ocratic society and powerful
personages were dearer to him than his own soul, people used to say that
on meeting you he would be cordial, that he would fascinate and enchant
you with his open-heartedness, especially if you were of use to him in
some way, and if you came to him with some preliminary recommendation.
But that before any stray prince, any stray countess, anyone that he
was afraid of, he would regard it as his sacred duty to forget your
existence with the most insulting carelessness, like a chip of wood,
like a fly, before you had even time to get out of his sight; he
seriously considered this the best and most aristocratic style. In spite
of the best of breeding and perfect knowledge of good manners he is,
they say, vain to such an hysterical pitch that he cannot conceal his
irritability as an author even in those circles of society where little
interest is taken in literature. If anyone were to surprise him by being
indifferent, he would be morbidly chagrined, and try to revenge himself.

A year before, I had read an article of his in a review, written with
an immense affectation of naive poetry, and psychology too. He described
the wreck of some steamer on the English coast, of which he had been
the witness, and how he had seen the drowning people saved, and the
dead bodies brought ashore. All this rather long and verbose article
was written solely with the object of self-display. One seemed to read
between the lines: "Concentrate yourselves on me. Behold what I was like
at those moments. What are the sea, the storm, the rocks, the splinters
of wrecked ships to you? I have described all that sufficiently to you
with my mighty pen. Why look at that drowned woman with the dead child
in her dead arms? Look rather at me, see how I was unable to bear that
sight and turned away from it. Here I stood with my back to it; here
I was horrified and could not bring myself to look; I blinked my
eyes--isn't that interesting?" When I told Stepan Trofimovitch my
opinion of Karmazinov's article he quite agreed with me.

When rumours had reached us of late that Karmazinov was coming to the
neighbourhood I was, of course, very eager to see him, and, if possible,
to make his acquaintance. I knew that this might be done through Stepan
Trofimovitch, they had once been friends. And now I suddenly met him at
the cross-roads. I knew him at once. He had been pointed out to me two
or three days before when he drove past with the go