age is there, Good-bye!"

"I review my past and I ask myself, Why have I lived? Why was I born?
and I think there was a reason, and I think I was called to high
things, for I feel in my soul the presence of vast powers; but I did
not divine my high calling; I gave myself up to the allurement of
shallow and ignoble passions; I emerged from their furnace as hard and
as cold as iron, but I had lost for ever the ardour of noble
aspirations, the flower of life. And since then how often have I
played the part of the axe in the hands of fate. Like the weapon of
the executioner I have fallen on the necks of the victims, often
without malice, always without pity. My love has never brought
happiness, because I have never in the slightest degree sacrificed
myself for those whom I loved. I loved for my own sake, for my own
pleasure.... And if I die I shall not leave behind me one soul who
understood me. Some think I am better, others that I am worse than I
am. Some will say he was a good fellow; others he was a blackguard."

It will be seen from these passages, all of which apply to Lermontov
himself, even if they were not so intended, that he must have been a
trying companion, friend, or acquaintance. He had, indeed, except for
a few intimate friends, an impossible temperament; he was proud,
overbearing, exasperated and exasperating, filled with a savage
_amour-propre_; and he took a childish delight in annoying; he
cultivated "le plaisir aristocratique de deplaire"; he was envious of
what was least enviable in his contemporaries. He could not bear not
to make himself felt, and if he felt that he was unsuccessful in
accomplishing this by pleasant means, he resorted to unpleasant means.
And yet, at the same time, he was warm-hearted, thirsting for love and
kindness, and capable of giving himself up to love--if he chose.

During his period of training at the Cadet School, he led a wild life;
and when he became an officer, he hankered after social and not after
literary success. He did not achieve it immediately; at first he was
not noticed, and when he was noticed he was not liked. His looks were
unprepossessing, and one of his legs was shorter than the other. His
physical strength was enormous--he could bend a ramrod with his
fingers. Noticed he was determined to be; and, as he himself says in
one of his letters, observing that every one in society had some sort
of pedestal--wealth, lineage, position, or patronage--he saw that if