penetrated by the clear
beams of reason, we see the object of our adoration in his true shape,
and with all his virtues and failings exposed. Some of those failings
strike us with the exaggerated force of the unexpected, and combine with
the instinct for novelty and the hope that perfection may yet be
found in a fellow-man to induce us not only to feel coldness, but
even aversion, towards the late object of our adoration. Consequently,
desiring it no longer, we usually cast it from us, and pass onwards
to seek fresh perfection. For the circumstance that that was not what
occurred with respect to my own relation to Dimitri, I was indebted to
his stubborn, punctilious, and more critical than impulsive attachment
to myself--a tie which I felt ashamed to break. Moreover, our strange
vow of frankness bound us together. We were afraid that, if we parted,
we should leave in one another's power all the incriminatory moral
secrets of which we had made mutual confession. At the same time, our
rule of frankness had long ceased to be faithfully observed, but, on
the contrary, proved a frequent cause of constraint, and brought about
strange relations between us.

Almost every time that winter that I went upstairs to Dimitri's room,
I used to find there a University friend of his named Bezobiedoff, with
whom he appeared to be very much taken up. Bezobiedoff was a small,
slight fellow, with a face pitted over with smallpox, freckled,
effeminate hands, and a huge flaxen moustache much in need of the comb.
He was invariably dirty, shabby, uncouth, and uninteresting. To me,
Dimitri's relations with him were as unintelligible as his relations
with Lubov Sergievna, and the only reason he could have had for choosing
such a man for his associate was that in the whole University there was
no worse-looking student than Bezobiedoff. Yet that alone would have
been sufficient to make Dimitri extend him his friendship, and, as a
matter of fact, in all his intercourse with this fellow he seemed to be
saying proudly: "I care nothing who a man may be. In my eyes every one
is equal. I like him, and therefore he is a desirable acquaintance."
Nevertheless I could not imagine how he could bring himself to do it,
nor how the wretched Bezobiedoff ever contrived to maintain his awkward
position. To me the friendship seemed a most distasteful one.

One night, I went up to Dimitri's room to try and get him to come down
for an evening's talk in his mother's