Текст книги "The Adolescent"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 34 (всего у книги 45 страниц)

“Remember, Lambert, how we drove to a tavern in Moscow, and in the tavern you stabbed me with a fork, and how you had five hundred roubles then?”

“Yes, I remember! Eh, the devil, I do! I like you . . . Believe that. Nobody likes you, but I do; I’m the only one, remember . . . The one who’s coming, the pockmarked one, is the most cunning canaille; don’t say anything to him if he starts talking, and if he starts asking questions, answer with nonsense, keep mum . . .”

At any rate, on account of his excitement, he didn’t ask me anything on the way. I even felt offended that he was so sure of me and didn’t even suspect any mistrust in me; it seemed to me that he had the stupid notion that he could still order me around. “And besides, he’s terribly uneducated,” I thought, going into the restaurant.

III

I USED TO go to this restaurant on Morskaya ²²before, during the time of my infamous decadence and depravity, and therefore the impression of these rooms, these waiters, looking me over and recognizing me as a familiar visitor, the impression, finally, of this mysterious company of Lambert’s friends, in which I had so suddenly found myself and to which I already seemed to belong indivisibly, and above all—the dark foreboding that I was voluntarily heading for some sort of vileness and would undoubtedly end up in bad business—it was as if all this suddenly pierced me. There was a moment when I almost left; but the moment passed and I stayed.

That “pockmarked one” Lambert was so afraid of for some reason was already waiting for us. He was a small man with one of those stupidly businesslike appearances, a type I’ve hated almost since childhood; about forty-five years old, of medium height, with some gray in his hair, with a face clean-shaven to the point of vileness, and with small, regular, gray, trimmed side-whiskers in the form of two little sausages on the two cheeks of an extremely flat and wicked face. Naturally, he was dull, serious, taciturn, and even, as is usual with all these wretched little people, for some reason arrogant. He scrutinized me very attentively but didn’t say a word, and Lambert was so stupid that, in seating us at the same table, he felt no need to introduce us, so that the man might have taken me for one of Lambert’s blackmailing associates. To those young people (who arrived almost at the same time as we did) he also said nothing all through dinner, but it could be seen, nevertheless, that he knew them closely. He talked about something only with Lambert, and then almost in a whisper, and then it was almost only Lambert who talked, while the pockmarked one just got off with fragmentary and angry ultimatums. He behaved superciliously, was spiteful and jeering, whereas Lambert, on the contrary, was in great agitation and evidently kept persuading him, probably trying to win him over to some venture. Once I reached for the bottle of red wine; the pockmarked one suddenly took a bottle of sherry and handed it to me, having not said a word to me till then.

“Try this,” he said, offering me the bottle. Here I suddenly realized that he must already know everything in the world about me—my story, and my name, and maybe why Lambert was counting on me. The thought that he might take me for someone in Lambert’s service infuriated me again, and Lambert’s face expressed a very strong and stupid alarm as soon as the man addressed me. The pockmarked one noticed it and laughed. “Lambert decidedly depends on everybody,” I thought, hating him at that moment with all my soul. Thus, though we sat through the whole dinner at one table, we were divided into two groups: the pockmarked one and Lambert nearer the window, facing each other, and I next to the greasy Andreev, with Trishatov facing me. Lambert hurried with the meal, urging the waiter to serve every minute. When champagne was served, he suddenly reached out his glass to me.

“To your health, let’s clink!” he said, interrupting his conversation with the pockmarked one.

“And will you allow me to clink with you?” The pretty Trishatov reached out his glass to me across the table. Before the champagne he had been somehow very pensive and silent. The dadaissaid nothing at all, but ate silently and a lot.

“With pleasure,” I replied to Trishatov. We clinked glasses and drank.

“And I won’t drink to your health,” the dadaissuddenly turned to me, “not because I wish for your death, but so that you won’t drink anymore here today.” He uttered it gloomily and weightily. “Three glasses are enough for you. I see you’re looking at my unwashed fist?” he went on, displaying his fist on the table. “I don’t wash it, and rent it out to Lambert unwashed as it is, for crushing other people’s heads on occasions that Lambert finds ticklish.” And, having said that, he suddenly banged his fist on the table with such force that all the plates and glasses jumped. Besides us, there were people dining at four other tables in this room, all of them officers and various imposing-looking gentlemen. It was a fashionable restaurant; for a moment everybody stopped talking and looked at our corner. And it seems we had long been arousing some curiosity. Lambert turned all red.

“Hah, he’s at it again! I believe I asked you to behave yourself, Nikolai Semyonovich,” he said to Andreev in a fierce whisper. The man looked him over with a long and slow stare:

“I don’t want my new friend Dolgorowkyto drink much wine here today.”

Lambert turned still more red. The pockmarked one listened silently, but with visible pleasure. For some reason he liked Andreev’s escapade. I was the only one who didn’t understand why I shouldn’t drink.

“He only does it to get money! You’ll get another seven roubles, do you hear, after dinner—only let us finish eating, don’t disgrace us,” Lambert rasped to him.

“Aha!” the dadaisgrunted victoriously. This quite delighted the pockmarked one, and he sniggered maliciously.

“Listen, you’re much too . . .” Trishatov said to his friend with uneasiness and almost with suffering, evidently wishing to restrain him. Andreev fell silent, but not for long; that was not how he reckoned. At a table about five steps away from us, two gentlemen were dining and having a lively conversation. They were both middle-aged gentlemen of an extremely ticklish appearance. One was tall and very fat, the other also very fat but small. They were talking in Polish about the current Parisian events. The dadaishad long been glancing at them curiously and listening. The little Pole obviously struck him as a comic figure, and he hated him at once, after the manner of all bilious and liverish people, to whom this always happens suddenly even without any cause. Suddenly the little Pole spoke the name of the deputy Madier de Montjau, ²³but following the habit of a great many Poles, he pronounced it in a Polish manner, that is, with the stress on the next-to-last syllable, and it came out not as Madiér de Montjáu, but as Mádier de Móntjau. That was all the dadaisneeded. He turned to the Poles and, drawing himself up importantly, suddenly said distinctly and loudly, as though asking them a question:

“Mádier de Móntjau?”

The Poles turned to him fiercely.

“What do you want?” the big fat Pole cried menacingly in Russian. The dadaisbided his time.

“Mádier de Móntjau?” he suddenly repeated for the whole room to hear, without giving any further explanations, just as he had stupidly repeated “Dolgorowky?” as he came at me earlier by the door. The Poles jumped up from their places, Lambert jumped up from the table, rushed first to Andreev, but then abandoned him, leaped over to the Poles, and humbly began apologizing to them.

“They’re buffoons, panie, ⁸⁷buffoons!” the little Pole repeated contemptuously, all red as a carrot with indignation. “Soon it will be impossible to come here!” There was a stirring in the room, some murmuring was heard, but more laughter.

“Leave . . . please . . . let’s go now!” Lambert murmured, completely at a loss, trying somehow to get Andreev out of the room. Giving Lambert a searching look and figuring that at this point he could get money from him, the man agreed to follow him. It was probably not the first time he had used this shameless method to knock money out of Lambert. Trishatov also made as if to run after them, but looked at me and stayed.

“Ah, how nasty!” he said, covering his eyes with his slender fingers.

“Very nasty, sirs,” the pockmarked one whispered this time with a very angered air. Meanwhile Lambert came back almost completely pale and, with lively gesticulations, began whispering something to the pockmarked one. The latter meanwhile ordered the waiter to quickly serve coffee. He listened squeamishly; he evidently wanted to leave quickly. And, nevertheless, the whole incident was merely a schoolboy prank. Trishatov, with his cup of coffee, came over from his place and sat next to me.

“I like him very much,” he began, addressing me with such a candid air as though he had always been talking to me about it. “You wouldn’t believe how unhappy Andreev is. He ate and drank up his sister’s dowry, and ate and drank up everything they had, the year he served in the army, and I can see how he suffers now. And as for his not washing—it’s from despair. And he has terribly strange thoughts: he suddenly tells you that a scoundrel and an honest man are all the same and there’s no difference; and that there’s no need to do anything, either good or bad, or it’s all the same—you can do either good or bad, but the best thing of all is to lie there without taking your clothes off for a month at a time, drink, eat, sleep—and that’s all. But, believe me, he just says it. And you know, I even think he carried on like that just now because he wanted to finish completely with Lambert. He spoke of it yesterday. Believe me, sometimes at night or when he’s been sitting alone for a long time, he begins to weep, and, you know, when he weeps, it’s in some special way, as no one else weeps: he starts howling, howling terribly, and that, you know, is still more pitiful . . . And besides, he’s so big and strong, and suddenly—he’s just howling. Such a poor fellow, isn’t it so? I want to save him, but I’m such a nasty, lost little brat myself, you wouldn’t believe it! Will you let me in, Dolgoruky, if I ever come to see you?”

“Oh, do come, I even like you.”

“What on earth for? Well, but thank you. Listen, let’s drink another glass. Though—what’s the matter with me?—you’d better not drink. It’s true what he said, that you mustn’t drink more,” he suddenly winked at me significantly, “but I’ll drink even so. I’m all right now, but, believe me, I can’t restrain myself in anything. Just tell me I’m not to dine in restaurants anymore, and I’m ready for anything just to go and do it. Oh, we sincerely want to be honest, I assure you, only we keep postponing it.

And the years go by—all the best years! ²⁴

And I’m terribly afraid he’ll hang himself. He’ll go and not tell anybody. He’s like that. Nowadays they all hang themselves; who knows—maybe there are a lot like us? I, for instance, simply can’t live without spare cash. The spare cash is much more important for me than the necessary. Listen, do you like music? I’m terribly fond of it. I’ll play something for you when I come to see you. I play the piano very well, and I studied for a long time. I studied seriously. If I were to write an opera, you know, I’d take the subject from Faust. ²⁵I like that theme very much. I keep creating the scene in the cathedral, just so, imagining it in my head. A Gothic cathedral, inside, choirs, hymns, Gretchen enters, and, you know, the choirs are medieval, so that you can just hear the fifteenth century. Gretchen is in grief, first there’s a recitative, quiet but terrible, tormenting, but the choirs rumble gloomily, sternly, indifferently:

Dies irae, dies illa! ²⁶

And suddenly—the devil’s voice, the devil’s song. He’s invisible, it’s just a song, alongside the hymns, together with the hymns, it almost coincides with them, and yet it’s quite different—it has to be done that way somehow. The song is long, tireless, it’s a tenor, it must be a tenor. He starts quietly, tenderly: ‘Remember, Gretchen, how you, still innocent, still a child, used to come with your mama to this cathedral and prattle out your prayers from an old book?’ But the song grows stronger, more passionate, more impetuous; the notes get higher: there are tears in it, anguish, tireless, hopeless, and, finally, despair: ‘There is no forgiveness, Gretchen, there is no forgiveness for you here!’ Gretchen wants to pray, but only cries burst from her breast—you know, when your breast is contracted with tears—but Satan’s song doesn’t stop, ever more deeply it pierces the soul, like a sharp point, ever higher—and suddenly it breaks off almost with a shout: ‘It’s all over, you are cursed!’ Gretchen falls on her knees, clasps her hands before her—and here comes her prayer, something very short, half recitative, but naïve, without any polish, something medieval in the highest degree, four lines, only four lines in all—there are several such notes in Stradella ²⁷—and at the last note she swoons! Commotion. She’s lifted, borne up—and here suddenly a thundering choir. It’s like an assault of voices, an inspired chorus, victorious, overwhelming, something like our ‘Up-borne-by-the-an-gel-ichosts’ ²⁸—so that everything’s shaken to its foundations, and everything changes into an ecstatic, exultant, universal exclamation—‘Hosanna!’—as if it were the cry of the whole universe, and she’s borne up, borne up, and here the curtain falls! No, you know, if I could, I’d have done something! Only I can’t do anything now, but only keep dreaming. I keep dreaming and dreaming; my whole life has turned into a dream, I even dream at night. Ah, Dolgoruky, have you read Dickens’s Old Curiosity Shop?”

“I have. What about it?”

“Do you remember . . . Wait, I’ll drink another glass . . . Do you remember that place at the end, when they—that crazy old man and that lovely thirteen-year-old girl, his granddaughter—after their fantastic flight and wanderings, finally find refuge somewhere on the edge of England, near some medieval Gothic cathedral, and the girl obtains some post there, showing the cathedral to visitors . . . And then, once, the sun is setting, and this child is standing on the porch of the cathedral, all bathed in the last rays, standing and watching the sunset with quiet, pensive contemplation in her child’s soul, a soul astonished as before some riddle, because the one and the other are like a riddle—the sun as God’s thought, and the cathedral as man’s thought . . . isn’t it so? Oh, I don’t know how to express it, only God likes such first thoughts from children . . . And there, next to her on the steps, this mad old man, the grandfather, stares at her with a fixed gaze . . . You know, there’s nothing special in this picture from Dickens, absolutely nothing, but you’ll never forget it, and this remains in all of Europe—why? Here is the beautiful! Here is innocence! Eh! I don’t know what it is, only it’s good. I was always reading novels in high school. You know, I have a sister in the country, only a year older than me . . . Oh, it’s all been sold there now, and there’s no longer any estate! We sat on the terrace, under our old lindens, and read that novel, and the sun was also setting, and suddenly we stopped reading and said to each other that we, too, would be good, and we, too, would be beautiful—I was preparing for the university then and . . . Ah, Dolgoruky, you know, each of us has his memories! . . .”

And suddenly he leaned his pretty little head on my shoulder—and wept. I felt very, very sorry for him. True, he had drunk a lot of wine, but he had talked so sincerely with me, like a brother, with such feeling . . . Suddenly, at that moment, a shout came from the street and a strong rapping of knuckles on our window (the windows here are one-piece, big, and it was on the ground floor as well, so that it’s possible to knock from the street). It was the ejected Andreev.

‘Ohé, Lambert! Où est Lambert? As-tu vu Lambert?” his wild shout resounded in the street.

“Ah, but he’s here! So he hasn’t gone?” exclaimed my boy, tearing from his place.

“The check!” Lambert rasped to the waiter. His hands even trembled with anger as he went to pay, but the pockmarked one wouldn’t let Lambert pay for him.

“But why? Didn’t I invite you, didn’t you accept the invitation?”

“No, permit me.” The pockmarked one took out his purse and, having calculated his share, paid separately.

“You offend me, Semyon Sidorych!”

“That’s how I want it, sir,” Semyon Sidorovich snapped and, taking his hat and not saying good-bye to anyone, walked out of the room alone. Lambert threw the money at the waiter and hastily ran out after him, even forgetting about me in his confusion. Trishatov and I went out after all the rest. Andreev was standing by the entrance like a milepost, waiting for Trishatov.

“Blackguard!” Lambert couldn’t keep from saying.

“Uh-uh!” Andreev growled at him, and with one swing of his arm he knocked off his round hat, which rolled along the pavement. The humiliated Lambert rushed to pick it up.

“Vingt-cinq roubles!” ⁸⁸Andreev showed Trishatov the banknote he had wrested from Lambert earlier.

“Enough,” Trishatov cried to him. “Why do you keep making a row? . . . And why did you skin him for twenty-five roubles? You only had seven coming.”

“What do you mean, skin him? He promised we’d dine in a private room with Athenian women, and he served up the pockmarked one instead of the women, and, besides that, I didn’t finish eating and froze in the cold a sure eighteen roubles’ worth. He had seven roubles outstanding, which makes exactly twenty-five for you.”

“Get the hell out of here, both of you!” yelled Lambert. “I’m throwing you both out, and I’ll tie you in little knots . . .”

“Lambert, I’m throwing you out, and I’ll tie you in little knots!” cried Andreev. “ Adieu, mon prince, ⁸⁹don’t drink any more wine! Off we go, Petya! Ohé, Lambert! Où est Lambert? As-tu vu Lambert?” he roared one last time, moving off with enormous strides.

“So I’ll come to see you, may I?” Trishatov hastily babbled to me, hurrying after his friend.

Lambert and I remained alone.

“ Well . . . let’s go!” he uttered, as if he had difficulty catching his breath and even as if demented.

“Where should I go? I’m not going anywhere with you!” I hastened to cry in defiance.

“How do you mean, not going?” he roused himself up fearfully, coming to his senses all at once. “But I’ve only been waiting for us to be left alone!”

“But where on earth can we go?” I confess, I also had a slight ringing in my head from the three glasses of champagne and two of sherry.

“This way, over this way, you see?”

“But the sign says fresh oysters, you see? It’s a foul-smelling place . . .”

“That’s because you’ve just eaten, but it’s Miliutin’s shop; we won’t eat oysters, I’ll give you champagne . . .”

“I don’t want it! You want to get me drunk.”

“They told you that; they were laughing at you. You believe the scoundrels!”

“No, Trishatov is not a scoundrel. But I myself know how to be careful—that’s what!”

“So you’ve got your own character?”

“Yes, I’ve got character, a bit more than you have, because you’re enslaved to the first comer. You disgraced us, you apologized to the Poles like a lackey. You must have been beaten often in taverns?”

“But we have to have a talk, cghretin!” he cried with that scornful impatience which all but said, “And you’re at it, too?” “What, are you afraid or something? Are you my friend or not?”

“I’m not your friend, and you’re a crook. Let’s go, if only to prove that I’m not afraid of you. Ah, what a foul smell, it smells of cheese! What nastiness!”

Chapter Six

I

I ASK YOU once more to remember that I had a slight ringing in my head; if it hadn’t been for that, I would have talked and acted differently. In the back room of this shop one could actually eat oysters, and we sat down at a little table covered with a foul, dirty cloth. Lambert ordered champagne; a glass of cold, golden-colored wine appeared before me and looked at me temptingly; but I was vexed.

“You see, Lambert, what mainly offends me is that you think you can order me around now, as you used to at Touchard’s, while you yourself are enslaved by everybody here.”

“Cghretin! Eh, let’s clink!”

“You don’t even deign to pretend before me; you might at least conceal that you want to get me drunk.”

“You’re driveling, and you’re drunk. You have to drink more, and you’ll be more cheerful. Take your glass, go on, take it!”

“What’s all this ‘go on, take it’? I’m leaving, and that’s the end of it.”

And I actually made as if to get up. He became terribly angry.

“It’s Trishatov whispering to you against me: I saw the two of you whispering there. You’re a cghretin in that case. Alphonsine is even repulsed when he comes near her . . . He’s vile. I’ll tell you what he’s like.”

“You’ve already said it. All you’ve got is Alphonsine, you’re terribly narrow.”

“Narrow?” He didn’t understand. “They’ve gone over to the pockmarked one now. That’s what! That’s why I threw them out. They’re dishonest. That pockmarked villain will corrupt them, too. But I always demanded that they behave nobly.”

I sat down, took the glass somehow mechanically, and drank a gulp.

“I’m incomparably superior to you in education,” I said. But he was only too glad that I had sat down, and at once poured me more wine.

“So you’re afraid of them?” I went on teasing him (and at that point I was certainly more vile than he was himself ). “Andreev knocked your hat off, and you gave him twenty-five roubles for it.”

“I did, but he’ll pay me back. They’re rebellious, but I’ll tie them into . . .”

“You’re very worried about the pockmarked one. And you know, it seems to me that I’m the only one you’ve got left now. All your hopes are resting on me alone now—eh?”

“Yes, Arkashka, that’s so: you’re my only remaining friend; you put it so well!” he slapped me on the shoulder.

What could be done with such a crude man? He was totally undeveloped and took mockery for praise.

“You could save me from some bad things, if you were a good comrade, Arkady,” he went on, looking at me affectionately.

“In what way could I save you?”

“You know what way. Without me you’re like a cghretin, and you’re sure to be stupid, but I’d give you thirty thousand, and we’d go halves, and you yourself know how. Well, who are you, just look: you’ve got nothing—no name, no family—and here’s a pile all at once; and on such money you know what a career you can start!”

I was simply amazed at such a method. I had decidedly assumed he would dodge, but he began with such directness, such boyish directness, with me. I decided to listen to him out of breadth and . . . out of terrible curiosity.

“You see, Lambert, you won’t understand this, but I agree to listen to you because I’m broad,” I declared firmly and took another sip from the glass. Lambert at once refilled it.

“Here’s the thing, Arkady: if a man like Bjoring dared to heap abuse on me and strike me in front of a lady I adored, I don’t know what I’d do! But you took it, and I find you repulsive, you’re a dishrag!”

“How dare you say Bjoring struck me!” I cried, turning red. “It’s rather I who struck him, and not he me.”

“No, he struck you, not you him.”

“Lies, I also stepped on his foot!”

“But he shoved you with his arm and told the lackeys to drag you away . . . and she sat and watched from the carriage and laughed at you—she knows you have no father and can be insulted.”

“I don’t know, Lambert, we’re having a schoolboy conversation, which I’m ashamed of. You’re doing it to get me all worked up, and so crudely and openly, as if I were some sort of sixteen-year-old. You arranged it with Anna Andreevna!” I cried, trembling with anger and mechanically sipping wine all the while.

“Anna Andreevna is a rascal! She’ll hoodwink you, and me, and the whole world! I’ve been waiting for you, because you’re better able to finish with the other one.”

“What other one?”

“With Madame Akhmakov. I know everything. You told me yourself that she’s afraid of the letter you’ve got . . .”

“What letter . . . you’re lying . . . Have you seen her?” I muttered in confusion.

“I’ve seen her. She’s good-looking. Très belle, ⁹⁰and you’ve got taste.”

“I know you’ve seen her; only you didn’t dare to speak with her, and I want you also not to dare to speak ofher.”

“You’re still little, and she laughs at you—that’s what! We had a pillar of virtue like her in Moscow! Oh, how she turned up her nose! But she trembled when we threatened to tell all, and she obeyed at once; and we took the one and the other: both the money and the other thing—you understand what? Now she’s back in society, unapproachable—pah, the devil, how high she flies, and what a carriage, and if only you’d seen in what sort of back room it all went on! You haven’t lived enough; if you knew what little back rooms they’ll venture into . . .”

“So I’ve thought,” I murmured irrepressibly.

“They’re depraved to the tips of their fingers; you don’t know what they’re capable of! Alphonsine lived in one such house; she found it quite repulsive.”

“I’ve thought about that,” I confirmed again.

“They beat you, and you feel sorry . . .”

“Lambert, you’re a villain, curse you!” I cried out, suddenly somehow understanding and trembling. “I saw it all in a dream, you stood there, and Anna Andreevna . . . Oh, curse you! Did you really think I was such a scoundrel? I saw it in a dream, because I just knew you were going to say it. And, finally, all this can’t be so simple that you’d tell me about it all so simply and directly!”

“Look how angry he is! Tut-tut-tut!” Lambert drawled, laughing and triumphant. “Well, brother Arkashka, now I’ve learned all I needed to know. That’s why I was waiting for you. Listen, it means you love her and want to take revenge on Bjoring—that’s what I needed to know. I suspected it all along, while I was waiting for you. Ceci posé, celà change la question. ⁹¹And so much the better, because she loves you herself. So get married, don’t delay, that’s the best. And you can’t possibly do otherwise, you’ve hit on the right thing. And then know, Arkady, that you have a friend—me, that is—whom you can saddle and ride on. This friend will help you and get you married; I’ll leave no stone unturned, Arkasha! And afterwards you can give your old friend thirty thousand for his labors, eh? But I will help you, don’t doubt that. I know all the fine points in these matters, and they’ll give you a whole dowry, and you’ll be a rich man with a career!”

Though my head was spinning, I looked at Lambert in amazement. He was serious, that is, not really serious, but I could see clearly that he fully believed in the possibility of getting me married, and even accepted the idea with rapture. Naturally, I also saw that he was trying to ensnare me like a little boy (I saw it right then for certain), but the thought of marrying her so pierced me through that, though I was astonished at Lambert’s ability to believe in such a fantasy, at the same time I rushed to believe it myself, though without losing even for a moment the awareness that, of course, it couldn’t be realized for anything. It somehow all sank in together.

“Can it be possible?” I babbled.

“Why not? You’ll show her the document—she’ll turn coward and marry you so as not to lose the money.”

I decided not to stop Lambert in his meanness, because he laid it out for me so simpleheartedly that he didn’t even suspect I might suddenly become indignant; but I murmured, nevertheless, that I wouldn’t want to marry only by force.

“Not for anything do I want to use force; how can you be so mean as to suppose that in me?”

“Ehh! She’ll marry you of herself: it won’t be your doing, she’ll get frightened herself and marry you. And she’ll also do it because she loves you,” Lambert caught himself.

“That’s a lie. You’re laughing at me. How do you know she loves me?”

“Absolutely. I know. And Anna Andreevna thinks so, too. I’m telling you seriously and truthfully that Anna Andreevna thinks so. And then I’ll also tell you another thing, when you come to my place, and you’ll see that she loves you. Alphonsine was in Tsarskoe; she also found things out there . . .”

“What could she have found out there?”

“Let’s go to my place. She’ll tell you herself, and you’ll be pleased. What makes you worse than another man? You’re handsome, you’re well bred . . .”

“Yes, I’m well bred,” I whispered, barely pausing for breath. My heart was throbbing and, of course, not from wine alone.

“You’re handsome. You’re well dressed.”

“Yes, I’m well dressed . . .”

“And you’re kind . . .”

“Yes, I’m kind.”

“Then why shouldn’t she agree? After all, Bjoring won’t take her without money, and you can deprive her of money—so she’ll get frightened; you’ll marry her, and that will be your revenge on Bjoring. You told me yourself that night, after you froze, that she was in love with you.”

“Did I tell you that? Surely I didn’t put it that way.”

“No, that way.”

“I was delirious. Surely I must also have told you then about the document?”

“Yes, you said you had this letter, and I thought: since he has such a letter, why should he lose what’s his?”

“This is all fantasy, and I’m by no means so stupid as to believe it,” I muttered. “First, there’s the difference in age, and, second, I have no name.”

“She’ll marry you; she can’t do otherwise when so much money’s to be lost—I’ll arrange that. And besides, she loves you. You know, that old prince is quite well disposed towards you; through his patronage you know what sort of connections you could make; and as for the fact that you have no name, nowadays that’s all unnecessary: once you’ve grabbed the money, you’ll get on, you’ll get on, and in ten years you’ll be such a millionaire that all Russia will be talking, and what name do you need then? You can buy up a baron in Austria. But once you marry her, you’ll have to keep her in hand. They need it good and proper. A woman, if she’s in love, likes to be kept in a tight fist. A woman likes character in a man. But once you frighten her with the letter, from that time on you’ll also show her your character. ‘Ah,’ she’ll say, ‘so young, but he’s got character.’”