it, if the husband is a good one, loves you, cherishes you,\nnever leaves you! There is happiness in such a family!  Even sometimes\nthere is happiness in the midst of sorrow; and indeed sorrow is\neverywhere.  If you marry YOU WILL FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF.  But think of\nthe first years of married life with one you love: what happiness, what\nhappiness there sometimes is in it! And indeed it's the ordinary thing.\nIn those early days even quarrels with one's husband end happily.  Some\nwomen get up quarrels with their husbands just because they love them.\nIndeed, I knew a woman like that: she seemed to say that because she\nloved him, she would torment him and make him feel it.  You know that\nyou may torment a man on purpose through love.  Women are particularly\ngiven to that, thinking to themselves 'I will love him so, I will make\nso much of him afterwards, that it's no sin to torment him a little\nnow.' And all in the  house rejoice in the sight of you, and you are\nhappy and gay and peaceful and honourable.... Then there are some\nwomen who are jealous.  If he went off anywhere--I knew one such woman,\nshe couldn't restrain herself, but would jump up at night and run off\non the sly to find out where he was, whether he was with some other\nwoman.  That's a pity.  And the woman knows herself it's wrong, and her\nheart fails her and she suffers, but she loves--it's all through love.\nAnd how sweet it is to make up after quarrels, to own herself in the\nwrong or to forgive him!  And they both are so happy all at once--as\nthough they had met anew, been married over again; as though their love\nhad begun afresh.  And no one, no one should know what passes between\nhusband and wife if they love one another.  And whatever quarrels there\nmay be between them they ought not to call in their own mother to judge\nbetween them and tell tales of one another. They are their own judges.\nLove is a holy mystery and ought to be hidden from all other eyes,\nwhatever happens.  That makes it holier and better. They respect one\nanother more, and much is built on respect.  And if once there has been\nlove, if they have been married for love, why should love pass away?\nSurely one can keep it!  It is rare that one cannot keep it. And if the\nhusband is kind and straightforward, why should not love last? The\nfirst phase of married love will pass, it is true, but then there will\ncome a love that is better still.  Then there will be the union of\nsouls, they will have everything in common, there will be no secrets\nbetween them. And once they have children, the most difficult times\nwill seem to them happy, so long as there is love and courage.  Even\ntoil will be a joy, you may deny yourself bread for your children and\neven that will be a joy, They will love you for it afterwards; so you\nare laying by for your future. As the children grow up you feel that\nyou are an example, a support for them; that even after you die your\nchildren will always keep your thoughts and feelings, because they have\nreceived them from you, they will take on your semblance and likeness.\nSo you see this is a great duty. How can it fail to draw the father and\nmother nearer?  People say it's a trial to have children.  Who says\nthat?  It is heavenly happiness!  Are you fond of little children,\nLiza?  I am awfully fond of them.  You know--a little rosy baby boy at\nyour bosom, and what husband's heart is not touched, seeing his wife\nnursing his child!  A plump little rosy baby, sprawling and snuggling,\nchubby little hands and feet, clean tiny little nails, so tiny that it\nmakes one laugh to look at them; eyes that look as if they understand\neverything.  And while it sucks it clutches at your bosom with its\nlittle hand, plays.  When its father comes up, the child tears itself\naway from the bosom, flings itself back, looks at its father, laughs,\nas though it were fearfully funny, and falls to sucking again.  Or it\nwill bite its mother's breast when its little teeth are coming, while\nit looks sideways at her with its little eyes as though to say, 'Look,\nI am biting!' Is not all that happiness when they are the three\ntogether, husband, wife and child?  One can forgive a great deal for\nthe sake of such moments.  Yes, Liza, one must first learn to live\noneself before one blames others!\"\n\n\"It's by pictures, pictures like that one must get at you,\" I thought\nto myself, though I did speak with real feeling, and all at once I\nflushed crimson.  \"What if she were suddenly to burst out laughing,\nwhat should I do then?\" That idea drove me to fury.  Towards the end of\nmy speech I really was excited, and now my vanity was somehow wounded.\nThe silence continued.  I almost nudged her.\n\n\"Why are you--\" she began and stopped.  But I understood: there was a\nquiver of something different in her voice, not abrupt, harsh and\nunyielding as before, but something soft and shamefaced, so shamefaced\nthat I suddenly felt ashamed and guilty.\n\n\"What?\" I asked, with tender curiosity.\n\n\"Why, you...\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Why, you ... speak somehow like a book,\" she said, and again there was\na note of irony in her voice.\n\nThat remark sent a pang to my heart.  It was not what I was expecting.\n\nI did not understand that she was hiding her feelings under irony, that\nthis is usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when\nthe privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded, and that\ntheir pride makes them refuse to surrender till the last moment and\nshrink from giving expression to their feelings before you.  I ought to\nhave guessed the truth from the timidity with which she had repeatedly\napproached her sarcasm, only bringing herself to utter it at last with\nan effort.  But I did not guess, and an evil feeling took possession of\nme.\n\n\"Wait a bit!\" I thought.\n\n\n\nVII\n\n\"Oh, hush, Liza!  How can you talk about being like a book, when it\nmakes even me, an outsider, feel sick?  Though I don't look at it as an\noutsider, for, indeed, it touches me to the heart....  Is it possible,\nis it possible that you do not feel sick at being here yourself?\nEvidently habit does wonders!  God knows what habit can do with anyone.\nCan you seriously think that you will never grow old, that you will\nalways be good-looking, and that they will keep you here for ever and\never?  I say nothing of the loathsomeness of the life here.... Though\nlet me tell you this about it--about your present life, I mean; here\nthough you are young now, attractive, nice, with soul and feeling, yet\nyou know as soon as I came to myself just now I felt at once sick at\nbeing here with you!  One can only come here when one is drunk.  But if\nyou were anywhere else, living as good people live, I should perhaps be\nmore than attracted by you, should fall in love with you, should be\nglad of a look from you, let alone a word; I should hang about your\ndoor, should go down on my knees to you, should look upon you as my\nbetrothed and think it an honour to be allowed to.  I should not dare\nto have an impure thought about you.  But here, you see, I know that I\nhave only to whistle and you have to come with me whether you like it\nor not.  I don't consult your wishes, but you mine.  The lowest\nlabourer hires himself as a workman, but he doesn't make a slave of\nhimself altogether; besides, he knows that he will be free again\npresently.  But when are you free?  Only think what you are giving up\nhere?  What is it you are making a slave of?  It is your soul, together\nwith your body; you are selling your soul which you have no right to\ndispose of!  You give your love to be outraged by every drunkard!\nLove!  But that's everything, you know, it's a priceless diamond, it's\na maiden's treasure, love--why, a man would be ready to give his soul,\nto face death to gain that love.  But how much is your love worth now?\nYou are sold, all of you, body and soul, and there is no need to strive\nfor love when you can have everything without love.  And you know there\nis no greater insult to a girl than that, do you understand?  To be\nsure, I have heard that they comfort you, poor fools, they let you have\nlovers of your own here.  But you know that's simply a farce, that's\nsimply a sham, it's just laughing at you, and you are taken in by it!\nWhy, do you suppose he really loves you, that lover of yours?  I don't\nbelieve it.  How can he love you when he knows you may be called away\nfrom him any minute? He would be a low fellow if he did!  Will he have\na grain of respect for you?  What have you in common with him?  He\nlaughs at you and robs you--that is all his love amounts to!  You are\nlucky if he does not beat you.  Very likely he does beat you, too.  Ask\nhim, if you have got one, whether he will marry you.  He will laugh in\nyour face, if he doesn't spit in it or give you a blow--though maybe he\nis not worth a bad halfpenny himself.  And for what have you ruined\nyour life, if you come to think of it?  For the coffee they give you to\ndrink and the plentiful meals?  But with what object are they feeding\nyou up?  An honest girl couldn't swallow the food, for she would know\nwhat she was being fed for.  You are in debt here, and, of course, you\nwill always be in debt, and you will go on in debt to the end, till the\nvisitors here begin to scorn you.  And that will soon happen, don't\nrely upon your youth--all that flies by express train here, you know.\nYou will be kicked out.  And not simply kicked out; long before that\nshe'll begin nagging at you, scolding you, abusing you, as though you\nhad not sacrificed your health for her, had not thrown away your youth\nand your soul for her benefit, but as though you had ruined her,\nbeggared her, robbed her.  And don't expect anyone to take your part:\nthe others, your companions, will attack you, too, win her favour, for\nall are in slavery here, and have lost all conscience and pity here\nlong ago.  They have become utterly vile, and nothing on earth is\nviler, more loathsome, and more insulting than their abuse.  And you\nare laying down everything here, unconditionally, youth and health and\nbeauty and hope, and at twenty-two you will look like a woman of\nfive-and-thirty, and you will be lucky if you are not diseased, pray to\nGod for that!  No doubt you are thinking now that you have a gay time\nand no work to do!  Yet there is no work harder or more dreadful in the\nworld or ever has been.  One would think that the heart alone would be\nworn out with tears.  And you won't dare to say a word, not half a word\nwhen they drive you away from here; you will go away as though you were\nto blame.  You will change to another house, then to a third, then\nsomewhere else, till you come down at last to the Haymarket.  There you\nwill be beaten at every turn; that is good manners there, the visitors\ndon't know how to be friendly without beating you.  You don't believe\nthat it is so hateful there?  Go and look for yourself some time, you\ncan see with your own eyes.  Once, one New Year's Day, I saw a woman at\na door.  They had turned her out as a joke, to give her a taste of the\nfrost because she had been crying so much, and they shut the door\nbehind her.  At nine o'clock in the morning she was already quite\ndrunk, dishevelled, half-naked, covered with bruises, her face was\npowdered, but she had a black-eye, blood was trickling from her nose\nand her teeth; some cabman had just given her a drubbing.  She was\nsitting on the stone steps, a salt fish of some sort was in her hand;\nshe was crying, wailing something about her luck and beating with the\nfish on the steps, and cabmen and drunken soldiers were crowding in the\ndoorway taunting her.  You don't believe that you will ever be like\nthat?  I should be sorry to believe it, too, but how do you know; maybe\nten years, eight years ago that very woman with the salt fish came here\nfresh as a cherub, innocent, pure, knowing no evil, blushing at every\nword.  Perhaps she was like you, proud, ready to take offence, not like\nthe others; perhaps she looked like a queen, and knew what happiness\nwas in store for the man who should love her and whom she should love.\nDo you see how it ended?  And what if at that very minute when she was\nbeating on the filthy steps with that fish, drunken and\ndishevelled--what if at that very minute she recalled the pure early\ndays in her father's house, when she used to go to school and the\nneighbour's son watched for her on the way, declaring that he would\nlove her as long as he lived, that he would devote his life to her, and\nwhen they vowed to love one another for ever and be married as soon as\nthey were grown up!  No, Liza, it would be happy for you if you were to\ndie soon of consumption in some corner, in some cellar like that woman\njust now.  In the hospital, do you say?  You will be lucky if they take\nyou, but what if you are still of use to the madam here? Consumption is\na queer disease, it is not like fever.  The patient goes on hoping till\nthe last minute and says he is all right.  He deludes himself And that\njust suits your madam.  Don't doubt it, that's how it is; you have sold\nyour soul, and what is more you owe money, so you daren't say a word.\nBut when you are dying, all will abandon you, all will turn away from\nyou, for then there will be nothing to get from you.  What's more, they\nwill reproach you for cumbering the place, for being so long over\ndying.  However you beg you won't get a drink of water without abuse:\n'Whenever are you going off, you nasty hussy, you won't let us sleep\nwith your moaning, you make the gentlemen sick.'  That's true, I have\nheard such things said myself.  They will thrust you dying into the\nfilthiest corner in the cellar--in the damp and darkness; what will\nyour thoughts be, lying there alone?  When you die, strange hands will\nlay you out, with grumbling and impatience; no one will bless you, no\none will sigh for you, they only want to get rid of you as soon as may\nbe; they will buy a coffin, take you to the grave as they did that poor\nwoman today, and celebrate your memory at the tavern.  In the grave,\nsleet, filth, wet snow--no need to put themselves out for you--'Let her\ndown, Vanuha; it's just like her luck--even here, she is head-foremost,\nthe hussy.  Shorten the cord, you rascal.'  'It's all right as it is.'\n'All right, is it?  Why, she's on her side!  She was a fellow-creature,\nafter all!  But, never mind, throw the earth on her.'  And they won't\ncare to waste much time quarrelling over you.  They will scatter the\nwet blue clay as quick as they can and go off to the tavern ... and\nthere your memory on earth will end; other women have children to go to\ntheir graves, fathers, husbands.  While for you neither tear, nor sigh,\nnor remembrance; no one in the whole world will ever come to you, your\nname will vanish from the face of the earth--as though you had never\nexisted, never been born at all!  Nothing but filth and mud, however\nyou knock at your coffin lid at night, when the dead arise, however you\ncry: 'Let me out, kind people, to live in the light of day!  My life\nwas no life at all; my life has been thrown away like a dish-clout; it\nwas drunk away in the tavern at the Haymarket; let me out, kind people,\nto live in the world again.'\"\n\nAnd I worked myself up to such a pitch that I began to have a lump in\nmy throat myself, and ... and all at once I stopped, sat up in dismay\nand, bending over apprehensively, began to listen with a beating heart.\nI had reason to be troubled.\n\nI had felt for some time that I was turning her soul upside down and\nrending her heart, and--and the more I was convinced of it, the more\neagerly I desired to gain my object as quickly and as effectually as\npossible.  It was the exercise of my skill that carried me away; yet it\nwas not merely sport....\n\nI knew I was speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly, in fact, I\ncould not speak except \"like a book.\"  But that did not trouble me: I\nknew, I felt that I should be understood and that this very bookishness\nmight be an assistance.  But now, having attained my effect, I was\nsuddenly panic-stricken.  Never before had I witnessed such despair!\nShe was lying on her face, thrusting her face into the pillow and\nclutching it in both hands.  Her heart was being torn.  Her youthful\nbody was shuddering all over as though in convulsions.  Suppressed sobs\nrent her bosom and suddenly burst out in weeping and wailing, then she\npressed closer into the pillow: she did not want anyone here, not a\nliving soul, to know of her anguish and her tears.  She bit the pillow,\nbit her hand till it bled (I saw that afterwards), or, thrusting her\nfingers into her dishevelled hair, seemed rigid with the effort of\nrestraint, holding her breath and clenching her teeth.  I began saying\nsomething, begging her to calm herself, but felt that I did not dare;\nand all at once, in a sort of cold shiver, almost in terror, began\nfumbling in the dark, trying hurriedly to get dressed to go.  It was\ndark; though I tried my best I could not finish dressing quickly.\nSuddenly I felt a box of matches and a candlestick with a whole candle\nin it.  As soon as the room was lighted up, Liza sprang up, sat up in\nbed, and with a contorted face, with a half insane smile, looked at me\nalmost senselessly.  I sat down beside her and took her hands; she came\nto herself, made an impulsive movement towards me, would have caught\nhold of me, but did not dare, and slowly bowed her head before me.\n\n\"Liza, my dear, I was wrong ... forgive me, my dear,\" I began, but she\nsqueezed my hand in her fingers so tightly that I felt I was saying the\nwrong thing and stopped.\n\n\"This is my address, Liza, come to me.\"\n\n\"I will come,\" she answered resolutely, her head still bowed.\n\n\"But now I am going, good-bye ... till we meet again.\"\n\nI got up; she, too, stood up and suddenly flushed all over, gave a\nshudder, snatched up a shawl that was lying on a chair and muffled\nherself in it to her chin.  As she did this she gave another sickly\nsmile, blushed and looked at me strangely.  I felt wretched; I was in\nhaste to get away--to disappear.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" she said suddenly, in the passage just at the doorway,\nstopping me with her hand on my overcoat.  She put down the candle in\nhot haste and ran off; evidently she had thought of something or wanted\nto show me something.  As she ran away she flushed, her eyes shone, and\nthere was a smile on her lips--what was the meaning of it?  Against my\nwill I waited: she came back a minute later with an expression that\nseemed to ask forgiveness for something.  In fact, it was not the same\nface, not the same look as the evening before: sullen, mistrustful and\nobstinate. Her eyes now were imploring, soft, and at the same time\ntrustful, caressing, timid.  The expression with which children look at\npeople they are very fond of, of whom they are asking a favour.  Her\neyes were a light hazel, they were lovely eyes, full of life, and\ncapable of expressing love as well as sullen hatred.\n\nMaking no explanation, as though I, as a sort of higher being, must\nunderstand everything without explanations, she held out a piece of\npaper to me.  Her whole face was positively beaming at that instant\nwith naive, almost childish, triumph.  I unfolded it.  It was a letter\nto her from a medical student or someone of that sort--a very\nhigh-flown and flowery, but extremely respectful, love-letter.  I don't\nrecall the words now, but I remember well that through the high-flown\nphrases there was apparent a genuine feeling, which cannot be feigned.\nWhen I had finished reading it I met her glowing, questioning, and\nchildishly impatient eyes fixed upon me.  She fastened her eyes upon my\nface and waited impatiently for what I should say.  In a few words,\nhurriedly, but with a sort of joy and pride, she explained to me that\nshe had been to a dance somewhere in a private house, a family of \"very\nnice people, WHO KNEW NOTHING, absolutely nothing, for she had only\ncome here so lately and it had all happened ... and she hadn't made up\nher mind to stay and was certainly going away as soon as she had paid\nher debt...\" and at that party there had been the student who had\ndanced with her all the evening.  He had talked to her, and it turned\nout that he had known her in old days at Riga when he was a child, they\nhad played together, but a very long time ago--and he knew her parents,\nbut ABOUT THIS he knew nothing, nothing whatever, and had no suspicion!\nAnd the day after the dance (three days ago) he had sent her that\nletter through the friend with whom she had gone to the party ... and\n... well, that was all.\n\nShe dropped her shining eyes with a sort of bashfulness as she finished.\n\nThe poor girl was keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure,\nand had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me\nto go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely\nloved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully.  No doubt that letter\nwas destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing.  But none the less,\nI am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious\ntreasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she\nhad thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise\nherself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of\nher.  I said nothing, pressed her hand and went out.  I so longed to\nget away ... I walked all the way home, in spite of the fact that the\nmelting snow was still falling in heavy flakes.  I was exhausted,\nshattered, in bewilderment.  But behind the bewilderment the truth was\nalready gleaming.  The loathsome truth.\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nIt was some time, however, before I consented to recognise that truth.\nWaking up in the morning after some hours of heavy, leaden sleep, and\nimmediately realising all that had happened on the previous day, I was\npositively amazed at my last night's SENTIMENTALITY with Liza, at all\nthose \"outcries of horror and pity.\"  \"To think of having such an\nattack of womanish hysteria, pah!\" I concluded.  And what did I thrust\nmy address upon her for?  What if she comes?  Let her come, though; it\ndoesn't matter....  But OBVIOUSLY, that was not now the chief and the\nmost important matter: I had to make haste and at all costs save my\nreputation in the eyes of Zverkov and Simonov as quickly as possible;\nthat was the chief business.  And I was so taken up that morning that I\nactually forgot all about Liza.\n\nFirst of all I had at once to repay what I had borrowed the day before\nfrom Simonov.  I resolved on a desperate measure: to borrow fifteen\nroubles straight off from Anton Antonitch.  As luck would have it he\nwas in the best of humours that morning, and gave it to me at once, on\nthe first asking.  I was so delighted at this that, as I signed the IOU\nwith a swaggering air, I told him casually that the night before \"I had\nbeen keeping it up with some friends at the Hotel de Paris; we were\ngiving a farewell party to a comrade, in fact, I might say a friend of\nmy childhood, and you know--a desperate rake, fearfully spoilt--of\ncourse, he belongs to a good family, and has considerable means, a\nbrilliant career; he is witty, charming, a regular Lovelace, you\nunderstand; we drank an extra 'half-dozen' and ...\"\n\nAnd it went off all right; all this was uttered very easily,\nunconstrainedly and complacently.\n\nOn reaching home I promptly wrote to Simonov.\n\nTo this hour I am lost in admiration when I recall the truly\ngentlemanly, good-humoured, candid tone of my letter.  With tact and\ngood-breeding, and, above all, entirely without superfluous words, I\nblamed myself for all that had happened.  I defended myself, \"if I\nreally may be allowed to defend myself,\" by alleging that being utterly\nunaccustomed to wine, I had been intoxicated with the first glass,\nwhich I said, I had drunk before they arrived, while I was waiting for\nthem at the Hotel de Paris between five and six o'clock.  I begged\nSimonov's pardon especially; I asked him to convey my explanations to\nall the others, especially to Zverkov, whom \"I seemed to remember as\nthough in a dream\" I had insulted.  I added that I would have called\nupon all of them myself, but my head ached, and besides I had not the\nface to.  I was particularly pleased with a certain lightness, almost\ncarelessness (strictly within the bounds of politeness, however), which\nwas apparent in my style, and better than any possible arguments, gave\nthem at once to understand that I took rather an independent view of\n\"all that unpleasantness last night\"; that I was by no means so utterly\ncrushed as you, my friends, probably imagine; but on the contrary,\nlooked upon it as a gentleman serenely respecting himself should look\nupon it.  \"On a young hero's past no censure is cast!\"\n\n\"There is actually an aristocratic playfulness about it!\" I thought\nadmiringly, as I read over the letter.  \"And it's all because I am an\nintellectual and cultivated man!  Another man in my place would not\nhave known how to extricate himself, but here I have got out of it and\nam as jolly as ever again, and all because I am 'a cultivated and\neducated man of our day.' And, indeed, perhaps, everything was due to\nthe wine yesterday.  H'm!\" ...  No, it was not the wine.  I did not\ndrink anything at all between five and six when I was waiting for them.\nI had lied to Simonov; I had lied shamelessly; and indeed I wasn't\nashamed now.... Hang it all though, the great thing was that I was rid\nof it.\n\nI put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to\ntake it to Simonov.  When he learned that there was money in the\nletter, Apollon became more respectful and agreed to take it.  Towards\nevening I went out for a walk.  My head was still aching and giddy\nafter yesterday.  But as evening came on and the twilight grew denser,\nmy impressions and, following them, my thoughts, grew more and more\ndifferent and confused. Something was not dead within me, in the depths\nof my heart and conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in\nacute depression.  For the most part I jostled my way through the most\ncrowded business streets, along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy\nStreet and in Yusupov Garden. I always liked particularly sauntering\nalong these streets in the dusk, just when there were crowds of working\npeople of all sorts going home from their daily work, with faces\nlooking cross with anxiety.  What I liked was just that cheap bustle,\nthat bare prose.  On this occasion the jostling of the streets\nirritated me more than ever, I could not make out what was wrong with\nme, I could not find the clue, something seemed rising up continually\nin my soul, painfully, and refusing to be appeased.  I returned home\ncompletely upset, it was just as though some crime were lying on my\nconscience.\n\nThe thought that Liza was coming worried me continually.  It seemed\nqueer to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented\nme, as it were, especially, as it were, quite separately.  Everything\nelse I had quite succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it\nall and was still perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov.  But\non this point I was not satisfied at all.  It was as though I were\nworried only by Liza.  \"What if she comes,\" I thought incessantly,\n\"well, it doesn't matter, let her come! H'm! it's horrid that she\nshould see, for instance, how I live.  Yesterday I seemed such a hero\nto her, while now, h'm!  It's horrid, though, that I have let myself go\nso, the room looks like a beggar's.  And I brought myself to go out to\ndinner in such a suit!  And my American leather sofa with the stuffing\nsticking out.  And my dressing-gown, which will not cover me, such\ntatters, and she will see all this and she will see Apollon.  That\nbeast is certain to insult her.  He will fasten upon her in order to be\nrude to me. And I, of course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall\nbegin bowing and scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round\nme, I shall begin smiling, telling lies.  Oh, the beastliness!  And it\nisn't the beastliness of it that matters most!  There is something more\nimportant, more loathsome, viler!  Yes, viler!  And to put on that\ndishonest lying mask again! ...\"\n\nWhen I reached that thought I fired up all at once.\n\n\"Why dishonest?  How dishonest?  I was speaking sincerely last night.\nI remember there was real feeling in me, too.  What I wanted was to\nexcite an honourable feeling in her....  Her crying was a good thing,\nit will have a good effect.\"\n\nYet I could not feel at ease.  All that evening, even when I had come\nback home, even after nine o'clock, when I calculated that Liza could\nnot possibly come, still she haunted me, and what was worse, she came\nback to my mind always in the same position.  One moment out of all\nthat had happened last night stood vividly before my imagination; the\nmoment when I struck a match and saw her pale, distorted face, with its\nlook of torture.  And what a pitiful, what an unnatural, what a\ndistorted smile she had at that moment!  But I did not know then, that\nfifteen years later I should still in my imagination see Liza, always\nwith the pitiful, distorted, inappropriate smile which was on her face\nat that minute.\n\nNext day I was ready again to look upon it all as nonsense, due to\nover-excited nerves, and, above all, as EXAGGERATED.  I was always\nconscious of that weak point of mine, and sometimes very much afraid of\nit.  \"I exaggerate everything, that is where I go wrong,\" I repeated to\nmyself every hour.  But, however, \"Liza will very likely come all the\nsame,\" was the refrain with which all my reflections ended.  I was so\nuneasy that I sometimes flew into a fury: \"She'll come, she is certain\nto come!\" I cried, running about the room, \"if not today, she will come\ntomorrow; she'll find me out!  The damnable romanticism of these pure\nhearts!  Oh, the vileness--oh, the silliness--oh, the stupidity of\nthese 'wretched sentimental souls!' Why, how fail to understand?  How\ncould one fail to understand? ...\"\n\nBut at this point I stopped short, and in great confusion, indeed.\n\nAnd how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how\nlittle of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic\ntoo) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my\nwill.  That's virginity, to be sure!  Freshness of soil!\n\nAt times a thought occurred to me, to go to her, \"to tell her all,\" and\nbeg her not to come to me.  But this thought stirred such wrath in me\nthat I believed I should have crushed that \"damned\" Liza if she had\nchanced to be near me at the time.  I should have insulted her, have\nspat at her, have turned her out, have struck her!\n\nOne day passed, however, another and another; she did not come and I\nbegan to grow calmer.  I felt particularly bold and cheerful after nine\no'clock, I even sometimes began dreaming, and rather sweetly: I, for\ninstance, became the salvation of Liza, simply through her coming to me\nand my talking to her.... I develop her, educate her.  Finally, I\nnotice that she loves me, loves me passionately.  I pretend not to\nunderstand (I don't know, however, why I pretend, just for effect,\nperhaps).  At last all confusion, transfigured, trembling and sobbing,\nshe flings herself at my feet and says that I am her saviour, and that\nshe loves me better than anything in the world.  I am amazed, but....\n\"Liza,\" I say, \"can you imagine that I have not noticed your love?  I\nsaw it all, I divined it, but I did not dare to approach you first,\nbecause I had an influence over you and was afraid that you would force\nyourself, from gratitude, to respond to my love, would try to rouse in\nyour heart a feeling which was perhaps absent, and I did not wish that\n... because it would be tyranny ... it would be indelicate (in short, I\nlaunch off at that point into European, inexplicably lofty subtleties a\nla George Sand), but now, now you are mine, you are my creation, you\nare pure, you are good, you are my noble wife.\n\n     'Into my house come bold and free,\n     Its rightful mistress there to be'.\"\n\nThen we begin living together, go abroad and so on, and so on.  In\nfact, in the end it seemed vulgar to me myself, and I began putting out\nmy tongue at myself.\n\nBesides, they won't let her out, \"the hussy!\" I thought.  They don't\nlet them go out very readily, especially in the evening (for some\nreason I fancied she would come in the evening, and at seven o'clock\nprecisely). Though she did say she was not altogether a slave there\nyet, and had certain rights; so, h'm!  Damn it all, she will come, she\nis sure to come!\n\nIt was a good thing, in fact, that Apollon distracted my attention at\nthat time by his rudeness.  He drove me beyond all patience!  He was\nthe bane of my life, the curse laid upon me by Providence.  We had been\nsquabbling continually for years, and I hated him.  My God, how I hated\nhim! I believe I had never hated anyone in my life as I hated him,\nespecially at some moments.  He was an elderly, dignified man, who\nworked part of his time as a tailor.  But for some unknown reason he\ndespised me beyond all measure, and looked down upon me insufferably.\nThough, indeed, he looked down upon everyone.  Simply to glance at that\nflaxen, smoothly brushed head, at the tuft of hair he combed up on his\nforehead and oiled with sunflower oil, at that dignified mouth,\ncompressed into the shape of the letter V, made one feel one was\nconfronting a man who never doubted of himself.  He was a pedant, to\nthe most extreme point, the greatest pedant I had met on earth, and\nwith that had a vanity only befitting Alexander of Macedon.  He was in\nlove with every button on his coat, every nail on his\nfingers--absolutely in love with them, and he looked it! In his\nbehaviour to me he was a perfect tyrant, he spoke very little to me,\nand if he chanced to glance at me he gave me a firm, majestically\nself-confident and invariably ironical look that drove me sometimes to\nfury. He did his work with the air of doing me the greatest favour,\nthough he did scarcely anything for me, and did not, indeed, consider\nhimself bound to do anything.  There could be no doubt that he looked\nupon me as the greatest fool on earth, and that \"he did not get rid of\nme\" was simply that he could get wages from me every month.  He\nconsented to do nothing for me for seven roubles a month.  Many sins\nshould be forgiven me for what I suffered from him.  My hatred reached\nsuch a point that sometimes his very step almost threw me into\nconvulsions.  What I loathed particularly was his lisp.  His tongue\nmust have been a little too long or something of that sort, for he\ncontinually lisped, and seemed to be very proud of it, imagining that\nit greatly added to his dignity.  He spoke in a slow, measured tone,\nwith his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground.  He\nmaddened me particularly when he read aloud the psalms to himself\nbehind his partition.  Many a battle I waged over that reading!  But he\nwas awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even,\nsing-song voice, as though over the dead.  It is interesting that that\nis how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the\ndead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking.  But at\nthat time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were\nchemically combined with my existence.  Besides, nothing would have\ninduced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished\nlodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, my shell, my cave, in\nwhich I concealed myself from all mankind, and Apollon seemed to me,\nfor some reason, an integral part of that flat, and for seven years I\ncould not turn him away.\n\nTo be two or three days behind with his wages, for instance, was\nimpossible.  He would have made such a fuss, I should not have known\nwhere to hide my head.  But I was so exasperated with everyone during\nthose days, that I made up my mind for some reason and with some object\nto PUNISH Apollon and not to pay him for a fortnight the wages that\nwere owing him.  I had for a long time--for the last two years--been\nintending to do this, simply in order to teach him not to give himself\nairs with me, and to show him that if I liked I could withhold his\nwages.  I purposed to say nothing to him about it, and was purposely\nsilent indeed, in order to score off his pride and force him to be the\nfirst to speak of his wages.  Then I would take the seven roubles out\nof a drawer, show him I have the money put aside on purpose, but that I\nwon't, I won't, I simply won't pay him his wages, I won't just because\nthat is \"what I wish,\" because \"I am master, and it is for me to\ndecide,\" because he has been disrespectful, because he has been rude;\nbut if he were to ask respectfully I might be softened and give it to\nhim, otherwise he might wait another fortnight, another three weeks, a\nwhole month....\n\nBut angry as I was, yet he got the better of me.  I could not hold out\nfor four days.  He began as he always did begin in such cases, for\nthere had been such cases already, there had been attempts (and it may\nbe observed I knew all this beforehand, I knew his nasty tactics by\nheart).  He would begin by fixing upon me an exceedingly severe stare,\nkeeping it up for several minutes at a time, particularly on meeting me\nor seeing me out of the house.  If I held out and pretended not to\nnotice these stares, he would, still in silence, proceed to further\ntortures.  All at once, A PROPOS of nothing, he would walk softly and\nsmoothly into my room, when I was pacing up and down or reading, stand\nat the door, one hand behind his back and one foot behind the other,\nand fix upon me a stare more than severe, utterly contemptuous.  If I\nsuddenly asked him what he wanted, he would make me no answer, but\ncontinue staring at me persistently for some seconds, then, with a\npeculiar compression of his lips and a most significant air,\ndeliberately turn round and deliberately go back to his room.  Two\nhours later he would come out again and again present himself before me\nin the same way.  It had happened that in my fury I did not even ask\nhim what he wanted, but simply raised my head sharply and imperiously\nand began staring back at him.  So we stared at one another for two\nminutes; at last he turned with deliberation and dignity and went back\nagain for two hours.\n\nIf I were still not brought to reason by all this, but persisted in my\nrevolt, he would suddenly begin sighing while he looked at me, long,\ndeep sighs as though measuring by them the depths of my moral\ndegradation, and, of course, it ended at last by his triumphing\ncompletely: I raged and shouted, but still was forced to do what he\nwanted.\n\nThis time the usual staring manoeuvres had scarcely begun when I lost\nmy temper and flew at him in a fury.  I was irritated beyond endurance\napart from him.\n\n\"Stay,\" I cried, in a frenzy, as he was slowly and silently turning,\nwith one hand behind his back, to go to his room.  \"Stay!  Come back,\ncome back, I tell you!\" and I must have bawled so unnaturally, that he\nturned round and even looked at me with some wonder.  However, he\npersisted in saying nothing, and that infuriated me.\n\n\"How dare you come and look at me like that without being sent for?\nAnswer!\"\n\nAfter looking at me calmly for half a minute, he began turning round\nagain.\n\n\"Stay!\" I roared, running up to him, \"don't stir!  There.  Answer, now:\nwhat did you come in to look at?\"\n\n\"If you have any order to give me it's my duty to carry it out,\" he\nanswered, after another silent pause, with a slow, measured lisp,\nraising his eyebrows and calmly twisting his head from one side to\nanother, all this with exasperating composure.\n\n\"That's not what I am asking you about, you torturer!\" I shouted,\nturning crimson with anger.  \"I'll tell you why you came here myself:\nyou see, I don't give you your wages, you are so proud you don't want\nto bow down and ask for it, and so you come to punish me with your\nstupid stares, to worry me and you have no sus-pic-ion how stupid it\nis--stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! ...\"\n\nHe would have turned round again without a word, but I seized him.\n\n\"Listen,\" I shouted to him.  \"Here's the money, do you see, here it\nis,\" (I took it out of the table drawer); \"here's the seven roubles\ncomplete, but you are not going to have it, you ... are ... not ...\ngoing ... to ... have it until you come respectfully with bowed head to\nbeg my pardon. Do you hear?\"\n\n\"That cannot be,\" he answered, with the most unnatural self-confidence.\n\n\"It shall be so,\" I said, \"I give you my word of honour, it shall be!\"\n\n\"And there's nothing for me to beg your pardon for,\" he went on, as\nthough he had not noticed my exclamations at all.  \"Why, besides, you\ncalled me a 'torturer,' for which I can summon you at the\npolice-station at any time for insulting behaviour.\"\n\n\"Go, summon me,\" I roared, \"go at once, this very minute, this very\nsecond!  You are a torturer all the same!  a torturer!\"\n\nBut he merely looked at me, then turned, and regardless of my loud\ncalls to him, he walked to his room with an even step and without\nlooking round.\n\n\"If it had not been for Liza nothing of this would have happened,\" I\ndecided inwardly.  Then, after waiting a minute, I went myself behind\nhis screen with a dignified and solemn air, though my heart was beating\nslowly and violently.\n\n\"Apollon,\" I said quietly and emphatically, though I was breathless,\n\"go at once without a minute's delay and fetch the police-officer.\"\n\nHe had meanwhile settled himself at his table, put on his spectacles\nand taken up some sewing.  But, hearing my order, he burst into a\nguffaw.\n\n\"At once, go this minute!  Go on, or else you can't imagine what will\nhappen.\"\n\n\"You are certainly out of your mind,\" he observed, without even raising\nhis head, lisping as deliberately as ever and threading his needle.\n\"Whoever heard of a man sending for the police against himself?  And as\nfor being frightened--you are upsetting yourself about nothing, for\nnothing will come of it.\"\n\n\"Go!\" I shrieked, clutching him by the shoulder.  I felt I should\nstrike him in a minute.\n\nBut I did not notice the door from the passage softly and slowly open\nat that instant and a figure come in, stop short, and begin staring at\nus in perplexity I glanced, nearly swooned with shame, and rushed back\nto my room.  There, clutching at my hair with both hands, I leaned my\nhead against the wall and stood motionless in that position.\n\nTwo minutes later I heard Apollon's deliberate footsteps.  \"There is\nsome woman asking for you,\" he said, looking at me with peculiar\nseverity.  Then he stood aside and let in Liza.  He would not go away,\nbut stared at us sarcastically.\n\n\"Go away, go away,\" I commanded in desperation.  At that moment my\nclock began whirring and wheezing and struck seven.\n\n\n\nIX\n\n     \"Into my house come bold and free,\n     Its rightful mistress there to be.\"\n\nI stood before her crushed, crestfallen, revoltingly confused, and I\nbelieve I smiled as I did my utmost to wrap myself in the skirts of my\nragged wadded dressing-gown--exactly as I had imagined the scene not\nlong before in a fit of depression.  After standing over us for a\ncouple of minutes Apollon went away, but that did not make me more at\nease.  What made it worse was that she, too, was overwhelmed with\nconfusion, more so, in fact, than I should have expected.  At the sight\nof me, of course.\n\n\"Sit down,\" I said mechanically, moving a chair up to the table, and I\nsat down on the sofa.  She obediently sat down at once and gazed at me\nopen-eyed, evidently expecting something from me at once.  This naivete\nof expectation drove me to fury, but I restrained myself.\n\nShe ought to have tried not to notice, as though everything had been as\nusual, while instead of that, she ... and I dimly felt that I should\nmake her pay dearly for ALL THIS.\n\n\"You have found me in a strange position, Liza,\" I began, stammering\nand knowing that this was the wrong way to begin.  \"No, no, don't\nimagine anything,\" I cried, seeing that she had suddenly flushed.  \"I\nam not ashamed of my poverty....  On the contrary, I look with pride\non my poverty.  I am poor but honourable....  One can be poor and\nhonourable,\" I muttered.  \"However ... would you like tea?....\"\n\n\"No,\" she was beginning.\n\n\"Wait a minute.\"\n\nI leapt up and ran to Apollon.  I had to get out of the room somehow.\n\n\"Apollon,\" I whispered in feverish haste, flinging down before him the\nseven roubles which had remained all the time in my clenched fist,\n\"here are your wages, you see I give them to you; but for that you must\ncome to my rescue: bring me tea and a dozen rusks from the restaurant.\nIf you won't go, you'll make me a miserable man!  You don't know what\nthis woman is.... This is--everything!  You may be imagining\nsomething.... But you don't know what that woman is! ...\"\n\nApollon, who had already sat down to his work and put on his spectacles\nagain, at first glanced askance at the money without speaking or\nputting down his needle; then, without paying the slightest attention\nto me or making any answer, he went on busying himself with his needle,\nwhich he had not yet threaded.  I waited before him for three minutes\nwith my arms crossed A LA NAPOLEON.  My temples were moist with sweat.\nI was pale, I felt it.  But, thank God, he must have been moved to\npity, looking at me.  Having threaded his needle he deliberately got up\nfrom his seat, deliberately moved back his chair, deliberately took off\nhis spectacles, deliberately counted the money, and finally asking me\nover his shoulder: \"Shall I get a whole portion?\" deliberately walked\nout of the room.  As I was going back to Liza, the thought occurred to\nme on the way: shouldn't I run away just as I was in my dressing-gown,\nno matter where, and then let happen what would?\n\nI sat down again.  She looked at me uneasily.  For some minutes we were\nsilent.\n\n\"I will kill him,\" I shouted suddenly, striking the table with my fist\nso that the ink spurted out of the inkstand.\n\n\"What are you saying!\" she cried, starting.\n\n\"I will kill him!  kill him!\" I shrieked, suddenly striking the table\nin absolute frenzy, and at the same time fully understanding how stupid\nit was to be in such a frenzy.  \"You don't know, Liza, what that\ntorturer is to me. He is my torturer....  He has gone now to fetch\nsome rusks; he ...\"\n\nAnd suddenly I burst into tears.  It was an hysterical attack.  How\nashamed I felt in the midst of my sobs; but still I could not restrain\nthem.\n\nShe was frightened.\n\n\"What is the matter?  What is wrong?\" she cried, fussing about me.\n\n\"Water, give me water, over there!\" I muttered in a faint voice, though\nI was inwardly conscious that I could have got on very well without\nwater and without muttering in a faint voice.  But I was, what is\ncalled, PUTTING IT ON, to save appearances, though the attack was a\ngenuine one.\n\nShe gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment.  At that moment\nApollon brought in the tea.  It suddenly seemed to me that this\ncommonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undignified and paltry after all\nthat had happened, and I blushed crimson.  Liza looked at Apollon with\npositive alarm.  He went out without a glance at either of us.\n\n\"Liza, do you despise me?\" I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling\nwith impatience to know what she was thinking.\n\nShe was confused, and did not know what to answer.\n\n\"Drink your tea,\" I said to her angrily.  I was angry with myself, but,\nof course, it was she who would have to pay for it.  A horrible spite\nagainst her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have\nkilled her.  To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a\nword to her all the time.  \"She is the cause of it all,\" I thought.\n\nOur silence lasted for five minutes.  The tea stood on the table; we\ndid not touch it.  I had got to the point of purposely refraining from\nbeginning in order to embarrass her further; it was awkward for her to\nbegin alone.  Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity.\nI was obstinately silent.  I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer,\nbecause I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful\nstupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.\n\n\"I want to... get away ... from there altogether,\" she began, to break\nthe silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought\nnot to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as\nI was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and\nunnecessary straightforwardness.  But something hideous at once stifled\nall compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom.  I did not\ncare what happened.  Another five minutes passed.\n\n\"Perhaps I am in your way,\" she began timidly, hardly audibly, and was\ngetting up.\n\nBut as soon as I saw this first impulse of wounded dignity I positively\ntrembled with spite, and at once burst out.\n\n\"Why have you come to me, tell me that, please?\" I began, gasping for\nbreath and regardless of logical connection in my words.  I longed to\nhave it all out at once, at one burst; I did not even trouble how to\nbegin.  \"Why have you come?  Answer, answer,\" I cried, hardly knowing\nwhat I was doing.  \"I'll tell you, my good girl, why you have come.\nYou've come because I talked sentimental stuff to you then.  So now you\nare soft as butter and longing for fine sentiments again.  So you may\nas well know that I was laughing at you then.  And I am laughing at you\nnow.  Why are you shuddering?  Yes, I was laughing at you!  I had been\ninsulted just before, at dinner, by the fellows who came that evening\nbefore me.  I came to you, meaning to thrash one of them, an officer;\nbut I didn't succeed, I didn't find him; I had to avenge the insult on\nsomeone to get back my own again; you turned up, I vented my spleen on\nyou and laughed at you.  I had been humiliated, so I wanted to\nhumiliate; I had been treated like a rag, so I wanted to show my power....\nThat's what it was, and you imagined I had come there on purpose\nto save you.  Yes?  You imagined that?  You imagined that?\"\n\nI knew that she would perhaps be muddled and not take it all in\nexactly, but I knew, too, that she would grasp the gist of it, very\nwell indeed.  And so, indeed, she did.  She turned white as a\nhandkerchief, tried to say something, and her lips worked painfully;\nbut she sank on a chair as though she had been felled by an axe.  And\nall the time afterwards she listened to me with her lips parted and her\neyes wide open, shuddering with awful terror.  The cynicism, the\ncynicism of my words overwhelmed her....\n\n\"Save you!\" I went on, jumping up from my chair and running up and down\nthe room before her.  \"Save you from what?  But perhaps I am worse than\nyou myself.  Why didn't you throw it in my teeth when I was giving you\nthat sermon: 'But what did you come here yourself for?  was it to read\nus a sermon?'  Power, power was what I wanted then, sport was what I\nwanted, I wanted to wring out your tears, your humiliation, your\nhysteria--that was what I wanted then!  Of course, I couldn't keep it\nup then, because I am a wretched creature, I was frightened, and, the\ndevil knows why, gave you my address in my folly.  Afterwards, before I\ngot home, I was cursing and swearing at you because of that address, I\nhated you already because of the lies I had told you.  Because I only\nlike playing with words, only dreaming, but, do you know, what I really\nwant is that you should all go to hell.  That is what I want.  I want\npeace; yes, I'd sell the whole world for a farthing, straight off, so\nlong as I was left in peace. Is the world to go to pot, or am I to go\nwithout my tea?  I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I\nalways get my tea.  Did you know that, or not?  Well, anyway, I know\nthat I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard.  Here I\nhave been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your\ncoming.  And do you know what has worried me particularly for these\nthree days?  That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see\nme in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told you\njust now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well know\nthat I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more\nafraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because I am as\nvain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.\nSurely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for\nhaving found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at\nApollon like a spiteful cur.  The saviour, the former hero, was flying\nlike a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was\njeering at him!  And I shall never forgive you for the tears I could\nnot help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put to\nshame!  And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never forgive\nyou either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you turned up like\nthis, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest,\nabsurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit\nbetter than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;\nwhile I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom!  And\nwhat is it to me that you don't understand a word of this!  And what do\nI care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or\nnot?  Do you understand?  How I shall hate you now after saying this,\nfor having been here and listening. Why, it's not once in a lifetime a\nman speaks out like this, and then it is in hysterics!  ...  What more\ndo you want?  Why do you still stand confronting me, after all this?\nWhy are you worrying me?  Why don't you go?\"\n\nBut at this point a strange thing happened.  I was so accustomed to\nthink and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in\nthe world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,\nthat I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance.  What\nhappened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great\ndeal more than I imagined.  She understood from all this what a woman\nunderstands first of all, if she feels genuine love, that is, that I\nwas myself unhappy.\n\nThe frightened and wounded expression on her face was followed first by\na look of sorrowful perplexity.  When I began calling myself a\nscoundrel and a blackguard and my tears flowed (the tirade was\naccompanied throughout by tears) her whole face worked convulsively.\nShe was on the point of getting up and stopping me; when I finished she\ntook no notice of my shouting: \"Why are you here, why don't you go\naway?\" but realised only that it must have been very bitter to me to\nsay all this.  Besides, she was so crushed, poor girl; she considered\nherself infinitely beneath me; how could she feel anger or resentment?\nShe suddenly leapt up from her chair with an irresistible impulse and\nheld out her hands, yearning towards me, though still timid and not\ndaring to stir....  At this point there was a revulsion in my heart\ntoo.  Then she suddenly rushed to me, threw her arms round me and burst\ninto tears.  I, too, could not restrain myself, and sobbed as I never\nhad before.\n\n\"They won't let me ... I can't be good!\" I managed to articulate; then\nI went to the sofa, fell on it face downwards, and sobbed on it for a\nquarter of an hour in genuine hysterics.  She came close to me, put her\narms round me and stayed motionless in that position.  But the trouble\nwas that the hysterics could not go on for ever, and (I am writing the\nloathsome truth) lying face downwards on the sofa with my face thrust\ninto my nasty leather pillow, I began by degrees to be aware of a\nfar-away, involuntary but irresistible feeling that it would be awkward\nnow for me to raise my head and look Liza straight in the face.  Why\nwas I ashamed?  I don't know, but I was ashamed.  The thought, too,\ncame into my overwrought brain that our parts now were completely\nchanged, that she was now the heroine, while I was just a crushed and\nhumiliated creature as she had been before me that night--four days\nbefore....  And all this came into my mind during the minutes I was\nlying on my face on the sofa.\n\nMy God! surely I was not envious of her then.\n\nI don't know, to this day I cannot decide, and at the time, of course,\nI was still less able to understand what I was feeling than now.  I\ncannot get on without domineering and tyrannising over someone, but ...\nthere is no explaining anything by reasoning and so it is useless to\nreason.\n\nI conquered myself, however, and raised my head; I had to do so sooner\nor later ... and I am convinced to this day that it was just because I\nwas ashamed to look at her that another feeling was suddenly kindled\nand flamed up in my heart ... a feeling of mastery and possession.  My\neyes gleamed with passion, and I gripped her hands tightly.  How I\nhated her and how I was drawn to her at that minute!  The one feeling\nintensified the other.  It was almost like an act of vengeance.  At\nfirst there was a look of amazement, even of terror on her face, but\nonly for one instant. She warmly and rapturously embraced me.\n\n\n\nX\n\nA quarter of an hour later I was rushing up and down the room in\nfrenzied impatience, from minute to minute I went up to the screen and\npeeped through the crack at Liza.  She was sitting on the ground with\nher head leaning against the bed, and must have been crying.  But she\ndid not go away, and that irritated me.  This time she understood it\nall.  I had insulted her finally, but ... there's no need to describe\nit.  She realised that my outburst of passion had been simply revenge,\na fresh humiliation, and that to my earlier, almost causeless hatred\nwas added now a PERSONAL HATRED, born of envy....  Though I do not\nmaintain positively that she understood all this distinctly; but she\ncertainly did fully understand that I was a despicable man, and what\nwas worse, incapable of loving her.\n\nI know I shall be told that this is incredible--but it is incredible to\nbe as spiteful and stupid as I was; it may be added that it was strange\nI should not love her, or at any rate, appreciate her love.  Why is it\nstrange?  In the first place, by then I was incapable of love, for I\nrepeat, with me loving meant tyrannising and showing my moral\nsuperiority.  I have never in my life been able to imagine any other\nsort of love, and have nowadays come to the point of sometimes thinking\nthat love really consists in the right--freely given by the beloved\nobject--to tyrannise over her.\n\nEven in my underground dreams I did not imagine love except as a\nstruggle.  I began it always with hatred and ended it with moral\nsubjugation, and afterwards I never knew what to do with the subjugated\nobject. And what is there to wonder at in that, since I had succeeded\nin so corrupting myself, since I was so out of touch with \"real life,\"\nas to have actually thought of reproaching her, and putting her to\nshame for having come to me to hear \"fine sentiments\"; and did not even\nguess that she had come not to hear fine sentiments, but to love me,\nbecause to a woman all reformation, all salvation from any sort of\nruin, and all moral renewal is included in love and can only show\nitself in that form.\n\nI did not hate her so much, however, when I was running about the room\nand peeping through the crack in the screen.  I was only insufferably\noppressed by her being here.  I wanted her to disappear.  I wanted\n\"peace,\" to be left alone in my underground world.  Real life oppressed\nme with its novelty so much that I could hardly breathe.\n\nBut several minutes passed and she still remained, without stirring, as\nthough she were unconscious.  I had the shamelessness to tap softly at\nthe screen as though to remind her....  She started, sprang up, and\nflew to seek her kerchief, her hat, her coat, as though making her\nescape from me....  Two minutes later she came from behind the screen\nand looked with heavy eyes at me.  I gave a spiteful grin, which was\nforced, however, to KEEP UP APPEARANCES, and I turned away from her\neyes.\n\n\"Good-bye,\" she said, going towards the door.\n\nI ran up to her, seized her hand, opened it, thrust something in it and\nclosed it again.  Then I turned at once and dashed away in haste to the\nother corner of the room to avoid seeing, anyway....\n\nI did mean a moment since to tell a lie--to write that I did this\naccidentally, not knowing what I was doing through foolishness, through\nlosing my head.  But I don't want to lie, and so I will say straight\nout that I opened her hand and put the money in it ... from spite.  It\ncame into my head to do this while I was running up and down the room\nand she was sitting behind the screen.  But this I can say for certain:\nthough I did that cruel thing purposely, it was not an impulse from the\nheart, but came from my evil brain.  This cruelty was so affected, so\npurposely made up, so completely a product of the brain, of books, that\nI could not even keep it up a minute--first I dashed away to avoid\nseeing her, and then in shame and despair rushed after Liza.  I opened\nthe door in the passage and began listening.\n\n\"Liza!  Liza!\" I cried on the stairs, but in a low voice, not boldly.\nThere was no answer, but I fancied I heard her footsteps, lower down on\nthe stairs.\n\n\"Liza!\" I cried, more loudly.\n\nNo answer.  But at that minute I heard the stiff outer glass door open\nheavily with a creak and slam violently; the sound echoed up the stairs.\n\nShe had gone.  I went back to my room in hesitation.  I felt horribly\noppressed.\n\nI stood still at the table, beside the chair on which she had sat and\nlooked aimlessly before me.  A minute passed, suddenly I started;\nstraight before me on the table I saw....  In short, I saw a crumpled\nblue five-rouble note, the one I had thrust into her hand a minute\nbefore.  It was the same note; it could be no other, there was no other\nin the flat.  So she had managed to fling it from her hand on the table\nat the moment when I had dashed into the further corner.\n\nWell!  I might have expected that she would do that.  Might I have\nexpected it?  No, I was such an egoist, I was so lacking in respect for\nmy fellow-creatures that I could not even imagine she would do so.  I\ncould not endure it.  A minute later I flew like a madman to dress,\nflinging on what I could at random and ran headlong after her.  She\ncould not have got two hundred paces away when I ran out into the\nstreet.\n\nIt was a still night and the snow was coming down in masses and falling\nalmost perpendicularly, covering the pavement and the empty street as\nthough with a pillow.  There was no one in the street, no sound was to\nbe heard.  The street lamps gave a disconsolate and useless glimmer.  I\nran two hundred paces to the cross-roads and stopped short.\n\nWhere had she gone?  And why was I running after her?\n\nWhy?  To fall down before her, to sob with remorse, to kiss her feet,\nto entreat her forgiveness!  I longed for that, my whole breast was\nbeing rent to pieces, and never, never shall I recall that minute with\nindifference. But--what for?  I thought.  Should I not begin to hate\nher, perhaps, even tomorrow, just because I had kissed her feet today?\nShould I give her happiness?  Had I not recognised that day, for the\nhundredth time, what I was worth?  Should I not torture her?\n\nI stood in the snow, gazing into the troubled darkness and pondered\nthis.\n\n\"And will it not be better?\" I mused fantastically, afterwards at home,\nstifling the living pang of my heart with fantastic dreams.  \"Will it\nnot be better that she should keep the resentment of the insult for\never? Resentment--why, it is purification; it is a most stinging and\npainful consciousness!  Tomorrow I should have defiled her soul and\nhave exhausted her heart, while now the feeling of insult will never\ndie in her heart, and however loathsome the filth awaiting her--the\nfeeling of insult will elevate and purify her ... by hatred ... h'm!\n... perhaps, too, by forgiveness....  Will all that make things easier\nfor her though? ...\"\n\nAnd, indeed, I will ask on my own account here, an idle question: which\nis better--cheap happiness or exalted sufferings?  Well, which is\nbetter?\n\nSo I dreamed as I sat at home that evening, almost dead with the pain\nin my soul.  Never had I endured such suffering and remorse, yet could\nthere have been the faintest doubt when I ran out from my lodging that\nI should turn back half-way?  I never met Liza again and I have heard\nnothing of her.  I will add, too, that I remained for a long time\nafterwards pleased with the phrase about the benefit from resentment\nand hatred in spite of the fact that I almost fell ill from misery.\n\n      *      *      *      *      *\n\nEven now, so many years later, all this is somehow a very evil memory.\nI have many evil memories now, but ... hadn't I better end my \"Notes\"\nhere?  I believe I made a mistake in beginning to write them, anyway I\nhave felt ashamed all the time I've been writing this story; so it's\nhardly literature so much as a corrective punishment.  Why, to tell\nlong stories, showing how I have spoiled my life through morally\nrotting in my corner, through lack of fitting environment, through\ndivorce from real life, and rankling spite in my underground world,\nwould certainly not be interesting; a novel needs a hero, and all the\ntraits for an anti-hero are EXPRESSLY gathered together here, and what\nmatters most, it all produces an unpleasant impression, for we are all\ndivorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less.\nWe are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for\nreal life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come\nalmost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and\nwe are all privately agreed that it is better in books.  And why do we\nfuss and fume sometimes?  Why are we perverse and ask for something\nelse?  We don't know what ourselves.  It would be the worse for us if\nour petulant prayers were answered.  Come, try, give any one of us, for\ninstance, a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the\nspheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you\n... we should be begging to be under control again at once.  I know\nthat you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin\nshouting and stamping.  Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your\nmiseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of\nus--excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that \"all of\nus.\"  As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life\ncarried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and\nwhat's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have\nfound comfort in deceiving yourselves.  So that perhaps, after all,\nthere is more life in me than in you.  Look into it more carefully!\nWhy, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what it\nis called?  Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in\nconfusion at once.  We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling\nto, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise.\nWe are oppressed at being men--men with a real individual body and\nblood, we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive\nto be some sort of impossible generalised man.  We are stillborn, and\nfor generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and\nthat suits us better and better.  We are developing a taste for it.\nSoon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea.  But enough; I\ndon't want to write more from \"Underground.\"\n\n\n[The notes of this paradoxalist do not end here, however.  He could not\nrefrain from going on with them, but it seems to us that we may stop\nhere.]"