itch himself has, on more than one occasion,
sobbed on my shoulder while he described to me in lurid colours all his
most secret feelings. (And what was there he did not say at such times!)
But what almost always happened after these tearful outbreaks was that
next day he was ready to crucify himself for his ingratitude. He would
send for me in a hurry or run over to see me simply to assure me that
Varvara Petrovna was "an angel of honour and delicacy, while he was very
much the opposite." He did not only run to confide in me, but, on more
than one occasion, described it all to her in the most eloquent letter,
and wrote a full signed confession that no longer ago than the day
before he had told an outsider that she kept him out of vanity, that
she was envious of his talents and erudition, that she hated him and was
only afraid to express her hatred openly, dreading that he would leave
her and so damage her literary reputation, that this drove him to
self-contempt, and he was resolved to die a violent death, and that he
was waiting for the final word from her which would decide everything,
and so on and so on in the same style. You can fancy after this what
an hysterical pitch the nervous outbreaks of this most innocent of
all fifty-year-old infants sometimes reached! I once read one of these
letters after some quarrel between them, arising from a trivial matter,
but growing venomous as it went on. I was horrified and besought him not
to send it.

"I must... more honourable... duty... I shall die if I don't confess
everything, everything!" he answered almost in delirium, and he did send
the letter.

That was the difference between them, that Varvara Petrovna never would
have sent such a letter. It is true that he was passionately fond of
writing, he wrote to her though he lived in the same house, and during
hysterical interludes he would write two letters a day. I know for a
fact that she always read these letters with the greatest attention,
even when she received two a day, and after reading them she put them
away in a special drawer, sorted and annotated; moreover, she pondered
them in her heart. But she kept her friend all day without an answer,
met him as though there were nothing the matter, exactly as though
nothing special had happened the day before. By degrees she broke him in
so completely that at last he did not himself dare to allude to what had
happened the day before, and only glanced into her eyes at tim