Then he swore that "he would never change," that he would go back to
her (that is, Varvara Petrovna). "We" (that is, he and Sofya Matveyevna)
"will go to her steps every day when she is getting into her carriage
for her morning drive, and we will watch her in secret.... Oh, I wish
her to smite me on the other cheek; it's a joy to wish it! I shall turn
her my other cheek _comme dans votre livre!_ Only now for the first time
I understand what is meant by... turning the other cheek. I never
understood before!"

The two days that followed were among the most terrible in Sofya
Matveyevna's life; she remembers them with a shudder to this day. Stepan
Trofimovitch became so seriously ill that he could not go on board the
steamer, which on this occasion arrived punctually at two o'clock in the
afternoon. She could not bring herself to leave him alone, so she
did not leave for Spasov either. From her account he was positively
delighted at the steamer's going without him.

"Well, that's a good thing, that's capital!" he muttered in his bed.
"I've been afraid all the time that we should go. Here it's so nice,
better than anywhere.... You won't leave me? Oh, you have not left me!"

It was by no means so nice "here" however. He did not care to hear of
her difficulties; his head was full of fancies and nothing else. He
looked upon his illness as something transitory, a trifling ailment, and
did not think about it at all; he though of nothing but how they would
go and sell "these books." He asked her to read him the gospel.

"I haven't read it for a long time... in the original. Some one may ask
me about it and I shall make a mistake; I ought to prepare myself after
all."

She sat down beside him and opened the book.

"You read beautifully," he interrupted her after the first line. "I see,
I see I was not mistaken," he added obscurely but ecstatically. He was,
in fact, in a continual state of enthusiasm. She read the Sermon on the
Mount.

"_Assez, assez, mon enfant,_ enough.... Don't you think that that is
enough?"

And he closed his eyes helplessly. He was very weak, but had not yet
lost consciousness. Sofya Matveyevna was getting up, thinking that he
wanted to sleep. But he stopped her.

"My friend, I've been telling lies all my life. Even when I told the
truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always for my own
sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now.... Oh, where are those
friends whom I have insulted