shot rang out. The bullet grazed my knee. Involuntarily I took a few
paces forward in order to get away from the edge as quickly as possible.

"Well, my dear Grushnitski, it is a pity that you have missed!" said
the captain. "Now it is your turn, take your stand! Embrace me first: we
shall not see each other again!"

They embraced; the captain could scarcely refrain from laughing.

"Do not be afraid," he added, glancing cunningly at Grushnitski;
"everything in this world is nonsense... Nature is a fool, fate a
turkeyhen, and life a copeck!" [31]

After that tragic phrase, uttered with becoming gravity, he went back to
his place. Ivan Ignatevich, with tears, also embraced Grushnitski, and
there the latter remained alone, facing me. Ever since then, I have been
trying to explain to myself what sort of feeling it was that was boiling
within my breast at that moment: it was the vexation of injured vanity,
and contempt, and wrath engendered at the thought that the man now
looking at me with such confidence, such quiet insolence, had, two
minutes before, been about to kill me like a dog, without exposing
himself to the least danger, because had I been wounded a little more
severely in the leg I should inevitably have fallen over the cliff.

For a few moments I looked him fixedly in the face, trying to discern
thereon even a slight trace of repentance. But it seemed to me that he
was restraining a smile.

"I should advise you to say a prayer before you die," I said.

"Do not worry about my soul any more than your own. One thing I beg of
you: be quick about firing."

"And you do not recant your slander? You do not beg my forgiveness?...
Bethink you well: has your conscience nothing to say to you?"

"Mr. Pechorin!" exclaimed the captain of dragoons. "Allow me to point
out that you are not here to preach... Let us lose no time, in case
anyone should ride through the gorge and we should be seen."

"Very well. Doctor, come here!"

The doctor came up to me. Poor doctor! He was paler than Grushnitski had
been ten minutes before.

The words which followed I purposely pronounced with a pause between
each--loudly and distinctly, as the sentence of death is pronounced:

"Doctor, these gentlemen have forgotten, in their hurry, no doubt, to
put a bullet in my pistol. I beg you to load it afresh--and properly!"

"Impossible!" cried the captain, "impossible! I loaded both pistols.
Perhaps the bullet has rolled out of yours...