there. As for the ladies of
the household, they neither knew nor cared what either an examination or
a plucking meant, and condoled with me only because they saw me in
such distress. Dimitri came to see me every day, and was very kind and
consolatory throughout; but for that very reason he seemed to me to
have grown colder than before. It always hurt me and made me feel
uncomfortable when he came up to my room and seated himself in silence
beside me, much as a doctor might scat himself by the bedside of an
awkward patient. Sophia Ivanovna and Varenika sent me books for which I
had expressed a wish, as also an invitation to go and see them, but
in that very thoughtfulness of theirs I saw only proud, humiliating
condescension to one who had fallen beyond forgiveness. Although, in
three days' time, I grew calmer, it was not until we departed for the
country that I left the house, but spent the time in nursing my grief
and wandering, fearful of all the household, through the various rooms.

One evening, as I was sitting deep in thought and listening to Avdotia
playing her waltz, I suddenly leapt to my feet, ran upstairs, got out
the copy-book whereon I had once inscribed "Rules of My Life," opened
it, and experienced my first moment of repentance and moral resolution.
True, I burst into tears once more, but they were no longer tears of
despair. Pulling myself together, I set about writing out a fresh set
of rules, in the assured conviction that never again would I do a wrong
action, waste a single moment on frivolity, or alter the rules which I
now decided to frame.

How long that moral impulse lasted, what it consisted of, and what new
principles I devised for my moral growth I will relate when speaking of
the ensuing and happier portion of my early manhood.

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