"treated her as a gentleman should, but he--he
robbed her right and left, as I could see with my own eyes. Twice she
caught him at it, and rated him soundly. On one occasion she even
pulled his hair, so that the bystanders burst out laughing. Yet she
lost everything, sir--that is to say, she lost all that you had changed
for her. Then we brought her home, and, after asking for some water and
saying her prayers, she went to bed. So worn out was she that she fell
asleep at once. May God send her dreams of angels! And this is all that
foreign travel has done for us! Oh, my own Moscow! For what have we not
at home there, in Moscow? Such a garden and flowers as you could never
see here, and fresh air and apple-trees coming into blossom,--and a
beautiful view to look upon. Ah, but what must she do but go travelling
abroad? Alack, alack!"

XIII

Almost a month has passed since I last touched these notes--notes which
I began under the influence of impressions at once poignant and
disordered. The crisis which I then felt to be approaching has now
arrived, but in a form a hundred times more extensive and unexpected
than I had looked for. To me it all seems strange, uncouth, and tragic.
Certain occurrences have befallen me which border upon the marvellous.
At all events, that is how I view them. I view them so in one regard at
least. I refer to the whirlpool of events in which, at the time, I was
revolving. But the most curious feature of all is my relation to those
events, for hitherto I had never clearly understood myself. Yet now the
actual crisis has passed away like a dream. Even my passion for Polina
is dead. Was it ever so strong and genuine as I thought? If so, what
has become of it now? At times I fancy that I must be mad; that
somewhere I am sitting in a madhouse; that these events have merely
SEEMED to happen; that still they merely SEEM to be happening.

I have been arranging and re-perusing my notes (perhaps for the purpose
of convincing myself that I am not in a madhouse). At present I am
lonely and alone. Autumn is coming--already it is mellowing the leaves;
and, as I sit brooding in this melancholy little town (and how
melancholy the little towns of Germany can be!), I find myself taking
no thought for the future, but living under the influence of passing
moods, and of my recollections of the tempest which recently drew me
into its vortex, and then cast me out again. At times I seem still to
be caught withi