h the clearest
recognition of all the horrors awaiting him he would have gone out to
the high road and walked along it! There was something proud in the
undertaking which allured him in spite of everything. Oh, he might have
accepted Varvara Petrovna's luxurious provision and have remained living
on her charity, "_comme un_ humble dependent." But he had not accepted her
charity and was not remaining! And here he was leaving her of himself,
and holding aloft the "standard of a great idea, and going to die for it
on the open road." That is how he must have been feeling; that's how his
action must have appeared to him.

Another question presented itself to me more than once. Why did he run
away, that is, literally run away on foot, rather than simply drive
away? I put it down at first to the impracticability of fifty years and
the fantastic bent of his mind under the influence of strong emotion.
I imagined that the thought of posting tickets and horses (even if
they had bells) would have seemed too simple and prosaic to him; a
pilgrimage, on the other hand, even under an umbrella, was ever so much
more picturesque and in character with love and resentment. But now that
everything is over, I am inclined to think that it all came about in a
much simpler way. To begin with, he was afraid to hire horses because
Varvara Petrovna might have heard of it and prevented him from going by
force; which she certainly would have done, and he certainly would have
given in, and then farewell to the great idea for ever. Besides, to take
tickets for anywhere he must have known at least where he was going. But
to think about that was the greatest agony to him at that moment; he
was utterly unable to fix upon a place. For if he had to fix on any
particular town his enterprise would at once have seemed in his own eyes
absurd and impossible; he felt that very strongly. What should he do in
that particular town rather than in any other? Look out for _ce marchand_?
But what _marchand_? At that point his second and most terrible question
cropped up. In reality there was nothing he dreaded more than _ce
marchand_, whom he had rushed off to seek so recklessly, though, of
course, he was terribly afraid of finding him. No, better simply the
high road, better simply to set off for it, and walk along it and to
think of nothing so long as he could put off thinking. The high road is
something very very long, of which one cannot see the end--like human
lif