thing. You were
not present at my last struggle: you did not come to that matinee, and
you did well to stay away. But you will be told that in our Russia,
which has grown so poor in men of character, one man had the courage to
stand up and, in spite of deadly menaces showered on him from all
sides, to tell the fools the truth, that is, that they are fools. _Oh,
ce sont--des pauvres petits vauriens et rien de plus, des
petits_--fools--_voila le mot!_ The die is cast; I am going from this town
for ever and I know not whither. Every one I loved has turned from me.
But you, you are a pure and naive creature; you, a gentle being whose
life has been all but linked with mine at the will of a capricious and
imperious heart; you who looked at me perhaps with contempt when I shed
weak tears on the eve of our frustrated marriage; you, who cannot in any
case look on me except as a comic figure--for you, for you is the last
cry of my heart, for you my last duty, for you alone! I cannot leave
you for ever thinking of me as an ungrateful fool, a churlish egoist, as
probably a cruel and ungrateful heart--whom, alas, I cannot forget--is
every day describing me to you...."

And so on and so on, four large pages.

Answering his "I won't open" with three bangs with my fist on the door,
and shouting after him that I was sure he would send Nastasya for me
three times that day, but I would not come, I gave him up and ran off to
Yulia Mihailovna.

II

There I was the witness of a revolting scene: the poor woman was
deceived to her face, and I could do nothing. Indeed, what could I say
to her? I had had time to reconsider things a little and reflect that
I had nothing to go upon but certain feelings and suspicious
presentiments. I found her in tears, almost in hysterics, with
compresses of eau-de-Cologne and a glass of water. Before her stood
Pyotr Stepanovitch, who talked without stopping, and the prince, who
held his tongue as though it had been under a lock. With tears and
lamentations she reproached Pyotr Stepanovitch for his "desertion." I
was struck at once by the fact that she ascribed the whole failure,
the whole ignominy of the matinee, everything in fact, to Pyotr
Stepanovitch's absence.

In him I observed an important change: he seemed a shade too anxious,
almost serious. As a rule he never seemed serious; he was always
laughing, even when he was angry, and he was often angry. Oh, he was
angry now! He was speaking coarsely, ca