ABOUT seven o’clock in the evening, I was walking on the boulevard. Grushnitski perceived me a long way off, and came up to me. A sort of ridiculous rapture was shining in his eyes. He pressed my hand warmly, and said in a tragic voice:
“I thank you, Pechorin... You understand me?”
“No; but in any case it is not worth gratitude,” I answered, not having, in fact, any good deed upon my conscience.
“What? But yesterday! Have you forgotten?... Mary has told me everything”...
“Why! Have you everything in common so soon as this? Even gratitude?”...
“Listen,” said Grushnitski very earnestly; “pray do not make fun of my love, if you wish to remain my friend... You see, I love her to the point of madness... and I think—I hope—she loves me too... I have a request to make of you. You will be at their house this evening; promise me to observe everything. I know you are experienced in these matters, you know women better than I... Women! Women! Who can understand them? Their smiles contradict their glances, their words promise and allure, but the tone of their voice repels... At one time they grasp and divine in a moment our most secret thoughts, at another they cannot understand the clearest hints... Take Princess Mary, now: yesterday her eyes, as they rested upon me, were blazing with passion; to-day they are dull and cold”...
“That is possibly the result of the waters,” I replied.
“You see the bad side of everything... materialist,” he added contemptuously. “However, let us talk of other matters.”
And, satisfied with his bad pun, he cheered up.
At nine o’clock we went to Princess Ligovski’s together.
Passing by Vera’s windows, I saw her looking out. We threw a fleeting glance at each other. She entered the Ligovskis’ drawing-room soon after us. Princess Ligovski presented me to her, as a relation of her own. Tea was served. The guests were numerous, and the conversation was general. I endeavoured to please the Princess, jested, and made her laugh heartily a few times. Princess Mary, also, was more than once on the point of bursting out laughing, but she restrained herself in order not to depart from the role she had assumed. She finds languor becoming to her, and perhaps she is not mistaken. Grushnitski appears to be very glad that she is not infected by my gaiety.
After tea we all went into the drawingroom.
“Are you satisfied with my obedience, Vera?” I said as I was passing her.
She threw me a glance full of love and gratitude. I have grown accustomed to such glances; but at one time they constituted my felicity. The Princess seated her daughter at the pianoforte, and all the company begged her to sing. I kept silence, and, taking advantage of the hubbub, I went aside to the window with Vera, who wished to say something of great importance to both of us... It turned out to be—nonsense...
Meanwhile my indifference was vexing Princess Mary, as I was able to make out from a single angry, gleaming glance which she cast at me... Oh! I understand the method of conversation wonderfully well: mute but expressive, brief but forceful!...
She began to sing. She has a good voice, but she sings badly... However, I was not listening.
Grushnitski, on the contrary, leaning his elbows on the grand piano, facing her, was devouring her with his eyes and saying in an undertone every minute: “Charmant! Delicieux!”
“Listen,” said Vera to me, “I do not wish you to make my husband’s acquaintance, but you must, without fail, make yourself agreeable to the Princess; that will be an easy task for you: you can do anything you wish. It is only here that we shall see each other”...
“Only here?”...
She blushed and continued:
“You know that I am your slave: I have never been able to resist you... and I shall be punished for it, you will cease to love me! At least, I want to preserve my reputation... not for myself—that you know very well!... Oh! I beseech you: do not torture me, as before, with idle doubts and feigned coldness! It may be that I shall die soon; I feel that I am growing weaker from day to day... And, yet, I cannot think of the future life, I think only of you... You men do not understand the delights of a glance, of a pressure of the hand... but as for me, I swear to you that, when I listen to your voice, I feel such a deep, strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place.”
Meanwhile, Princess Mary had finished her song. Murmurs of praise were to be heard all around. I went up to her after all the other guests, and said something rather carelessly to her on the subject of her voice.
She made a little grimace, pouting her lower lip, and dropped a very sarcastic curtsey.
“That is all the more flattering,” she said, “because you have not been listening to me at all; but perhaps you do not like music?”...
“On the contrary, I do... After dinner, especially.”
“Grushnitski is right in saying that you have very prosaic tastes... and I see that you like music in a gastronomic respect.”
“You are mistaken again: I am by no means an epicure. I have a most wretched digestion. But music after dinner puts one to sleep, and to sleep after dinner is healthful; consequently I like music in a medicinal respect. In the evening, on the contrary, it excites my nerves too much: I become either too melancholy or too gay. Both are fatiguing, where there is no positive reason for being either sorrowful or glad. And, moreover, melancholy in society is ridiculous, and too great gaiety is unbecoming”...
She did not hear me to the end, but went away and sat beside Grushnitski, and they entered into a sort of sentimental conversation. Apparently the Princess answered his sage phrases rather absent-mindedly and inconsequently, although endeavouring to show that she was listening to him with attention, because sometimes he looked at her in astonishment, trying to divine the cause of the inward agitation which was expressed at times in her restless glance...
But I have found you out, my dear Princess! Have a care! You want to pay me back in the same coin, to wound my vanity—you will not succeed! And if you declare war on me, I will be merciless!
In the course of the evening, I purposely tried a few times to join in their conversation, but she met my remarks rather coldly, and, at last, I retired in pretended vexation. Princess Mary was triumphant, Grushnitski likewise. Triumph, my friends, and be quick about it!... You will not have long to triumph!... It cannot be otherwise. I have a presentiment... On making a woman’s acquaintance I have always unerringly guessed whether she would fall in love with me or not.
The remaining part of the evening I spent at Vera’s side, and talked to the full about the old days... Why does she love me so much? In truth, I am unable to say, all the more so because she is the only woman who has understood me perfectly, with all my petty weaknesses and evil passions... Can it be that wickedness is so attractive?...
Grushnitski and I left the house together. In the street he took my arm, and, after a long silence, said:
“Well?”
“You are a fool,” I should have liked to answer. But I restrained myself and only shrugged my shoulders.
ALL these days I have not once departed from my system. Princess Mary has come to like talking to me; I have told her a few of the strange events of my life, and she is beginning to look on me as an extraordinary man. I mock at everything in the world, especially feelings; and she is taking alarm. When I am present, she does not dare to embark upon sentimental discussions with Grushnitski, and already, on a few occasions, she has answered his sallies with a mocking smile. But every time that Grushnitski comes up to her I assume an air of meekness and leave the two of them together. On the first occasion, she was glad, or tried to make it appear so; on the second, she was angry with me; on the third—with Grushnitski.
“You have very little vanity!” she said to me yesterday. “What makes you think that I find Grushnitski the more entertaining?”
I answered that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for the sake of the happiness of a friend.
“And my pleasure, too,” she added.
I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her... In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was apparently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh—at a most inopportune moment—pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski—I will not talk to her for another two days.
I OFTEN ask myself why I am so obstinately endeavouring to win the love of a young girl whom I do not wish to deceive, and whom I will never marry. Why this woman-like coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary ever will. Had I regarded the latter as an invincible beauty, I should perhaps have been allured by the difficulty of the undertaking...
However, there is no such difficulty in this case! Consequently, my present feeling is not that restless craving for love which torments us in the early days of our youth, flinging us from one woman to another until we find one who cannot endure us. And then begins our constancy—that sincere, unending passion which may be expressed mathematically by a line falling from a point into space—the secret of that endlessness lying only in the impossibility of attaining the aim, that is to say, the end.
From what motive, then, am I taking all this trouble?—Envy of Grushnitski? Poor fellow!
He is quite undeserving of it. Or, is it the result of that ugly, but invincible, feeling which causes us to destroy the sweet illusions of our neighbour in order to have the petty satisfaction of saying to him, when, in despair, he asks what he is to believe:
“My friend, the same thing happened to me, and you see, nevertheless, that I dine, sup, and sleep very peacefully, and I shall, I hope, know how to die without tears and lamentations.”
There is, in sooth, a boundless enjoyment in the possession of a young, scarce-budded soul! It is like a floweret which exhales its best perfume at the kiss of the first ray of the sun. You should pluck the flower at that moment, and, breathing its fragrance to the full, cast it upon the road: perchance someone will pick it up! I feel within me that insatiate hunger which devours everything it meets upon the way; I look upon the sufferings and joys of others only from the point of view of their relation to myself, regarding them as the nutriment which sustains my spiritual forces. I myself am no longer capable of committing follies under the influence of passion; with me, ambition has been repressed by circumstances, but it has emerged in another form, because ambition is nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will. To arouse the feeling of love, devotion and awe towards oneself—is not that the first sign, and the greatest triumph, of power? To be the cause of suffering and joy to another—without in the least possessing any definite right to be so—is not that the sweetest food for our pride? And what is happiness?—Satisfied pride. Were I to consider myself the best, the most powerful man in the world, I should be happy; were all to love me, I should find within me inexhaustible springs of love. Evil begets evil; the first suffering gives us the conception of the satisfaction of torturing another. The idea of evil cannot enter the mind without arousing a desire to put it actually into practice. “Ideas are organic entities,” someone has said. The very fact of their birth endows them with form, and that form is action. He in whose brain the most ideas are born accomplishes the most. From that cause a genius, chained to an official desk, must die or go mad, just as it often happens that a man of powerful constitution, and at the same time of sedentary life and simple habits, dies of an apoplectic stroke.
Passions are naught but ideas in their first development; they are an attribute of the youth of the heart, and foolish is he who thinks that he will be agitated by them all his life. Many quiet rivers begin their course as noisy waterfalls, and there is not a single stream which will leap or foam throughout its way to the sea. That quietness, however, is frequently the sign of great, though latent, strength. The fulness and depth of feelings and thoughts do not admit of frenzied outbursts. In suffering and in enjoyment the soul renders itself a strict account of all it experiences and convinces itself that such things must be. It knows that, but for storms, the constant heat of the sun would dry it up! It imbues itself with its own life—pets and punishes itself like a favourite child. It is only in that highest state of self-knowledge that a man can appreciate the divine justice.
On reading over this page, I observe that I have made a wide digression from my subject... But what matter?... You see, it is for myself that I am writing this diary, and, consequently anything that I jot down in it will in time be a valuable reminiscence for me.
. . . . .
Grushnitski has called to see me to-day. He flung himself upon my neck; he has been promoted to be an officer. We drank champagne. Doctor Werner came in after him.
“I do not congratulate you,” he said to Grushnitski.
“Why not?”
“Because the soldier’s cloak suits you very well, and you must confess that an infantry uniform, made by one of the local tailors, will not add anything of interest to you... Do you not see? Hitherto, you have been an exception, but now you will come under the general rule.”
“Talk away, doctor, talk away! You will not prevent me from rejoicing. He does not know,” added Grushnitski in a whisper to me, “how many hopes these epaulettes have lent me... Oh!... Epaulettes, epaulettes! Your little stars are guiding stars! No! I am perfectly happy now!”
“Are you coming with us on our walk to the hollow?” I asked him.
“I? Not on any account will I show myself to Princess Mary until my uniform is finished.”
“Would you like me to inform her of your happiness?”
“No, please, not a word... I want to give her a surprise”...
“Tell me, though, how are you getting on with her?”
He became embarrassed, and fell into thought; he would gladly have bragged and told lies, but his conscience would not let him; and, at the same time, he was ashamed to confess the truth.
“What do you think? Does she love you?”...
“Love me? Good gracious, Pechorin, what ideas you do have!... How could she possibly love me so soon?... And a well-bred woman, even if she is in love, will never say so”...
“Very well! And, I suppose, in your opinion, a well-bred man should also keep silence in regard to his passion?”...
“Ah, my dear fellow! There are ways of doing everything; often things may remain unspoken, but yet may be guessed”...
“That is true... But the love which we read in the eyes does not pledge a woman to anything, whilst words... Have a care, Grushnitski, she is befooling you!”
“She?” he answered, raising his eyes heavenward and smiling complacently. “I am sorry for you, Pechorin!”...
He took his departure.
In the evening, a numerous company set off to walk to the hollow.
In the opinion of the learned of Pyatigorsk, the hollow in question is nothing more nor less than an extinct crater. It is situated on a slope of Mount Mashuk, at the distance of a verst from the town, and is approached by a narrow path between brushwood and rocks. In climbing up the hill, I gave Princess Mary my arm, and she did not leave it during the whole excursion.
Our conversation commenced with slander; I proceeded to pass in review our present and absent acquaintances; at first I exposed their ridiculous, and then their bad, sides. My choler rose. I began in jest, and ended in genuine malice. At first she was amused, but afterwards frightened.
“You are a dangerous man!” she said. “I would rather perish in the woods under the knife of an assassin than under your tongue... In all earnestness I beg of you: when it comes into your mind to speak evil of me, take a knife instead and cut my throat. I think you would not find that a very difficult matter.”
“Am I like an assassin, then?”...
“You are worse”...
I fell into thought for a moment; then, assuming a deeply moved air, I said:
“Yes, such has been my lot from very childhood! All have read upon my countenance the marks of bad qualities, which were not existent; but they were assumed to exist—and they were born. I was modest—I was accused of slyness: I grew secretive. I profoundly felt both good and evil—no one caressed me, all insulted me: I grew vindictive. I was gloomy—other children merry and talkative; I felt myself higher than they—I was rated lower: I grew envious. I was prepared to love the whole world—no one understood me: I learned to hate. My colourless youth flowed by in conflict with myself and the world; fearing ridicule, I buried my best feelings in the depths of my heart, and there they died. I spoke the truth—I was not believed: I began to deceive. Having acquired a thorough knowledge of the world and the springs of society, I grew skilled in the science of life; and I saw how others without skill were happy, enjoying gratuitously the advantages which I so unweariedly sought. Then despair was born within my breast—not that despair which is cured at the muzzle of a pistol, but the cold, powerless despair concealed beneath the mask of amiability and a good-natured smile. I became a moral cripple. One half of my soul ceased to exist; it dried up, evaporated, died, and I cut it off and cast it from me. The other half moved and lived—at the service of all; but it remained unobserved, because no one knew that the half which had perished had ever existed. But, now, the memory of it has been awakened within me by you, and I have read you its epitaph. To many, epitaphs in general seem ridiculous, but to me they do not; especially when I remember what reposes beneath them. I will not, however, ask you to share my opinion. If this outburst seems absurd to you, I pray you, laugh! I forewarn you that your laughter will not cause me the least chagrin.”
At that moment I met her eyes: tears were welling in them. Her arm, as it leaned upon mine, was trembling; her cheeks were aflame; she pitied me! Sympathy—a feeling to which all women yield so easily, had dug its talons into her inexperienced heart. During the whole excursion she was preoccupied, and did not flirt with anyone—and that is a great sign!
We arrived at the hollow; the ladies left their cavaliers, but she did not let go my arm. The witticisms of the local dandies failed to make her laugh; the steepness of the declivity beside which she was standing caused her no alarm, although the other ladies uttered shrill cries and shut their eyes.
On the way back, I did not renew our melancholy conversation, but to my idle questions and jests she gave short and absent-minded answers.
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked her at length.
She looked at me intently, shook her head and again fell into a reverie. It was evident that she was wishing to say something, but did not know how to begin. Her breast heaved... And, indeed, that was but natural! A muslin sleeve is a weak protection, and an electric spark was running from my arm to hers. Almost all passions have their beginning in that way, and frequently we are very much deceived in thinking that a woman loves us for our moral and physical merits; of course, these prepare and predispose the heart for the reception of the holy flame, but for all that it is the first touch that decides the matter.
“I have been very amiable to-day, have I not?” Princess Mary said to me, with a forced smile, when we had returned from the walk.
We separated.
She is dissatisfied with herself. She accuses herself of coldness... Oh, that is the first, the chief triumph!
To-morrow, she will be feeling a desire to recompense me. I know the whole proceeding by heart already—that is what is so tiresome!
I HAVE seen Vera to-day. She has begun to plague me with her jealousy. Princess Mary has taken it into her head, it seems, to confide the secrets of her heart to Vera: a happy choice, it must be confessed!
“I can guess what all this is leading to,” said Vera to me. “You had better simply tell me at once that you are in love with her.”
“But supposing I am not in love with her?”
“Then why run after her, disturb her, agitate her imagination!... Oh, I know you well! Listen—if you wish me to believe you, come to Kislovodsk in a week’s time; we shall be moving thither the day after to-morrow. Princess Mary will remain here longer. Engage lodgings next door to us. We shall be living in the large house near the spring, on the mezzanine floor. Princess Ligovski will be below us, and next door there is a house belonging to the same landlord, which has not yet been taken... Will you come?”...
I gave my promise, and this very same day I have sent to engage the lodgings.
Grushnitski came to me at six o’clock and announced that his uniform would be ready to-morrow, just in time for him to go to the ball in it.
“At last I shall dance with her the whole evening through... And then I shall talk to my heart’s content,” he added.
“When is the ball?”
“Why, to-morrow! Do you not know, then? A great festival—and the local authorities have undertaken to organize it”...
“Let us go to the boulevard”...
“Not on any account, in this nasty cloak”...
“What! Have you ceased to love it?”...
I went out alone, and, meeting Princess Mary I asked her to keep the mazurka for me. She seemed surprised and delighted.
“I thought that you would only dance from necessity as on the last occasion,” she said, with a very charming smile...
She does not seem to notice Grushnitski’s absence at all.
“You will be agreeably surprised to-morrow,” I said to her.
“At what?”
“That is a secret... You will find it out yourself, at the ball.”
I finished up the evening at Princess Ligovski’s; there were no other guests present except Vera and a certain very amusing, little old gentleman. I was in good spirits, and improvised various extraordinary stories. Princess Mary sat opposite me and listened to my nonsense with such deep, strained, and even tender attention that I grew ashamed of myself. What had become of her vivacity, her coquetry, her caprices, her haughty mien, her contemptuous smile, her absentminded glance?...
Vera noticed everything, and her sickly countenance was a picture of profound grief. She was sitting in the shadow by the window, buried in a wide arm-chair... I pitied her.
Then I related the whole dramatic story of our acquaintanceship, our love—concealing it all, of course, under fictitious names.
So vividly did I portray my tenderness, my anxieties, my raptures; in so favourable a light did I exhibit her actions and her character, that involuntarily she had to forgive me for my flirtation with Princess Mary.
She rose, sat down beside us, and brightened up... and it was only at two o’clock in the morning that we remembered that the doctors had ordered her to go to bed at eleven.
HALF an hour before the ball, Grushnitski presented himself to me in the full splendour of the uniform of the Line infantry. Attached to his third button was a little bronze chain, on which hung a double lorgnette. Epaulettes of incredible size were bent backwards and upwards in the shape of a cupid’s wings; his boots creaked; in his left hand he held cinnamon-coloured kid gloves and a forage-cap, and with his right he kept every moment twisting his frizzled tuft of hair up into tiny curls. Complacency and at the same time a certain diffidence were depicted upon his face. His festal appearance and proud gait would have made me burst out laughing, if such a proceeding had been in accordance with my intentions.
He threw his cap and gloves on the table and began to pull down the skirts of his coat and to put himself to rights before the looking-glass. An enormous black handkerchief, which was twisted into a very high stiffener for his cravat, and the bristles of which supported his chin, stuck out an inch over his collar. It seemed to him to be rather small, and he drew it up as far as his ears. As a result of that hard work—the collar of his uniform being very tight and uncomfortable—he grew red in the face.
“They say you have been courting my princess terribly these last few days?” he said, rather carelessly and without looking at me.
“‘Where are we fools to drink tea!’”271I answered, repeating a pet phrase of one of the cleverest rogues of past times, once celebrated in song by Pushkin.
“Tell me, does my uniform fit me well?... Oh, the cursed Jew!... How it cuts me under the armpits!... Have you got any scent?”
“Good gracious, what more do you want? You are reeking of rose pomade as it is.”
“Never mind. Give me some”...
He poured half a phial over his cravat, his pocket-handkerchief, his sleeves.
“You are going to dance?” he asked.
“I think not.”
“I am afraid I shall have to lead off the mazurka with Princess Mary, and I scarcely know a single figure”...
“Have you asked her to dance the mazurka with you?”
“Not yet”...
“Mind you are not forestalled”...
“Just so, indeed!” he said, striking his forehead. “Good-bye... I will go and wait for her at the entrance.”
He seized his forage-cap and ran.
Half an hour later I also set off. The street was dark and deserted. Around the assembly rooms, or inn—whichever you prefer—people were thronging. The windows were lighted up, the strains of the regimental band were borne to me on the evening breeze. I walked slowly; I felt melancholy.
“Can it be possible,” I thought, “that my sole mission on earth is to destroy the hopes of others? Ever since I began to live and to act, it seems always to have been my fate to play a part in the ending of other people’s dramas, as if, but for me, no one could either die or fall into despair! I have been the indispensable person of the fifth act; unwillingly I have played the pitiful part of an executioner or a traitor. What object has fate had in this?... Surely, I have not been appointed by destiny to be an author of middle-class tragedies and family romances, or to be a collaborator with the purveyor of stories—for the ‘Reader’s Library,’272for example?... How can I tell?... Are there not many people who, in beginning life, think to end it like Lord Byron or Alexander the Great, and, nevertheless, remain Titular Councillors273all their days?”
Entering the saloon, I concealed myself in a crowd of men, and began to make my observations.
Grushnitski was standing beside Princess Mary and saying something with great warmth. She was listening to him absent-mindedly and looking about her, her fan laid to her lips. Impatience was depicted upon her face, her eyes were searching all around for somebody. I went softly behind them in order to listen to their conversation.
“You torture me, Princess!” Grushnitski was saying. “You have changed dreadfully since I saw you last”...
“You, too, have changed,” she answered, casting a rapid glance at him, in which he was unable to detect the latent sneer.
“I! Changed?... Oh, never! You know that such a thing is impossible! Whoever has seen you once will bear your divine image with him for ever.”
“Stop”...
“But why will you not let me say to-night what you have so often listened to with condescension—and just recently, too?”...
“Because I do not like repetitions,” she answered, laughing.
“Oh! I have been bitterly mistaken!... I thought, fool that I was, that these epaulettes, at least, would give me the right to hope... No, it would have been better for me to have remained for ever in that contemptible soldier’s cloak, to which, probably, I was indebted for your attention”...
“As a matter of fact, the cloak is much more becoming to you”...
At that moment I went up and bowed to Princess Mary. She blushed a little, and went on rapidly:
“Is it not true, Monsieur Pechorin, that the grey cloak suits Monsieur Grushnitski much better?”...
“I do not agree with you,” I answered: “he is more youthful-looking still in his uniform.”
That was a blow which Grushnitski could not bear: like all boys, he has pretensions to being an old man; he thinks that the deep traces of passions upon his countenance take the place of the lines scored by Time. He cast a furious glance at me, stamped his foot, and took himself off.
“Confess now,” I said to Princess Mary: “that although he has always been most ridiculous, yet not so long ago he seemed to you to be interesting... in the grey cloak?”...
She cast her eyes down and made no reply.
Grushnitski followed the Princess about during the whole evening and danced either with her or vis-a-vis. He devoured her with his eyes, sighed, and wearied her with prayers and reproaches. After the third quadrille she had begun to hate him.
“I did not expect this from you,” he said, coming up to me and taking my arm.
“What?”
“You are going to dance the mazurka with her?” he asked in a solemn tone. “She admitted it”...
“Well, what then? It is not a secret, is it”?
“Of course not... I ought to have expected such a thing from that chit—that flirt... I will have my revenge, though!”
“You should lay the blame on your cloak, or your epaulettes, but why accuse her? What fault is it of hers that she does not like you any longer?”...
“But why give me hopes?”
“Why did you hope? To desire and to strive after something—that I can understand! But who ever hopes?”
“You have won the wager, but not quite,” he said, with a malignant smile.
The mazurka began. Grushnitski chose no one but the Princess, other cavaliers chose her every minute: obviously a conspiracy against me—all the better! She wants to talk to me, they are preventing her—she will want to twice as much.
I squeezed her hand once or twice; the second time she drew it away without saying a word.
“I shall sleep badly to-night,” she said to me when the mazurka was over.
“Grushnitski is to blame for that.”
“Oh, no!”
And her face became so pensive, so sad, that I promised myself that I would not fail to kiss her hand that evening.
The guests began to disperse. As I was handing Princess Mary into her carriage, I rapidly pressed her little hand to my lips. The night was dark and nobody could see.
I returned to the saloon very well satisfied with myself.
The young men, Grushnitski amongst them, were having supper at the large table. As I came in, they all fell silent: evidently they had been talking about me. Since the last ball many of them have been sulky with me, especially the captain of dragoons; and now, it seems, a hostile gang is actually being formed against me, under the command of Grushnitski. He wears such a proud and courageous air...
I am very glad; I love enemies, though not in the Christian sense. They amuse me, stir my blood. To be always on one’s guard, to catch every glance, the meaning of every word, to guess intentions, to crush conspiracies, to pretend to be deceived and suddenly with one blow to overthrow the whole immense and laboriously constructed edifice of cunning and design—that is what I call life.
During supper Grushnitski kept whispering and exchanging winks with the captain of dragoons.
VERA and her husband left this morning for Kislovodsk. I met their carriage as I was walking to Princess Ligovski’s. Vera nodded to me: reproach was in her glance.
Who is to blame, then? Why will she not give me an opportunity of seeing her alone? Love is like fire—if not fed it dies out. Perchance, jealousy will accomplish what my entreaties have failed to do.
I stayed a whole hour at Princess Ligovski’s. Mary has not been out, she is ill. In the evening she was not on the boulevard. The newly formed gang, armed with lorgnettes, has in very fact assumed a menacing aspect. I am glad that Princess Mary is ill; they might be guilty of some impertinence towards her. Grushnitski goes about with dishevelled locks, and wears an appearance of despair: he is evidently afflicted, as a matter of fact; his vanity especially has been injured. But, you see, there are some people in whom even despair is diverting!...
On my way home I noticed that something was lacking. I have not seen her! She is ill! Surely I have not fallen in love with her in real earnest?... What nonsense!
AT eleven o’clock in the morning—the hour at which Princess Ligovski is usually perspiring in the Ermolov baths—I walked past her house. Princess Mary was sitting pensively at the window; on seeing me she sprang up.
I entered the ante-room, there was nobody there, and, availing myself of the freedom afforded by the local customs, I made my way, unannounced, into the drawing-room.
Princess Mary’s charming countenance was shrouded with a dull pallor. She was standing by the pianoforte, leaning one hand on the back of an arm-chair; her hand was very faintly trembling. I went up to her softly and said:
“You are angry with me?”...
She lifted a deep, languid glance upon me and shook her head. Her lips were about to utter something, but failed; her eyes filled with tears; she sank into the arm-chair and buried her face in her hands.
“What is the matter with you?” I said, taking her hand.
“You do not respect me!... Oh, leave me!”...
I took a few steps... She drew herself up in the chair, her eyes sparkled.
I stopped still, took hold of the handle of the door, and said:
“Forgive me, Princess. I have acted like a madman... It will not happen another time; I shall see to that... But how can you know what has been taking place hitherto within my soul? That you will never learn, and so much the better for you. Farewell.”
As I was going out, I seemed to hear her weeping.
I wandered on foot about the environs of Mount Mashuk till evening, fatigued myself terribly and, on arriving home, flung myself on my bed, utterly exhausted.
Werner came to see me.
“Is it true,” he asked, “that you are going to marry Princess Mary?”
“What?”
“The whole town is saying so. All my patients are occupied with that important piece of news; but you know what these patients are: they know everything.”
“This is one of Grushnitski’s tricks,” I said to myself.
“To prove the falsity of these rumours, doctor, I may mention, as a secret, that I am moving to Kislovodsk to-morrow”...
“And Princess Mary, too?”
“No, she remains here another week”...
“So you are not going to get married?”...
“Doctor, doctor! Look at me! Am I in the least like a bridegroom, or any such thing?”
“I am not saying so... But you know there are occasions...” he added, with a crafty smile—“in which an honourable man is obliged to marry, and there are mothers who, to say the least, do not prevent such occasions... And so, as a friend, I should advise you to be more cautious. The air of these parts is very dangerous. How many handsome young men, worthy of a better fate, have I not seen departing from here straight to the altar!... Would you believe me, they were even going to find a wife for me! That is to say, one person was—a lady belonging to this district, who had a very pale daughter. I had the misfortune to tell her that the latter’s colour would be restored after wedlock, and then with tears of gratitude she offered me her daughter’s hand and the whole of her own fortune—fifty souls,28I think. But I replied that I was unfit for such an honour.”
Werner left, fully convinced that he had put me on my guard.
I gathered from his words that various ugly rumours were already being spread about the town on the subject of Princess Mary and myself: Grushnitski shall smart for this!