of Sophia Blashkov, during the months before his
birth, reproduced itself, with startling similarity, in the youth whose
sensibilities had been so sharpened by long pampering in the hot-house
atmosphere of luxurious idleness; and an attitude of constant flattery
and suavity from the men and women in whose eyes he was always haloed by
a crown of thousand-rouble pieces. To-day, how different his estate! He
saw his world now with the eyes of the outsider. And what a thing it
was!--This stolid dummy, from which both tinsel robe and leering mask
had now been stripped for him, exposing the brutal, heartless machine
that had taken such delight in crushing a fallen man!

Metaphors such as these are stale enough: yet Ivan, in his soreness,
concocted many an unlovely allegory, during those first days of his
lonely exile. He had been at this useless occupation for some time on a
certain afternoon in June, when all his soul seemed crying to him for a
breath of country air. He was sitting in his single rocking-chair, by
the open dormer of his attic-room, in one of the narrow dwelling streets
on Vassily Island--the poorest quarter of Petersburg. Day after day had
he sat thus, coming, by slow, rather timorous degrees, face to face with
himself and his new surroundings. Just now his eyes were closed; but the
noise of the street, in which most of the inhabitants passed the greater
part of their time at this season, and the fetid smells of the baking
city, came up to him from below, reminding him constantly of his
neighborhood.--Ay, he had got his wish!--The half-gods had gone, indeed.
But the gods--how should they honor such a spot as this by their divine
presence? Nay; he was alone in a strange land. Alone, yet known to many,
all too well! Deserted by his own class, how should the poverty-stricken
creatures who must henceforth be his neighbors welcome among them one
repudiated by his father and his nearest relatives?--Ah! In this last
thought lay, indeed, the keynote to poor Ivan's mental state. All
through the recent, dreadful weeks, he had held in his heart a hope,
however faint, that there would reach him some message, some word, some
hint, even, that she--Nathalie, did not utterly condemn him: had still
for him a thought of sympathy and understanding of his reckless deed.
But day after day had come and gone. The trial had ended. He had left
his old haunts: had severed himself completely from all former
associations; and without kno