in you the germs of delicate feeling, and
you will get over it perhaps--_apres le temps,_ of course, like all of us
Russians. As for what you say about my impracticability, I'll remind you
of a recent idea of mine: a whole mass of people in Russia do nothing
whatever but attack other people's impracticability with the utmost fury
and with the tiresome persistence of flies in the summer, accusing every
one of it except themselves. _Cher,_ remember that I am excited, and
don't distress me. Once more _merci_ for everything, and let us part like
Karmazinov and the public; that is, let us forget each other with as
much generosity as we can. He was posing in begging his former readers
so earnestly to forget him; _quant a moi,_ I am not so conceited, and I
rest my hopes on the youth of your inexperienced heart. How should you
remember a useless old man for long? 'Live more,' my friend, as Nastasya
wished me on my last name-day _(ces pauvres gens ont quelquefois des
mots charmants et pleins de philosophie)._ I do not wish you much
happiness--it will bore you. I do not wish you trouble either, but,
following the philosophy of the peasant, I will repeat simply 'live
more' and try not to be much bored; this useless wish I add from myself.
Well, good-bye, and good-bye for good. Don't stand at my door, I will
not open it."

He went away and I could get nothing more out of him. In spite of his
"excitement," he spoke smoothly, deliberately, with weight, obviously
trying to be impressive. Of course he was rather vexed with me and was
avenging himself indirectly, possibly even for the yesterday's "prison
carts" and "floors that give way." His tears in public that morning, in
spite of a triumph of a sort, had put him, he knew, in rather a comic
position, and there never was a man more solicitous of dignity and
punctilio in his relations with his friends than Stepan Trofimovitch.
Oh, I don't blame him. But this fastidiousness and irony which he
preserved in spite of all shocks reassured me at the time. A man who was
so little different from his ordinary self was, of course, not in the
mood at that moment for anything tragic or extraordinary. So I reasoned
at the time, and, heavens, what a mistake I made! I left too much out of
my reckoning.

In anticipation of events I will quote the few first lines of the letter
to Darya Pavlovna, which she actually received the following day:

"_Mon enfant,_ my hand trembles, but I've done with every