m I to go
without my tea? I say that the world may go to pot for me so long as I
always get my tea. Did you know that, or not? Well, anyway, I know
that I am a blackguard, a scoundrel, an egoist, a sluggard. Here I
have been shuddering for the last three days at the thought of your
coming. And do you know what has worried me particularly for these
three days? That I posed as such a hero to you, and now you would see
me in a wretched torn dressing-gown, beggarly, loathsome. I told you
just now that I was not ashamed of my poverty; so you may as well know
that I am ashamed of it; I am more ashamed of it than of anything, more
afraid of it than of being found out if I were a thief, because I am as
vain as though I had been skinned and the very air blowing on me hurt.
Surely by now you must realise that I shall never forgive you for
having found me in this wretched dressing-gown, just as I was flying at
Apollon like a spiteful cur. The saviour, the former hero, was flying
like a mangy, unkempt sheep-dog at his lackey, and the lackey was
jeering at him! And I shall never forgive you for the tears I could
not help shedding before you just now, like some silly woman put to
shame! And for what I am confessing to you now, I shall never forgive
you either! Yes--you must answer for it all because you turned up like
this, because I am a blackguard, because I am the nastiest, stupidest,
absurdest and most envious of all the worms on earth, who are not a bit
better than I am, but, the devil knows why, are never put to confusion;
while I shall always be insulted by every louse, that is my doom! And
what is it to me that you don't understand a word of this! And what do
I care, what do I care about you, and whether you go to ruin there or
not? Do you understand? How I shall hate you now after saying this,
for having been here and listening. Why, it's not once in a lifetime a
man speaks out like this, and then it is in hysterics! ... What more
do you want? Why do you still stand confronting me, after all this?
Why are you worrying me? Why don't you go?"

But at this point a strange thing happened. I was so accustomed to
think and imagine everything from books, and to picture everything in
the world to myself just as I had made it up in my dreams beforehand,
that I could not all at once take in this strange circumstance. What
happened was this: Liza, insulted and crushed by me, understood a great
deal more than I imagin