XIV

The shock made me utter an exclamation.

"What is the matter? What is the matter?" she asked in a
strange voice. She was looking pale, and her eyes were dim.

"What is the matter?" I re-echoed. "Why, the fact that you
are HERE!"

"If I am here, I have come with all that I have to bring," she
said. "Such has always been my way, as you shall presently see.
Please light a candle."

I did so; whereupon she rose, approached the table, and laid
upon it an open letter.

"Read it," she added.

"It is De Griers' handwriting!" I cried as I seized the
document. My hands were so tremulous that the lines on the pages
danced before my eyes. Although, at this distance of time, I
have forgotten the exact phraseology of the missive, I append,
if not the precise words, at all events the general sense.

"Mademoiselle," the document ran, "certain untoward
circumstances compel me to depart in haste. Of course, you have
of yourself remarked that hitherto I have always refrained from
having any final explanation with you, for the reason that I
could not well state the whole circumstances; and now to my
difficulties the advent of the aged Grandmother, coupled with
her subsequent proceedings, has put the final touch. Also, the
involved state of my affairs forbids me to write with any
finality concerning those hopes of ultimate bliss upon which,
for a long while past, I have permitted myself to feed. I regret
the past, but at the same time hope that in my conduct you have
never been able to detect anything that was unworthy of a
gentleman and a man of honour. Having lost, however, almost the
whole of my money in debts incurred by your stepfather, I find
myself driven to the necessity of saving the remainder;
wherefore, I have instructed certain friends of mine in St.
Petersburg to arrange for the sale of all the property which has
been mortgaged to myself. At the same time, knowing that, in
addition, your frivolous stepfather has squandered money which
is exclusively yours, I have decided to absolve him from a
certain moiety of the mortgages on his property, in order that
you may be in a position to recover of him what you have lost,
by suing him in legal fashion. I trust, therefore, that, as
matters now stand, this action of mine may bring you some
advantage. I trust also that this same action leaves me in the
position of having fulfilled every obligation which is incumbent
upon a man of honour and refinement. Rest assured that your
memory will for ever remain graven in my heart."

"All this is clear enough," I commented. "Surely you did not
expect aught else from him?" Somehow I was feeling annoyed.

"I expected nothing at all from him," she replied--quietly
enough, to all outward seeming, yet with a note of irritation in
her tone. "Long ago I made up my mind on the subject, for I
could read his thoughts, and knew what he was thinking. He
thought that possibly I should sue him--that one day I might
become a nuisance." Here Polina halted for a moment, and stood
biting her lips. "So of set purpose I redoubled my contemptuous
treatment of him, and waited to see what he would do. If a
telegram to say that we had become legatees had arrived from,
St. Petersburg, I should have flung at him a quittance for my
foolish stepfather's debts, and then dismissed him. For a long
time I have hated him. Even in earlier days he was not a man;
and now!--Oh, how gladly I could throw those fifty thousand
roubles in his face, and spit in it, and then rub the spittle in!"

"But the document returning the fifty-thousand rouble
mortgage--has the General got it? If so, possess yourself of it,
and send it to De Griers."

"No, no; the General has not got it."

"Just as I expected! Well, what is the General going to do?"
Then an idea suddenly occurred to me. "What about the
Grandmother?" I asked.

Polina looked at me with impatience and bewilderment.

"What makes you speak of HER?" was her irritable inquiry. "I
cannot go and live with her. Nor," she added hotly, "will I go
down upon my knees to ANY ONE."

"Why should you?" I cried. "Yet to think that you should have
loved De Griers! The villain, the villain! But I will kill him
in a duel. Where is he now?"

"In Frankfort, where he will be staying for the next three
days."

"Well, bid me do so, and I will go to him by the first train
tomorrow," I exclaimed with enthusiasm.

She smiled.

"If you were to do that," she said, "he would merely
tell you to be so good as first to return him the fifty
thousand francs. What, then, would be the use of
having a quarrel with him? You talk sheer nonsense."

I ground my teeth.

"The question," I went on, "is how to raise the fifty thousand
francs. We cannot expect to find them lying about on the floor.
Listen. What of Mr. Astley?" Even as I spoke a new and strange
idea formed itself in my brain.

Her eyes flashed fire.

"What? YOU YOURSELF wish me to leave you for him?" she cried
with a scornful look and a proud smile. Never before had she
addressed me thus.

Then her head must have turned dizzy with emotion, for suddenly
she seated herself upon the sofa, as though she were powerless
any longer to stand.

A flash of lightning seemed to strike me as I stood there. I
could scarcely believe my eyes or my ears. She DID love me,
then! It WAS to me, and not to Mr. Astley, that she had turned!
Although she, an unprotected girl, had come to me in my room--in
an hotel room--and had probably compromised herself thereby, I
had not understood!

Then a second mad idea flashed into my brain.

"Polina," I said, "give me but an hour. Wait here just one
hour until I return. Yes, you MUST do so. Do you not see what I
mean? Just stay here for that time."

And I rushed from the room without so much as answering her look
of inquiry. She called something after me, but I did not return.

Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most
impossible conception, will become so fixed in one's head that
at length one believes the thought or the conception to be
reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there
is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to
look upon the said thought or conception as something fated,
inevitable, and foreordained--something bound to happen. Whether
by this there is connoted something in the nature of a
combination of presentiments, or a great effort of will, or a
self-annulment of one's true expectations, and so on, I do not
know; but, at all events that night saw happen to me (a night
which I shall never forget) something in the nature of the
miraculous. Although the occurrence can easily be explained by
arithmetic, I still believe it to have been a miracle. Yet why
did this conviction take such a hold upon me at the time, and
remain with me ever since? Previously, I had thought of the idea,
not as an occurrence which was ever likely to come about, but as
something which NEVER could come about.

The time was a quarter past eleven o'clock when I entered the
Casino in such a state of hope (though, at the same time, of
agitation) as I had never before experienced. In the
gaming-rooms there were still a large number of people, but not
half as many as had been present in the morning.

At eleven o'clock there usually remained behind only the real,
the desperate gamblers--persons for whom, at spas, there existed
nothing beyond roulette, and who went thither for that alone.
These gamesters took little note of what was going on around
them, and were interested in none of the appurtenances of the
season, but played from morning till night, and would have been
ready to play through the night until dawn had that been
possible. As it was, they used to disperse unwillingly when, at
midnight, roulette came to an end. Likewise, as soon as ever
roulette was drawing to a close and the head croupier had called
"Les trois derniers coups," most of them were ready to stake on
the last three rounds all that they had in their pockets--and,
for the most part, lost it. For my own part I proceeded towards
the table at which the Grandmother had lately sat; and, since the
crowd around it was not very large, I soon obtained standing
room among the ring of gamblers, while directly in front of me,
on the green cloth, I saw marked the word "Passe."

"Passe" was a row of numbers from 19 to 36 inclusive; while a
row of numbers from 1 to 18 inclusive was known as "Manque."
But what had that to do with me? I had not noticed--I had not so
much as heard the numbers upon which the previous coup had
fallen, and so took no bearings when I began to play, as, in my
place, any SYSTEMATIC gambler would have done. No, I merely
extended my stock of twenty ten-gulden pieces, and threw them
down upon the space "Passe" which happened to be confronting
me.

"Vingt-deux!" called the croupier.

I had won! I staked upon the same again--both my original stake
and my winnings.

"Trente-et-un!" called the croupier.

Again I had won, and was now in possession of eighty ten-gulden
pieces. Next, I moved the whole eighty on to twelve middle
numbers (a stake which, if successful, would bring me in a
triple profit, but also involved a risk of two chances to one).
The wheel revolved, and stopped at twenty-four. Upon this I was
paid out notes and gold until I had by my side a total sum of
two thousand gulden.

It was as in a fever that I moved the pile, en bloc, on to the
red. Then suddenly I came to myself (though that was the only
time during the evening's play when fear cast its cold spell
over me, and showed itself in a trembling of the hands and
knees). For with horror I had realised that I MUST win, and that
upon that stake there depended all my life.

"Rouge!" called the croupier. I drew a long breath, and hot
shivers went coursing over my body. I was paid out my winnings
in bank-notes--amounting, of course, to a total of four thousand
florins, eight hundred gulden (I could still calculate the
amounts).

After that, I remember, I again staked two thousand florins upon
twelve middle numbers, and lost. Again I staked the whole of
my gold, with eight hundred gulden, in notes, and lost. Then
madness seemed to come upon me, and seizing my last two thousand
florins, I staked them upon twelve of the first numbers--wholly
by chance, and at random, and without any sort of reckoning.
Upon my doing so there followed a moment of suspense only
comparable to that which Madame Blanchard must have experienced
when, in Paris, she was descending earthwards from a balloon.

"Quatre!" called the croupier.

Once more, with the addition of my original stake, I was in
possession of six thousand florins! Once more I looked around me
like a conqueror--once more I feared nothing as I threw down four
thousand of these florins upon the black. The croupiers glanced
around them, and exchanged a few words; the bystanders
murmured expectantly.

The black turned up. After that I do not exactly remember
either my calculations or the order of my stakings. I only
remember that, as in a dream, I won in one round sixteen
thousand florins; that in the three following rounds, I lost
twelve thousand; that I moved the remainder (four thousand) on
to "Passe" (though quite unconscious of what I was doing--I was
merely waiting, as it were, mechanically, and without
reflection, for something) and won; and that, finally, four
times in succession I lost. Yes, I can remember raking in money
by thousands--but most frequently on the twelve, middle numbers,
to which I constantly adhered, and which kept appearing in a
sort of regular order--first, three or four times running, and
then, after an interval of a couple of rounds, in another break
of three or four appearances. Sometimes, this astonishing
regularity manifested itself in patches; a thing to upset all
the calculations of note--taking gamblers who play with a
pencil and a memorandum book in their hands Fortune perpetrates
some terrible jests at roulette!

Since my entry not more than half an hour could have elapsed.
Suddenly a croupier informed me that I had, won thirty thousand
florins, as well as that, since the latter was the limit for
which, at any one time, the bank could make itself responsible,
roulette at that table must close for the night. Accordingly, I
caught up my pile of gold, stuffed it into my pocket, and,
grasping my sheaf of bank-notes, moved to the table in an
adjoining salon where a second game of roulette was in
progress. The crowd followed me in a body, and cleared a place
for me at the table; after which, I proceeded to stake as
before--that is to say, at random and without calculating. What
saved me from ruin I do not know.

Of course there were times when fragmentary reckonings DID come
flashing into my brain. For instance, there were times when I
attached myself for a while to certain figures and coups--though
always leaving them, again before long, without knowing what I
was doing.

In fact, I cannot have been in possession of all my faculties,
for I can remember the croupiers correcting my play more than
once, owing to my having made mistakes of the gravest order. My
brows were damp with sweat, and my hands were shaking. Also,
Poles came around me to proffer their services, but I heeded
none of them. Nor did my luck fail me now. Suddenly, there arose
around me a loud din of talking and laughter. " Bravo, bravo! "
was the general shout, and some people even clapped their hands.
I had raked in thirty thousand florins, and again the bank had
had to close for the night!

"Go away now, go away now," a voice whispered to me on my
right. The person who had spoken to me was a certain Jew of
Frankfurt--a man who had been standing beside me the whole while,
and occasionally helping me in my play.

"Yes, for God's sake go," whispered a second voice in my left
ear. Glancing around, I perceived that the second voice had come
from a modestly, plainly dressed lady of rather less than
thirty--a woman whose face, though pale and sickly-looking, bore
also very evident traces of former beauty. At the moment, I was
stuffing the crumpled bank-notes into my pockets and collecting
all the gold that was left on the table. Seizing up my last note
for five hundred gulden, I contrived to insinuate it,
unperceived, into the hand of the pale lady. An overpowering
impulse had made me do so, and I remember how her thin little
fingers pressed mine in token of her lively gratitude. The whole
affair was the work of a moment.

Then, collecting my belongings, I crossed to where trente et
quarante was being played--a game which could boast of a more
aristocratic public, and was played with cards instead of with a
wheel. At this diversion the bank made itself responsible for a
hundred thousand thalers as the limit, but the highest stake
allowable was, as in roulette, four thousand florins. Although I
knew nothing of the game--and I scarcely knew the stakes,
except those on black and red--I joined the ring of players,
while the rest of the crowd massed itself around me. At this
distance of time I cannot remember whether I ever gave a thought
to Polina; I seemed only to be conscious of a vague pleasure in
seizing and raking in the bank-notes which kept massing
themselves in a pile before me.

But, as ever, fortune seemed to be at my back. As though of set
purpose, there came to my aid a circumstance which not
infrequently repeats itself in gaming. The circumstance is that
not infrequently luck attaches itself to, say, the red, and does
not leave it for a space of say, ten, or even fifteen, rounds
in succession. Three days ago I had heard that, during the
previous week there had been a run of twenty-two coups on the
red--an occurrence never before known at roulette--so that men
spoke of it with astonishment. Naturally enough, many deserted
the red after a dozen rounds, and practically no one could now
be found to stake upon it. Yet upon the black also--the
antithesis of the red--no experienced gambler would stake
anything, for the reason that every practised player knows the
meaning of "capricious fortune." That is to say, after the
sixteenth (or so) success of the red, one would think that the
seventeenth coup would inevitably fall upon the black; wherefore,
novices would be apt to back the latter in the seventeenth
round, and even to double or treble their stakes upon it--only,
in the end, to lose.

Yet some whim or other led me, on remarking that the red had
come up consecutively for seven times, to attach myself to that
colour. Probably this was mostly due to self-conceit, for I
wanted to astonish the bystanders with the riskiness of my play.
Also, I remember that--oh, strange sensation!--I suddenly, and
without any challenge from my own presumption, became obsessed
with a DESIRE to take risks. If the spirit has passed through a
great many sensations, possibly it can no longer be sated with
them, but grows more excited, and demands more sensations, and
stronger and stronger ones, until at length it falls exhausted.
Certainly, if the rules of the game had permitted even of my
staking fifty thousand florins at a time, I should have staked
them. All of a sudden I heard exclamations arising that the
whole thing was a marvel, since the red was turning up for the
fourteenth time!

"Monsieur a gagne cent mille florins," a voice exclaimed beside
me.

I awoke to my senses. What? I had won a hundred thousand
florins? If so, what more did I need to win? I grasped the
banknotes, stuffed them into my pockets, raked in the gold
without counting it, and started to leave the Casino. As I
passed through the salons people smiled to see my
bulging pockets and unsteady gait, for the weight which I was
carrying must have amounted to half a pood! Several hands I saw
stretched out in my direction, and as I passed I filled them
with all the money that I could grasp in my own. At length two
Jews stopped me near the exit.

"You are a bold young fellow," one said, "but mind you depart
early tomorrow--as early as you can--for if you do not you will
lose everything that you have won."

But I did not heed them. The Avenue was so dark that it was
barely possible to distinguish one's hand before one's face,
while the distance to the hotel was half a verst or so; but I
feared neither pickpockets nor highwaymen. Indeed, never since
my boyhood have I done that. Also, I cannot remember what I
thought about on the way. I only felt a sort of fearful pleasure
--the pleasure of success, of conquest, of power (how can I best
express it?). Likewise, before me there flitted the image of
Polina; and I kept remembering, and reminding myself, that it
was to HER I was going, that it was in HER presence I should
soon be standing, that it was SHE to whom I should soon be able
to relate and show everything. Scarcely once did I recall what
she had lately said to me, or the reason why I had left her, or
all those varied sensations which I had been experiencing a bare
hour and a half ago. No, those sensations seemed to be things of
the past, to be things which had righted themselves and grown
old, to be things concerning which we needed to trouble
ourselves no longer, since, for us, life was about to begin
anew. Yet I had just reached the end of the Avenue when there
DID come upon me a fear of being robbed or murdered. With each
step the fear increased until, in my terror, I almost started to
run. Suddenly, as I issued from the Avenue, there burst upon me
the lights of the hotel, sparkling with a myriad lamps! Yes,
thanks be to God, I had reached home!

Running up to my room, I flung open the door of it.  Polina was
still on the sofa, with a lighted candle in front of her, and
her hands clasped. As I entered she stared at me in astonishment
(for, at the moment, I must have presented a strange spectacle).
All I did, however, was to halt before her, and fling upon the
table my burden of wealth.

XV

I remember, too, how, without moving from her place, or changing
her attitude, she gazed into my face.

"I have won two hundred thousand francs!" cried I as I pulled
out my last sheaf of bank-notes. The pile of paper currency
occupied the whole table. I could not withdraw my eyes from it.
Consequently, for a moment or two Polina escaped my mind. Then I
set myself to arrange the pile in order, and to sort the notes,
and to mass the gold in a separate heap. That done, I left
everything where it lay, and proceeded to pace the room with
rapid strides as I lost myself in thought. Then I darted to the
table once more, and began to recount the money; until all of a
sudden, as though I had remembered something, I rushed to the
door, and closed and double-locked it. Finally I came to a
meditative halt before my little trunk.

"Shall I put the money there until tomorrow?" I asked,
turning sharply round to Polina as the recollection of her
returned to me.

She was still in her old place--still making not a sound. Yet her
eyes had followed every one of my movements. Somehow in her face
there was a strange expression--an expression which I did not
like. I think that I shall not be wrong if I say that it
indicated sheer hatred.

Impulsively I approached her.

"Polina," I said, "here are twenty-five thousand florins--fifty
thousand francs, or more. Take them, and tomorrow throw them
in De Griers' face."

She returned no answer.

"Or, if you should prefer," I continued, "let me take
them to him myself tomorrow--yes, early tomorrow morning. Shall
I?"

Then all at once she burst out laughing, and laughed for a long
while. With astonishment and a feeling of offence I gazed at
her. Her laughter was too like the derisive merriment which she
had so often indulged in of late--merriment which had broken
forth always at the time of my most passionate explanations. At
length she ceased, and frowned at me from under her eyebrows.

"I am NOT going to take your money," she said contemptuously.

"Why not?" I cried. "Why not, Polina?"

"Because I am not in the habit of receiving money for nothing."

"But I am offering it to you as a FRIEND in the same way I
would offer you my very life."

Upon this she threw me a long, questioning glance, as though she
were seeking to probe me to the depths.

"You are giving too much for me," she remarked with a smile.
"The beloved of De Griers is not worth fifty thousand francs."

"Oh Polina, how can you speak so?" I exclaimed reproachfully.
"Am I De Griers?"

"You?" she cried with her eyes suddenly flashing. "Why, I
HATE you! Yes, yes, I HATE you! I love you no more than I do De
Griers."

Then she buried her face in her hands, and relapsed into
hysterics. I darted to her side. Somehow I had an intuition of
something having happened to her which had nothing to do with
myself. She was like a person temporarily insane.

"Buy me, would you, would you? Would you buy me for fifty
thousand francs as De Griers did?" she gasped between her
convulsive sobs.

I clasped her in my arms, kissed her hands and feet, and fell
upon my knees before her.

Presently the hysterical fit passed away, and, laying her hands
upon my shoulders, she gazed for a while into my face, as though
trying to read it--something I said to her, but it was clear
that she did not hear it. Her face looked so dark and despondent
that I began to fear for her reason. At length she drew me towards
herself--a trustful smile playing over her features; and then,
as suddenly, she pushed me away again as she eyed me dimly.

Finally she threw herself upon me in an embrace.

"You love me?" she said. "DO you?--you who were willing even to
quarrel with the Baron at my bidding?"

Then she laughed--laughed as though something dear, but
laughable, had recurred to her memory. Yes, she laughed and wept
at the same time. What was I to do? I was like a man in a fever.
I remember that she began to say something to me--though WHAT I do
not know, since she spoke with a feverish lisp, as though she
were trying to tell me something very quickly. At intervals,
too, she would break off into the smile which I was beginning to
dread. "No, no!" she kept repeating. "YOU are my dear one;
YOU are the man I trust." Again she laid her hands upon my
shoulders, and again she gazed at me as she reiterated: "You love
me, you love me? Will you ALWAYS love me?" I could not take my
eyes off her. Never before had I seen her in this mood of
humility and affection. True, the mood was the outcome of
hysteria; but--! All of a sudden she noticed my ardent gaze, and
smiled slightly. The next moment, for no apparent reason, she
began to talk of Astley.

She continued talking and talking about him, but I could not
make out all she said--more particularly when she was
endeavouring to tell me of something or other which had happened
recently. On the whole, she appeared to be laughing at Astley,
for she kept repeating that he was waiting for her, and did I
know whether, even at that moment, he was not standing beneath
the window? "Yes, yes, he is there," she said. "Open the
window, and see if he is not." She pushed me in that direction;
yet, no sooner did I make a movement to obey her behest than she
burst into laughter, and I remained beside her, and she
embraced me.

"Shall we go away tomorrow?" presently she asked, as though
some disturbing thought had recurred to her recollection. "How
would it be if we were to try and overtake Grandmamma? I think
we should do so at Berlin. And what think you she would have to
say to us when we caught her up, and her eyes first lit upon us?
What, too, about Mr. Astley? HE would not leap from the
Shlangenberg for my sake! No! Of that I am very sure!"--and she
laughed. "Do you know where he is going next year? He says he
intends to go to the North Pole for scientific investigations,
and has invited me to go with him! Ha, ha, ha! He also says that
we Russians know nothing, can do nothing, without European help.
But he is a good fellow all the same. For instance, he does not
blame the General in the matter, but declares that Mlle.
Blanche--that love--But no; I do not know, I do not know." She
stopped suddenly, as though she had said her say, and was
feeling bewildered. "What poor creatures these people are. How
sorry I am for them, and for Grandmamma! But when are you going
to kill De Griers? Surely you do not intend actually to murder
him? You fool! Do you suppose that I should ALLOW you to fight
De Griers? Nor shall you kill the Baron." Here she burst out
laughing. "How absurd you looked when you were talking to the
Burmergelms! I was watching you all the time--watching you from
where I was sitting. And how unwilling you were to go when I
sent you! Oh, how I laughed and laughed!"

Then she kissed and embraced me again; again she pressed her
face to mine with tender passion. Yet I neither saw nor heard
her, for my head was in a whirl. . . .

It must have been about seven o'clock in the morning when I
awoke. Daylight had come, and Polina was sitting by my side--a
strange expression on her face, as though she had seen a vision
and was unable to collect her thoughts. She too had just
awoken, and was now staring at the money on the table. My head
ached; it felt heavy. I attempted to take Polina's hand, but she
pushed me from her, and leapt from the sofa. The dawn was full
of mist, for rain had fallen, yet she moved to the window,
opened it, and, leaning her elbows upon the window-sill, thrust
out her head and shoulders to take the air. In this position did
she remain for several minutes, without ever looking round at
me, or listening to what I was saying. Into my head there came
the uneasy thought: What is to happen now? How is it all to end?
Suddenly Polina rose from the window, approached the table, and,
looking at me with an expression of infinite aversion, said with
lips which quivered with anger:

"Well? Are you going to hand me over my fifty thousand francs?"

"Polina, you say that AGAIN, AGAIN?" I exclaimed.

"You have changed your mind, then? Ha, ha, ha! You are sorry
you ever promised them?"

On the table where, the previous night, I had counted the money
there still was lying the packet of twenty five thousand
florins. I handed it to her.

"The francs are mine, then, are they? They are mine?" she
inquired viciously as she balanced the money in her hands.

"Yes; they have ALWAYS been yours," I said.

"Then TAKE your fifty thousand francs!" and she hurled them
full in my face. The packet burst as she did so, and the floor
became strewed with bank-notes. The instant that the deed was
done she rushed from the room.

At that moment she cannot have been in her right mind; yet, what
was the cause of her temporary aberration I cannot say. For a
month past she had been unwell. Yet what had brought about this
PRESENT condition of mind,above all things, this outburst? Had
it come of wounded pride? Had it come of despair over her
decision to come to me? Had it come of the fact that, presuming
too much on my good fortune, I had seemed to be intending to
desert her (even as De Griers had done) when once I had given
her the fifty thousand francs? But, on my honour, I had never
cherished any such intention. What was at fault, I think, was
her own pride, which kept urging her not to trust me, but,
rather, to insult me--even though she had not realised the fact.
In her eyes I corresponded to De Griers, and therefore had been
condemned for a fault not wholly my own. Her mood of late had
been a sort of delirium, a sort of light-headedness--that I knew
full well; yet, never had I sufficiently taken it into consideration.
Perhaps she would not pardon me now? Ah, but this was THE PRESENT.
What about the future? Her delirium and sickness were not likely to
make her forget what she had done in bringing me De Griers'
letter. No, she must have known what she was doing when she
brought it.

Somehow I contrived to stuff the pile of notes and gold under
the bed, to cover them over, and then to leave the room some ten
minutes after Polina. I felt sure that she had returned to her
own room; wherefore, I intended quietly to follow her, and to ask
the nursemaid aid who opened the door how her mistress was.
Judge, therefore, of my surprise when, meeting the domestic on
the stairs, she informed me that Polina had not yet returned,
and that she (the domestic) was at that moment on her way to my
room in quest of her!

"Mlle. left me but ten minutes ago," I said.
"What can have become of her?" The nursemaid looked at me
reproachfully.

Already sundry rumours were flying about the hotel. Both in the
office of the commissionaire and in that of the landlord it was
whispered that, at seven o'clock that morning, the Fraulein had
left the hotel, and set off, despite the rain, in the direction
of the Hotel d'Angleterre. From words and hints let fall I could
see that the fact of Polina having spent the night in my room
was now public property. Also, sundry rumours were circulating
concerning the General's family affairs. It was known that last
night he had gone out of his mind, and paraded the hotel in
tears; also, that the old lady who had arrived was his mother,
and that she had come from Russia on purpose to forbid her son's
marriage with Mlle. de Cominges, as well as to cut him out of
her will if he should disobey her; also that, because he had
disobeyed her, she had squandered all her money at roulette, in
order to have nothing more to leave to him. "Oh, these
Russians!" exclaimed the landlord, with an angry toss of the
head, while the bystanders laughed and the clerk betook himself
to his accounts. Also, every one had learnt about my winnings;
Karl, the corridor lacquey, was the first to congratulate me.
But with these folk I had nothing to do. My business was to set
off at full speed to the Hotel d'Angleterre.

As yet it was early for Mr. Astley to receive visitors; but, as
soon as he learnt that it was I who had arrived, he came out
into the corridor to meet me, and stood looking at me in silence
with his steel-grey eyes as he waited to hear what I had to say.
I inquired after Polina.

"She is ill," he replied, still looking at me with his direct,
unwavering glance.

"And she is in your rooms."

"Yes, she is in my rooms."

"Then you are minded to keep her there?"

"Yes, I am minded to keep her there."

"But, Mr. Astley, that will raise a scandal. It ought not to be
allowed. Besides, she is very ill. Perhaps you had not remarked
that?"

"Yes, I have. It was I who told you about it. Had she not been
ill, she would not have gone and spent the night with you."

"Then you know all about it?"

"Yes; for last night she was to have accompanied me to the
house of a relative of mine. Unfortunately, being ill, she made
a mistake, and went to your rooms instead."

"Indeed? Then I wish you joy, Mr. Astley. Apropos, you have
reminded me of something. Were you beneath my window last night?
Every moment Mlle. Polina kept telling me to open the window and
see if you were there; after which she always smiled."

"Indeed? No, I was not there; but I was waiting in the
corridor, and walking about the hotel."

"She ought to see a doctor, you know, Mr. Astley."

"Yes, she ought. I have sent for one, and, if she dies, I shall
hold you responsible."

This surprised me.

"Pardon me," I replied, "but what do you mean?"

"Never mind. Tell me if it is true that, last night, you won two
hundred thousand thalers?"

"No; I won a hundred thousand florins."

"Good heavens! Then I suppose you will be off to Paris this
morning?

"Why?"

"Because all Russians who have grown rich go to Paris,"
explained Astley, as though he had read the fact in a book.

"But what could I do in Paris in summer time?--I LOVE her, Mr.
Astley! Surely you know that?"

"Indeed? I am sure that you do NOT. Moreover, if you were to
stay here, you would lose everything that you possess, and have
nothing left with which to pay your expenses in Paris. Well,
good-bye now. I feel sure that today will see you gone from
here."

"Good-bye. But I am NOT going to Paris. Likewise--pardon me--what
is to become of this family? I mean that the affair of the
General and Mlle. Polina will soon be all over the town."

"I daresay; yet, I hardly suppose that that will break the
General's heart. Moreover, Mlle. Polina has a perfect right to
live where she chooses. In short, we may say that, as a family,
this family has ceased to exist."

I departed, and found myself smiling at the Englishman's strange
assurance that I should soon be leaving for Paris. "I suppose
he means to shoot me in a duel, should Polina die. Yes, that is
what he intends to do."  Now, although I was honestly sorry for
Polina, it is a fact that, from the moment when, the previous
night, I had approached the gaming-table, and begun to rake in
the packets of bank-notes, my love for her had entered upon a
new plane. Yes, I can say that now; although, at the time, I was
barely conscious of it. Was I, then, at heart a gambler? Did I,
after all, love Polina not so very much? No, no! As God is my
witness, I loved her! Even when I was returning home from Mr.
Astley's my suffering was genuine, and my self-reproach sincere.
But presently I was to go through an exceedingly strange and
ugly experience.

I was proceeding to the General's rooms when I heard a door near
me open, and a voice call me by name. It was Mlle.'s mother, the
Widow de Cominges who was inviting me, in her daughter's
name, to enter.

I did so; whereupon, I heard a laugh and a little cry proceed
from the bedroom (the pair occupied a suite of two apartments),
where Mlle. Blanche was just arising.

"Ah, c'est lui! Viens, donc, bete! Is it true that you have won
a mountain of gold and silver? J'aimerais mieux l'or."

"Yes," I replied with a smile.

"How much?"

"A hundred thousand florins."

"Bibi, comme tu es bete! Come in here, for I can't hear you
where you are now. Nous ferons bombance, n'est-ce pas?"

Entering her room, I found her lolling under a pink satin
coverlet, and revealing a pair of swarthy, wonderfully healthy
shoulders--shoulders such as one sees in dreams--shoulders covered
over with a white cambric nightgown which, trimmed with lace,
stood out, in striking relief, against the darkness of her skin.

"Mon fils, as-tu du coeur?" she cried when she saw me, and
then giggled. Her laugh had always been a very cheerful one, and
at times it even sounded sincere.

"Tout autre--" I began, paraphrasing Comeille.

"See here," she prattled on. "Please search for my stockings,
and help me to dress. Aussi, si tu n'es pas trop bete je te
prends a Paris. I am just off, let me tell you."

"This moment?"

"In half an hour."

True enough, everything stood ready-packed--trunks, portmanteaux,
and all. Coffee had long been served.

"Eh bien, tu verras Paris. Dis donc, qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un
'utchitel'? Tu etais bien bete quand tu etais 'utchitel.' Where
are my stockings? Please help me to dress."

And she lifted up a really ravishing foot--small, swarthy, and
not misshapen like the majority of feet which look dainty only
in bottines. I laughed, and started to draw on to the foot a
silk stocking, while Mlle. Blanche sat on the edge of the bed
and chattered.

"Eh bien, que feras-tu si je te prends avec moi? First of all I
must have fifty thousand francs, and you shall give them to me
at Frankfurt. Then we will go on to Paris, where we will live
together, et je te ferai voir des etoiles en plein jour. Yes,
you shall see such women as your eyes have never lit upon."

"Stop a moment. If I were to give you those fifty thousand
francs, what should I have left for myself?"

"Another hundred thousand francs, please to remember. Besides,
I could live with you in your rooms for a month, or even for
two; or even for longer. But it would not take us more than two
months to get through fifty thousand francs; for, look you, je
suis bonne enfante, et tu verras des etoiles, you may be sure."

"What? You mean to say that we should spend the whole in two
months?"

"Certainly. Does that surprise you very much? Ah, vil esclave!
Why, one month of that life would be better than all your
previous existence. One month--et apres, le deluge! Mais tu ne
peux comprendre. Va! Away, away! You are not worth it.--Ah, que
fais-tu?"

For, while drawing on the other stocking, I had felt constrained
to kiss her. Immediately she shrunk back, kicked me in the face
with her toes, and turned me neck and prop out of the room.

"Eh bien, mon 'utchitel'," she called after me, "je t'attends,
si tu veux. I start in a quarter of an hour's time."

I returned to my own room with my head in a whirl. It was not my
fault that Polina had thrown a packet in my face, and preferred
Mr. Astley to myself. A few bank-notes were still fluttering
about the floor, and I picked them up. At that moment the door
opened, and the landlord appeared--a person who, until now, had
never bestowed upon me so much as a glance. He had come to know
if I would prefer to move to a lower floor--to a suite which had
just been tenanted by Count V.

For a moment I reflected.

"No!" I shouted. "My account, please, for in ten minutes I
shall be gone."

"To Paris, to Paris!" I added to myself. "Every man of birth
must make her acquaintance."

Within a quarter of an hour all three of us were seated in a
family compartment--Mlle. Blanche, the Widow de Cominges, and
myself. Mlle. kept laughing hysterically as she looked at me,
and Madame re-echoed her; but I did not feel so cheerful. My
life had broken in two, and yesterday had infected me with a
habit of staking my all upon a card. Although it might be that I
had failed to win my stake, that I had lost my senses, that I
desired nothing better, I felt that the scene was to be changed
only FOR A TIME. "Within a month from now," I kept thinking to
myself, "I shall be back again in Roulettenberg; and THEN I
mean to have it out with you, Mr. Astley!" Yes, as now I look
back at things, I remember that I felt greatly depressed,
despite the absurd gigglings of the egregious Blanche.

"What is the matter with you? How dull you are!" she cried at
length as she interrupted her laughter to take me seriously to
task.

"Come, come! We are going to spend your two hundred thousand
francs for you, et tu seras heureux comme un petit roi. I myself
will tie your tie for you, and introduce you to Hortense. And
when we have spent your money you shall return here, and break
the bank again. What did those two Jews tell you?--that the thing
most needed is daring, and that you possess it? Consequently,
this is not the first time that you will be hurrying to Paris
with money in your pocket. Quant ... moi, je veux cinquante mille
francs de rente, et alors"

"But what about the General?" I interrupted.

"The General? You know well enough that at about this hour every
day he goes to buy me a bouquet. On this occasion, I took care to
tell him that he must hunt for the choicest of flowers; and when
he returns home, the poor fellow will find the bird flown.
Possibly he may take wing in pursuit--ha, ha, ha! And if so, I
shall not be sorry, for he could be useful to me in Paris, and
Mr. Astley will pay his debts here."

In this manner did I depart for the Gay City.

XVI

Of Paris what am I to say? The whole proceeding was a delirium,
a madness. I spent a little over three weeks there, and, during
that time, saw my hundred thousand francs come to an end. I
speak only of the ONE hundred thousand francs, for the other
hundred thousand I gave to Mlle. Blanche in pure cash. That is
to say, I handed her fifty thousand francs at Frankfurt, and,
three days later (in Paris), advanced her another fifty thousand
on note of hand. Nevertheless, a week had not elapsed ere she
came to me for more money. "Et les cent mille francs qui nous
restent," she added, "tu les mangeras avec moi, mon utchitel."
Yes, she always called me her "utchitel." A person more
economical, grasping, and mean than Mlle. Blanche one could not
imagine. But this was only as regards HER OWN money. MY hundred
thousand francs (as she explained to me later) she needed to set
up her establishment in Paris, "so that once and for all I may
be on a decent footing, and proof against any stones which may
be thrown at me--at all events for a long time to come."
Nevertheless, I saw nothing of those hundred thousand francs, for
my own purse (which she inspected daily) never managed to amass
in it more than a hundred francs at a time; and, generally the
sum did not reach even that figure.

"What do you want with money?" she would say to me with air of
absolute simplicity; and I never disputed the point.
Nevertheless, though she fitted out her flat very badly with the
money, the fact did not prevent her from saying when, later, she
was showing me over the rooms of her new abode:  "See what
care and taste can do with the most wretched of means!"
However, her "wretchedness " had cost fifty thousand francs,
while with the remaining fifty thousand she purchased a carriage
and horses.

Also, we gave a couple of balls--evening parties
attended by Hortense and Lisette and Cleopatre, who were women
remarkable both for the number of their liaisons and (though
only in some cases) for their good looks. At these reunions
I had to play the part of host--to meet and entertain fat
mercantile parvenus who were impossible by reason of their
rudeness and braggadocio, colonels of various kinds, hungry
authors, and journalistic hacks--all of whom disported
themselves in fashionable tailcoats and pale yellow gloves, and
displayed such an aggregate of conceit and gasconade as would be
unthinkable even in St. Petersburg--which is saying a great deal!
They used to try to make fun of me, but I would console myself
by drinking champagne and then lolling in a retiring-room.
Nevertheless, I found it deadly work. "C'est un utchitel," Blanche would
say of me, "qui a gagne deux cent mille francs,
and but for me, would have had not a notion how to spend them.
Presently he will have to return to his tutoring. Does any one
know of a vacant post? You know, one must do something for him."

I had the more frequent recourse to champagne in that I
constantly felt depressed and bored, owing to the fact that I
was living in the most bourgeois commercial milieu imaginable--a
milieu wherein every sou was counted and grudged. Indeed, two
weeks had not elapsed before I perceived that Blanche had no
real affection for me, even though she dressed me in elegant
clothes, and herself tied my tie each day. In short, she utterly
despised me. But that caused me no concern. Blase and inert, I
spent my evenings generally at the Chateau des Fleurs, where I
would get fuddled and then dance the cancan (which, in that
establishment, was a very indecent performance) with eclat. At
length, the time came when Blanche had drained my purse dry. She
had conceived an idea that, during the term of our residence
together, it would be well if I were always to walk behind her
with a paper and pencil, in order to jot down exactly what she
spent, what she had saved, what she was paying out, and what
she was laying by. Well, of course I could not fail to be aware
that this would entail a battle over every ten francs; so,
although for every possible objection that I might make she had
prepared a suitable answer, she soon saw that I made no
objections, and therefore, had to start disputes herself. That is
to say, she would burst out into tirades which were met only
with silence as I lolled on a sofa and stared fixedly at the
ceiling. This greatly surprised her. At first she imagined that
it was due merely to the fact that I was a fool, "un utchitel";
wherefore she would break off her harangue in the belief
that, being too stupid to understand, I was a hopeless case.
Then she would leave the room, but return ten minutes later to
resume the contest. This continued throughout her squandering of
my money--a squandering altogether out of proportion to our
means. An example is the way in which she changed her first pair
of horses for a pair which cost sixteen thousand francs.

"Bibi," she said on the latter occasion as she approached me,
"surely you are not angry?"

"No-o-o: I am merely tired," was my reply as I pushed her
from me. This seemed to her so curious that straightway she
seated herself by my side.

"You see," she went on, "I decided to spend so much upon these
horses only because I can easily sell them again. They would
go at any time for TWENTY thousand francs."

"Yes, yes. They are splendid horses, and you have got a
splendid turn-out. I am quite content. Let me hear no more of
the matter."

"Then you are not angry?"

"No. Why should I be? You are wise to provide yourself with
what you need, for it will all come in handy in the future.
Yes, I quite see the necessity of your establishing yourself on
a good basis, for without it you will never earn your million.
My hundred thousand francs I look upon merely as a beginning--as
a mere drop in the bucket."

Blanche, who had by no means expected such declarations from me,
but, rather, an uproar and protests, was rather taken aback.

"Well, well, what a man you are! " she exclaimed. " Mais tu as
l'esprit pour comprendre. Sais-tu, mon garcon, although you are
a tutor, you ought to have been born a prince. Are you not sorry
that your money should be going so quickly?"

"No. The quicker it goes the better."

"Mais--sais-tu-mais dis donc, are you really rich? Mais sais-tu,
you have too much contempt for money. Qu'est-ce que tu feras
apres, dis donc?"

"Apres I shall go to Homburg, and win another hundred thousand
francs."

"Oui, oui, c'est ca, c'est magnifique! Ah, I know you will win
them, and bring them to me when you have done so. Dis donc--you
will end by making me love you. Since you are what you are, I
mean to love you all the time, and never to be unfaithful to
you. You see, I have not loved you before parce que je croyais
que tu n'es qu'un utchitel (quelque chose comme un lacquais,
n'est-ce pas?) Yet all the time I have been true to you, parce
que je suis bonne fille."

"You lie!" I interrupted. "Did I not see you, the other day,
with Albert--with that black-jowled officer?"

"Oh, oh! Mais tu es--"

"Yes, you are lying right enough. But what makes you suppose
that I should be angry? Rubbish! Il faut que jeunesse se passe.
Even if that officer were here now, I should refrain from
putting him out of the room if I thought you really cared for
him. Only, mind you, do not give him any of my money. You hear?"

"You say, do you, that you would not be angry? Mais tu es un
vrai philosophe, sais-tu? Oui, un vrai philosophe! Eh bien, je
t'aimerai, je t'aimerai. Tu verras-tu seras content."

True enough, from that time onward she seemed to attach herself
only to me, and in this manner we spent our last ten days
together. The promised "etoiles" I did not see, but in other
respects she, to a certain extent, kept her word. Moreover, she
introduced me to Hortense, who was a remarkable woman in her
way, and known among us as Therese Philosophe.

But I need not enlarge further, for to do so would
require a story to itself, and entail a colouring which
I am lothe to impart to the present narrative. The point

is that with all my faculties I desired the episode to
come to an end as speedily as possible. Unfortunately,
our hundred thousand francs lasted us, as I have said,
for very nearly a month--which greatly surprised me. At all
events, Blanche bought herself articles to the tune of eighty
thousand francs, and the rest sufficed just to meet our expenses
of living. Towards the close of the affair, Blanche grew almost
frank with me (at least, she scarcely lied to me at
all)--declaring, amongst other things, that none of the debts
which she had been obliged to incur were going to fall upon my
head. "I have purposely refrained from making you responsible
for my bills or borrowings," she said, "for the reason that I
am sorry for you. Any other woman in my place would have done
so, and have let you go to prison. See, then, how much I love
you, and how good-hearted I am! Think, too, what this accursed
marriage with the General is going to cost me!"

True enough, the marriage took place. It did so at the close of
our month together, and I am bound to suppose that it was
upon the ceremony that the last remnants of my money were spent.
With it the episode--that is to say, my sojourn with the
Frenchwoman--came to an end, and I formally retired from the
scene.

It happened thus: A week after we had taken up our abode in
Paris there arrived thither the General. He came straight to see
us, and thenceforward lived with us practically as our guest,
though he had a flat of his own as well. Blanche met him with
merry badinage and laughter, and even threw her arms around him.
In fact, she managed it so that he had to follow everywhere in
her train--whether when promenading on the Boulevards, or when
driving, or when going to the theatre, or when paying calls; and
this use which she made of him quite satisfied the General.
Still of imposing appearance and presence, as well as of fair
height, he had a dyed moustache and whiskers (he had formerly
been in the cuirassiers), and a handsome, though a somewhat
wrinkled, face. Also, his manners were excellent, and he could
carry a frockcoat well--the more so since, in Paris, he took to
wearing his orders. To promenade the Boulevards with such a man
was not only a thing possible, but also, so to speak, a thing
advisable, and with this programme the good but foolish
General had not a fault to find. The truth is that he had never
counted upon this programme when he came to Paris to seek us
out. On that occasion he had made his appearance nearly shaking
with terror, for he had supposed that Blanche would at once
raise an outcry, and have him put from the door; wherefore, he
was the more enraptured at the turn that things had taken, and
spent the month in a state of senseless ecstasy. Already I had
learnt that, after our unexpected departure from Roulettenberg,
he had had a sort of a fit--that he had fallen into a swoon, and
spent a week in a species of garrulous delirium. Doctors had
been summoned to him, but he had broken away from them, and
suddenly taken a train to Paris. Of course Blanche's reception of
him had acted as the best of all possible cures, but for long
enough he carried the marks of his affliction, despite his
present condition of rapture and delight. To think clearly, or
even to engage in any serious conversation, had now become
impossible for him; he could only ejaculate after each word
"Hm!" and then nod his head in confirmation. Sometimes, also, he
would laugh, but only in a nervous, hysterical sort of a
fashion; while at other times he would sit for hours looking as
black as night, with his heavy eyebrows knitted. Of much that
went on he remained wholly oblivious, for he grew extremely
absent-minded, and took to talking to himself. Only Blanche
could awake him to any semblance of life. His fits of depression
and moodiness in corners always meant either that he had not
seen her for some while, or that she had gone out without taking
him with her, or that she had omitted to caress him before
departing. When in this condition, he would refuse to say what he
wanted--nor had he the least idea that he was thus sulking and
moping. Next, after remaining in this condition for an hour or
two (this I remarked on two occasions when Blanche had gone out
for the day--probably to see Albert), he would begin to look
about him, and to grow uneasy, and to hurry about with an air as
though he had suddenly remembered something, and must try and
find it; after which, not perceiving the object of his search,
nor succeeding in recalling what that object had been, he would
as suddenly relapse into oblivion, and continue so until the
reappearance of Blanche--merry, wanton, half-dressed, and
laughing her strident laugh as she approached to pet him, and
even to kiss him (though the latter reward he seldom received).
Once, he was so overjoyed at her doing so that he burst into
tears. Even I myself was surprised.

From the first moment of his arrival in Paris, Blanche set
herself to plead with me on his behalf; and at such times she
even rose to heights of eloquence--saying that it was for ME
she had abandoned him, though she had almost become his
betrothed and promised to become so; that it was for HER sake he
had deserted his family; that, having been in his service, I
ought to remember the fact, and to feel ashamed. To all this I
would say nothing, however much she chattered on; until at
length I would burst out laughing, and the incident would come
to an end (at first, as I have said, she had thought me a fool,
but since she had come to deem me a man of sense and
sensibility). In short, I had the happiness of calling her
better nature into play; for though, at first, I had not deemed
her so, she was, in reality, a kind-hearted woman after her own
fashion. "You are good and clever," she said to me towards the
finish, "and my one regret is that you are also so
wrong-headed. You will NEVER be a rich man!"

"Un vrai Russe--un Kalmuk" she usually called me.

Several times she sent me to give the General an airing in the
streets, even as she might have done with a lacquey and her
spaniel; but, I preferred to take him to the theatre, to the Bal
Mabille, and to restaurants. For this purpose she usually
allowed me some money, though the General had a little of his
own, and enjoyed taking out his purse before strangers. Once I
had to use actual force to prevent him from buying a phaeton at
a price of seven hundred francs, after a vehicle had caught his
fancy in the Palais Royal as seeming to be a desirable present
for Blanche. What could SHE have done with a seven-hundred-franc
phaeton?--and the General possessed in the world but a thousand
francs! The origin even of those francs I could never determine,
but imagined them to have emanated from Mr. Astley--the more so
since the latter had paid the family's hotel bill. As for what
view the General took of myself, I think that he never divined
the footing on which I stood with Blanche. True, he had
heard, in a dim sort of way, that I had won a good deal of money;
but more probably he supposed me to be acting as secretary--or even
as a kind of servant--to his inamorata. At all events, he
continued to address me, in his old haughty style, as my
superior. At times he even took it upon himself to scold me. One
morning in particular, he started to sneer at me over our
matutinal coffee. Though not a man prone to take offence, he
suddenly, and for some reason of which to this day I am
ignorant, fell out with me. Of course even he himself did not
know the reason. To put things shortly, he began a speech which
had neither beginning nor ending, and cried out, a batons
rompus, that I was a boy whom he would soon put to rights--and so
forth, and so forth. Yet no one could understand what he was
saying, and at length Blanche exploded in a burst of laughter.
Finally something appeased him, and he was taken out for his
walk. More than once, however, I noticed that his depression was
growing upon him; that he seemed to be feeling the want of
somebody or something; that, despite Blanche's presence, he was
missing some person in particular. Twice, on these occasions,
did he plunge into a conversation with me, though he could not
make himself intelligible, and only went on rambling about the
service, his late wife, his home, and his property. Every now
and then, also, some particular word would please him; whereupon
he would repeat it a hundred times in the day--even though the
word happened to express neither his thoughts nor his feelings.
Again, I would try to get him to talk about his children, but
always he cut me short in his old snappish way, and passed to
another subject. "Yes, yes--my children," was all that I could
extract from him. "Yes, you are right in what you have said
about them." Only once did he disclose his real feelings. That
was when we were taking him to the theatre, and suddenly he
exclaimed: "My unfortunate children! Yes, sir, they are
unfortunate children." Once, too, when I chanced to mention
Polina, he grew quite bitter against her. "She is an ungrateful
woman!" he exclaimed. "She is a bad and ungrateful woman! She
has broken up a family. If there were laws here, I would have
her impaled. Yes, I would." As for De Griers, the General would
not have his name mentioned. " He has ruined me," he would say.
"He has robbed me, and cut my throat. For two years he was a
perfect nightmare to me. For months at a time he never left me
in my dreams. Do not speak of him again."

It was now clear to me that Blanche and he were on the point of
coming to terms; yet, true to my usual custom, I said nothing.
At length, Blanche took the initiative in explaining matters.
She did so a week before we parted.

"Il a du chance," she prattled, "for the Grandmother is now
REALLY ill, and therefore, bound to die. Mr. Astley has just sent
a telegram to say so, and you will agree with me that the
General is likely to be her heir. Even if he should not be so,
he will not come amiss, since, in the first place, he has his
pension, and, in the second place, he will be content to live in
a back room; whereas I shall be Madame General, and get into a
good circle of society" (she was always thinking of this) "and
become a Russian chatelaine. Yes, I shall have a mansion of my
own, and peasants, and a million of money at my back."

"But, suppose he should prove jealous? He might demand all
sorts of things, you know. Do you follow me?"

"Oh, dear no! How ridiculous that would be of him! Besides, I
have taken measures to prevent it. You need not be alarmed. That
is to say, I have induced him to sign notes of hand in Albert's
name. Consequently, at any time I could get him punished. Isn't
he ridiculous?"

"Very well, then. Marry him."

And, in truth, she did so--though the marriage was a family one
only, and involved no pomp or ceremony. In fact, she invited to
the nuptials none but Albert and a few other friends. Hortense,
Cleopatre, and the rest she kept firmly at a distance. As for
the bridegroom, he took a great interest in his new position.
Blanche herself tied his tie, and Blanche herself pomaded him--
with the result that, in his frockcoat and white waistcoat, he
looked quite comme il faut.

"Il est, pourtant, TRES comme il faut," Blanche remarked when
she issued from his room, as though the idea that he was "TRES
comme il faut " had impressed even her. For myself, I had so
little knowledge of the minor details of the affair, and took
part in it so much as a supine spectator, that I have forgotten
most of what passed on this occasion. I only remember that
Blanche and the Widow figured at it, not as "de Cominges," but
as "du Placet." Why they had hitherto been "de Cominges " I do
not know--I only know that this entirely satisfied the
General, that he liked the name "du Placet" even better than he
had liked the name "de Cominges." On the morning of the wedding,
he paced the salon in his gala attire and kept repeating to
himself with an air of great gravity and importance: " Mlle.
Blanche du Placet! Mlle. Blanche du Placet, du Placet!" He
beamed with satisfaction as he did so. Both in the church and at
the wedding breakfast he remained not only pleased and
contented, but even proud. She too underwent a change, for now
she assumed an air of added dignity.

"I must behave altogether differently," she confided to me with
a serious air. "Yet, mark you, there is a tiresome circumstance
of which I had never before thought--which is, how best to
pronounce my new family name. Zagorianski, Zagozianski, Madame
la Generale de Sago, Madame la Generale de Fourteen
Consonants--oh these infernal Russian names! The LAST of them
would be the best to use, don't you think?"

At length the time had come for us to part, and Blanche, the
egregious Blanche, shed real tears as she took her leave of me.
"Tu etais bon enfant" she said with a sob. "je te croyais bete et tu
en avais l'air, but it suited you." Then, having given me a final
handshake, she exclaimed, "Attends!"; whereafter, running into
her boudoir, she brought me thence two thousand-franc notes. I
could scarcely believe my eyes! "They may come in handy for
you," she explained, "for, though you are a very learned
tutor, you are a very stupid man. More than two thousand francs,
however, I am not going to give you, for the reason that, if I
did so, you would gamble them all away. Now good-bye. Nous
serons toujours bons amis, and if you win again, do not fail to
come to me, et tu seras heureux."

I myself had still five hundred francs left, as well as a watch
worth a thousand francs, a few diamond studs, and so on.
Consequently, I could subsist for quite a length of time without
particularly bestirring myself. Purposely I have taken up my
abode where I am now partly to pull myself together, and partly
to wait for Mr. Astley, who, I have learnt, will soon be here
for a day or so on business. Yes, I know that, and then--and then
I shall go to Homburg. But to Roulettenberg I shall not go until
next year, for they say it is bad to try one's luck twice in
succession at a table. Moreover, Homburg is where the best play
is carried on.

XVII

It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes
of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with
depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through
at random. I left them off at the point where I was just going
to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively
speaking) did I write the concluding lines!--though it may be
not so much with a light heart, as with a measure of
self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At that time had I any
doubts of myself ? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a half
have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest
beggar. But what is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined
myself--that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can
compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use
for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well
be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons
who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your
maxims--if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the
sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag
your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not
already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the
fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for
me, has become changed. Yet, had things befallen otherwise,
these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel
persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and
congratulations. Yes, they would never have turned from me as
they are doing now! A fig for all of them! What am I? I am
zero--nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from the
dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man
in myself, if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered.

I went, I say, to Homburg, but afterwards went also to
Roulettenberg, as well as to Spa and Baden; in which latter
place, for a time, I acted as valet to a certain rascal of a
Privy Councillor, by name Heintze, who until lately was also my
master here. Yes, for five months I lived my life with lacqueys!
That was just after I had come out of Roulettenberg prison,
where I had lain for a small debt which I owed. Out of that
prison I was bailed by--by whom? By Mr. Astley? By Polina? I do
not know. At all events, the debt was paid to the tune of two
hundred thalers, and I sallied forth a free man. But what was I
to do with myself ? In my dilemma I had recourse to this
Heintze, who was a young scapegrace, and the sort of man who
could speak and write three languages. At first I acted as his
secretary, at a salary of thirty gulden a month, but afterwards
I became his lacquey, for the reason that he could not afford to
keep a secretary--only an unpaid servant. I had nothing else to
turn to, so I remained with him, and allowed myself to become
his flunkey. But by stinting myself in meat and drink I saved,
during my five months of service, some seventy gulden; and one
evening, when we were at Baden, I told him that I wished to
resign my post, and then hastened to betake myself to roulette.

Oh, how my heart beat as I did so! No, it was not the money that
I valued--what I wanted was to make all this mob of Heintzes,
hotel proprietors, and fine ladies of Baden talk about me,
recount my story, wonder at me, extol my doings, and worship my
winnings. True, these were childish fancies and aspirations, but
who knows but that I might meet Polina, and be able to tell her
everything, and see her look of surprise at the fact that I had
overcome so many adverse strokes of fortune. No, I had no desire
for money for its own sake, for I was perfectly well aware that
I should only squander it upon some new Blanche, and spend
another three weeks in Paris after buying a pair of horses which
had cost sixteen thousand francs. No, I never believed myself to
be a hoarder; in fact, I knew only too well that I was a
spendthrift. And already, with a sort of fear, a sort of
sinking in my heart, I could hear the cries of the croupiers--
"Trente et un, rouge, impair et passe," "Quarte, noir, pair et
manque. "  How greedily I gazed upon the gaming-table, with its
scattered louis d'or, ten-gulden pieces, and thalers; upon the
streams of gold as they issued from the croupier's hands, and
piled themselves up into heaps of gold scintillating as fire;
upon the ell--long rolls of silver lying around the croupier.
Even at a distance of two rooms I could hear the chink of that
money--so much so that I nearly fell into convulsions.

Ah, the evening when I took those seventy gulden to the gaming
table was a memorable one for me. I began by staking ten gulden
upon passe. For passe I had always had a sort of predilection,
yet I lost my stake upon it. This left me with sixty gulden in
silver. After a moment's thought I selected zero--beginning by
staking five gulden at a time. Twice I lost, but the third round
suddenly brought up the desired coup. I could almost have died
with joy as I received my one hundred and seventy-five gulden.
Indeed, I have been less pleased when, in former times, I have
won a hundred thousand gulden. Losing no time, I staked another
hundred gulden upon the red, and won; two hundred upon the red,
and won; four hundred upon the black, and won; eight hundred
upon manque, and won. Thus, with the addition of the remainder
of my original capital, I found myself possessed, within five
minutes, of seventeen hundred gulden.  Ah, at such moments one
forgets both oneself and one's former failures! This I had
gained by risking my very life. I had dared so to risk, and
behold, again I was a member of mankind!

I went and hired a room, I shut myself up in it, and sat
counting my money until three o'clock in the morning. To think
that when I awoke on the morrow, I was no lacquey! I decided to
leave at once for Homburg. There I should neither have to serve
as a footman nor to lie in prison. Half an hour before starting,
I went and ventured a couple of stakes--no more; with the result
that, in all, I lost fifteen hundred florins. Nevertheless, I
proceeded to Homburg, and have now been there for a month.

Of course, I am living in constant trepidation,playing for the
smallest of stakes, and always looking out for
something--calculating, standing whole days by the gaming-tables
to watch the play--even seeing that play in my dreams--yet
seeming, the while, to be in some way stiffening, to be growing
caked, as it were, in mire. But I must conclude my notes, which
I finish under the impression of a recent encounter with Mr.
Astley. I had not seen him since we parted at Roulettenberg, and
now we met quite by accident. At the time I was walking in the
public gardens, and meditating upon the fact that not only had I
still some fifty olden in my possession, but also I had fully
paid up my hotel bill three days ago. Consequently, I was in a
position to try my luck again at roulette; and if I won anything
I should be able to continue my play, whereas, if I lost what I
now possessed, I should once more have to accept a lacquey's
place, provided that, in the alternative, I failed to discover a
Russian family which stood in need of a tutor. Plunged in these
reflections, I started on my daily walk through the Park and
forest towards a neighbouring principality. Sometimes, on such
occasions, I spent four hours on the way, and would return to
Homburg tired and hungry; but, on this particular occasion, I had
scarcely left the gardens for the Park when I caught sight of
Astley seated on a bench. As soon as he perceived me, he called
me by name, and I went and sat down beside him; but, on noticing
that he seemed a little stiff in his manner, I hastened to
moderate the expression of joy which the sight of him had called
forth.

"YOU here?" he said. "Well, I had an idea that I should meet
you. Do not trouble to tell me anything, for I know all--yes,
all. In fact, your whole life during the past twenty months lies
within my knowledge."

"How closely you watch the doings of your old friends!" I
replied. "That does you infinite credit. But stop a moment. You
have reminded me of something. Was it you who bailed me out of
Roulettenberg prison when I was lying there for a debt of two
hundred gulden? SOMEONE did so."

"Oh dear no!--though I knew all the time that you were lying
there."

"Perhaps you could tell me who DID bail me out?"

"No; I am afraid I could not."

"What a strange thing! For I know no Russians at all here, so
it cannot have been a Russian who befriended me. In Russia we
Orthodox folk DO go bail for one another, but in this case I
thought it must have been done by some English stranger who was
not conversant with the ways of the country."

Mr. Astley seemed to listen to me with a sort of surprise.
Evidently he had expected to see me looking more crushed and
broken than I was.

"Well," he said--not very pleasantly, "I am none the less glad
to find that you retain your old independence of spirit, as well
as your buoyancy."

"Which means that you are vexed at not having found me more
abased and humiliated than I am?" I retorted with a smile.

Astley was not quick to understand this, but presently did so
and laughed.

"Your remarks please me as they always did," he continued. "In
those words I see the clever, triumphant, and, above all things,
cynical friend of former days. Only Russians have the faculty of
combining within themselves so many opposite qualities. Yes,
most men love to see their best friend in abasement; for
generally it is on such abasement that friendship is founded.
All thinking persons know that ancient truth. Yet, on the
present occasion, I assure you, I am sincerely glad to see that
you are NOT cast down. Tell me, are you never going to give up
gambling?"

"Damn the gambling! Yes, I should certainly have given it up,
were it not that--"

"That you are losing? I thought so. You need not tell me any
more. I know how things stand, for you have said that last in
despair, and therefore, truthfully. Have you no other employment
than gambling?"

"No; none whatever."

Astley gave me a searching glance. At that time it was ages
since I had last looked at a paper or turned the pages of a book.

"You are growing blase," he said. "You have not only renounced
life, with its interests and social ties, but the duties of a citizen
and a man; you have not only renounced the friends whom I know
you to have had, and every aim in life but that of winning
money; but you have also renounced your memory. Though I can
remember you in the strong, ardent period of your life, I feel
persuaded that you have now forgotten every better feeling of
that period--that your present dreams and aspirations of
subsistence do not rise above pair, impair rouge, noir, the
twelve middle numbers, and so forth."

"Enough, Mr. Astley!" I cried with some irritation--almost in
anger. "Kindly do not recall to me any more recollections, for
I can remember things for myself. Only for a time have I put
them out of my head. Only until I shall have rehabilitated
myself, am I keeping my memory dulled. When that hour shall come,
you will see me arise from the dead."

"Then you will have to be here another ten years," he replied.
"Should I then be alive, I will remind you--here, on this very
bench--of what I have just said. In fact, I will bet you a wager
that I shall do so."

"Say no more," I interrupted impatiently. "And to show you
that I have not wholly forgotten the past, may I enquire where
Mlle. Polina is? If it was not you who bailed me out of prison,
it must have been she. Yet never have I heard a word concerning
her."

"No, I do not think it was she. At the present moment she is in
Switzerland, and you will do me a favour by ceasing to ask me
these questions about her." Astley said this with a firm, and
even an angry, air.

"Which means that she has dealt you a serious wound?" I burst
out with an involuntary sneer.

"Mlle. Polina," he continued, "Is the best of all possible
living beings; but, I repeat, that I shall thank you to cease
questioning me about her. You never really knew her, and her
name on your lips is an offence to my moral feeling."

"Indeed? On what subject, then, have I a better right to speak
to you than on this? With it are bound up all your recollections
and mine. However, do not be alarmed: I have no wish to probe
too far into your private, your secret affairs. My interest in
Mlle. Polina does not extend beyond her outward circumstances
and surroundings. About them you could tell me in two words."

"Well, on condition that the matter shall end there, I will
tell you that for a long time Mlle. Polina was ill, and still is
so. My mother and sister entertained her for a while at their
home in the north of England, and thereafter Mlle. Polina's
grandmother (you remember the mad old woman?) died, and left
Mlle. Polina a personal legacy of seven thousand pounds
sterling. That was about six months ago, and now Mlle. is
travelling with my sister's family--my sister having since
married. Mlle.'s little brother and sister also benefited by the
Grandmother's will, and are now being educated in London. As for
the General, he died in Paris last month, of a stroke. Mlle.
Blanche did well by him, for she succeeded in having transferred
to herself all that he received from the Grandmother. That, I
think, concludes all that I have to tell."

"And De Griers? Is he too travelling in Switzerland?"

"No; nor do I know where he is. Also I warn you once more that
you had better avoid such hints and ignoble suppositions;
otherwise you will assuredly have to reckon with me."

"What? In spite of our old friendship?"

"Yes, in spite of our old friendship."

"Then I beg your pardon a thousand times, Mr. Astley. I meant
nothing offensive to Mlle. Polina, for I have nothing of which
to accuse her. Moreover, the question of there being anything
between this Frenchman and this Russian lady is not one which
you and I need discuss, nor even attempt to understand."

"If," replied Astley, "you do not care to hear their names
coupled together, may I ask you what you mean by the expressions
'this Frenchman,' 'this Russian lady,' and 'there being
anything between them'? Why do you call them so particularly a
'Frenchman' and a 'Russian lady'?"

"Ah, I see you are interested, Mr. Astley. But it is a long,
long story, and calls for a lengthy preface. At the same time,
the question is an important one, however ridiculous it may seem
at the first glance. A Frenchman, Mr. Astley, is merely a fine
figure of a man. With this you, as a Britisher, may not agree.
With it I also, as a Russian, may not agree--out of envy. Yet
possibly our good ladies are of another opinion. For instance,
one may look upon Racine as a broken-down, hobbledehoy, perfumed
individual--one may even be unable to read him; and I too may
think him the same, as well as, in some respects, a subject for
ridicule. Yet about him, Mr. Astley, there is a certain charm,
and, above all things, he is a great poet--though one might like
to deny it. Yes, the Frenchman, the Parisian, as a national
figure, was in process of developing into a figure of elegance
before we Russians had even ceased to be bears. The Revolution
bequeathed to the French nobility its heritage, and now every
whippersnapper of a Parisian may possess manners, methods of
expression, and even thoughts that are above reproach in form,
while all the time he himself may share in that form neither in
initiative nor in intellect nor in soul--his manners, and the
rest, having come to him through inheritance. Yes, taken by
himself, the Frenchman is frequently a fool of fools and a
villain of villains. Per contra, there is no one in the
world more worthy of confidence and respect than this young
Russian lady. De Griers might so mask his face and play a part
as easily to overcome her heart, for he has an imposing figure,
Mr. Astley, and this young lady might easily take that figure for
his real self--for the natural form of his heart and soul--instead
of the mere cloak with which heredity has dowered him. And even
though it may offend you, I feel bound to say that the majority
also of English people are uncouth and unrefined, whereas we
Russian folk can recognise beauty wherever we see it, and are
always eager to cultivate the same. But to distinguish beauty of
soul and personal originality there is needed far more
independence and freedom than is possessed by our women,
especially by our younger ladies. At all events, they need more
EXPERIENCE. For instance, this Mlle. Polina--pardon me, but the
name has passed my lips, and I cannot well recall it--is taking a
very long time to make up her mind to prefer you to Monsieur de
Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may
open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be
reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De
Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love--to the fact
that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of
a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing
his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and,
although these transactions of his have since been exposed, you
will find that the exposure has made no impression upon her
mind. Only give her the De Griers of former days, and she will
ask of you no more. The more she may detest the present De
Griers, the more will she lament the De Griers of the past--even
though the latter never existed but in her own imagination. You
are a sugar refiner, Mr. Astley, are you not?"

"Yes, I belong to the well-known firm of Lovell and Co."

"Then see here. On the one hand, you are a sugar refiner,
while, on the other hand, you are an Apollo Belvedere. But the
two characters do not mix with one another. I, again, am not
even a sugar refiner; I am a mere roulette gambler who has also
served as a lacquey. Of this fact Mlle. Polina is probably well
aware, since she appears to have an excellent force of police at
her disposal."

"You are saying this because you are feeling bitter," said
Astley with cold indifference. "Yet there is not the least
originality in your words."

"I agree. But therein lies the horror of it all--that, however
mean and farcical my accusations may be, they are none the less
TRUE. But I am only wasting words."

"Yes, you are, for you are only talking nonsense! exclaimed my
companion--his voice now trembling and his eyes flashing fire.
"Are you aware," he continued, "that wretched, ignoble, petty,
unfortunate man though you are, it was at HER request I came to
Homburg, in order to see you, and to have a long, serious talk
with you, and to report to her your feelings and thoughts and
hopes--yes, and your recollections of her, too?"

"Indeed? Is that really so?" I cried--the tears beginning to
well from my eyes. Never before had this happened.

"Yes, poor unfortunate," continued Astley. "She DID love you;
and I may tell you this now for the reason that now you are
utterly lost. Even if I were also to tell you that she still
loves you, you would none the less have to remain where you are.
Yes, you have ruined yourself beyond redemption. Once upon a
time you had a certain amount of talent, and you were of a
lively disposition, and your good looks were not to be despised.
You might even have been useful to your country, which needs men
like you. Yet you remained here, and your life is now over. I am
not blaming you for this--in my view all Russians resemble you,
or are inclined to do so. If it is not roulette, then it is
something else. The exceptions are very rare. Nor are you the
first to learn what a taskmaster is yours. For roulette is not
exclusively a Russian game. Hitherto, you have honourably preferred
to serve as a lacquey rather than to act as a thief; but what the
future may have in store for you I tremble to think. Now good-bye.
You are in want of money, I suppose? Then take these ten louis d'or.
More I shall not give you, for you would only gamble it away. Take
care of these coins, and farewell. Once more, TAKE CARE of them."

"No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I--"

"TAKE CARE of them!" repeated my friend. "I am certain you
are still a gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one
gentleman may give money to another. Also, if I could be certain
that you would leave both Homburg and the gaming-tables, and
return to your own country, I would give you a thousand pounds
down to start life afresh; but, I give you ten louis d'or instead
of a thousand pounds for the reason that at the present time a
thousand pounds and ten louis d'or will be all the same to
you--you will lose the one as readily as you will the other. Take
the money, therefore, and good-bye."

"Yes, I WILL take it if at the same time you will embrace me."

"With pleasure."

So we parted--on terms of sincere affection.

...............

But he was wrong. If I was hard and undiscerning as regards
Polina and De Griers, HE was hard and undiscerning as regards
Russian people generally. Of myself I say nothing. Yet--yet words
are only words. I need to ACT. Above all things I need to think
of Switzerland. Tomorrow, tomorrow--Ah, but if only I could
set things right tomorrow, and be born again, and rise again
from the dead! But no--I cannot. Yet I must show her what I can
do. Even if she should do no more than learn that I can still
play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too late, but
TOMORROW...

Yet I have a presentiment that things can never be otherwise. I
have got fifteen louis d'or in my possession, although I began
with fifteen gulden. If I were to play carefully at the
start--But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet WHY
should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but
to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I
should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour,
and my fortunes would be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my
weak point. I have only to remember what happened to me some
months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a
notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the
occasion in question I had lost everything--everything; yet, just
as I was leaving the Casino, I heard another gulden give a
rattle in my pocket! "Perhaps I shall need it for a meal," I
thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my
mind, and returned. That gulden I staked upon manque--and there
is something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a
foreign land, and far from one's own home and friends, and
ignorant of whence one's next meal is to come, one is
nevertheless staking one's very last coin! Well, I won the
stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino with a hundred
and seventy gulden in my pocket! That is a fact, and it shows
what a last remaining gulden can do. . . . But what if my heart
had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? . . .

No: tomorrow all shall be ended!

XVII

It is a year and eight months since I last looked at these notes
of mine. I do so now only because, being overwhelmed with
depression, I wish to distract my mind by reading them through
at random. I left them off at the point where I was just going
to Homburg. My God, with what a light heart (comparatively
speaking) did I write the concluding lines!--though it may be
not so much with a light heart, as with a measure of
self-confidence and unquenchable hope. At that time had I any
doubts of myself ? Yet behold me now. Scarcely a year and a half
have passed, yet I am in a worse position than the meanest
beggar. But what is a beggar? A fig for beggary! I have ruined
myself--that is all. Nor is there anything with which I can
compare myself; there is no moral which it would be of any use
for you to read to me. At the present moment nothing could well
be more incongruous than a moral. Oh, you self-satisfied persons
who, in your unctuous pride, are forever ready to mouth your
maxims--if only you knew how fully I myself comprehend the
sordidness of my present state, you would not trouble to wag
your tongues at me! What could you say to me that I do not
already know? Well, wherein lies my difficulty? It lies in the
fact that by a single turn of a roulette wheel everything for
me, has become changed. Yet, had things befallen otherwise,
these moralists would have been among the first (yes, I feel
persuaded of it) to approach me with friendly jests and
congratulations. Yes, they would never have turned from me as
they are doing now! A fig for all of them! What am I? I am
zero--nothing. What shall I be tomorrow? I may be risen from the
dead, and have begun life anew. For still, I may discover the man
in myself, if only my manhood has not become utterly shattered.

I went, I say, to Homburg, but afterwards went also to
Roulettenberg, as well as to Spa and Baden; in which latter
place, for a time, I acted as valet to a certain rascal of a
Privy Councillor, by name Heintze, who until lately was also my
master here. Yes, for five months I lived my life with lacqueys!
That was just after I had come out of Roulettenberg prison,
where I had lain for a small debt which I owed. Out of that
prison I was bailed by--by whom? By Mr. Astley? By Polina? I do
not know. At all events, the debt was paid to the tune of two
hundred thalers, and I sallied forth a free man. But what was I
to do with myself ? In my dilemma I had recourse to this
Heintze, who was a young scapegrace, and the sort of man who
could speak and write three languages. At first I acted as his
secretary, at a salary of thirty gulden a month, but afterwards
I became his lacquey, for the reason that he could not afford to
keep a secretary--only an unpaid servant. I had nothing else to
turn to, so I remained with him, and allowed myself to become
his flunkey. But by stinting myself in meat and drink I saved,
during my five months of service, some seventy gulden; and one
evening, when we were at Baden, I told him that I wished to
resign my post, and then hastened to betake myself to roulette.

Oh, how my heart beat as I did so! No, it was not the money that
I valued--what I wanted was to make all this mob of Heintzes,
hotel proprietors, and fine ladies of Baden talk about me,
recount my story, wonder at me, extol my doings, and worship my
winnings. True, these were childish fancies and aspirations, but
who knows but that I might meet Polina, and be able to tell her
everything, and see her look of surprise at the fact that I had
overcome so many adverse strokes of fortune. No, I had no desire
for money for its own sake, for I was perfectly well aware that
I should only squander it upon some new Blanche, and spend
another three weeks in Paris after buying a pair of horses which
had cost sixteen thousand francs. No, I never believed myself to
be a hoarder; in fact, I knew only too well that I was a
spendthrift. And already, with a sort of fear, a sort of
sinking in my heart, I could hear the cries of the croupiers--
"Trente et un, rouge, impair et passe," "Quarte, noir, pair et
manque. "  How greedily I gazed upon the gaming-table, with its
scattered louis d'or, ten-gulden pieces, and thalers; upon the
streams of gold as they issued from the croupier's hands, and
piled themselves up into heaps of gold scintillating as fire;
upon the ell--long rolls of silver lying around the croupier.
Even at a distance of two rooms I could hear the chink of that
money--so much so that I nearly fell into convulsions.

Ah, the evening when I took those seventy gulden to the gaming
table was a memorable one for me. I began by staking ten gulden
upon passe. For passe I had always had a sort of predilection,
yet I lost my stake upon it. This left me with sixty gulden in
silver. After a moment's thought I selected zero--beginning by
staking five gulden at a time. Twice I lost, but the third round
suddenly brought up the desired coup. I could almost have died
with joy as I received my one hundred and seventy-five gulden.
Indeed, I have been less pleased when, in former times, I have
won a hundred thousand gulden. Losing no time, I staked another
hundred gulden upon the red, and won; two hundred upon the red,
and won; four hundred upon the black, and won; eight hundred
upon manque, and won. Thus, with the addition of the remainder
of my original capital, I found myself possessed, within five
minutes, of seventeen hundred gulden.  Ah, at such moments one
forgets both oneself and one's former failures! This I had
gained by risking my very life. I had dared so to risk, and
behold, again I was a member of mankind!

I went and hired a room, I shut myself up in it, and sat
counting my money until three o'clock in the morning. To think
that when I awoke on the morrow, I was no lacquey! I decided to
leave at once for Homburg. There I should neither have to serve
as a footman nor to lie in prison. Half an hour before starting,
I went and ventured a couple of stakes--no more; with the result
that, in all, I lost fifteen hundred florins. Nevertheless, I
proceeded to Homburg, and have now been there for a month.

Of course, I am living in constant trepidation,playing for the
smallest of stakes, and always looking out for
something--calculating, standing whole days by the gaming-tables
to watch the play--even seeing that play in my dreams--yet
seeming, the while, to be in some way stiffening, to be growing
caked, as it were, in mire. But I must conclude my notes, which
I finish under the impression of a recent encounter with Mr.
Astley. I had not seen him since we parted at Roulettenberg, and
now we met quite by accident. At the time I was walking in the
public gardens, and meditating upon the fact that not only had I
still some fifty olden in my possession, but also I had fully
paid up my hotel bill three days ago. Consequently, I was in a
position to try my luck again at roulette; and if I won anything
I should be able to continue my play, whereas, if I lost what I
now possessed, I should once more have to accept a lacquey's
place, provided that, in the alternative, I failed to discover a
Russian family which stood in need of a tutor. Plunged in these
reflections, I started on my daily walk through the Park and
forest towards a neighbouring principality. Sometimes, on such
occasions, I spent four hours on the way, and would return to
Homburg tired and hungry; but, on this particular occasion, I had
scarcely left the gardens for the Park when I caught sight of
Astley seated on a bench. As soon as he perceived me, he called
me by name, and I went and sat down beside him; but, on noticing
that he seemed a little stiff in his manner, I hastened to
moderate the expression of joy which the sight of him had called
forth.

"YOU here?" he said. "Well, I had an idea that I should meet
you. Do not trouble to tell me anything, for I know all--yes,
all. In fact, your whole life during the past twenty months lies
within my knowledge."

"How closely you watch the doings of your old friends!" I
replied. "That does you infinite credit. But stop a moment. You
have reminded me of something. Was it you who bailed me out of
Roulettenberg prison when I was lying there for a debt of two
hundred gulden? SOMEONE did so."

"Oh dear no!--though I knew all the time that you were lying
there."

"Perhaps you could tell me who DID bail me out?"

"No; I am afraid I could not."

"What a strange thing! For I know no Russians at all here, so
it cannot have been a Russian who befriended me. In Russia we
Orthodox folk DO go bail for one another, but in this case I
thought it must have been done by some English stranger who was
not conversant with the ways of the country."

Mr. Astley seemed to listen to me with a sort of surprise.
Evidently he had expected to see me looking more crushed and
broken than I was.

"Well," he said--not very pleasantly, "I am none the less glad
to find that you retain your old independence of spirit, as well
as your buoyancy."

"Which means that you are vexed at not having found me more
abased and humiliated than I am?" I retorted with a smile.

Astley was not quick to understand this, but presently did so
and laughed.

"Your remarks please me as they always did," he continued. "In
those words I see the clever, triumphant, and, above all things,
cynical friend of former days. Only Russians have the faculty of
combining within themselves so many opposite qualities. Yes,
most men love to see their best friend in abasement; for
generally it is on such abasement that friendship is founded.
All thinking persons know that ancient truth. Yet, on the
present occasion, I assure you, I am sincerely glad to see that
you are NOT cast down. Tell me, are you never going to give up
gambling?"

"Damn the gambling! Yes, I should certainly have given it up,
were it not that--"

"That you are losing? I thought so. You need not tell me any
more. I know how things stand, for you have said that last in
despair, and therefore, truthfully. Have you no other employment
than gambling?"

"No; none whatever."

Astley gave me a searching glance. At that time it was ages
since I had last looked at a paper or turned the pages of a book.

"You are growing blase," he said. "You have not only renounced
life, with its interests and social ties, but the duties of a citizen
and a man; you have not only renounced the friends whom I know
you to have had, and every aim in life but that of winning
money; but you have also renounced your memory. Though I can
remember you in the strong, ardent period of your life, I feel
persuaded that you have now forgotten every better feeling of
that period--that your present dreams and aspirations of
subsistence do not rise above pair, impair rouge, noir, the
twelve middle numbers, and so forth."

"Enough, Mr. Astley!" I cried with some irritation--almost in
anger. "Kindly do not recall to me any more recollections, for
I can remember things for myself. Only for a time have I put
them out of my head. Only until I shall have rehabilitated
myself, am I keeping my memory dulled. When that hour shall come,
you will see me arise from the dead."

"Then you will have to be here another ten years," he replied.
"Should I then be alive, I will remind you--here, on this very
bench--of what I have just said. In fact, I will bet you a wager
that I shall do so."

"Say no more," I interrupted impatiently. "And to show you
that I have not wholly forgotten the past, may I enquire where
Mlle. Polina is? If it was not you who bailed me out of prison,
it must have been she. Yet never have I heard a word concerning
her."

"No, I do not think it was she. At the present moment she is in
Switzerland, and you will do me a favour by ceasing to ask me
these questions about her." Astley said this with a firm, and
even an angry, air.

"Which means that she has dealt you a serious wound?" I burst
out with an involuntary sneer.

"Mlle. Polina," he continued, "Is the best of all possible
living beings; but, I repeat, that I shall thank you to cease
questioning me about her. You never really knew her, and her
name on your lips is an offence to my moral feeling."

"Indeed? On what subject, then, have I a better right to speak
to you than on this? With it are bound up all your recollections
and mine. However, do not be alarmed: I have no wish to probe
too far into your private, your secret affairs. My interest in
Mlle. Polina does not extend beyond her outward circumstances
and surroundings. About them you could tell me in two words."

"Well, on condition that the matter shall end there, I will
tell you that for a long time Mlle. Polina was ill, and still is
so. My mother and sister entertained her for a while at their
home in the north of England, and thereafter Mlle. Polina's
grandmother (you remember the mad old woman?) died, and left
Mlle. Polina a personal legacy of seven thousand pounds
sterling. That was about six months ago, and now Mlle. is
travelling with my sister's family--my sister having since
married. Mlle.'s little brother and sister also benefited by the
Grandmother's will, and are now being educated in London. As for
the General, he died in Paris last month, of a stroke. Mlle.
Blanche did well by him, for she succeeded in having transferred
to herself all that he received from the Grandmother. That, I
think, concludes all that I have to tell."

"And De Griers? Is he too travelling in Switzerland?"

"No; nor do I know where he is. Also I warn you once more that
you had better avoid such hints and ignoble suppositions;
otherwise you will assuredly have to reckon with me."

"What? In spite of our old friendship?"

"Yes, in spite of our old friendship."

"Then I beg your pardon a thousand times, Mr. Astley. I meant
nothing offensive to Mlle. Polina, for I have nothing of which
to accuse her. Moreover, the question of there being anything
between this Frenchman and this Russian lady is not one which
you and I need discuss, nor even attempt to understand."

"If," replied Astley, "you do not care to hear their names
coupled together, may I ask you what you mean by the expressions
'this Frenchman,' 'this Russian lady,' and 'there being
anything between them'? Why do you call them so particularly a
'Frenchman' and a 'Russian lady'?"

"Ah, I see you are interested, Mr. Astley. But it is a long,
long story, and calls for a lengthy preface. At the same time,
the question is an important one, however ridiculous it may seem
at the first glance. A Frenchman, Mr. Astley, is merely a fine
figure of a man. With this you, as a Britisher, may not agree.
With it I also, as a Russian, may not agree--out of envy. Yet
possibly our good ladies are of another opinion. For instance,
one may look upon Racine as a broken-down, hobbledehoy, perfumed
individual--one may even be unable to read him; and I too may
think him the same, as well as, in some respects, a subject for
ridicule. Yet about him, Mr. Astley, there is a certain charm,
and, above all things, he is a great poet--though one might like
to deny it. Yes, the Frenchman, the Parisian, as a national
figure, was in process of developing into a figure of elegance
before we Russians had even ceased to be bears. The Revolution
bequeathed to the French nobility its heritage, and now every
whippersnapper of a Parisian may possess manners, methods of
expression, and even thoughts that are above reproach in form,
while all the time he himself may share in that form neither in
initiative nor in intellect nor in soul--his manners, and the
rest, having come to him through inheritance. Yes, taken by
himself, the Frenchman is frequently a fool of fools and a
villain of villains. Per contra, there is no one in the
world more worthy of confidence and respect than this young
Russian lady. De Griers might so mask his face and play a part
as easily to overcome her heart, for he has an imposing figure,
Mr. Astley, and this young lady might easily take that figure for
his real self--for the natural form of his heart and soul--instead
of the mere cloak with which heredity has dowered him. And even
though it may offend you, I feel bound to say that the majority
also of English people are uncouth and unrefined, whereas we
Russian folk can recognise beauty wherever we see it, and are
always eager to cultivate the same. But to distinguish beauty of
soul and personal originality there is needed far more
independence and freedom than is possessed by our women,
especially by our younger ladies. At all events, they need more
EXPERIENCE. For instance, this Mlle. Polina--pardon me, but the
name has passed my lips, and I cannot well recall it--is taking a
very long time to make up her mind to prefer you to Monsieur de
Griers. She may respect you, she may become your friend, she may
open out her heart to you; yet over that heart there will be
reigning that loathsome villain, that mean and petty usurer, De
Griers. This will be due to obstinacy and self-love--to the fact
that De Griers once appeared to her in the transfigured guise of
a marquis, of a disenchanted and ruined liberal who was doing
his best to help her family and the frivolous old General; and,
although these transactions of his have since been exposed, you
will find that the exposure has made no impression upon her
mind. Only give her the De Griers of former days, and she will
ask of you no more. The more she may detest the present De
Griers, the more will she lament the De Griers of the past--even
though the latter never existed but in her own imagination. You
are a sugar refiner, Mr. Astley, are you not?"

"Yes, I belong to the well-known firm of Lovell and Co."

"Then see here. On the one hand, you are a sugar refiner,
while, on the other hand, you are an Apollo Belvedere. But the
two characters do not mix with one another. I, again, am not
even a sugar refiner; I am a mere roulette gambler who has also
served as a lacquey. Of this fact Mlle. Polina is probably well
aware, since she appears to have an excellent force of police at
her disposal."

"You are saying this because you are feeling bitter," said
Astley with cold indifference. "Yet there is not the least
originality in your words."

"I agree. But therein lies the horror of it all--that, however
mean and farcical my accusations may be, they are none the less
TRUE. But I am only wasting words."

"Yes, you are, for you are only talking nonsense! exclaimed my
companion--his voice now trembling and his eyes flashing fire.
"Are you aware," he continued, "that wretched, ignoble, petty,
unfortunate man though you are, it was at HER request I came to
Homburg, in order to see you, and to have a long, serious talk
with you, and to report to her your feelings and thoughts and
hopes--yes, and your recollections of her, too?"

"Indeed? Is that really so?" I cried--the tears beginning to
well from my eyes. Never before had this happened.

"Yes, poor unfortunate," continued Astley. "She DID love you;
and I may tell you this now for the reason that now you are
utterly lost. Even if I were also to tell you that she still
loves you, you would none the less have to remain where you are.
Yes, you have ruined yourself beyond redemption. Once upon a
time you had a certain amount of talent, and you were of a
lively disposition, and your good looks were not to be despised.
You might even have been useful to your country, which needs men
like you. Yet you remained here, and your life is now over. I am
not blaming you for this--in my view all Russians resemble you,
or are inclined to do so. If it is not roulette, then it is
something else. The exceptions are very rare. Nor are you the
first to learn what a taskmaster is yours. For roulette is not
exclusively a Russian game. Hitherto, you have honourably preferred
to serve as a lacquey rather than to act as a thief; but what the
future may have in store for you I tremble to think. Now good-bye.
You are in want of money, I suppose? Then take these ten louis d'or.
More I shall not give you, for you would only gamble it away. Take
care of these coins, and farewell. Once more, TAKE CARE of them."

"No, Mr. Astley. After all that has been said I--"

"TAKE CARE of them!" repeated my friend. "I am certain you
are still a gentleman, and therefore I give you the money as one
gentleman may give money to another. Also, if I could be certain
that you would leave both Homburg and the gaming-tables, and
return to your own country, I would give you a thousand pounds
down to start life afresh; but, I give you ten louis d'or instead
of a thousand pounds for the reason that at the present time a
thousand pounds and ten louis d'or will be all the same to
you--you will lose the one as readily as you will the other. Take
the money, therefore, and good-bye."

"Yes, I WILL take it if at the same time you will embrace me."

"With pleasure."

So we parted--on terms of sincere affection.

...............

But he was wrong. If I was hard and undiscerning as regards
Polina and De Griers, HE was hard and undiscerning as regards
Russian people generally. Of myself I say nothing. Yet--yet words
are only words. I need to ACT. Above all things I need to think
of Switzerland. Tomorrow, tomorrow--Ah, but if only I could
set things right tomorrow, and be born again, and rise again
from the dead! But no--I cannot. Yet I must show her what I can
do. Even if she should do no more than learn that I can still
play the man, it would be worth it. Today it is too late, but
TOMORROW...

Yet I have a presentiment that things can never be otherwise. I
have got fifteen louis d'or in my possession, although I began
with fifteen gulden. If I were to play carefully at the
start--But no, no! Surely I am not such a fool as that? Yet WHY
should I not rise from the dead? I should require at first but
to go cautiously and patiently and the rest would follow. I
should require but to put a check upon my nature for one hour,
and my fortunes would be changed entirely. Yes, my nature is my
weak point. I have only to remember what happened to me some
months ago at Roulettenberg, before my final ruin. What a
notable instance that was of my capacity for resolution! On the
occasion in question I had lost everything--everything; yet, just
as I was leaving the Casino, I heard another gulden give a
rattle in my pocket! "Perhaps I shall need it for a meal," I
thought to myself; but a hundred paces further on, I changed my
mind, and returned. That gulden I staked upon manque--and there
is something in the feeling that, though one is alone, and in a
foreign land, and far from one's own home and friends, and
ignorant of whence one's next meal is to come, one is
nevertheless staking one's very last coin! Well, I won the
stake, and in twenty minutes had left the Casino with a hundred
and seventy gulden in my pocket! That is a fact, and it shows
what a last remaining gulden can do. . . . But what if my heart
had failed me, or I had shrunk from making up my mind? . . .

No: tomorrow all shall be ended!

[Dedicated by the Translator to those sceptics who clamour so
loudly, both in print and private letters--"Show us the wonder-
working 'Brothers,' let them come out publicly--and we will
believe in them!"]


[The following is an extract from M. Dostoevsky's celebrated
novel, The Brothers Karamazof, the last publication from the pen
of the great Russian novelist, who died a few months ago, just as
the concluding chapters appeared in print. Dostoevsky is
beginning to be recognized as one of the ablest and profoundest
among Russian writers. His characters are invariably typical
portraits drawn from various classes of Russian society,
strikingly life-like and realistic to the highest degree. The
following extract is a cutting satire on modern theology
generally and the Roman Catholic religion in particular. The idea
is that Christ revisits earth, coming to Spain at the period of
the Inquisition, and is at once arrested as a heretic by the
Grand Inquisitor. One of the three brothers of the story, Ivan, a
rank materialist and an atheist of the new school, is supposed to
throw this conception into the form of a poem, which he describes
to Alyosha--the youngest of the brothers, a young Christian
mystic brought up by a "saint" in a monastery--as follows:
(--Ed. Theosophist, Nov., 1881)]





"Quite impossible, as you see, to start without an introduction,"
laughed Ivan. "Well, then, I mean to place the event described in
the poem in the sixteenth century, an age--as you must have been
told at school--when it was the great fashion among poets to
make the denizens and powers of higher worlds descend on earth
and mix freely with mortals... In France all the notaries'
clerks, and the monks in the cloisters as well, used to give
grand performances, dramatic plays in which long scenes were
enacted by the Madonna, the angels, the saints, Christ, and even
by God Himself. In those days, everything was very artless and
primitive. An instance of it may be found in Victor Hugo's drama,
Notre Dame de Paris, where, at the Municipal Hall, a play called
Le Bon Jugement de la Tres-sainte et Graceuse Vierge Marie, is
enacted in honour of Louis XI, in which the Virgin appears
personally to pronounce her 'good judgment.' In Moscow, during
the prepetrean period, performances of nearly the same character,
chosen especially from the Old Testament, were also in great
favour. Apart from such plays, the world was overflooded with
mystical writings, 'verses'--the heroes of which were always
selected from the ranks of angels, saints and other heavenly
citizens answering to the devotional purposes of the age. The
recluses of our monasteries, like the Roman Catholic monks,
passed their time in translating, copying, and even producing
original compositions upon such subjects, and that, remember,
during the Tarter period!... In this connection, I am reminded of
a poem compiled in a convent--a translation from the Greek, of
course--called, 'The Travels of the Mother of God among the
Damned,' with fitting illustrations and a boldness of conception
inferior nowise to that of Dante. The 'Mother of God' visits
hell, in company with the archangel Michael as her cicerone to
guide her through the legions of the 'damned.' She sees them all,
and is witness to their multifarious tortures. Among the many
other exceedingly remarkably varieties of torments--every
category of sinners having its own--there  is one especially
worthy of notice, namely a class of the 'damned' sentenced to
gradually sink in a burning lake of brimstone and fire. Those
whose sins cause them to sink so low that they no longer can rise
to the surface are for ever forgotten by God, i.e., they fade out
from the omniscient memory, says the poem--an expression, by the
way, of an extraordinary profundity of thought, when closely
analysed. The Virgin is terribly shocked, and falling down upon
her knees in tears before the throne of God, begs that all she
has seen in hell--all, all without exception, should have their
sentences remitted to them. Her dialogue with God is colossally
interesting. She supplicates, she will not leave Him. And when
God, pointing to the pierced hands and feet of her Son, cries,
'How can I forgive His executioners?' She then commands that all
the saints, martyrs, angels and archangels, should prostrate
themselves with her before the Immutable and Changeless One and
implore Him to change His wrath into mercy and--forgive them
all. The poem closes upon her obtaining from God a compromise, a
kind of yearly respite of tortures between Good Friday and
Trinity, a chorus of the 'damned' singing loud praises to God
from their 'bottomless pit,' thanking and telling Him:

Thou art right, O Lord, very right,
Thou hast condemned us justly.

"My poem is of the same character.

"In it, it is Christ who appears on the scene. True, He says
nothing, but only appears and passes out of sight. Fifteen
centuries have elapsed since He left the world with the distinct
promise to return 'with power and great glory'; fifteen long
centuries since His prophet cried, 'Prepare ye the way of the
Lord!' since He Himself had foretold, while yet on earth, 'Of
that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven
but my Father only.' But Christendom expects Him still. ...

"It waits for Him with the same old faith and the same emotion;
aye, with a far greater faith, for fifteen centuries have rolled
away since the last sign from heaven was sent to man,

And blind faith remained alone
To lull the trusting heart,
As heav'n would send a sign no more.

"True, again, we have all heard of miracles being wrought ever
since the 'age of miracles' passed away to return no more. We
had, and still have, our saints credited with performing the most
miraculous cures; and, if we can believe their biographers, there
have been those among them who have been personally visited by
the Queen of Heaven. But Satan sleepeth not, and the first germs
of doubt, and ever-increasing unbelief in such wonders, already
had begun to sprout in Christendom as early as the sixteenth
century. It was just at that time that a new and terrible heresy
first made its appearance in the north of Germany.*   [*Luther's
reform]  A great star 'shining as it were a lamp... fell upon the
fountains waters'... and 'they were made bitter.' This 'heresy'
blasphemously denied 'miracles.' But those who had remained
faithful believed all the more ardently, the tears of mankind
ascended to Him as heretofore, and the Christian world was
expecting Him as confidently as ever; they loved Him and hoped in
Him, thirsted and hungered to suffer and die for Him just as many
of them had done before.... So many centuries had weak, trusting
humanity implored Him, crying with ardent faith and fervour: 'How
long, O Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not come!' So many long
centuries hath it vainly appealed to Him, that at last, in His
inexhaustible compassion, He consenteth to answer the prayer....
He decideth that once more, if it were but for one short hour,
the people--His long-suffering, tortured, fatally sinful, his
loving and child-like, trusting people--shall behold Him again.
The scene of action is placed by me in Spain, at Seville, during
that terrible period of the Inquisition, when, for the greater
glory of God, stakes were flaming all over the country.

Burning wicked heretics,
In grand auto-da-fes.

"This particular visit has, of course, nothing to do with the
promised Advent, when, according to the programme, 'after the
tribulation of those days,' He will appear 'coming in the clouds
of heaven.' For, that 'coming of the Son of Man,' as we are
informed, will take place as suddenly 'as the lightning cometh
out of the east and shineth even unto the west.' No; this once,
He desired to come unknown, and appear among His children, just
when the bones of the heretics, sentenced to be burnt alive, had
commenced crackling at the flaming stakes. Owing to His limitless
mercy, He mixes once more with mortals and in the same form in
which He was wont to appear fifteen centuries ago. He descends,
just at the very moment when before king, courtiers, knights,
cardinals, and the fairest dames of court, before the whole
population of Seville, upwards of a hundred wicked heretics are
being roasted, in a magnificent auto-da-fe ad majorem Dei
gloriam, by the order of the powerful Cardinal Grand Inquisitor.

"He comes silently and unannounced; yet all--how strange--yea,
all recognize Him, at once! The population rushes towards Him as
if propelled by some irresistible force; it surrounds, throngs,
and presses around, it follows Him.... Silently, and with a smile
of boundless compassion upon His lips, He crosses the dense
crowd, and moves softly on. The Sun of Love burns in His heart,
and warm rays of Light, Wisdom and Power beam forth from His
eyes, and pour down their waves upon the swarming multitudes of
the rabble assembled around, making their hearts vibrate with
returning love. He extends His hands over their heads, blesses
them, and from mere contact with Him, aye, even with His
garments, a healing power goes forth. An old man, blind from his
birth, cries, 'Lord, heal me, that I may see Thee!' and the
scales falling off the closed eyes, the blind man beholds Him...
The crowd weeps for joy, and kisses the ground upon which He
treads. Children strew flowers along His path and sing to Him,
'Hosanna!' It is He, it is Himself, they say to each other, it
must be He, it can be none other but He! He pauses at the portal
of the old cathedral, just as a wee white coffin is carried in,
with tears and great lamentations. The lid is off, and in the
coffin lies the body of a fair-child, seven years old, the only
child of an eminent citizen of the city. The little corpse lies
buried in flowers. 'He will raise the child to life!' confidently
shouts the crowd to the weeping mother. The officiating priest
who had come to meet the funeral procession, looks perplexed, and
frowns. A loud cry is suddenly heard, and the bereaved mother
prostrates herself at His feet. 'If it be Thou, then bring back
my child to life!' she cries beseechingly. The procession halts,
and the little coffin is gently lowered at his feet. Divine
compassion beams forth from His eyes, and as He looks at the
child, His lips are heard to whisper once more, 'Talitha Cumi' -
and 'straightway the damsel arose.' The child rises in her
coffin. Her little hands still hold the nosegay of white roses
which after death was placed in them, and, looking round with
large astonished eyes she smiles sweetly .... The crowd is
violently excited. A terrible commotion rages among them, the
populace shouts and loudly weeps, when suddenly, before the
cathedral door, appears the Cardinal Grand Inquisitor himself....
He is tall, gaunt-looking old man of nearly four-score years and
ten, with a stern, withered face, and deeply sunken eyes, from
the cavity of which glitter two fiery sparks. He has laid aside
his gorgeous cardinal's robes in which he had appeared before the
people at the auto da-fe of the enemies of the Romish Church, and
is now clad in his old, rough, monkish cassock. His sullen
assistants and slaves of the 'holy guard' are following at a
distance. He pauses before the crowd and observes. He has seen
all. He has witnessed the placing of the little coffin at His
feet, the calling back to life. And now, his dark, grim face has
grown still darker; his bushy grey eyebrows nearly meet, and his
sunken eye flashes with sinister light. Slowly raising his
finger, he commands his minions to arrest Him....

"Such is his power over the well-disciplined, submissive and now
trembling people, that the thick crowds immediately give way, and
scattering before the guard, amid dead silence and without one
breath of protest, allow them to lay their sacrilegious hands
upon the stranger and lead Him away.... That same populace, like
one man, now bows its head to the ground before the old
Inquisitor, who blesses it and slowly moves onward. The guards
conduct their prisoner to the ancient building of the Holy
Tribunal; pushing Him into a narrow, gloomy, vaulted prison-cell,
they lock Him in and retire....

"The day wanes, and night--a dark, hot breathless Spanish night
--creeps on and settles upon the city of Seville. The air smells
of laurels and orange blossoms. In the Cimmerian darkness of the
old Tribunal Hall the iron door of the cell is suddenly thrown
open, and the Grand Inquisitor, holding a dark lantern, slowly
stalks into the dungeon. He is alone, and, as the heavy door
closes behind him, he pauses at the threshold, and, for a minute
or two, silently and gloomily scrutinizes the Face before him. At
last approaching with measured steps, he sets his lantern down
upon the table and addresses Him in these words:

"'It is Thou! ... Thou!' ... Receiving no reply, he rapidly
continues: 'Nay, answer not; be silent! ... And what couldst Thou
say? ... I know but too well Thy answer.... Besides, Thou hast no
right to add one syllable to that which was already uttered by
Thee before.... Why shouldst Thou now return, to impede us in our
work? For Thou hast come but for that only, and Thou knowest it
well. But art Thou as well aware of what awaits Thee in the
morning? I do not know, nor do I care to know who thou mayest be:
be it Thou or only thine image, to-morrow I will condemn and burn
Thee on the stake, as the most wicked of all the heretics; and
that same people, who to-day were kissing Thy feet, to-morrow at
one bend of my finger, will rush to add fuel to Thy funeral
pile... Wert Thou aware of this?' he adds, speaking as if in
solemn thought, and never for one instant taking his piercing
glance off the meek Face before him."....

"I can hardly realize the situation described--what is all
this, Ivan?" suddenly interrupted Alyosha, who had remained
silently listening to his brother. "Is this an extravagant fancy,
or some mistake of the old man, an impossible quid pro quo?"

"Let it be the latter, if you like," laughed Ivan, "since modern
realism has so perverted your taste that you feel unable to
realize anything from the world of fancy.... Let it be a quid pro
quo, if you so choose it. Again, the Inquisitor is ninety years
old, and he might have easily gone mad with his one idee fixe of
power; or, it might have as well been a delirious vision, called
forth by dying fancy, overheated by the auto-da-fe of the hundred
heretics in that forenoon.... But what matters for the poem,
whether it was a quid pro quo or an uncontrollable fancy? The
question is, that the old man has to open his heart; that he must
give out his thought at last; and that the hour has come when he
does speak it out, and says loudly that which for ninety years he
has kept secret within his own breast."

"And his prisoner, does He never reply? Does He keep silent,
looking at him, without saying a word?"

"Of course; and it could not well be otherwise," again retorted
Ivan. "The Grand Inquisitor begins from his very first words by
telling Him that He has no right to add one syllable to that which
He had said before. To make the situation clear at once, the above
preliminary monologue is intended to convey to the reader the very
fundamental idea which underlies Roman Catholicism--as well as I
can convey it, his words mean, in short: 'Everything was given
over by Thee to the Pope, and everything now rests with him alone;
Thou hast no business to return and thus hinder us in our work.'
In this sense the Jesuits not only talk but write likewise.

"'Hast thou the right to divulge to us a single one of the
mysteries of that world whence Thou comest?' enquires of Him my
old Inquisitor, and forthwith answers for Him. 'Nay, Thou has no
such right. For, that would be adding to that which was already
said by Thee before; hence depriving people of that freedom for
which Thou hast so stoutly stood up while yet on earth....
Anything new that Thou would now proclaim would have to be
regarded as an attempt to interfere with that freedom of choice,
as it would come as a new and a miraculous revelation superseding
the old revelation of fifteen hundred years ago, when Thou didst
so repeatedly tell the people: "The truth shall make you free."
Behold then, Thy "free" people now!' adds the old man with sombre
irony. 'Yea!... it has cost us dearly.' he continues, sternly
looking at his victim. 'But we have at last accomplished our
task, and--in Thy name.... For fifteen long centuries we had to
toil and suffer owing to that "freedom": but now we have
prevailed and our work is done, and well and strongly it is done.
....Believest not Thou it is so very strong? ... And why should
Thou look at me so meekly as if I were not worthy even of Thy
indignation?... Know then, that now, and only now, Thy people
feel fully sure and satisfied of their freedom; and that only
since they have themselves and of their own free will delivered
that freedom unto our hands by placing it submissively at our
feet. But then, that is what we have done. Is it that which Thou
has striven for? Is this the kind of "freedom" Thou has promised
them?'"

"Now again, I do not understand," interrupted Alyosha. "Does the
old man mock and laugh?"

"Not in the least. He seriously regards it as a great service
done by himself, his brother monks and Jesuits, to humanity, to
have conquered and subjected unto their authority that freedom,
and boasts that it was done but for the good of the world. 'For
only now,' he says (speaking of the Inquisition) 'has it become
possible to us, for the first time, to give a serious thought to
human happiness. Man is born a rebel, and can rebels be ever
happy?... Thou has been fairly warned of it, but evidently to no
use, since Thou hast rejected the only means which could make
mankind happy; fortunately at Thy departure Thou hast delivered
the task to us.... Thou has promised, ratifying the pledge by Thy
own words, in words giving us the right to bind and unbind... and
surely, Thou couldst not think of depriving us of it now!'"

"But what can he mean by the words, 'Thou has been fairly
warned'?" asked Alexis.

"These words give the key to what the old man has to say for his
justification... But listen--

"'The terrible and wise spirit, the spirit of self annihilation
and non-being,' goes on the Inquisitor, 'the great spirit of
negation conversed with Thee in the wilderness, and we are told
that he "tempted" Thee... Was it so? And if it were so, then it is
impossible to utter anything more truthful than what is contained
in his three offers, which Thou didst reject, and which are
usually called "temptations." Yea; if ever there was on earth a
genuine striking wonder produced, it was on that day of Thy three
temptations, and it is precisely in these three short sentences
that the marvelous miracle is contained. If it were possible that
they should vanish and disappear for ever, without leaving any
trace, from the record and from the memory of man, and that it
should become necessary again to devise, invent, and make them
reappear in Thy history once more, thinkest Thou that all the
world's sages, all the legislators, initiates, philosophers and
thinkers, if called upon to frame three questions which should,
like these, besides answering the magnitude of the event, express
in three short sentences the whole future history of  this our
world and of mankind--dost Thou believe, I ask Thee, that all
their combined efforts could ever create anything equal in power
and depth of thought to the three propositions offered Thee by the
powerful and all-wise spirit in the wilderness? Judging of them by
their marvelous aptness alone, one can at once perceive that they
emanated not from a finite, terrestrial intellect, but indeed,
from the Eternal and the Absolute. In these three offers we find,
blended into one and foretold to us, the complete subsequent
history of man; we are shown three images, so to say, uniting in
them all the future axiomatic, insoluble problems and
contradictions of human nature, the world over. In those days, the
wondrous wisdom contained in them was not made so apparent as it
is now, for futurity remained still veiled; but now, when fifteen
centuries have elapsed, we see that everything in these three
questions is so marvelously foreseen and foretold, that to add to,
or to take away from, the prophecy one jot, would be absolutely
impossible!

"'Decide then thyself.' sternly proceeded the Inquisitor, 'which
of ye twain was right: Thou who didst reject, or he who offered?
Remember the subtle meaning of question the first, which runs
thus: Wouldst Thou go into the world empty-handed? Would Thou
venture thither with Thy vague and undefined promise of freedom,
which men, dull and unruly as they are by nature, are unable so
much as to understand, which they avoid and fear?--for never was
there anything more unbearable to the human race than personal
freedom! Dost Thou see these stones in the desolate and glaring
wilderness? Command that these stones be made bread--and mankind
will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle.
But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou
should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread!
Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men
of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where
men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone--
was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was
precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial
spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally
conquer Thee, followed by the hungry multitudes shouting: "Who is
like unto that Beast, who maketh fire come down from heaven upon
the earth!" Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and
the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and
through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime,
hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? "Feed us
first and then command us to be virtuous!" will be the words
written upon the banner lifted against Thee--a banner which
shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations,  and in the
place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of
Babel; and though its building be left unfinished, as was that of
the first one, yet the fact will remain recorded that Thou
couldst, but wouldst not, prevent the attempt to build that new
tower by accepting the offer, and thus saving mankind a
millennium of useless suffering on earth. And it is to us that
the people will return again. They will search for us catacombs,
as we shall once more be persecuted and martyred--and they will
begin crying unto us: "Feed us, for they who promised us the fire
from heaven have deceived us!" It is then that we will finish
building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall
finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them
that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to
feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them
bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay
that freedom at our feet, and say: "Enslave, but feed us!" That
day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily
bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had
together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two
among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be
free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born
wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of
life, the bread of  heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread
ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever
ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even
supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the
name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will
become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings
to weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?
Or is it but those tens of thousands chosen among the great and
the mighty, that are so dear to Thee, while the remaining
millions, innumerable as the grains of sand in the seas, the weak
and the loving, have to be used as material for the former? No,
no! In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are
the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but
we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire
us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to
those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden
of freedom by ruling over them--so terrible will that freedom at
last appear to men! Then we will tell them that it is in
obedience to Thy will and in Thy name that we rule over them. We
will deceive them once more and lie to them once again--for
never, never more will we allow Thee to come among us. In this
deception we will find our suffering, for we must needs lie
eternally, and never cease to lie!

"Such is the secret meaning of "temptation" the first, and that
is what Thou didst reject in the wilderness for the sake of that
freedom which Thou didst prize above all. Meanwhile Thy tempter's
offer contained another great world-mystery. By accepting the
"bread," Thou wouldst have satisfied and answered a universal
craving, a ceaseless longing alive in the heart of every
individual human being, lurking in the breast of collective
mankind, that most perplexing problem--"whom or what shall we
worship?" There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a
man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he
shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks
to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater
majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be
worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree
unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these
miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their
own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe
in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive
need of having a worship in common that is the chief suffering of
every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of
times. It is for that universality of religious worship that
people destroyed each other by sword. Creating gods unto
themselves, they forwith began appealing to each other: "Abandon
your deities, come and bow down to ours, or death to ye and your
idols!" And so will they do till the end of this world; they will
do so even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared,
for then men will prostrate themselves before and worship some
idea. Thou didst know, Thou couldst not be ignorant of, that
mysterious fundamental principle in human nature, and still thou
hast rejected the only absolute banner offered Thee, to which all
the nations would remain true, and before which all would have
bowed--the banner of earthly bread, rejected in the name of
freedom and of "bread in the kingdom of God"! Behold, then, what
Thou hast done furthermore for that "freedom's" sake! I repeat to
Thee, man has no greater anxiety in life than to find some one to
whom he can make over that gift of freedom with which the
unfortunate creature is born. But he alone will prove capable of
silencing and quieting their consciences, that shall succeed in
possessing himself of the freedom of men. With "daily bread" an
irresistible power was offered Thee: show a man "bread" and he
will follow Thee, for what can he resist less than the attraction
of bread? But if, at the same time, another succeed in possessing
himself of his conscience--oh! then even Thy bread will be
forgotten, and man will follow him who seduced his conscience. So
far Thou wert right. For the mystery of human being does not
solely rest in the desire to live, but in the problem--for what
should one live at all? Without a clear perception of his reasons
for living, man will never consent to live, and will rather
destroy himself than tarry on earth, though he be surrounded with
bread. This is the truth. But what has happened? Instead of
getting hold of man's freedom, Thou has enlarged it still more!
Hast Thou again forgotten that to man rest and even death are
preferable to a free choice between the knowledge of Good and
Evil? Nothing seems more seductive in his eyes than freedom of
conscience, and nothing proves more painful. And behold! instead
of laying a firm foundation whereon to rest once for all man's
conscience, Thou hast chosen to stir up in him all that is
abnormal, mysterious, and indefinite, all that is beyond human
strength, and has acted as if Thou never hadst any love for him,
and yet Thou wert He who came to "lay down His life for His
friends!" Thou hast burdened man's soul with anxieties hitherto
unknown to him. Thirsting for human love freely given, seeking to
enable man, seduced and charmed by Thee, to follow Thy path of
his own free-will, instead of the old and wise law which held him
in subjection, Thou hast given him the right henceforth to choose
and freely decide what is good and bad for him, guided but by
Thine image in his heart. But hast Thou never dreamt of the
probability, nay, of the certainty, of that same man one day
rejected finally, and controverting even Thine image and Thy
truth, once he would find himself laden with such a terrible
burden as freedom of choice? That a time would surely come when
men would exclaim that Truth and Light cannot be in Thee, for no
one could have left them in a greater perplexity and mental
suffering than Thou has done, lading them with so many cares and
insoluble problems. Thus, it is Thyself who hast laid the
foundation for the destruction of Thine own kingdom and no one
but Thou is to be blamed for it.

"'Meantime, every chance of success was offered Thee. There are
three Powers, three unique Forces upon earth, capable of
conquering for ever by charming the conscience of these weak
rebels--men--for their own good; and these Forces are: Miracle,
Mystery and Authority. Thou hast rejected all the three, and thus
wert the first to set them an example. When the terrible and all-
wise spirit placed Thee on a pinnacle of the temple and said unto
Thee, "If Thou be the son of God, cast Thyself down, for it is
written, He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee: and in
their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash
Thy foot against a stone!"--for thus Thy faith in Thy father
should have been made evident, Thou didst refuse to accept his
suggestion and didst not follow it. Oh, undoubtedly, Thou didst
act in this with all the magnificent pride of a god, but then men
--that weak and rebel race--are they also gods, to understand
Thy refusal? Of course, Thou didst well know that by taking one
single step forward, by making the slightest motion to throw
Thyself down, Thou wouldst have tempted "the Lord Thy God," lost
suddenly all faith in Him, and dashed Thyself to atoms against
that same earth which Thou camest to save, and thus wouldst have
allowed the wise spirit which tempted Thee to triumph and
rejoice. But, then, how many such as Thee are to be found on this
globe, I ask Thee? Couldst Thou ever for a moment imagine that
men would have the same strength to resist such a temptation? Is
human nature calculated to reject miracle, and trust, during the
most terrible moments in life, when the most momentous, painful
and perplexing problems struggle within man's soul, to the free
decisions of his heart for the true solution? Oh, Thou knewest
well that that action of Thine would remain recorded in books for
ages to come, reaching to the confines of the globe, and Thy hope
was, that following Thy example, man would remain true to his
God, without needing any miracle to keep his faith alive! But
Thou knewest not, it seems, that no sooner would man reject
miracle than he would reject God likewise, for he seeketh less
God than "a sign" from Him. And thus, as it is beyond the power
of man to remain without miracles, so, rather than live without,
he will create for himself new wonders of his own making; and he
will bow to and worship the soothsayer's miracles, the old
witch's sorcery, were he a rebel, a heretic, and an atheist a
hundred times over. Thy refusal to come down from the cross when
people, mocking and wagging their heads were saying to Thee--
"Save Thyself if Thou be the son of God, and we will believe in
Thee," was due to the same determination--not to enslave man
through miracle, but to obtain faith in Thee freely and apart
from any miraculous influence. Thou thirstest for free and
uninfluenced love, and refuses the passionate adoration of the
slave before a Potency which would have subjected his will once
for ever. Thou judgest of men too highly here, again, for though
rebels they be, they are born slaves and nothing more. Behold,
and judge of them once more, now that fifteen centuries have
elapsed since that moment. Look at them, whom Thou didst try to
elevate unto Thee! I swear man is weaker and lower than Thou hast
ever imagined him to be! Can he ever do that which Thou art said
to have accomplished? By valuing him so highly Thou hast acted as
if there were no love for him in Thine heart, for Thou hast
demanded of him more than he could ever give--Thou, who lovest
him more than Thyself! Hadst Thou esteemed him less, less wouldst
Thou have demanded of him, and that would have been more like
love, for his burden would have been made thereby lighter. Man is
weak and cowardly. What matters it, if he now riots and rebels
throughout the world against our will and power, and prides
himself upon that rebellion? It is but the petty pride and vanity
of a school-boy. It is the rioting of little children, getting up
a mutiny in the class-room and driving their schoolmaster out of
it. But it will not last long, and when the day of their triumph
is over, they will have to pay dearly for it. They will destroy
the temples and raze them to the ground, flooding the earth with
blood. But the foolish children will have to learn some day that,
rebels though they be and riotous from nature, they are too weak
to maintain the spirit of mutiny for any length of time. Suffused
with idiotic tears, they will confess that He who created them
rebellious undoubtedly did so but to mock them. They will
pronounce these words in despair, and such blasphemous utterances
will but add to their misery--for human nature cannot endure
blasphemy, and takes her own revenge in the end.

"'And thus, after all Thou has suffered for mankind and its
freedom, the present fate of men may be summed up in three words:
Unrest, Confusion, Misery! Thy great prophet John records in his
vision, that he saw, during the first resurrection of the chosen
servants of God--"the number of them which were sealed" in their
foreheads, "twelve thousand" of every tribe. But were they,
indeed, as many? Then they must have been gods, not men. They had
shared Thy Cross for long years, suffered scores of years' hunger
and thirst in dreary wildernesses and deserts, feeding upon
locusts and roots--and of these children of free love for Thee,
and self-sacrifice in Thy name, Thou mayest well feel proud. But
remember that these are but a few thousands--of gods, not men;
and how about all others? And why should the weakest be held
guilty for not being able to endure what the strongest have
endured? Why should a soul incapable of containing such terrible
gifts be punished for its weakness? Didst Thou really come to,
and for, the "elect" alone? If so, then the mystery will remain
for ever mysterious to our finite minds. And if a mystery, then
were we right to proclaim it as one, and preach it, teaching them
that neither their freely given love to Thee nor freedom of
conscience were essential, but only that incomprehensible mystery
which they must blindly obey even against the dictates of their
conscience. Thus did we. We corrected and improved Thy teaching
and based it upon "Miracle, Mystery, and Authority." And men
rejoiced at finding themselves led once more like a herd of
cattle, and at  finding their hearts  at last delivered of the
terrible burden laid upon them by Thee, which caused them so much
suffering. Tell me, were we right in doing as we did. Did not we
show our great love for humanity, by realizing in such a humble
spirit its helplessness, by so mercifully lightening its great
burden, and by permitting and remitting for its weak nature every
sin, provided it be committed with our authorization? For what,
then, hast Thou come again to trouble us in our work? And why
lookest Thou at me so penetratingly with Thy meek eyes, and in
such a silence? Rather shouldst Thou feel wroth, for I need not
Thy love, I reject it, and love Thee not, myself. Why should I
conceal the truth from Thee? I know but too well with whom I am
now talking! What I had to say was known to Thee before, I read
it in Thine eye. How should I conceal from Thee our secret? If
perchance Thou wouldst hear it from my own lips, then listen: We
are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! For
centuries have we abandoned Thee to follow him, yes--eight
centuries. Eight hundred years now since we accepted from him the
gift rejected by Thee with indignation; that last gift which he
offered Thee from the high mountain when, showing all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, he saith unto Thee:
"All these things will I give Thee, if Thou will fall down and
worship me!" We took Rome from him and the glaive of Caesar, and
declared ourselves alone the kings of this earth, its sole kings,
though our work is not yet fully accomplished. But who is to
blame for it? Our work is but in its incipient stage, but it is
nevertheless started. We may have long to wait until its
culmination, and mankind have to suffer much, but we shall reach
the goal some day, and become sole Caesars, and then will be the
time to think of universal happiness for men.

"'Thou couldst accept the glaive of Caesar Thyself; why didst
Thou reject the offer? By accepting from the powerful spirit his
third offer Thou would have realized every aspiration man seeketh
for himself on earth; man would have found a constant object for
worship; one to deliver his conscience up to, and one that should
unite all together into one common and harmonious ant-hill; for
an innate necessity for universal union constitutes the third and
final affliction of mankind. Humanity as a whole has ever aspired
to unite itself universally. Many were, the great nations with
great histories, but the greater they were, the more unhappy they
felt, as they felt the stronger necessity of a universal union
among men. Great conquerors, like Timoor and Tchengis-Khan,
passed like a cyclone upon the face of the earth in their efforts
to conquer the universe, but even they, albeit unconsciously,
expressed the same aspiration towards universal and common union.
In accepting the kingdom of the world and Caesar's purple, one
would found a universal kingdom and secure to mankind eternal
peace. And who can rule mankind better than those who have
possessed themselves of man's conscience, and hold in their hand
man's daily bread? Having accepted Caesar's glaive and purple, we
had, of course, but to deny Thee, to henceforth follow him alone.
Oh, centuries of intellectual riot and rebellious free thought
are yet before us, and their science will end by anthropophagy,
for having begun to build their Babylonian tower without our help
they will have to end by anthropophagy. But it is precisely at
that time that the Beast will crawl up to us in full submission,
and lick the soles of our feet, and sprinkle them with tears of
blood and we shall sit upon the scarlet-colored Beast, and
lifting up high the golden cup "full of abomination and
filthiness," shall show written upon it the word "Mystery"! But
it is only then that men will see the beginning of a kingdom of
peace and happiness. Thou art proud of Thine own elect, but Thou
has none other but these elect, and we--we will give rest to
all. But that is not the end. Many are those among thine elect
and the laborers of Thy vineyard, who, tired of waiting for Thy
coming, already have carried and will yet carry, the great fervor
of their hearts and their spiritual strength into another field,
and will end by lifting up against Thee Thine own banner of
freedom. But it is Thyself Thou hast to thank. Under our rule and
sway all will be happy, and will neither rebel nor destroy each
other as they did while under Thy free banner. Oh, we will take
good care to prove to them that they will become absolutely free
only when they have abjured their freedom in our favor and submit
to us absolutely. Thinkest Thou we shall be right or still lying?
They will convince themselves of our rightness, for they will see
what a depth of degrading slavery and strife that liberty of
Thine has led them into. Liberty, Freedom of Thought and
Conscience, and Science will lead them into such impassable
chasms, place them face to face before such wonders and insoluble
mysteries, that some of them--more rebellious and ferocious than
the rest--will destroy themselves; others--rebellious but weak
--will destroy each other; while the remainder, weak, helpless
and miserable, will crawl back to our feet and cry: "'Yes; right
were ye, oh Fathers of Jesus; ye alone are in possession of His
mystery, and we return to you, praying that ye save us from
ourselves!" Receiving their bread from us, they will clearly see
that we take the bread from them, the bread made by their own
hands, but to give it back to them in equal shares and that
without any miracle; and having ascertained that, though we have
not changed stones  into bread, yet bread they have, while every
other bread turned verily in their own hands into stones, they
will be only to glad to have it so. Until that day, they will
never be happy. And who is it that helped the most to blind them,
tell me? Who separated the flock and scattered it over ways
unknown if it be not Thee? But we will gather the sheep once more
and subject them to our will for ever. We will prove to them
their own weakness and make them humble again, whilst with Thee
they have learnt but pride, for Thou hast made more of them than
they ever were worth. We will give them that quiet, humble
happiness, which alone benefits such weak, foolish creatures as
they are, and having once had proved to them their weakness, they
will become timid and obedient, and gather around us as chickens
around their hen. They will wonder at and feel a superstitious
admiration for us, and feel proud to be led by men so powerful
and wise that a handful of them can subject a flock a thousand
millions strong. Gradually men will begin to fear us. They will
nervously dread our slightest anger, their intellects will
weaken, their eyes become as easily accessible to tears as those
of children and women; but we will teach them an easy transition
from grief and tears to laughter, childish joy and mirthful song.
Yes; we will make them work like slaves, but during their
recreation hours they shall have an innocent child-like life,
full of play and merry laughter. We will even permit them sin,
for, weak and helpless, they will feel the more love for us for
permitting them to indulge in it. We will tell them that every
kind of sin will be remitted to them, so long as it is done with
our permission; that we take all these sins upon ourselves, for
we so love the world, that we are even willing to sacrifice our
souls for its satisfaction. And, appearing before them in the
light of their scapegoats and redeemers, we shall be adored the
more for it. They will have no secrets from us. It will rest with
us to permit them to live with their wives and concubines, or to
forbid them, to have children or remain childless, either way
depending on the degree of their obedience to us; and they will
submit most joyfully to us the most agonizing secrets of their
souls--all, all will they lay down at our feet, and we will
authorize and remit them all in Thy name, and they will believe
us and accept our mediation with rapture, as it will deliver them
from their greatest anxiety and torture--that of having to
decide freely for themselves. And all will be happy, all except
the one or two hundred thousands of their rulers. For it is but
we, we the keepers of the great Mystery who will be miserable.
There will be thousands of millions of happy infants, and one
hundred thousand martyrs who have taken upon themselves the curse
of knowledge of good and evil. Peaceable will be their end, and
peacefully will they die, in Thy name, to find behind the portals
of the grave--but death. But we will keep the secret inviolate,
and deceive them for their own good with the mirage of life
eternal in Thy kingdom. For, were there really anything like life
beyond the grave, surely it would never fall to the lot of such
as they! People tell us and prophesy of Thy coming and triumphing
once more on earth; of Thy appearing with the army of Thy elect,
with Thy proud and mighty ones; but we will answer Thee that they
have saved but themselves while we have saved all. We are also
threatened with the great disgrace which awaits the whore,
"Babylon the great, the mother of harlots"--who sits upon the
Beast, holding in her hands the Mystery, the word written upon
her forehead; and we are told that the weak ones, the lambs shall
rebel against her and shall make her desolate and naked. But then
will I arise, and point out to Thee the thousands of millions of
happy infants free from any sin. And we who have taken their sins
upon us, for their own good, shall stand before Thee and say:
"Judge us if Thou canst and darest!" Know then that I fear Thee
not. Know that I too have lived in the dreary wilderness, where I
fed upon locusts and roots, that I too have blessed freedom with
which thou hast blessed men, and that I too have once prepared to
join the ranks of Thy elect, the proud and the mighty. But I
awoke from my delusion and refused since then to serve insanity.
I returned to join the legion of those who corrected Thy
mistakes. I left the proud and returned to the really humble, and
for their own happiness. What I now tell thee will come to pass,
and our kingdom shall be built, I tell Thee not later than
to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock which at one simple
motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake, on
which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in
our work. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any
of the others our inquisitorial fires--it is Thee! To-morrow I
will burn Thee. Dixi'."

Ivan paused. He had entered into the situation and had spoken
with great animation, but now he suddenly burst out laughing.

"But all that is absurd!" suddenly exclaimed Alyosha, who had
hitherto listened perplexed and agitated but in profound silence.
"Your poem is a glorification of Christ, not an accusation, as
you, perhaps, meant to be. And who will believe you when you
speak of 'freedom'? Is it thus that we Christians must understand
it? It is Rome (not all Rome, for that would be unjust), but the
worst of the Roman Catholics, the Inquisitors and Jesuits, that
you have been exposing! Your Inquisitor is an impossible
character. What are these sins they are taking upon themselves?
Who are those keepers of mystery who took upon themselves a curse
for the good of mankind? Who ever met them? We all know the
Jesuits, and no one has a good word to say in their favor; but
when were they as you depict them? Never, never! The Jesuits are
merely a Romish army making ready for their future temporal
kingdom, with a mitred emperor--a Roman high priest at their
head. That is their ideal and object, without any mystery or
elevated suffering. The most prosaic thirsting for power, for the
sake of the mean and earthly pleasures of life, a desire to
enslave their fellow-men, something like our late system of
serfs, with themselves at the head as landed proprietors--that
is all that they can be accused of. They may not believe in God,
that is also possible, but your suffering Inquisitor is simply--
a fancy!"

"Hold, hold!" interrupted Ivan, smiling. "Do not be so excited. A
fancy, you say; be it so! Of course, it is a fancy. But stop. Do
you really imagine that all this Catholic movement during the
last centuries is naught but a desire for power for the mere
purpose of 'mean pleasures'? Is this what your Father Paissiy
taught you?"

"No, no, quite the reverse, for Father Paissiy once told me
something very similar to what you yourself  say, though, of
course, not that--something quite different," suddenly added
Alexis, blushing.

"A precious piece of information, notwithstanding your 'not
that.' I ask you, why should the Inquisitors and the Jesuits of
your imagination live but for the attainment of 'mean material
pleasures?' Why should there not be found among them one single
genuine martyr suffering under a great and holy idea and loving
humanity with all his heart? Now let us suppose that among all
these Jesuits thirsting and hungering but after 'mean material
pleasures' there may be one, just one like my old Inquisitor, who
had himself fed upon roots in the wilderness, suffered the
tortures of damnation while trying to conquer flesh, in order to
become free and perfect, but who had never ceased to love
humanity, and who one day prophetically beheld the truth; who saw
as plain as he could see that the bulk of humanity could never be
happy under the old system, that it was not for them that the
great Idealist had come and died and dreamt of His Universal
Harmony. Having realized that truth, he returned into the world
and joined--intelligent and practical people. Is this so
impossible?"

"Joined whom? What intelligent and practical people?" exclaimed
Alyosha quite excited. "Why should they be more intelligent than
other men, and what secrets and mysteries can they have? They
have neither. Atheism and infidelity is all the secret they have.
Your Inquisitor does not believe in God, and that is all the
Mystery there is in it!"

"It may be so. You have guessed rightly there. And it is so, and
that is his whole secret; but is this not the acutest sufferings
for such a man as he, who killed all his young life in asceticism
in the desert, and yet could not cure himself of his love towards
his fellowmen? Toward the end of his life he becomes convinced
that it is only by following the advice of the great and terrible
spirit that the fate of these millions of weak rebels, these
'half-finished samples of humanity created in mockery' can be
made tolerable.  And once convinced of it, he sees as clearly
that to achieve that object, one must follow blindly the guidance
of the wise spirit, the fearful spirit of death and destruction,
hence accept a system of lies and deception and lead humanity
consciously this time toward death and destruction, and moreover,
be deceiving them all the while in order to prevent them from
realizing where they are being led, and so force the miserable
blind men to feel happy, at least while here on earth. And note
this: a wholesale deception in the name of Him, in whose ideal
the old man had so passionately, so fervently, believed during
nearly his whole life! Is this no suffering? And were such a
solitary exception found amidst, and at the head of, that army
'that thirsts for power but for the sake of the mean pleasures of
life,' think you one such man would not suffice to bring on a
tragedy? Moreover, one single man like my Inquisitor as a
principal leader, would prove sufficient to discover the real
guiding idea of the Romish system with all its armies of Jesuits,
the greatest and chiefest conviction that the solitary type
described in my poem has at no time ever disappeared from among
the chief leaders of that movement. Who knows but that terrible
old man, loving humanity so stubbornly and in such an original
way, exists even in our days in the shape of a whole host of such
solitary exceptions, whose existence is not due to mere chance,
but to a well-defined association born of mutual consent, to a
secret league, organized several centuries back, in order to
guard the Mystery from the indiscreet eyes of the miserable and
weak people, and only in view of their own happiness? And so it
is; it cannot be otherwise. I suspect that even Masons have some
such Mystery underlying the basis of their organization, and that
it is just the reason why the Roman Catholic clergy hate them so,
dreading to find in them rivals, competition, the dismemberment
of the unity of the idea, for the realization of which one flock
and one Shepherd are needed. However, in defending my idea, I
look like an author whose production is unable to stand
criticism. Enough of this."

"You are, perhaps, a Mason yourself!" exclaimed Alyosha. "You do
not believe in God," he added, with a note of profound sadness in
his voice. But suddenly remarking that his brother was looking at
him with mockery, "How do you mean then to bring your poem to a
close?" he unexpectedly enquired, casting his eyes downward, "or
does it break off here?"

"My intention is to end it with the following scene: Having
disburdened his heart, the Inquisitor waits for some time to hear
his prisoner speak in His turn. His silence weighs upon him. He
has seen that his captive has been attentively listening to him
all the time, with His eyes fixed penetratingly and softly on the
face of his jailer, and evidently bent upon not replying to him.
The old man longs to hear His voice, to hear Him reply; better
words of bitterness and scorn than His silence. Suddenly He
rises; slowly and silently approaching the Inquisitor, He bends
towards him and softly kisses the bloodless, four-score and-ten-
year-old lips. That is all the answer. The Grand Inquisitor
shudders. There is a convulsive twitch at the corner of his
mouth. He goes to the door, opens it, and addressing Him, 'Go,'
he says, 'go, and return no more... do not come again... never,
never!' and--lets Him out into the dark night. The prisoner
vanishes."

"And the old man?"

"The kiss burns his heart, but the old man remains firm in his
own ideas and unbelief."

"And you, together with him? You too!" despairingly exclaimed
Alyosha, while Ivan burst into a still louder fit of laughter.

Part I

Underground*
          *The author of the diary and the diary itself
     are, of course, imaginary.  Nevertheless it is clear
     that such persons as the writer of these notes
     not only may, but positively must, exist in our
     society, when we consider the circumstances in
     the midst of which our society is formed.  I have
     tried to expose to the view of the public more
     distinctly than is commonly done, one of the
     characters of the recent past.  He is one of the
     representatives of a generation still living.  In this
     fragment, entitled "Underground," this person
     introduces himself and his views, and, as it were,
     tries to explain the causes owing to which he has
     made his appearance and was bound to make his
     appearance in our midst.  In the second fragment
     there are added the actual notes of this person
     concerning certain events in his life.

--Author's note---

I


I am a sick man. ...  I am a spiteful man.  I am an unattractive man.  I
believe my liver is diseased.  However, I know nothing at all about my
disease, and do not know for certain what ails me.  I don't consult a doctor
for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.
Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine,
anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am
superstitious).  No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite.  That you
probably will not understand.  Well, I understand it, though.  Of course, I
can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my
spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not
consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only
injuring myself and no one else.  But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is
from spite.  My liver is bad, well--let it get worse!

I have been going on like that for a long time--twenty years.  Now I am
forty.  I used to be in the government service, but am no longer.  I was a
spiteful official.  I was rude and took pleasure in being so.  I did not take
bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least.  (A
poor jest, but I will not scratch it out.  I wrote it thinking it would sound
very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off
in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!)

When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I
sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I
succeeded in making anybody unhappy.  I almost did succeed.  For the
most part they were all timid people--of course, they were petitioners.
But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not
endure.  He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a
disgusting way.  I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over
that sword.  At last I got the better of him.  He left off clanking it.  That
happened in my youth, though.
But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite?
Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually,
even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with
shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man,
that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it.  I
might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of
tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased.  I might even be
genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards
and lie awake at night with shame for months after.  That was my way.

I was lying when I said just now that I was a spiteful official.  I was
lying from spite.  I was simply amusing myself with the petitioners and with
the officer, and in reality I never could become spiteful.  I was conscious
every moment in myself of many, very many elements absolutely opposite to
that.  I felt them positively swarming in me, these opposite elements.
I knew that they had been swarming in me all my life and craving
some outlet from me, but I would not let them, would not let them,
purposely would not let them come out.  They tormented me till I was
ashamed: they drove me to convulsions and--sickened me, at last, how
they sickened me!  Now, are not you fancying, gentlemen, that I am
expressing remorse for something now, that I am asking your forgiveness
for something?  I am sure you are fancying that ...  However, I assure you
I do not care if you are. ...

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to
become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest
man, neither a hero nor an insect.  Now, I am living out my life in my
corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an
intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool
who becomes anything.  Yes, a man in the nineteenth century must and
morally ought to be pre-eminently a characterless creature; a man of
character, an active man is pre-eminently a limited creature.  That is my
conviction of forty years.  I am forty years old now, and you know forty
years is a whole lifetime; you know it is extreme old age.  To live longer
than forty years is bad manners, is vulgar, immoral.  Who does live
beyond forty?  Answer that, sincerely and honestly I will tell you who do:
fools and worthless fellows.  I tell all old men that to their face, all these
venerable old men, all these silver-haired and reverend seniors!  I tell the
whole world that to its face!  I have a right to say so, for I shall go on
living to sixty myself.  To seventy!  To eighty!  ...  Stay, let me
take breath ...

You imagine no doubt, gentlemen, that I want to amuse you.  You are
mistaken in that, too.  I am by no means such a mirthful person as you
imagine, or as you may imagine; however, irritated by all this babble (and
I feel that you are irritated) you think fit to ask me who I am--then my
answer is, I am a collegiate assessor.  I was in the service that I might have
something to eat (and solely for that reason), and when last year a distant
relation left me six thousand roubles in his will I immediately retired
from the service and settled down in my corner.  I used to live in this
corner before, but now I have settled down in it.  My room is a wretched,
horrid one in the outskirts of the town.  My servant is an old country-
woman, ill-natured from stupidity, and, moreover, there is always a nasty
smell about her.  I am told that the Petersburg climate is bad for me, and
that with my small means it is very expensive to live in Petersburg.  I
know all that better than all these sage and experienced counsellors and
monitors. ...  But I am remaining in Petersburg; I am not going away
from Petersburg!  I am not going away because ... ech!  Why, it is
absolutely no matter whether I am going away or not going away.

But what can a decent man speak of with most pleasure?

Answer: Of himself.

Well, so I will talk about myself.

II


I want now to tell you, gentlemen, whether you care to hear it or not, why
I could not even become an insect.  I tell you solemnly, that I have many
times tried to become an insect.  But I was not equal even to that.  I swear,
gentlemen, that to be too conscious is an illness--a real thorough-going
illness.  For man's everyday needs, it would have been quite enough to
have the ordinary human consciousness, that is, half or a quarter of the
amount which falls to the lot of a cultivated man of our unhappy
nineteenth century, especially one who has the fatal ill-luck to inhabit
Petersburg, the most theoretical and intentional town on the whole
terrestrial globe.  (There are intentional and unintentional towns.)  It
would have been quite enough, for instance, to have the consciousness
by which all so-called direct persons and men of action live.  I bet you
think I am writing all this from affectation, to be witty at the expense of
men of action; and what is more, that from ill-bred affectation, I am
clanking a sword like my officer.  But, gentlemen, whoever can pride
himself on his diseases and even swagger over them?

Though, after all, everyone does do that; people do pride themselves
on their diseases, and I do, may be, more than anyone.  We will not
dispute it; my contention was absurd.  But yet I am firmly persuaded that
a great deal of consciousness, every sort of consciousness, in fact, is a
disease.  I stick to that.  Let us leave that, too, for a minute.  Tell me this:
why does it happen that at the very, yes, at the very moments when I am
most capable of feeling every refinement of all that is "sublime and
beautiful," as they used to say at one time, it would, as though of design,
happen to me not only to feel but to do such ugly things, such that ...
Well, in short, actions that all, perhaps, commit; but which, as though
purposely, occurred to me at the very time when I was most conscious
that they ought not to be committed.  The more conscious I was of goodness
and of all that was "sublime and beautiful," the more deeply I sank
into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether.  But the
chief point was that all this was, as it were, not accidental in me, but as
though it were bound to be so.  It was as though it were my most normal
condition, and not in the least disease or depravity, so that at last all desire
in me to struggle against this depravity passed.  It ended by my almost
believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal
condition.  But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that
struggle!  I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my
life I hid this fact about myself as a secret.  I was ashamed (even now,
perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret
abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on
some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had
committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be
undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing
and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of
shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment!
Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment!  I insist upon that.  I have spoken of
this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel
such enjoyment?  I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too
intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling
oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that
it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never
could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left
you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to
change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because
perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.

And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord
with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and
with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that
consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely
nothing.  Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness,
that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were
any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he
actually is a scoundrel.  But enough. ...  Ech, I have talked a lot of
nonsense, but what have I explained?  How is enjoyment in this to be
explained?  But I will explain it.  I will get to the bottom of it!  That is why
I have taken up my pen. ...

I, for instance, have a great deal of AMOUR PROPRE.  I am as suspicious
and prone to take offence as a humpback or a dwarf.  But upon my word I
sometimes have had moments when if I had happened to be slapped in
the face I should, perhaps, have been positively glad of it.  I say, in
earnest, that I should probably have been able to discover even in that a
peculiar sort of enjoyment--the enjoyment, of course, of despair; but in
despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is
very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position.  And when
one is slapped in the face--why then the consciousness of being rubbed
into a pulp would positively overwhelm one.  The worst of it is, look at it
which way one will, it still turns out that I was always the most to blame
in everything.  And what is most humiliating of all, to blame for no fault
of my own but, so to say, through the laws of nature.  In the first place, to
blame because I am cleverer than any of the people surrounding me.  (I
have always considered myself cleverer than any of the people surrounding
me, and sometimes, would you believe it, have been positively
ashamed of it.  At any rate, I have all my life, as it were, turned my eyes
away and never could look people straight in the face.)  To blame, finally,
because even if I had had magnanimity, I should only have had more
suffering from the sense of its uselessness.  I should certainly have never
been able to do anything from being magnanimous--neither to forgive,
for my assailant would perhaps have slapped me from the laws of nature,
and one cannot forgive the laws of nature; nor to forget, for even if it were
owing to the laws of nature, it is insulting all the same.  Finally, even if I
had wanted to be anything but magnanimous, had desired on the
contrary to revenge myself on my assailant, I could not have revenged
myself on any one for anything because I should certainly never have
made up my mind to do anything, even if I had been able to.  Why
should I not have made up my mind?  About that in particular I want to
say a few words.

III


With people who know how to revenge themselves and to stand up for
themselves in general, how is it done?  Why, when they are possessed, let
us suppose, by the feeling of revenge, then for the time there is nothing
else but that feeling left in their whole being.  Such a gentleman simply
dashes straight for his object like an infuriated bull with its horns down,
and nothing but a wall will stop him.  (By the way: facing the wall, such
gentlemen--that is, the "direct" persons and men of action--are genuinely
nonplussed.  For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who
think and consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside,
an excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely believe
in it ourselves, as a rule.  No, they are nonplussed in all sincerity.  The
wall has for them something tranquillising, morally soothing, final--
maybe even something mysterious ... but of the wall later.)

Well, such a direct person I regard as the real normal man, as his
tender mother nature wished to see him when she graciously brought him
into being on the earth.  I envy such a man till I am green in the face.  He
is stupid.  I am not disputing that, but perhaps the normal man should be
stupid, how do you know?  Perhaps it is very beautiful, in fact.  And I am
the more persuaded of that suspicion, if one can call it so, by the fact that
if you take, for instance, the antithesis of the normal man, that is, the
man of acute consciousness, who has come, of course, not out of the lap
of nature but out of a retort (this is almost mysticism, gentlemen, but I
suspect this, too), this retort-made man is sometimes so nonplussed in
the presence of his antithesis that with all his exaggerated consciousness
he genuinely thinks of himself as a mouse and not a man.  It may be an
acutely conscious mouse, yet it is a mouse, while the other is a man, and
therefore, et caetera, et caetera.  And the worst of it is, he himself, his very
own self, looks on himself as a mouse; no one asks him to do so; and that
is an important point.  Now let us look at this mouse in action.  Let us
suppose, for instance, that it feels insulted, too (and it almost always does
feel insulted), and wants to revenge itself, too.  There may even be a
greater accumulation of spite in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA
VERITE.  The base and nasty desire to vent that spite on its assailant rankles
perhaps even more nastily in it than in L'HOMME DE LA NATURE ET DE LA
VERITE.  For through his innate stupidity the latter looks upon his revenge
as justice pure and simple; while in consequence of his acute consciousness
the mouse does not believe in the justice of it.  To come at last to the
deed itself, to the very act of revenge.  Apart from the one fundamental
nastiness the luckless mouse succeeds in creating around it so many other
nastinesses in the form of doubts and questions, adds to the one question
so many unsettled questions that there inevitably works up around it a sort
of fatal brew, a stinking mess, made up of its doubts, emotions, and of the
contempt spat upon it by the direct men of action who stand solemnly
about it as judges and arbitrators, laughing at it till their healthy sides
ache.  Of course the only thing left for it is to dismiss all that with a wave
of its paw, and, with a smile of assumed contempt in which it does not
even itself believe, creep ignominiously into its mouse-hole.  There in its
nasty, stinking, underground home our insulted, crushed and ridiculed
mouse promptly becomes absorbed in cold, malignant and, above all,
everlasting spite.  For forty years together it will remember its injury down
to the smallest, most ignominious details, and every time will add, of
itself, details still more ignominious, spitefully teasing and tormenting
itself with its own imagination.  It will itself be ashamed of its imaginings,
but yet it will recall it all, it will go over and over every detail, it will
invent unheard of things against itself, pretending that those things
might happen, and will forgive nothing.  Maybe it will begin to revenge
itself, too, but, as it were, piecemeal, in trivial ways, from behind the
stove, incognito, without believing either in its own right to vengeance,
or in the success of its revenge, knowing that from all its efforts at revenge
it will suffer a hundred times more than he on whom it revenges itself,
while he, I daresay, will not even scratch himself.  On its deathbed it will
recall it all over again, with interest accumulated over all the years
and ...

But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that
conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years,
in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's
position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of
oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a
minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have
spoken lies.  It is so subtle, so difficult of analysis, that persons who are a
little limited, or even simply persons of strong nerves, will not understand
a single atom of it.  "Possibly," you will add on your own account
with a grin, "people will not understand it either who have never received
a slap in the face," and in that way you will politely hint to me that I, too,
perhaps, have had the experience of a slap in the face in my life, and so I
speak as one who knows.  I bet that you are thinking that.  But set your
minds at rest, gentlemen, I have not received a slap in the face, though it
is absolutely a matter of indifference to me what you may think about it.
Possibly, I even regret, myself, that I have given so few slaps in the face
during my life.  But enough ... not another word on that subject of such
extreme interest to you.

I will continue calmly concerning persons with strong nerves who do
not understand a certain refinement of enjoyment.  Though in certain
circumstances these gentlemen bellow their loudest like bulls, though
this, let us suppose, does them the greatest credit, yet, as I have said
already, confronted with the impossible they subside at once.  The impossible
means the stone wall!  What stone wall?  Why, of course, the laws of
nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics.  As soon as they
prove to you, for instance, that you are descended from a monkey, then it
is no use scowling, accept it for a fact.  When they prove to you that in
reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred
thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final
solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and
fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice
two is a law of mathematics.  Just try refuting it.

"Upon my word, they will shout at you, it is no use protesting: it is a
case of twice two makes four!  Nature does not ask your permission, she
has nothing to do with your wishes, and whether you like her laws or
dislike them, you are bound to accept her as she is, and consequently all
her conclusions.  A wall, you see, is a wall ... and so on, and so on."

Merciful Heavens!  but what do I care for the laws of nature and
arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that
twice two makes four?  Of course I cannot break through the wall by
battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it
down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone
wall and I have not the strength.

As though such a stone wall really were a consolation, and really did
contain some word of conciliation, simply because it is as true as twice
two makes four.  Oh, absurdity of absurdities!  How much better it is to
understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone
wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if
it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable,
logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the
everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow
to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the
least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into
luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to
feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an
object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-
sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing
who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an
ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.