together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the
side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: 'First
rate ... very fond!' and once he even said: 'And how it seizes one ...
excellent!' and wondered what made him say it. 'Dear me, am I drunk?'
he asked himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was
not the wine alone that was having this effect on Olenin. He remembered
all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he
believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of
hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice
saying, 'Good-bye, Mitya!' when he was already in the sledge. He
remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching
significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people
who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him,
seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him,
before his departure, as people do before confession or death. 'Perhaps
I shall not return from the Caucasus,' he thought. And he felt that he
loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But
it was not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart
that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of
themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet
been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love
full of hope--warm young love for all that was good in his own soul
(and at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in
it)--compelled him to weep and to mutter incoherent words.

Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never
served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office
or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age
of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He
was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme.

At the age of eighteen he was free--as only rich young Russians in the
'forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither
physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as
he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor
fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in
nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he
was not a morose or blase young man, nor se