I only remember from those three minutes a truly beautiful woman, whom the prince was kissing and making crosses over, and who suddenly—just as soon as she entered—quickly began looking at me. I clearly heard how the prince, obviously pointing to me, murmured something, with a sort of little laugh, about a new secretary, and spoke my last name. She somehow jerked her face up, gave me a nasty look, and smiled so insolently that I suddenly made a step, went up to the prince, and murmured, trembling terribly, without finishing a single word and, I think, with chattering teeth:
“From then on I . . . my own affairs now . . . I’m going.”
And I turned and went out. No one said a word to me, not even the prince; they all merely looked. The prince later told me that I turned so pale that he was “simply frightened.”
Well, who could care!
Chapter Three
I
PRECISELY, WHO COULD CARE? The highest consideration absorbed all trifles, and one powerful feeling satisfied me for everything. I went out in a sort of rapture. Stepping into the street, I was ready to start singing. As if on purpose, it was a lovely morning, sun, passersby, noise, movement, joy, the crowd. But hadn’t this woman insulted me? From whom would I have borne such a look and such an insolent smile without an immediate protest, even the stupidest—it makes no difference—on my part? Note that she was coming just so as to insult me the sooner, without ever having seen me: in her eyes, I was “Versilov’s agent,” and she was convinced even then and for a long time afterwards that Versilov held her entire fate in his hands and had the means to ruin her at once, if he wished to, by means of a certain document; she suspected as much at least. This was a duel to the death. And here—I was not insulted! There was an insult, but I didn’t feel it! Far from it! I was even glad; having come to hate her, I even felt I was beginning to love her. “I don’t know, can a spider hate the fly it has picked out and wants to catch? Sweet little fly! It seems to me that one loves one’s victim; at least one may. You see, I love my enemy: I find it terribly pleasing, for instance, that she’s so beautiful. I find it terribly pleasing, madam, that you are so haughty and majestic; if you were a bit meeker, the satisfaction wouldn’t be so great. You spat upon me, but I’m triumphant; if you were actually to spit in my face with real spit, I really might not get angry, because you are my victim—
That was how I would have translated my thoughts and my joy at that time, and much of what I felt. I will add only that here, in what I’ve just written, it has come out more light-minded: in reality, I was more profound and modest. Maybe even now I’m more modest in myself than in my words and deeds. God grant it!
Maybe I’ve done a very bad thing in sitting down to write; there is immeasurably more left inside than what comes out in words. Your thought, even a bad one, while it is with you, is always more profound, but in words it is more ridiculous and dishonorable. Versilov told me that the complete opposite happens only with the worst people. They just lie, it’s easy for them; while I’m trying to write the whole truth, which is terribly hard!
II
ON THIS NINETEENTH day of the month, I took one more “step.”
For the first time since my arrival, I had money in my pocket, because my sixty roubles, which I had saved up over two years, I had given to my mother, as I mentioned above; but several days earlier I had resolved that, on the day I got my salary, I would make a “test ” I had long been dreaming of. Just the day before, I had cut out an address from a newspaper—an announcement by “the bailiff of the St. Petersburg Civil Court,” and so on and so forth, that “on the nineteenth of September instant, at twelve noon, in the Kazan quarter, such-and-such precinct, etc., etc., at house number whatever, the sale of the movable property of Mrs. Lebrecht will take place,” and that “the description, value, and property itself can be seen on the day of the sale,” etc., etc.
