desire to get into good society, not to be inferior to others in
spite of fortune. He had studied diligently and gone to the Dorpat
University from ambition. Poverty exasperated him, and made him watchful
and cunning. He expressed himself with originality; from his youth he
had adopted a special kind of stinging and exasperated eloquence. His
ideas did not rise above the common level; but his way of speaking made
him seem not only a clever, but even a very clever, man. Having taken
his degree as candidate, Pigasov decided to devote himself to the
scholastic profession; he understood that in any other career he could
not possibly be the equal of his associates. He tried to select them
from a higher rank and knew how to gain their good graces; even by
flattery, though he was always abusing them. But to do this he had not,
to speak plainly, enough raw material. Having educated himself through
no love for study, Pigasov knew very little thoroughly. He broke down
miserably in the public disputation, while another student who had
shared the same room with him, and who was constantly the subject of his
ridicule, a man of very limited ability who had received a careful and
solid education, gained a complete triumph. Pigasov was infuriated by
this failure, he threw all his books and manuscripts into the fire and
went into a government office. At first he did not get on badly, he made
a fair official, not very active, extremely self-confident and bold,
however; but he wanted to make his way more quickly, he made a false
step, got into trouble, and was obliged to retire from the service. He
spent three years on the property he had bought himself and suddenly
married a wealthy half-educated woman who was captivated by his
unceremonious and sarcastic manners. But Pigasov's character had become
so soured and irritable that family life was unendurable to him. After
living with him a few years, his wife went off secretly to Moscow and
sold her estate to an enterprising speculator; Pigasov had only just
finished building a house on it. Utterly crushed by this last blow,
Pigasov began a lawsuit with his wife, but gained nothing by it. After
this he lived in solitude, and went to see his neighbours, whom he
abused behind their backs and even to their faces, and who welcomed him
with a kind of constrained half-laugh, though he did not inspire them
with any serious dread. He never took a book in his hand. He had about a
hundred serfs; his pe