ee's defects. Now I
understand very well that he was talking of women in general, of
their weak points in general, but at the time it seemed to me that
he was talking only of Natasha. He went into ecstasies over her
turn-up nose, her shrieks, her shrill laugh, her airs and graces,
precisely all the things I so disliked in her. All that was, to his
thinking, infinitely sweet, graceful, and feminine.

"Without my noticing it, he quickly passed from his enthusiastic
tone to one of fatherly admonition, and then to a light and derisive
one. . . . There was no presiding judge and no one to check the
diffusiveness of the lawyer. I had not time to open my mouth,
besides, what could I say? What my friend said was not new, it was
what everyone has known for ages, and the whole venom lay not in
what he said, but in the damnable form he put it in. It really was
beyond anything!

"As I listened to him then I learned that the same word has thousands
of shades of meaning according to the tone in which it is pronounced,
and the form which is given to the sentence. Of course I cannot
reproduce the tone or the form; I can only say that as I listened
to my friend and walked up and down the room, I was moved to
resentment, indignation, and contempt together with him. I even
believed him when with tears in his eyes he informed me that I was
a great man, that I was worthy of a better fate, that I was destined
to achieve something in the future which marriage would hinder!

"'My friend!' he exclaimed, pressing my hand. 'I beseech you, I
adjure you: stop before it is too late. Stop! May Heaven preserve
you from this strange, cruel mistake! My friend, do not ruin your
youth!'

"Believe me or not, as you choose, but the long and the short of
it was that I sat down to the table and wrote to my fiancee, breaking
off the engagement. As I wrote I felt relieved that it was not yet
too late to rectify my mistake. Sealing the letter, I hastened out
into the street to post it. The lawyer himself came with me.

"'Excellent! Capital!' he applauded me as my letter to Natasha
disappeared into the darkness of the box. 'I congratulate you with
all my heart. I am glad for you.'

"After walking a dozen paces with me the lawyer went on:

"'Of course, marriage has its good points. I, for instance, belong
to the class of people to whom marriage and home life is everything.'

"And he proceeded to describe his life, and lay before me all the
hideousness o