ceived me, she began to laugh--at a most inopportune
moment--pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and
began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and
yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski--I will not
talk to her for another two days.

CHAPTER VIII. 11th June.

I OFTEN ask myself why I am so obstinately endeavouring to win the love
of a young girl whom I do not wish to deceive, and whom I will never
marry. Why this woman-like coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess
Mary ever will. Had I regarded the latter as an invincible beauty, I
should perhaps have been allured by the difficulty of the undertaking...

However, there is no such difficulty in this case! Consequently, my
present feeling is not that restless craving for love which torments us
in the early days of our youth, flinging us from one woman to
another until we find one who cannot endure us. And then begins our
constancy--that sincere, unending passion which may be expressed
mathematically by a line falling from a point into space--the secret of
that endlessness lying only in the impossibility of attaining the aim,
that is to say, the end.

From what motive, then, am I taking all this trouble?--Envy of
Grushnitski? Poor fellow!

He is quite undeserving of it. Or, is it the result of that ugly, but
invincible, feeling which causes us to destroy the sweet illusions of
our neighbour in order to have the petty satisfaction of saying to him,
when, in despair, he asks what he is to believe:

"My friend, the same thing happened to me, and you see, nevertheless,
that I dine, sup, and sleep very peacefully, and I shall, I hope, know
how to die without tears and lamentations."

There is, in sooth, a boundless enjoyment in the possession of a young,
scarce-budded soul! It is like a floweret which exhales its best perfume
at the kiss of the first ray of the sun. You should pluck the flower at
that moment, and, breathing its fragrance to the full, cast it upon the
road: perchance someone will pick it up! I feel within me that insatiate
hunger which devours everything it meets upon the way; I look upon
the sufferings and joys of others only from the point of view of their
relation to myself, regarding them as the nutriment which sustains my
spiritual forces. I myself am no longer capable of committing follies
under the influence of passion; with me, ambition has been repressed by
circumstances, b