Then during all the
rest of the story he did not stop once. Even the new travellers as they
entered did not stop him.

His face, while he was talking, changed several times so completely
that it bore positively no resemblance to itself as it had appeared just
before. His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and even his beard, all were
new. Each time it was a beautiful and touching physiognomy, and these
transformations were produced suddenly in the penumbra; and for five
minutes it was the same face, that could not be compared to that of five
minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed again, and became
unrecognizable.

CHAPTER IV.

"Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,--yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome."

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:--

"To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It
must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage.
First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the
steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a
graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before
talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly,
and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other
so-called respectable people,--that is, in debauchery. And like the
majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I
was a man of irreproachable morality.

"The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this,
I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be
incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought thus,
and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.

"At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying
toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends,
and before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes,
I did not make d