r instance, about the Decabrist L--n, that he was always seeking
for danger, that he revelled in the sensation, and that it had become
a craving of his nature; that in his youth he had rushed into duels for
nothing; that in Siberia he used to go to kill bears with nothing but
a knife; that in the Siberian forests he liked to meet with runaway
convicts, who are, I may observe in passing, more formidable than bears.
There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen were capable of a
feeling of fear, and even to an extreme degree, perhaps, or they would
have been a great deal quieter, and a sense of danger would never have
become a physical craving with them. But the conquest of fear was
what fascinated them. The continual ecstasy of vanquishing and the
consciousness that no one could vanquish them was what attracted them.
The same L---n struggled with hunger for some time before he was sent
into exile, and toiled to earn his daily bread simply because he did not
care to comply with the requests of his rich father, which he considered
unjust. So his conception of struggle was many-sided, and he did not
prize stoicism and strength of character only in duels and bear-fights.

But many years have passed since those times, and the nervous,
exhausted, complex character of the men of to-day is incompatible with
the craving for those direct and unmixed sensations which were so sought
after by some restlessly active gentlemen of the good old days. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch would, perhaps, have looked down on L--n, and have
called him a boastful cock-a-hoop coward; it's true he wouldn't have
expressed himself aloud. Stavrogin would have shot his opponent in a
duel, and would have faced a bear if necessary, and would have defended
himself from a brigand in the forest as successfully and as fearlessly
as L--n, but it would be without the slightest thrill of enjoyment,
languidly, listlessly, even with ennui and entirely from unpleasant
necessity. In anger, of course, there has been a progress compared with
L--n, even compared with Lermontov. There was perhaps more malignant
anger in Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch than in both put together, but it was a
calm, cold, if one may so say, _reasonable_ anger, and therefore the most
revolting and most terrible possible. I repeat again, I considered him
then, and I still consider him (now that everything is over), a man who,
if he received a slap in the face, or any equivalent insult, would be
certain to