Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2 полностью

88 Instead of the next line, read: I cried out, and began to groan.

89 Add: And the same thing began again within me. I suffered as I never had suffered before. I did not know what to do with myself, and the thought occurred to me – and it pleased me very much – of getting out onto the line, lying down under the train, and finishing everything. The one thing that hindered my doing this was my self-pity, which immediately evoked hatred of her and of him. Of him not so much. Regarding him I had a strange feeling of my own humiliation and of his victory, but of her I felt terrible hatred. It will not do to finish myself off and to leave her, it is necessary that she should suffer.

90 Instead of the following words, read: and read the shop sign-boards,

91 Instead of the next sentence, read: I cannot at all explain to myself now why I was in such a hurry.

92 Read: there arose in me an animal craving for physical, agile, cunning, and decisive action.

93 Read: and of the tormenting pleasure of punishing, and executing.

94 In the lithograph the chapter ends with the words: I do not know how I went, with what steps, whether I ran or only walked, through which rooms I went on my way to the drawing-room, how I opened the door or how I entered the room – I remember nothing of all that.

95 In the lithograph this first sentence is omitted.

96 Add: as from a spring.

97 Add: – a sister.

98 Read: ‘ “Yes, if you had not killed me!” she suddenly exclaimed, and her eyes glittered feverishly.

99 The sentence ends: the children, not even Lisa who rushed up to her.

100 In the lithograph the conclusion is different, the last paragraph being as follows: Yes, that is what I have done, and what I have gone through. Yes, a man should understand that the real meaning of the words in the Gospel – Matthew v. 28 – where it says that everyone that looketh on a woman to lust after her commits adultery, relates to woman, his fellow human being – not merely to casual women or strangers, but above all to his own wife.

^* The Zémskoe Sobránie, work in the administration of which was paid for.

THE DEVIL

But I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

And if thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast into hell.

And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not thy whole body go into hell. Matthew v. 28, 29, 30.

I

A BRILLIANT career lay before Eugéne Irténev. He had everything necessary to attain it: an admirable education at home, high honours when he graduated in law at Petersburg University, and connexions in the highest society through his recently deceased father; he had also already begun service in one of the Ministries under the protection of the Minister. Moreover he had a fortune; even a large one, though insecure. His father had lived abroad and in Petersburg, allowing his sons, Eugéne and Andrew (who was older than Eugéne and in the Horse Guards), six thousand rubles a year each, while he himself and his wife spent a great deal. He only used to visit his estate for a couple of months in summer and did not concern himself with its direction, entrusting it all to an unscrupulous manager who also failed to attend to it, but in whom he had complete confidence.

After the father’s death, when the brothers began to divide the property, so many debts were discovered that their lawyer even advised them to refuse the inheritance and retain only an estate left them by their grandmother, which was valued at a hundred thousand rubles. But a neighbouring landed proprietor who had done business with old Irténev, that is to say, who had promissory notes from him and had come to Petersburg on that account, said that in spite of the debts they could straighten out affairs so as to retain a large fortune (it would only be necessary to sell the forest and some outlying land, retaining the rich Semënov estate with four thousand desyatins of black earth, the sugar factory, and two hundred desyatins of water-meadows) if one devoted oneself to the management of the estate, settled there, and farmed it wisely and economically.