Текст книги "The Adolescent"

Автор книги: Федор Достоевский

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“And what if she doesn’t?” Nastasya Egorovna kept her gaze fixed on me.

“Nastasya Egorovna, I remember your Olya . . . let me in.”

Her lips and chin suddenly began to tremble:

“Dear heart, maybe for Olya’s sake . . . for your feeling . . . Don’t abandon Anna Andreevna, dear heart! You won’t abandon her, eh? You won’t?”

“I won’t!”

“Give me your great word, then, that you won’t rush in on them and start shouting, if I put you in there?”

“I swear on my honor, Nastasya Egorovna!”

She took hold of my frock coat, let me into the dark room adjacent to the one they were sitting in, led me barely audibly over the soft rug to the door, placed me just at the lowered portière and, lifting a tiny corner of the portière, showed me both of them.

I stayed and she left. Naturally, I stayed. I realized that I was eavesdropping, eavesdropping on other people’s secrets, but I stayed. How could I not stay—what of the double? Hadn’t he smashed an icon before my eyes?

IV

THEY WERE SITTING opposite each other at the same table at which he and I had drunk wine yesterday to his “resurrection.” I could see their faces very well. She was in a simple black dress, beautiful, and apparently calm, as always. He was speaking, and she was listening to him with extreme and obliging attention. Maybe a certain timidity could be seen in her. He was terribly agitated. I arrived when the conversation had already begun, and therefore understood nothing for a certain time. I remember she suddenly asked:

“And I was the cause?”

“No, it was I who was the cause,” he replied, “and you were only blamelessly to blame. Do you know that one can be blamelessly to blame? That is the most unpardonable blame, and it almost always gets punished,” he added, laughing strangely. “And I really thought for a moment that I had quite forgotten you, and I quite laughed at my stupid passion . . . but you know that. And, anyhow, what do I care about the man you’re about to marry? I proposed to you yesterday, forgive me for that, it was absurd, and yet there was no alternative . . . what could I have done except that absurdity? I don’t know . . .”

He laughed perplexedly at these words, suddenly raising his eyes to her; till that time he had spoken as if looking away. If I had been in her place, I would have been frightened by that laughter, I could feel it. He suddenly got up from his chair.

“Tell me, how could you have agreed to come here?” he asked suddenly, as if remembering the main thing. “My invitation and my whole letter were absurd . . . Wait, I may still guess how it happened that you agreed to come, but—why have you come?—that’s the question. Can it be that you came only out of fear?”

“I came to see you,” she said, studying him with timid wariness. They were both silent for half a minute. Versilov lowered himself onto the chair again and began in a meek but deeply moved, almost trembling voice:

“I haven’t seen you for a terribly long time, Katerina Nikolaevna, so long that I almost considered it impossible ever to be sitting beside you as I am now, looking into your face and listening to your voice . . . For two years we haven’t seen each other, for two years we haven’t talked. I didn’t think I’d ever be talking to you. Well, so be it, what’s past is past, and what there is now will vanish tomorrow like smoke—so be it! I accept, because once again there’s no alternative, but don’t just go away now for nothing,” he suddenly added almost beseechingly, “since you’ve done me the charity of coming, don’t go away for nothing: answer me one question!”

“What question?”

“You and I will never see each other again and—what is it to you? Tell me the truth once and for all, to the one question intelligent people never ask: did you ever love me, or was I . . . mistaken?”

She blushed.

“I did love you,” she said.

I was just waiting for her to say that—oh, the truthful one, oh, the sincere one, oh, the honest one!

“And now?” he continued.

“Now I don’t.”

“And you laugh?”

“No, I just smiled inadvertently, because I knew you’d ask, ‘And now?’ And I smiled because . . . because when you guess something, you always smile . . .”

It was even strange. I had never yet seen her so wary, even almost timid, and so abashed. He was devouring her with his eyes.

“I know you don’t love me . . . and—you don’t love me at all?”

“Maybe I don’t love you at all. I don’t love you,” she added firmly, not smiling now and not blushing. “Yes, I did love you, but not for long. I very soon stopped loving you then . . .”

“I know, I know, you saw it wasn’t what you wanted, but . . . what do you want? Explain it to me once more . . .”

“Did I already explain it to you sometime? What I want? But I’m a most ordinary woman; I’m a calm woman, I like . . . I like merry people.”

“Merry?”

“You see, I don’t even know how to speak with you. It seems to me that if you could love me less, then I could come to love you,” she again smiled timidly. The fullest sincerity flashed in her reply, and could she possibly not have understood that her reply was the most definitive formula of their relations, which explained and resolved everything? Oh, how he must have understood that! But he looked at her and smiled strangely.

“Is Bjoring merry?” he went on asking.

“Oh, he shouldn’t trouble you at all,” she answered with a certain haste. “I’m marrying him only because with him it will be calmest for me. My soul will remain entirely my own.”

“They say you’ve again come to like society, the world?”

“Not society. I know that in our society there’s the same disorder as everywhere; but the external forms are still beautiful, so that if one lives only so as to pass by, it’s better here than anywhere else.”

“I’ve begun hearing the word ‘disorder’ quite often. Were you also frightened then by my disorder, the chains, the ideas, the stupidities?”

“No, it wasn’t quite that . . .”

“Then what was it? For God’s sake, say it all straight out.”

“Well, I’ll tell you straight out, because I consider you of the greatest intelligence . . . I always thought there was something ridiculous in you.”

Having said that, she suddenly blushed, as if realizing that she had done something extremely imprudent.

“I can forgive you a great deal for telling me that,” he said strangely.

“I didn’t finish,” she hurried on, turning more red. “It’s I who am ridiculous . . . for talking to you like a fool.”

“No, you’re not ridiculous, you’re merely a depraved society woman!” He turned terribly pale. “I also didn’t finish earlier, when I asked you why you came. Would you like me to finish? There exists a certain letter, a document, and you are terribly afraid of it, because your father, with that letter in his hands, might curse you while he lives and legally deprive you of your inheritance in his will. You are afraid of that letter, and you have come for that letter,” he spoke nearly trembling all over, and his teeth even almost chattering. She listened to him with a wistful and pained expression on her face.

“I know that you can cause me considerable unpleasantness,” she said, as if warding off his words, “but I’ve come not so much to persuade you not to persecute me, as to see you yourself. I’ve even wished very much to meet you for a long time now, I myself . . . But I find you the same as you were before,” she suddenly added, as if carried away by a particular and decisive thought and even by some strange and sudden feeling.

“And you hoped to see me different? This—after that letter of mine about your depravity? Tell me, did you come here without any fear?”

“I came because I once loved you; but, you know, I beg you, please, don’t threaten me with anything while we’re together now, don’t remind me of my bad thoughts and feelings. If you could talk to me about something else, I’d be very glad. Let there be threats afterwards, but something different now . . . I truly came to see and hear you for a moment. Well, but if you can’t, then kill me straight out, only don’t threaten me and don’t torture yourself before me,” she concluded, looking at him in strange expectation, as if she really supposed he might kill her. He got up from his chair again and, looking at her with an ardent gaze, said firmly:

“You will leave here without the slightest offense.”

“Ah, yes, your word of honor!” she smiled.

“No, not only because I gave my word of honor in the letter, but because I want to and shall think about you all night . . .”

“To torment yourself ?”

“I always imagine you when I’m alone. All I do is talk to you. I go into slums and dens and, as a contrast, you appear before me at once. But you always laugh at me, as now . . .” he said as if beside himself.

“Never, never have I laughed at you!” she exclaimed in a deeply moved voice and as if with the greatest compassion showing on her face. “If I came, I tried as hard as I could to do it so as not to hurt you in any way,” she suddenly added. “I came here to tell you that I almost love you . . . Forgive me, I may not have said it right,” she added hastily.

He laughed.

“What makes you unable to pretend? What makes you such a simpleton, what makes you unlike everyone else . . . Well, how can you say to a man you’re driving away, ‘I almost love you’?”

“I just didn’t know how to put it,” she hurried on, “I didn’t say it right; it’s because I’ve always been abashed in your presence and have never known how to speak, ever since our first meeting. And if I used the wrong words when I said I ‘almost love you,’ in my thought it was almost so—that’s why I said it, though I love you with that . . . well, that generallove with which one loves everyone and which there’s no shame in confessing . . .”

He listened silently, not taking his ardent gaze off her.

“I, of course, offend you,” he went on as if beside himself. “This must indeed be what they call passion . . . I know one thing, that with you I’m finished; without you also. It’s all the same with you or without you, wherever you are, you’re always with me. I also know that I can hate you very much, more than I love you . . . However, I’ve long ceased thinking of anything—it’s all the same to me. I’m only sorry that I love a woman like you . . .”

His voice faltered; he went on as if breathless:

“What’s the matter? You find what I’m saying wild?” He smiled a pale smile. “I think that, if only it would attract you, I could stand on one leg on a pillar somewhere for thirty years . . . I see you pity me, your face says, ‘I’d love you if I could, but I can’t . . .’ Yes? Never mind, I have no pride. I’m ready, like a beggar, to take any charity from you—any . . . do you hear? . . . What pride can a beggar have?”

She got up and went over to him.

“My friend!” she said, touching his shoulder with her hand and with inexpressible feeling in her face. “I cannot listen to such words! I’ll think of you all my life as of the most precious of men, as of the greatest of hearts, as of something sacred out of all that I can respect and love. Andrei Petrovich, understand my words: there’s something I came for now, dear man, dear before and now! I’ll never forget how you shook my mind during our first meetings. Let’s part as friends, and you will be my most serious and most dear thought in all my life!”

“‘Let’s part and then I’ll love you,’ I’ll love you, only let’s part. Listen,” he said, quite pale, “give me more charity: don’t love me, don’t live with me, let’s never see each other; I’ll be your slave, if you call me, I’ll vanish instantly if you don’t want to see or hear me, only . . . only don’t marry anyone!”

My heart was wrung painfully when I heard such words. This naïvely humiliating request was the more pathetic, it pierced the heart the more strongly, for being so naked and impossible. Yes, of course, he was asking for charity! Well, but could he think she’d agree? And yet he stooped to the attempt: he attempted to ask! This last degree of dispiritedness was unbearable to see. All the features of her face suddenly twisted as if with pain; but before she had time to say a word, he suddenly came to his senses:

“I’ll exterminateyou!” he said suddenly in a strange, distorted voice, not his own.

But her answer was also strange, also in an unexpected voice, not at all her own:

“If I were to give you charity,” she suddenly said firmly, “you’d revenge yourself on me for it afterwards still worse than you’re threatening now, because you’d never forget that you stood before me as such a beggar . . . I cannot listen to threats from you!” she concluded almost with indignation, looking at him all but in defiance.

“‘Threats from you,’ that is, from such a beggar! I was joking,” he said softly, smiling. “I won’t do anything to you, don’t be afraid, go now . . . and I’ll do all I can to send you that document—only go, go! I wrote you a stupid letter, and you responded to the stupid letter and came—we’re quits. Go this way,” he pointed to the door (she was about to pass through the room where I was standing behind the portière).

“Forgive me if you can,” she stopped in the doorway.

“Well, what if we meet as quite good friends someday and remember this scene with bright laughter?” he said suddenly; but all the features of his face trembled, as in a man overcome by a fit.

“Oh, God grant it!” she cried, pressing her hands together before her, but peering timorously into his face and as if trying to guess what he meant to say.

“Go. Much sense there is in the two of us, but you . . . Oh, you’re my kind of person! I wrote a crazy letter, and you agreed to come and say that you ‘almost love me.’ No, you and I—we’re people of the same madness! Always be mad like that, don’t change, and we’ll meet as friends—that I predict to you, I swear it to you!”

“And then I’ll certainly love you, because I feel it even now!” The woman in her couldn’t help herself and threw him these last words from the threshold.

She went out. I hastily and inaudibly moved to the kitchen and, almost without looking at Nastasya Egorovna, who was waiting for me, set off down the back stairs and across the courtyard to the street. But I only had time to see her get into a hired carriage that was waiting for her by the porch. I ran down the street.

Chapter Eleven

I

I WENT RUNNING to Lambert. Oh, how I wish I could give a semblance of logic and seek out the least bit of common sense in my acts that evening and all that night, but even now, when I can grasp everything, I’m in no way able to present the matter in proper and clear connection. There was a feeling here, or, better, a whole chaos of feelings, among which I was naturally bound to get lost. True, there was one chiefest feeling that overwhelmed me and commanded everything, but . . . need I confess it? The more so as I’m not certain . . .

I ran to Lambert, naturally, beside myself. I even frightened him and Alphonsinka at first. I’ve always noticed that the most lost, most crapulous Frenchmen are exceedingly attached, in their domestic life, to some sort of bourgeois order, to some sort of most prosaic daily routine of life established once and for all. However, Lambert very soon realized that something had happened and went into raptures, seeing me finally at his place, finally possessingme. That was all he thought about, day and night, those days! Oh, how he needed me! And now, when he had already lost all hope, I suddenly come on my own, and in such madness—precisely the state he needed.

“Wine, Lambert!” I shouted. “Let’s drink, let’s storm it up. Alphonsina, where’s your guitar?”

I won’t describe the scene—it’s superfluous. We drank, and I told him everything, everything. He listened greedily. I—and I was the first—directly suggested a plot to him, a conflagration. First of all, we must invite Katerina Nikolaevna here by letter . . .

“That can be done,” Lambert confirmed, snatching at every word I said.

Second, to be convincing, we must send a complete copy of her “document” with the letter, so that she can see straight off that she’s not being deceived.

“So we should, so we must!” Lambert confirmed, constantly exchanging glances with Alphonsinka.

Third, the one to invite her must be Lambert himself, on his own, in the manner of some unknown person just arrived from Moscow, and I must bring Versilov . . .

“Versilov can be done . . .” Lambert confirmed.

“Must be, not can be!” I cried. “It’s necessary! The whole thing’s being done for him!” I explained, sipping gulp after gulp from my glass. (All three of us were drinking, but it seems I alone drank the whole bottle of champagne, while they only made a show of it.) “Versilov and I will sit in the other room (we have to secure the other room, Lambert!), and when she suddenly agrees to everything—to the ransom in cash and to the otherransom, because they’re all mean—then Versilov and I will come out and catch her in all her meanness, and Versilov, seeing how loathsome she is, will be cured at once and will kick her out. But we need to have Bjoring there as well, so that he, too, can have a look at her!” I added in a frenzy.

“No, we don’t need Bjoring,” Lambert observed.

“We do, we do!” I yelled again. “You understand nothing, Lambert, because you’re stupid! On the contrary, let the scandal spread through high society—that way we’ll be revenged both on high society and on her, and let her be punished! She’ll give you a promissory note, Lambert . . . I don’t need money, I spit on money; you’ll stoop down to pick it up and put it in your pocket along with my spit, but instead I will crush her!”

“Yes, yes,” Lambert kept confirming, “it’s all as you . . .” He kept exchanging glances with Alphonsinka.

“Lambert! She’s terribly in awe of Versilov; I’ve just been convinced of it,” I babbled to him.

“It’s good that you spied it all out. I never supposed you were such a spy and had so much sense!” He said that in order to flatter me.

“Lies, Frenchman, I’m not a spy, but there is a lot of sense in me! And you know, Lambert, she loves him!” I went on, trying with all my might to speak myself out. “But she won’t marry him, because Bjoring’s an officer of the guards and Versilov is only a magnanimous man and friend of mankind, a comical person, in their opinion, and nothing more! Oh, she understands this passion and enjoys it, she flirts, she entices, but she won’t marry him! She’s a woman, she’s a serpent! Every woman is a serpent, and every serpent is a woman! He’s got to be cured; he’s got to have the scales torn off. Let him see what she’s like, and he’ll be cured. I’ll bring him to you, Lambert!”

“So you must,” Lambert kept confirming, pouring more for me every minute.

Above all, he simply trembled over not angering me with something, over not contradicting me, and getting me to drink more. This was so crude and obvious that even I couldn’t help noticing it then. But I myself couldn’t leave for anything; I kept drinking and talking, and I wanted terribly to speak myself out finally. When Lambert went for another bottle, Alphonsinka played some Spanish motif on the guitar; I almost burst into tears.

“Lambert, you don’t know all!” I exclaimed with deep feeling. “This man absolutely must be saved, because he’s surrounded by . . . sorcery. If she married him, the next morning, after the first night, he’d kick her out . . . because that does happen. Because such violent, wild love works like a fit, like a deadly noose, like an illness, and—as soon as you reach satisfaction—the scales fall at once and the opposite feeling appears: disgust and hatred, the wish to exterminate, to crush. Do you know the story of Abishag, ⁴⁰Lambert, have you read it?”

“No, I don’t recall. A novel?” murmured Lambert.

“Oh, you know nothing, Lambert! You’re terribly, terribly uneducated . . . but I spit on that. It makes no difference. Oh, he loves mama; he kissed her portrait; he’ll drive the other woman out the next morning and go to mama himself; but it will be too late, and that’s why we must save him now . . .”

Towards the end I started weeping bitterly; but I still went on talking, and I drank terribly much. The most characteristic feature consisted in the fact that Lambert, all evening, never once asked about the “document,” that is, where it was. That is, that I should show it to him, lay it on the table. What, it seems, would have been more natural than to ask about it, when we were arranging to act together? Another feature: we only said it must be done, that we must do “it” without fail, but where it would be, how and when—of that we also didn’t say a word! He only yessed me and exchanged glances with Alphonsinka—nothing more! Of course, I couldn’t put anything together then, but all the same I remember it.

I ended by falling asleep on his sofa without undressing. I slept for a very long time and woke up very late. I remember that, on waking up, I lay for some time on the sofa, as if stunned, trying to remember and put things together and pretending I was still asleep. But Lambert turned out not to be in the room: he had left. It was going on ten o’clock; the stove was burning and crackling, exactly as then, after that night, when I found myself at Lambert’s for the first time. But Alphonsinka was keeping watch on me from behind the screen. I noticed it at once, because she peeked out a couple of times and checked on me, but I closed my eyes each time and pretended I was still asleep. I did that because I was crushed and had to make sense of my situation. I felt with horror the whole absurdity and loathsomeness of my night’s confession to Lambert, my complicity with him, my mistake in having run to him! But, thank God, the document still remained with me, was still sewn up in my side pocket; I felt it with my hand—it was there! So all I had to do right then was jump up and run away, and there was no point in being ashamed of Lambert afterwards; Lambert wasn’t worth it.

But I was also ashamed of myself! I was my own judge, and—God, what there was in my soul! But I’m not going to describe that infernal, unbearable feeling and that consciousness of filth and vileness. But all the same I must confess it, because it seems the time has come for that. It should be pointed out in my notes. And so, let it be known that I wanted to disgrace her and witness her giving the ransom to Lambert (oh, baseness!), not because I wanted to save the mad Versilov and return him to mama, but because . . . maybe I myself was in love with her, in love and jealous! Jealous of whom? Of Bjoring? Of Versilov? Of all those she would look at or talk with at a ball, while I stood in the corner, ashamed of myself? . . . Oh, unseemliness!

In short, I don’t know whom I was jealous of; I only felt and had become convinced during the past evening, like two times two, that for me she was lost, that this woman would spurn and deride me for my falseness and absurdity. She was truthful and honest, while I—I was a spy, and with documents!

All this I’ve kept hidden in my heart ever since, but now the time has come, and I’m drawing the bottom line. But, once again and for the last time: maybe I’ve heaped lies on myself by a whole half or even seventy-five percent! That night I hated her, like a man beside himself, and later like a raging drunkard. I’ve already said it was a chaos of feelings and sensations in which I myself could make out nothing. But, all the same, they had to be spoken out, because at least a part of these feelings was certainly there.

With irrepressible disgust and with the irrepressible intention of smoothing everything over, I suddenly jumped up from the sofa; but just as I jumped up, Alphonsinka instantly jumped out. I grabbed my coat and hat, and told her to tell Lambert that I was raving the night before, that I had slandered the woman, that I was deliberately joking, and that Lambert should never dare come to me . . . All this I brought out anyhow, haphazardly, hastily, in French, and, of course, awfully unclearly, but, to my surprise, Alphonsinka understood it all terribly well. But, what was most surprising, she was even as if glad of something.

“ Oui, oui,” she agreed with me, “ c’est une honte! Une dame . . . Oh, vous êtes généreux, vous! Soyez tranquille, je ferai voir raison àLambert . . .” ⁹⁹

So that even at that moment I should have been thrown into perplexity, seeing such an unexpected turnabout in her feelings, which meant, perhaps, in Lambert’s as well. I went out silently, however; my soul was troubled and I wasn’t reasoning well. Oh, afterwards I considered it all, but by then it was too late! Oh, what an infernal machination came out here! I’ll stop and explain everything beforehand; otherwise it will be impossible for the reader to understand.

The thing was that, back at my first meeting with Lambert, while I was thawing out in his apartment, I had murmured to him, like a fool, that the document was sewn up in my pocket. Then I had suddenly fallen asleep for a while on the sofa in the corner, and Lambert had immediately felt my pocket then and made sure that a piece of paper was actually sewn up in it. Several times later he had made sure that the paper was still there: so, for instance, during our dinner at the Tartars’, I remember he purposely put his arm around my waist several times. Realizing, finally, how important this paper was, he put together his own totally particular plan, which I never supposed he had. Like a fool, I imagined all the while that he was so persistently inviting me to his place solely to persuade me to join company with him and not act otherwise than together. But, alas! he invited me for something quite different! He invited me in order to get me dead drunk and, when I was sprawled out there, unconscious and snoring, to cut my pocket open and take possession of the document. That’s just what he and Alphonsinka did that night; it was Alphonsinka who cut open the pocket. Having taken out the letter, her letter, my Moscow document, they took a simple sheet of note paper of the same size, put it into the cut pocket, and sewed it up again as if nothing had happened, so that I wouldn’t notice anything. Alphonsinka also did the sewing up. And I, almost to the very end, I—for a whole day and a half—went on thinking that I was in possession of the secret, and that Katerina Nikolaevna’s destiny was still in my hands!

A last word: this theft of the document was the cause of it all, all the remaining misfortunes!

II

NOW COME THE last twenty-four hours of my notes, and I’m at the final end!

It was, I think, around half-past ten when, agitated and, as far as I remember, somehow strangely distracted, but with a definitive resolve in my heart, I came trudging to my apartment. I was not in a hurry, I already knew how I was going to act. And suddenly, just as I entered our corridor, I understood at once that a new calamity had befallen and an extraordinary complication of matters had occurred: the old prince, having just been brought from Tsarskoe Selo, was in our apartment, and Anna Andreevna was with him!

He had been put not in my room, but in the two rooms next to mine, which belonged to the landlord. The day before, as it turned out, certain changes and embellishments, though of a minimal sort, had been carried out in these rooms. The landlord and his wife had moved to the tiny closet occupied by the fussy pockmarked tenant whom I have mentioned before, and the pockmarked tenant had been confiscated for the time being—I don’t know where to.

I was met by the landlord, who at once darted into my room. He did not have the same resolute air as the day before, but he was in an extraordinarily agitated state, equal, so to speak, to the event. I said nothing to him, but went to the corner and, clutching my head with my hands, stood there for about a minute. At first he thought I was “putting it on,” but in the end he couldn’t stand it and became alarmed.

“Is anything wrong?” he murmured. “I’ve been waiting to ask you,” he added, seeing that I didn’t answer, “whether you wouldn’t like to open this door, for direct communication with the prince’s rooms . . . rather than through the corridor?” He was pointing to the side door, which was always locked, and which communicated with his own rooms and now, therefore, with the prince’s quarters.

“Look here, Pyotr Ippolitovich,” I addressed him with a stern air, “I humbly beg you to go and invite Anna Andreevna here to my room for a talk. Have they been here long?”

“Must be nearly an hour.”

“So go.”

He went and brought back the strange reply that Anna Andreevna and Prince Nikolai Ivanovich were impatiently awaiting me in their rooms—meaning that Anna Andreevna did not wish to come. I straightened and cleaned my frock coat, which had become wrinkled during the night, washed, combed my hair, all of that unhurriedly, and, aware of how necessary it was to be cautious, went to see the old man.

The prince was sitting on the sofa at a round table, and Anna Andreevna was preparing tea for him in another corner, at another table covered with a tablecloth, on which the landlord’s samovar, polished as it had never been before, was boiling. I came in with the same stern look on my face, and the old man, instantly noticing it, gave a start, and the smile on his face quickly gave way to decided alarm. But I couldn’t keep it up, laughed at once, and held out my arms to him. The poor man simply threw himself into my embrace.

Unquestionably, I realized at once whom I was dealing with. First of all, it became as clear to me as two times two that, during the time since I last saw him, they had made the old man, who had even been almost hale and still at least somewhat sensible and with a certain character, into a sort of mummy, a sort of perfect child, fearful and mistrustful. I will add that he knew perfectly well why he had been brought here, and that everything had happened exactly as I explained above, when I ran ahead of myself. He was suddenly struck, broken, crushed by the news of his daughter’s betrayal and of the madhouse. He had allowed himself to be brought, so frightened that he scarcely knew what he was doing. He had been told that I was in possession of the secret, and held the key to the ultimate solution. I’ll say beforehand: it was this ultimate solution and key that he feared more than anything in the world. He expected that I’d just walk in there with some sort of sentence on my forehead and a paper in my hand, and he was awfully glad that I was prepared meanwhile to laugh and chatter about other things. When we embraced, he wept. I confess, I wept a bit, too. But I suddenly felt very sorry for him . . . Alphonsinka’s little dog went off into a high, bell-like barking and strained towards me from the sofa. He hadn’t parted from this tiny dog since the day he acquired it, and even slept with it.