the-kreutzer-sonata.txt

gistfile1.txt

THE KREUTZER SONATA.




CHAPTER I.


Travellers left and entered our car at every stopping of the train.
Three persons, however, remained, bound, like myself, for the farthest
station: a lady neither young nor pretty, smoking cigarettes, with a
thin face, a cap on her head, and wearing a semi-masculine outer
garment; then her companion, a very loquacious gentleman of about forty
years, with baggage entirely new and arranged in an orderly manner;
then a gentleman who held himself entirely aloof, short in stature,
very nervous, of uncertain age, with bright eyes, not pronounced in
color, but extremely attractive,—eyes that darted with rapidity from
one object to another.

This gentleman, during almost all the journey thus far, had entered
into conversation with no fellow-traveller, as if he carefully avoided
all acquaintance. When spoken to, he answered curtly and decisively,
and began to look out of the car window obstinately.

Yet it seemed to me that the solitude weighed upon him. He seemed to
perceive that I understood this, and when our eyes met, as happened
frequently, since we were sitting almost opposite each other, he turned
away his head, and avoided conversation with me as much as with the
others. At nightfall, during a stop at a large station, the gentleman
with the fine baggage—a lawyer, as I have since learned—got out with
his companion to drink some tea at the restaurant. During their absence
several new travellers entered the car, among whom was a tall old man,
shaven and wrinkled, evidently a merchant, wearing a large
heavily-lined cloak and a big cap. This merchant sat down opposite the
empty seats of the lawyer and his companion, and straightway entered
into conversation with a young man who seemed like an employee in some
commercial house, and who had likewise just boarded the train. At first
the clerk had remarked that the seat opposite was occupied, and the old
man had answered that he should get out at the first station. Thus
their conversation started.

I was sitting not far from these two travellers, and, as the train was
not in motion, I could catch bits of their conversation when others
were not talking.

They talked first of the prices of goods and the condition of business;
they referred to a person whom they both knew; then they plunged into
the fair at Nijni Novgorod. The clerk boasted of knowing people who
were leading a gay life there, but the old man did not allow him to
continue, and, interrupting him, began to describe the festivities of
the previous year at Kounavino, in which he had taken part. He was
evidently proud of these recollections, and, probably thinking that
this would detract nothing from the gravity which his face and manners
expressed, he related with pride how, when drunk, he had fired, at
Kounavino, such a broadside that he could describe it only in the
other’s ear.

The clerk began to laugh noisily. The old man laughed too, showing two
long yellow teeth. Their conversation not interesting me, I left the
car to stretch my legs. At the door I met the lawyer and his lady.

“You have no more time,” the lawyer said to me. “The second bell is
about to ring.”

Indeed I had scarcely reached the rear of the train when the bell
sounded. As I entered the car again, the lawyer was talking with his
companion in an animated fashion. The merchant, sitting opposite them,
was taciturn.

“And then she squarely declared to her husband,” said the lawyer with a
smile, as I passed by them, “that she neither could nor would live with
him, because” . . .

And he continued, but I did not hear the rest of the sentence, my
attention being distracted by the passing of the conductor and a new
traveller. When silence was restored, I again heard the lawyer’s voice.
The conversation had passed from a special case to general
considerations.

“And afterward comes discord, financial difficulties, disputes between
the two parties, and the couple separate. In the good old days that
seldom happened. Is it not so?” asked the lawyer of the two merchants,
evidently trying to drag them into the conversation.

Just then the train started, and the old man, without answering, took
off his cap, and crossed himself three times while muttering a prayer.
When he had finished, he clapped his cap far down on his head, and
said:

“Yes, sir, that happened in former times also, but not as often. In the
present day it is bound to happen more frequently. People have become
too learned.”

The lawyer made some reply to the old man, but the train, ever
increasing its speed, made such a clatter upon the rails that I could
no longer hear distinctly. As I was interested in what the old man was
saying, I drew nearer. My neighbor, the nervous gentleman, was
evidently interested also, and, without changing his seat, he lent an
ear.

“But what harm is there in education?” asked the lady, with a smile
that was scarcely perceptible. “Would it be better to marry as in the
old days, when the bride and bridegroom did not even see each other
before marriage?” she continued, answering, as is the habit of our
ladies, not the words that her interlocutor had spoken, but the words
she believed he was going to speak. “Women did not know whether they
would love or would be loved, and they were married to the first comer,
and suffered all their lives. Then you think it was better so?” she
continued, evidently addressing the lawyer and myself, and not at all
the old man.

“People have become too learned,” repeated the last, looking at the
lady with contempt, and leaving her question unanswered.

“I should be curious to know how you explain the correlation between
education and conjugal differences,” said the lawyer, with a slight
smile.

The merchant wanted to make some reply, but the lady interrupted him.

“No, those days are past.”

The lawyer cut short her words:—

“Let him express his thought.”

“Because there is no more fear,” replied the old man.

“But how will you marry people who do not love each other? Only animals
can be coupled at the will of a proprietor. But people have
inclinations, attachments,” the lady hastened to say, casting a glance
at the lawyer, at me, and even at the clerk, who, standing up and
leaning his elbow on the back of a seat, was listening to the
conversation with a smile.

“You are wrong to say that, madam,” said the old man. “The animals are
beasts, but man has received the law.”

“But, nevertheless, how is one to live with a man when there is no
love?” said the lady, evidently excited by the general sympathy and
attention.

“Formerly no such distinctions were made,” said the old man, gravely.
“Only now have they become a part of our habits. As soon as the least
thing happens, the wife says: ‘I release you. I am going to leave your
house.’ Even among the moujiks this fashion has become acclimated.
‘There,’ she says, ‘here are your shirts and drawers. I am going off
with Vanka. His hair is curlier than yours.’ Just go talk with them.
And yet the first rule for the wife should be fear.”

The clerk looked at the lawyer, the lady, and myself, evidently
repressing a smile, and all ready to deride or approve the merchant’s
words, according to the attitude of the others.

“What fear?” said the lady.

“This fear,—the wife must fear her husband; that is what fear.”

“Oh, that, my little father, that is ended.”

“No, madam, that cannot end. As she, Eve, the woman, was taken from
man’s ribs, so she will remain unto the end of the world,” said the old
man, shaking his head so triumphantly and so severely that the clerk,
deciding that the victory was on his side, burst into a loud laugh.

“Yes, you men think so,” replied the lady, without surrendering, and
turning toward us. “You have given yourself liberty. As for woman, you
wish to keep her in the seraglio. To you, everything is permissible. Is
it not so?”

“Oh, man,—that’s another affair.”

“Then, according to you, to man everything is permissible?”

“No one gives him this permission; only, if the man behaves badly
outside, the family is not increased thereby; but the woman, the wife,
is a fragile vessel,” continued the merchant, severely.

His tone of authority evidently subjugated his hearers. Even the lady
felt crushed, but she did not surrender.

“Yes, but you will admit, I think, that woman is a human being, and has
feelings like her husband. What should she do if she does not love her
husband?”

“If she does not love him!” repeated the old man, stormily, and
knitting his brows; “why, she will be made to love him.”

This unexpected argument pleased the clerk, and he uttered a murmur of
approbation.

“Oh, no, she will not be forced,” said the lady. “Where there is no
love, one cannot be obliged to love in spite of herself.”

“And if the wife deceives her husband, what is to be done?” said the
lawyer.

“That should not happen,” said the old man. “He must have his eyes
about him.”

“And if it does happen, all the same? You will admit that it does
happen?”

“It happens among the upper classes, not among us,” answered the old
man. “And if any husband is found who is such a fool as not to rule his
wife, he will not have robbed her. But no scandal, nevertheless. Love
or not, but do not disturb the household. Every husband can govern his
wife. He has the necessary power. It is only the imbecile who does not
succeed in doing so.”

Everybody was silent. The clerk moved, advanced, and, not wishing to
lag behind the others in the conversation, began with his eternal
smile:

“Yes, in the house of our employer, a scandal has arisen, and it is
very difficult to view the matter clearly. The wife loved to amuse
herself, and began to go astray. He is a capable and serious man.
First, it was with the book-keeper. The husband tried to bring her back
to reason through kindness. She did not change her conduct. She plunged
into all sorts of beastliness. She began to steal his money. He beat
her, but she grew worse and worse. To an unbaptized, to a pagan, to a
Jew (saving your permission), she went in succession for her caresses.
What could the employer do? He has dropped her entirely, and now he
lives as a bachelor. As for her, she is dragging in the depths.”

“He is an imbecile,” said the old man. “If from the first he had not
allowed her to go in her own fashion, and had kept a firm hand upon
her, she would be living honestly, no danger. Liberty must be taken
away from the beginning. Do not trust yourself to your horse upon the
highway. Do not trust yourself to your wife at home.”

At that moment the conductor passed, asking for the tickets for the
next station. The old man gave up his.

“Yes, the feminine sex must be dominated in season, else all will
perish.”

“And you yourselves, at Kounavino, did you not lead a gay life with the
pretty girls?” asked the lawyer with a smile.

“Oh, that’s another matter,” said the merchant, severely. “Good-by,” he
added, rising. He wrapped himself in his cloak, lifted his cap, and,
taking his bag, left the car.




CHAPTER II.


Scarcely had the old man gone when a general conversation began.

“There’s a little Old Testament father for you,” said the clerk.

“He is a Domostroy,”[*] said the lady. “What savage ideas about a woman
and marriage!”

[*] The Domostroy is a matrimonial code of the days of Ivan the
Terrible.


“Yes, gentlemen,” said the lawyer, “we are still a long way from the
European ideas upon marriage. First, the rights of woman, then free
marriage, then divorce, as a question not yet solved.” . . .

“The main thing, and the thing which such people as he do not
understand,” rejoined the lady, “is that only love consecrates
marriage, and that the real marriage is that which is consecrated by
love.”

The clerk listened and smiled, with the air of one accustomed to store
in his memory all intelligent conversation that he hears, in order to
make use of it afterwards.

“But what is this love that consecrates marriage?” said, suddenly, the
voice of the nervous and taciturn gentleman, who, unnoticed by us, had
approached.

He was standing with his hand on the seat, and evidently agitated. His
face was red, a vein in his forehead was swollen, and the muscles of
his cheeks quivered.

“What is this love that consecrates marriage?” he repeated.

“What love?” said the lady. “The ordinary love of husband and wife.”

“And how, then, can ordinary love consecrate marriage?” continued the
nervous gentleman, still excited, and with a displeased air. He seemed
to wish to say something disagreeable to the lady. She felt it, and
began to grow agitated.

“How? Why, very simply,” said she.

The nervous gentleman seized the word as it left her lips.

“No, not simply.”

“Madam says,” interceded the lawyer indicating his companion, “that
marriage should be first the result of an attachment, of a love, if you
will, and that, when love exists, and in that case only, marriage
represents something sacred. But every marriage which is not based on a
natural attachment, on love, has in it nothing that is morally
obligatory. Is not that the idea that you intended to convey?” he asked
the lady.

The lady, with a nod of her head, expressed her approval of this
translation of her thoughts.

“Then,” resumed the lawyer, continuing his remarks.

But the nervous gentleman, evidently scarcely able to contain himself,
without allowing the lawyer to finish, asked:

“Yes, sir. But what are we to understand by this love that alone
consecrates marriage?”

“Everybody knows what love is,” said the lady.

“But I don’t know, and I should like to know how you define it.”

“How? It is very simple,” said the lady.

And she seemed thoughtful, and then said:

“Love . . . love . . . is a preference for one man or one woman to the
exclusion of all others. . . .”

“A preference for how long? . . . For a month, two days, or half an
hour?” said the nervous gentleman, with special irritation.

“No, permit me, you evidently are not talking of the same thing.”

“Yes, I am talking absolutely of the same thing. Of the preference for
one man or one woman to the exclusion of all others. But I ask: a
preference for how long?”

“For how long? For a long time, for a life-time sometimes.”

“But that happens only in novels. In life, never. In life this
preference for one to the exclusion of all others lasts in rare cases
several years, oftener several months, or even weeks, days, hours. . .
.”

“Oh, sir. Oh, no, no, permit me,” said all three of us at the same
time.

The clerk himself uttered a monosyllable of disapproval.

“Yes, I know,” he said, shouting louder than all of us; “you are
talking of what is believed to exist, and I am talking of what is.
Every man feels what you call love toward each pretty woman he sees,
and very little toward his wife. That is the origin of the proverb,—and
it is a true one,—‘Another’s wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter
wormwood.’”

“Ah, but what you say is terrible! There certainly exists among human
beings this feeling which is called love, and which lasts, not for
months and years, but for life.”

“No, that does not exist. Even if it should be admitted that Menelaus
had preferred Helen all his life, Helen would have preferred Paris; and
so it has been, is, and will be eternally. And it cannot be otherwise,
just as it cannot happen that, in a load of chick-peas, two peas marked
with a special sign should fall side by side. Further, this is not only
an improbability, but it is certain that a feeling of satiety will come
to Helen or to Menelaus. The whole difference is that to one it comes
sooner, to the other later. It is only in stupid novels that it is
written that ‘they loved each other all their lives.’ And none but
children can believe it. To talk of loving a man or woman for life is
like saying that a candle can burn forever.”

“But you are talking of physical love. Do you not admit a love based
upon a conformity of ideals, on a spiritual affinity?”

“Why not? But in that case it is not necessary to procreate together
(excuse my brutality). The point is that this conformity of ideals is
not met among old people, but among young and pretty persons,” said he,
and he began to laugh disagreeably.

“Yes, I affirm that love, real love, does not consecrate marriage, as
we are in the habit of believing, but that, on the contrary, it ruins
it.”

“Permit me,” said the lawyer. “The facts contradict your words. We see
that marriage exists, that all humanity—at least the larger
portion—lives conjugally, and that many husbands and wives honestly end
a long life together.”

The nervous gentleman smiled ill-naturedly.

“And what then? You say that marriage is based upon love, and when I
give voice to a doubt as to the existence of any other love than
sensual love, you prove to me the existence of love by marriage. But in
our day marriage is only a violence and falsehood.”

“No, pardon me,” said the lawyer. “I say only that marriages have
existed and do exist.”

“But how and why do they exist? They have existed, and they do exist,
for people who have seen, and do see, in marriage something
sacramental, a sacrament that is binding before God. For such people
marriages exist, but to us they are only hypocrisy and violence. We
feel it, and, to clear ourselves, we preach free love; but, really, to
preach free love is only a call backward to the promiscuity of the
sexes (excuse me, he said to the lady), the haphazard sin of certain
_raskolniks_. The old foundation is shattered; we must build a new one,
but we must not preach debauchery.”

He grew so warm that all became silent, looking at him in astonishment.

“And yet the transition state is terrible. People feel that haphazard
sin is inadmissible. It is necessary in some way or other to regulate
the sexual relations; but there exists no other foundation than the old
one, in which nobody longer believes? People marry in the old fashion,
without believing in what they do, and the result is falsehood,
violence. When it is falsehood alone, it is easily endured. The husband
and wife simply deceive the world by professing to live monogamically.
If they really are polygamous and polyandrous, it is bad, but
acceptable. But when, as often happens, the husband and the wife have
taken upon themselves the obligation to live together all their lives
(they themselves do not know why), and from the second month have
already a desire to separate, but continue to live together just the
same, then comes that infernal existence in which they resort to drink,
in which they fire revolvers, in which they assassinate each other, in
which they poison each other.”

All were silent, but we felt ill at ease.

“Yes, these critical episodes happen in marital life. For instance,
there is the Posdnicheff affair,” said the lawyer, wishing to stop the
conversation on this embarrassing and too exciting ground. “Have you
read how he killed his wife through jealousy?”

The lady said that she had not read it. The nervous gentleman said
nothing, and changed color.

“I see that you have divined who I am,” said he, suddenly, after a
pause.

“No, I have not had that pleasure.”

“It is no great pleasure. I am Posdnicheff.”

New silence. He blushed, then turned pale again.

“What matters it, however?” said he. “Excuse me, I do not wish to
embarrass you.”

And he resumed his old seat.




CHAPTER III.


I resumed mine, also. The lawyer and the lady whispered together. I was
sitting beside Posdnicheff, and I maintained silence. I desired to talk
to him, but I did not know how to begin, and thus an hour passed until
we reached the next station.

There the lawyer and the lady went out, as well as the clerk. We were
left alone, Posdnicheff and I.

“They say it, and they lie, or they do not understand,” said
Posdnicheff.

“Of what are you talking?”

“Why, still the same thing.”

He leaned his elbows upon his knees, and pressed his hands against his
temples.

“Love, marriage, family,—all lies, lies, lies.”

He rose, lowered the lamp-shade, lay down with his elbows on the
cushion, and closed his eyes. He remained thus for a minute.

“Is it disagreeable to you to remain with me, now that you know who I
am?”

“Oh, no.”

“You have no desire to sleep?”

“Not at all.”

“Then do you want me to tell you the story of my life?”

Just then the conductor passed. He followed him with an ill-natured
look, and did not begin until he had gone again. Then during all the
rest of the story he did not stop once. Even the new travellers as they
entered did not stop him.

His face, while he was talking, changed several times so completely
that it bore positively no resemblance to itself as it had appeared
just before. His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and even his beard,
all were new. Each time it was a beautiful and touching physiognomy,
and these transformations were produced suddenly in the penumbra; and
for five minutes it was the same face, that could not be compared to
that of five minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed
again, and became unrecognizable.




CHAPTER IV.


“Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,—yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome.”

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:—

“To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning.
It must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my
marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman
of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University
pupil, a graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year.
But before talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived
formerly, and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so
many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And
like the majority, while leading the life of a _débauché_, I was
convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.

“The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of
this, I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be
incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought
thus, and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.

“At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying
toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends, and
before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes, I
did not make debauchery the principal object of my life; but I found
pleasure within the limits of society’s rules, and innocently believed
myself a profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations
did not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the
pleasure of the moment.

“In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the fact
that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was
honest. I avoided those women who, by attaching themselves to me, or
presenting me with a child, could bind my future. Moreover, perhaps
there may have been children or attachments; but I so arranged matters
that I could not become aware of them.

“And living thus, I considered myself a perfectly honest man. I did not
understand that debauchery does not consist simply in physical acts,
that no matter what physical ignominy does not yet constitute
debauchery, and that real debauchery consists in freedom from the moral
bonds toward a woman with whom one enters into carnal relations, and I
regarded _this freedom_ as a merit. I remember that I once tortured
myself exceedingly for having forgotten to pay a woman who probably had
given herself to me through love. I only became tranquil again when,
having sent her the money, I had thus shown her that I did not consider
myself as in any way bound to her. Oh, do not shake your head as if you
were in agreement with me (he cried suddenly with vehemence). I know
these tricks. All of you, and you especially, if you are not a rare
exception, have the same ideas that I had then. If you are in agreement
with me, it is now only. Formerly you did not think so. No more did I;
and, if I had been told what I have just told you, that which has
happened would not have happened. However, it is all the same. Excuse
me (he continued): the truth is that it is frightful, frightful,
frightful, this abyss of errors and debaucheries in which we live face
to face with the real question of the rights of woman.” . . .

“What do you mean by the ‘real’ question of the rights of woman?”

“The question of the nature of this special being, organized otherwise
than man, and how this being and man ought to view the wife. . . .”




CHAPTER V.


“Yes: for ten years I lived the most revolting existence, while
dreaming of the noblest love, and even in the name of that love. Yes, I
want to tell you how I killed my wife, and for that I must tell you how
I debauched myself. I killed her before I knew her.

“I killed _the_ wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and
then it was that I killed _my_ wife. Yes, sir: it is only after having
suffered, after having tortured myself, that I have come to understand
the root of things, that I have come to understand my crimes. Thus you
will see where and how began the drama that has led me to misfortune.

“It is necessary to go back to my sixteenth year, when I was still at
school, and my elder brother a first-year student. I had not yet known
women but, like all the unfortunate children of our society, I was
already no longer innocent. I was tortured, as you were, I am sure, and
as are tortured ninety-nine one-hundredths of our boys. I lived in a
frightful dread, I prayed to God, and I prostrated myself.

“I was already perverted in imagination, but the last steps remained to
be taken. I could still escape, when a friend of my brother, a very gay
student, one of those who are called good fellows,—that is, the
greatest of scamps,—and who had taught us to drink and play cards, took
advantage of a night of intoxication to drag us THERE. We started. My
brother, as innocent as I, fell that night, and I, a mere lad of
sixteen, polluted myself and helped to pollute a sister-woman, without
understanding what I did. Never had I heard from my elders that what I
thus did was bad. It is true that there are the ten commandments of the
Bible; but the commandments are made only to be recited before the
priests at examinations, and even then are not as exacting as the
commandments in regard to the use of _ut_ in conditional propositions.

“Thus, from my elders, whose opinion I esteemed, I had never heard that
this was reprehensible. On the contrary, I had heard people whom I
respected say that it was good. I had heard that my struggles and my
sufferings would be appeased after this act. I had heard it and read
it. I had heard from my elders that it was excellent for the health,
and my friends have always seemed to believe that it contained I know
not what merit and valor. So nothing is seen in it but what is
praiseworthy. As for the danger of disease, it is a foreseen danger.
Does not the government guard against it? And even science corrupts
us.”

“How so, science?” I asked.

“Why, the doctors, the pontiffs of science. Who pervert young people by
laying down such rules of hygiene? Who pervert women by devising and
teaching them ways by which not to have children?

“Yes: if only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were
spent in curing debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to
exist, whereas now all efforts are employed, not in extirpating
debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of the
consequences. Besides, it is not a question of that. It is a question
of this frightful thing that has happened to me, as it happens to
nine-tenths, if not more, not only of the men of our society, but of
all societies, even peasants,—this frightful thing that I had fallen,
and not because I was subjected to the natural seduction of a certain
woman. No, no woman seduced me. I fell because the surroundings in
which I found myself saw in this degrading thing only a legitimate
function, useful to the health; because others saw in it simply a
natural amusement, not only excusable, but even innocent in a young
man. I did not understand that it was a fall, and I began to give
myself to those pleasures (partly from desire and partly from
necessity) which I was led to believe were characteristic of my age,
just as I had begun to drink and smoke.

“And yet there was in this first fall something peculiar and touching.
I remember that straightway I was filled with such a profound sadness
that I had a desire to weep, to weep over the loss forever of my
relations with woman. Yes, my relations with woman were lost forever.
Pure relations with women, from that time forward, I could no longer
have. I had become what is called a voluptuary; and to be a voluptuary
is a physical condition like the condition of a victim of the morphine
habit, of a drunkard, and of a smoker.

“Just as the victim of the morphine habit, the drunkard, the smoker, is
no longer a normal man, so the man who has known several women for his
pleasure is no longer normal? He is abnormal forever. He is a
voluptuary. Just as the drunkard and the victim of the morphine habit
may be recognized by their face and manner, so we may recognize a
voluptuary. He may repress himself and struggle, but nevermore will he
enjoy simple, pure, and fraternal relations toward woman. By his way of
glancing at a young woman one may at once recognize a voluptuary; and I
became a voluptuary, and I have remained one.”




CHAPTER VI.


“Yes, so it is; and that went farther and farther with all sorts of
variations. My God! when I remember all my cowardly acts and bad deeds,
I am frightened. And I remember that ‘me’ who, during that period, was
still the butt of his comrades’ ridicule on account of his innocence.

“And when I hear people talk of the gilded youth, of the officers, of
the Parisians, and all these gentlemen, and myself, living wild lives
at the age of thirty, and who have on our consciences hundreds of
crimes toward women, terrible and varied, when we enter a parlor or a
ball-room, washed, shaven, and perfumed, with very white linen, in
dress coats or in uniform, as emblems of purity, oh, the disgust! There
will surely come a time, an epoch, when all these lives and all this
cowardice will be unveiled!

“So, nevertheless, I lived, until the age of thirty, without abandoning
for a minute my intention of marrying, and building an elevated
conjugal life; and with this in view I watched all young girls who
might suit me. I was buried in rottenness, and at the same time I
looked for virgins, whose purity was worthy of me! Many of them were
rejected: they did not seem to me pure enough!

“Finally I found one that I considered on a level with myself. She was
one of two daughters of a landed proprietor of Penza, formerly very
rich and since ruined. To tell the truth, without false modesty, they
pursued me and finally captured me. The mother (the father was away)
laid all sorts of traps, and one of these, a trip in a boat, decided my
future.

“I made up my mind at the end of the aforesaid trip one night, by
moonlight, on our way home, while I was sitting beside her. I admired
her slender body, whose charming shape was moulded by a jersey, and her
curling hair, and I suddenly concluded that _this was she_. It seemed
to me on that beautiful evening that she understood all that I thought
and felt, and I thought and felt the most elevating things.

“Really, it was only the jersey that was so becoming to her, and her
curly hair, and also the fact that I had spent the day beside her, and
that I desired a more intimate relation.

“I returned home enthusiastic, and I persuaded myself that she realized
the highest perfection, and that for that reason she was worthy to be
my wife, and the next day I made to her a proposal of marriage.

“No, say what you will, we live in such an abyss of falsehood, that,
unless some event strikes us a blow on the head, as in my case, we
cannot awaken. What confusion! Out of the thousands of men who marry,
not only among us, but also among the people, scarcely will you find a
single one who has not previously married at least ten times. (It is
true that there now exist, at least so I have heard, pure young people
who feel and know that this is not a joke, but a serious matter. May
God come to their aid! But in my time there was not to be found one
such in a thousand.)

“And all know it, and pretend not to know it. In all the novels are
described down to the smallest details the feelings of the characters,
the lakes and brambles around which they walk; but, when it comes to
describing their _great_ love, not a word is breathed of what _He_, the
interesting character, has previously done, not a word about his
frequenting of disreputable houses, or his association with
nursery-maids, cooks, and the wives of others.

“And if anything is said of these things, such _improper_ novels are
not allowed in the hands of young girls. All men have the air of
believing, in presence of maidens, that these corrupt pleasures, in
which _everybody_ takes part, do not exist, or exist only to a very
small extent. They pretend it so carefully that they succeed in
convincing themselves of it. As for the poor young girls, they believe
it quite seriously, just as my poor wife believed it.

“I remember that, being already engaged, I showed her my ‘memoirs,’
from which she could learn more or less of my past, and especially my
last _liaison_ which she might perhaps have discovered through the
gossip of some third party. It was for this last reason, for that
matter, that I felt the necessity of communicating these memoirs to
her. I can still see her fright, her despair, her bewilderment, when
she had learned and understood it. She was on the point of breaking the
engagement. What a lucky thing it would have been for both of us!”

Posdnicheff was silent for a moment, and then resumed:—

“After all, no! It is better that things happened as they did, better!”
he cried. “It was a good thing for me. Besides, it makes no difference.
I was saying that in these cases it is the poor young girls who are
deceived. As for the mothers, the mothers especially, informed by their
husbands, they know all, and, while pretending to believe in the purity
of the young man, they act as if they did not believe in it.

“They know what bait must be held out to people for themselves and
their daughters. We men sin through ignorance, and a determination not
to learn. As for the women, they know very well that the noblest and
most poetic love, as we call it, depends, not on moral qualities, but
on the physical intimacy, and also on the manner of doing the hair, and
the color and shape.

“Ask an experienced coquette, who has undertaken to seduce a man, which
she would prefer,—to be convicted, in presence of the man whom she is
engaged in conquering, of falsehood, perversity, cruelty, or to appear
before him in an ill-fitting dress, or a dress of an unbecoming color.
She will prefer the first alternative. She knows very well that we
simply lie when we talk of our elevated sentiments, that we seek only
the possession of her body, and that because of that we will forgive
her every sort of baseness, but will not forgive her a costume of an
ugly shade, without taste or fit.

“And these things she knows by reason, where as the maiden knows them
only by instinct, like the animal. Hence these abominable jerseys,
these artificial humps on the back, these bare shoulders, arms, and
throats.

“Women, especially those who have passed through the school of
marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are
only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all
that ornaments the body. Consequently, they act accordingly? If we
reject conventional explanations, and view the life of our upper and
lower classes as it is, with all its shamelessness, it is only a vast
perversity. You do not share this opinion? Permit me, I am going to
prove it to you (said he, interrupting me).

“You say that the women of our society live for a different interest
from that which actuates fallen women. And I say no, and I am going to
prove it to you. If beings differ from one another according to the
purpose of their life, according to their _inner life_, this will
necessarily be reflected also in their _outer life_, and their exterior
will be very different. Well, then, compare the wretched, the despised,
with the women of the highest society: the same dresses, the same
fashions, the same perfumeries, the same passion for jewelry, for
brilliant and very expensive articles, the same amusements, dances,
music, and songs. The former attract by all possible means; so do the
latter. No difference, none whatever!

“Yes, and I, too, was captivated by jerseys, bustles, and curly hair.”




CHAPTER VII.


“And it was very easy to capture me, since I was brought up under
artificial conditions, like cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant
nourishment, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but
systematic excitement of the imagination. The men of our society are
fed and kept like reproductive stallions. It is sufficient to close the
valve,—that is, for a young man to live a quiet life for some time,—to
produce as an immediate result a restlessness, which, becoming
exaggerated by reflection through the prism of our unnatural life,
provokes the illusion of love.

“All our idyls and marriage, all, are the result for the most part of
our eating. Does that astonish you? For my part, I am astonished that
we do not see it. Not far from my estate this spring some moujiks were
working on a railway embankment. You know what a peasant’s food
is,—bread, _kvass_,[*] onions. With this frugal nourishment he lives,
he is alert, he makes light work in the fields. But on the railway this
bill of fare becomes _cacha_ and a pound of meat. Only he restores this
meat by sixteen hours of labor pushing loads weighing twelve hundred
pounds.

[*] _Kvass_, a sort of cider.


“And we, who eat two pounds of meat and game, we who absorb all sorts
of heating drinks and food, how do we expend it? In sensual excesses.
If the valve is open, all goes well; but close it, as I had closed it
temporarily before my marriage, and immediately there will result an
excitement which, deformed by novels, verses, music, by our idle and
luxurious life, will give a love of the finest water. I, too, fell in
love, as everybody does, and there were transports, emotions, poesy;
but really all this passion was prepared by mamma and the dressmakers.
If there had been no trips in boats, no well-fitted garments, etc., if
my wife had worn some shapeless blouse, and I had seen her thus at her
home, I should not have been seduced.”




CHAPTER VIII.


“And note, also, this falsehood, of which all are guilty; the way in
which marriages are made. What could there be more natural? The young
girl is marriageable, she should marry. What simpler, provided the
young person is not a monster, and men can be found with a desire to
marry? Well, no, here begins a new hypocrisy.

“Formerly, when the maiden arrived at a favorable age, her marriage was
arranged by her parents. That was done, that is done still, throughout
humanity, among the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Mussulmans, and among our
common people also. Things are so managed in at least ninety-nine per
cent. of the families of the entire human race.

“Only we riotous livers have imagined that this way was bad, and have
invented another. And this other,—what is it? It is this. The young
girls are seated, and the gentlemen walk up and down before them, as in
a bazaar, and make their choice. The maidens wait and think, but do not
dare to say: ‘Take me, young man, me and not her. Look at these
shoulders and the rest.’ We males walk up and down, and estimate the
merchandise, and then we discourse upon the rights of woman, upon the
liberty that she acquires, I know not how, in the theatrical halls.”

“But what is to be done?” said I to him. “Shall the woman make the
advances?”

“I do not know. But, if it is a question of equality, let the equality
be complete. Though it has been found that to contract marriages
through the agency of match-makers is humiliating, it is nevertheless a
thousand times preferable to our system. There the rights and the
chances are equal; here the woman is a slave, exhibited in the market.
But as she cannot bend to her condition, or make advances herself,
there begins that other and more abominable lie which is sometimes
called _going into society_, sometimes _amusing one’s self_, and which
is really nothing but the hunt for a husband.

“But say to a mother or to her daughter that they are engaged only in a
hunt for a husband. God! What an offence! Yet they can do nothing else,
and have nothing else to do; and the terrible feature of it all is to
see sometimes very young, poor, and innocent maidens haunted solely by
such ideas. If only, I repeat, it were done frankly; but it is always
accompanied with lies and babble of this sort:—

“‘Ah, the descent of species! How interesting it is!’

“‘Oh, Lily is much interested in painting.’

“‘Shall you go to the Exposition? How charming it is!’

“‘And the troika, and the plays, and the symphony. Ah, how adorable!’

“‘My Lise is passionately fond of music.’

“‘And you, why do you not share these convictions?’

“And through all this verbiage, all have but one single idea: ‘Take me,
take my Lise. No, me! Only try!’”




CHAPTER IX.


“Do you know,” suddenly continued Posdnicheff, “that this power of
women from which the world suffers arises solely from what I have just
spoken of?”

“What do you mean by the power of women?” I said. “Everybody, on the
contrary, complains that women have not sufficient rights, that they
are in subjection.”

“That’s it; that’s it exactly,” said he, vivaciously. “That is just
what I mean, and that is the explanation of this extraordinary
phenomenon, that on the one hand woman is reduced to the lowest degree
of humiliation and on the other hand she reigns over everything. See
the Jews: with their power of money, they avenge their subjection, just
as the women do. ‘Ah! you wish us to be only merchants? All right;
remaining merchants, we will get possession of you,’ say the Jews. ‘Ah!
you wish us to be only objects of sensuality? All right; by the aid of
sensuality we will bend you beneath our yoke,’ say the women.

“The absence of the rights of woman does not consist in the fact that
she has not the right to vote, or the right to sit on the bench, but in
the fact that in her affectional relations she is not the equal of man,
she has not the right to abstain, to choose instead of being chosen.
You say that that would be abnormal. Very well! But then do not let man
enjoy these rights, while his companion is deprived of them, and finds
herself obliged to make use of the coquetry by which she governs, so
that the result is that man chooses ‘formally,’ whereas really it is
woman who chooses. As soon as she is in possession of her means, she
abuses them, and acquires a terrible supremacy.”

“But where do you see this exceptional power?”

“Where? Why, everywhere, in everything. Go see the stores in the large
cities. There are millions there, millions. It is impossible to
estimate the enormous quantity of labor that is expended there. In
nine-tenths of these stores is there anything whatever for the use of
men? All the luxury of life is demanded and sustained by woman. Count
the factories; the greater part of them are engaged in making feminine
ornaments. Millions of men, generations of slaves, die toiling like
convicts simply to satisfy the whims of our companions.

“Women, like queens, keep nine-tenths of the human race as prisoners of
war, or as prisoners at hard labor. And all this because they have been
humiliated, because they have been deprived of rights equal to those
which men enjoy. They take revenge for our sensuality; they catch us in
their nets.

“Yes, the whole thing is there. Women have made of themselves such a
weapon to act upon the senses that a young man, and even an old man,
cannot remain tranquil in their presence. Watch a popular festival, or
our receptions or ball-rooms. Woman well knows her influence there. You
will see it in her triumphant smiles.

“As soon as a young man advances toward a woman, directly he falls
under the influence of this opium, and loses his head. Long ago I felt
ill at ease when I saw a woman too well adorned,—whether a woman of the
people with her red neckerchief and her looped skirt, or a woman of our
own society in her ball-room dress. But now it simply terrifies me. I
see in it a danger to men, something contrary to the laws; and I feel a
desire to call a policeman, to appeal for defence from some quarter, to
demand that this dangerous object be removed.

“And this is not a joke, by any means. I am convinced, I am sure, that
the time will come—and perhaps it is not far distant—when the world
will understand this, and will be astonished that a society could exist
in which actions as harmful as those which appeal to sensuality by
adorning the body as our companions do were allowed. As well set traps
along our public streets, or worse than that.”




CHAPTER X.


“That, then, was the way in which I was captured. I was in love, as it
is called; not only did _she_ appear to me a perfect being, but I
considered myself a white blackbird. It is a commonplace fact that
there is no one so low in the world that he cannot find some one viler
than himself, and consequently puff with pride and self-contentment. I
was in that situation. I did not marry for money. Interest was foreign
to the affair, unlike the marriages of most of my acquaintances, who
married either for money or for relations. First, I was rich, she was
poor. Second, I was especially proud of the fact that, while others
married with an intention of continuing their polygamic life as
bachelors, it was my firm intention to live monogamically after my
engagement and the wedding, and my pride swelled immeasurably.

“Yes, I was a wretch, convinced that I was an angel. The period of my
engagement did not last long. I cannot remember those days without
shame. What an abomination!

“It is generally agreed that love is a moral sentiment, a community of
thought rather than of sense. If that is the case, this community of
thought ought to find expression in words and conversation. Nothing of
the sort. It was extremely difficult for us to talk with each other.
What a toil of Sisyphus was our conversation! Scarcely had we thought
of something to say, and said it, when we had to resume our silence and
try to discover new subjects. Literally, we did not know what to say to
each other. All that we could think of concerning the life that was
before us and our home was said.

“And then what? If we had been animals, we should have known that we
had not to talk. But here, on the contrary, it was necessary to talk,
and there were no resources! For that which occupied our minds was not
a thing to be expressed in words.

“And then that silly custom of eating bon-bons, that brutal gluttony
for sweetmeats, those abominable preparations for the wedding, those
discussions with mamma upon the apartments, upon the sleeping-rooms,
upon the bedding, upon the morning-gowns, upon the wrappers, the linen,
the costumes! Understand that if people married according to the old
fashion, as this old man said just now, then these eiderdown coverlets
and this bedding would all be sacred details; but with us, out of ten
married people there is scarcely to be found one who, I do not say
believes in sacraments (whether he believes or not is a matter of
indifference to us), but believes in what he promises. Out of a hundred
men, there is scarcely one who has not married before, and out of fifty
scarcely one who has not made up his mind to deceive his wife.

“The great majority look upon this journey to the church as a condition
necessary to the possession of a certain woman. Think then of the
supreme significance which material details must take on. Is it not a
sort of sale, in which a maiden is given over to a _débauché_, the sale
being surrounded with the most agreeable details?”




CHAPTER XI.


“All marry in this way. And I did like the rest. If the young people
who dream of the honeymoon only knew what a disillusion it is, and
always a disillusion! I really do not know why all think it necessary
to conceal it.

“One day I was walking among the shows in Paris, when, attracted by a
sign, I entered an establishment to see a bearded woman and a
water-dog. The woman was a man in disguise, and the dog was an ordinary
dog, covered with a sealskin, and swimming in a bath. It was not in the
least interesting, but the Barnum accompanied me to the exit very
courteously, and, in addressing the people who were coming in, made an
appeal to my testimony. ‘Ask the gentleman if it is not worth seeing!
Come in, come in! It only costs a franc!’ And in my confusion I did not
dare to answer that there was nothing curious to be seen, and it was
upon my false shame that the Barnum must have counted.

“It must be the same with the persons who have passed through the
abominations of the honeymoon. They do not dare to undeceive their
neighbor. And I did the same.

“The felicities of the honeymoon do not exist. On the contrary, it is a
period of uneasiness, of shame, of pity, and, above all, of _ennui_,—of
ferocious _ennui_. It is something like the feeling of a youth when he
is beginning to smoke. He desires to vomit; he drivels, and swallows
his drivel, pretending to enjoy this little amusement. The vice of
marriage . . .”

“What! _Vice?_” I said. “But you are talking of one of the most natural
things.”

“Natural!” said he. “Natural! No, I consider on the contrary that it is
against nature, and it is I, a perverted man, who have reached this
conviction. What would it be, then, if I had not known corruption? To a
young girl, to every unperverted young girl, it is an act extremely
unnatural, just as it is to children. My sister married, when very
young, a man twice her own age, and who was utterly corrupt. I remember
how astonished we were the night of her wedding, when, pale and covered
with tears, she fled from her husband, her whole body trembling, saying
that for nothing in the world would she tell what he wanted of her.

“You say natural? It is natural to eat; that is a pleasant, agreeable
function, which no one is ashamed to perform from the time of his
birth. No, it is not natural. A pure young girl wants one
thing,—children. Children, yes, not a lover.” . . .

“But,” said I, with astonishment, “how would the human race continue?”

“But what is the use of its continuing?” he rejoined, vehemently.

“What! What is the use? But then we should not exist.”

“And why is it necessary that we should exist?”

“Why, to live, to be sure.”

“And why live? The Schopenhauers, the Hartmanns, and all the Buddhists,
say that the greatest happiness is Nirvana, Non-Life; and they are
right in this sense,—that human happiness is coincident with the
annihilation of ‘Self.’ Only they do not express themselves well. They
say that Humanity should annihilate itself to avoid its sufferings,
that its object should be to destroy itself. Now the object of Humanity
cannot be to avoid sufferings by annihilation, since suffering is the
result of activity. The object of activity cannot consist in
suppressing its consequences. The object of Man, as of Humanity, is
happiness, and, to attain it, Humanity has a law which it must carry
out. This law consists in the union of beings. This union is thwarted
by the passions. And that is why, if the passions disappear, the union
will be accomplished. Humanity then will have carried out the law, and
will have no further reason to exist.”

“And before Humanity carries out the law?”

“In the meantime it will have the sign of the unfulfilled law, and the
existence of physical love. As long as this love shall exist, and
because of it, generations will be born, one of which will finally
fulfil the law. When at last the law shall be fulfilled, the Human Race
will be annihilated. At least it is impossible for us to conceive of
Life in the perfect union of people.”




CHAPTER XII.


“Strange theory!” cried I.

“Strange in what? According to all the doctrines of the Church, the
world will have an end. Science teaches the same fatal conclusions.
Why, then, is it strange that the same thing should result from moral
Doctrine? ‘Let those who can, contain,’ said Christ. And I take this
passage literally, as it is written. That morality may exist between
people in their worldly relations, they must make complete chastity
their object. In tending toward this end, man humiliates himself. When
he shall reach the last degree of humiliation, we shall have moral
marriage.

“But if man, as in our society, tends only toward physical love, though
he may clothe it with pretexts and the false forms of marriage, he will
have only permissible debauchery, he will know only the same immoral
life in which I fell and caused my wife to fall, a life which we call
the honest life of the family. Think what a perversion of ideas must
arise when the happiest situation of man, liberty, chastity, is looked
upon as something wretched and ridiculous. The highest ideal, the best
situation of woman, to be pure, to be a vestal, a virgin, excites fear
and laughter in our society. How many, how many young girls sacrifice
their purity to this Moloch of opinion by marrying rascals that they
may not remain virgins,—that is, superiors! Through fear of finding
themselves in that ideal state, they ruin themselves.

“But I did not understand formerly, I did not understand that the words
of the Gospel, that ‘he who looks upon a woman to lust after her has
already committed adultery,’ do not apply to the wives of others, but
notably and especially to our own wives. I did not understand this, and
I thought that the honeymoon and all of my acts during that period were
virtuous, and that to satisfy one’s desires with his wife is an
eminently chaste thing. Know, then, that I consider these departures,
these isolations, which young married couples arrange with the
permission of their parents, as nothing else than a license to engage
in debauchery.

“I saw, then, in this nothing bad or shameful, and, hoping for great
joys, I began to live the honeymoon. And very certainly none of these
joys followed. But I had faith, and was determined to have them, cost
what they might. But the more I tried to secure them, the less I
succeeded. All this time I felt anxious, ashamed, and weary. Soon I
began to suffer. I believe that on the third or fourth day I found my
wife sad and asked her the reason. I began to embrace her, which in my
opinion was all that she could desire. She put me away with her hand,
and began to weep.

“At what? She could not tell me. She was filled with sorrow, with
anguish. Probably her tortured nerves had suggested to her the truth
about the baseness of our relations, but she found no words in which to
say it. I began to question her; she answered that she missed her
absent mother. It seemed to me that she was not telling the truth. I
sought to console her by maintaining silence in regard to her parents.
I did not imagine that she felt herself simply overwhelmed, and that
her parents had nothing to do with her sorrow. She did not listen to
me, and I accused her of caprice. I began to laugh at her gently. She
dried her tears, and began to reproach me, in hard and wounding terms,
for my selfishness and cruelty.

“I looked at her. Her whole face expressed hatred, and hatred of me. I
cannot describe to you the fright which this sight gave me. ‘How?
What?’ thought I, ‘love is the unity of souls, and here she hates me?
Me? Why? But it is impossible! It is no longer she!’

“I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with an immovable and cold
hostility, so that, having no time to reflect, I was seized with keen
irritation. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this
first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It
was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us.
Love was exhausted with the satisfaction of sensuality. We stood face
to face in our true light, like two egoists trying to procure the
greatest possible enjoyment, like two individuals trying to mutually
exploit each other.

“So what I called our quarrel was our actual situation as it appeared
after the satisfaction of sensual desire. I did not realize that this
cold hostility was our normal state, and that this first quarrel would
soon be drowned under a new flood of the intensest sensuality. I
thought that we had disputed with each other, and had become
reconciled, and that it would not happen again. But in this same
honeymoon there came a period of satiety, in which we ceased to be
necessary to each other, and a new quarrel broke out.

“It became evident that the first was not a matter of chance. ‘It was
inevitable,’ I thought. This second quarrel stupefied me the more,
because it was based on an extremely unjust cause. It was something
like a question of money,—and never had I haggled on that score; it was
even impossible that I should do so in relation to her. I only remember
that, in answer to some remark that I made, she insinuated that it was
my intention to rule her by means of money, and that it was upon money
that I based my sole right over her. In short, something
extraordinarily stupid and base, which was neither in my character nor
in hers.

“I was beside myself. I accused her of indelicacy. She made the same
accusation against me, and the dispute broke out. In her words, in the
expression of her face, of her eyes, I noticed again the hatred that
had so astonished me before. With a brother, friends, my father, I had
occasionally quarrelled, but never had there been between us this
fierce spite. Some time passed. Our mutual hatred was again concealed
beneath an access of sensual desire, and I again consoled myself with
the reflection that these scenes were reparable faults.

“But when they were repeated a third and a fourth time, I understood
that they were not simply faults, but a fatality that must happen
again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply astonished that I
should be precisely the one to live so uncomfortably with my wife, and
that the same thing did not happen in other households. I did not know
that in all households the same sudden changes take place, but that
all, like myself, imagine that it is a misfortune exclusively reserved
for themselves alone, which they carefully conceal as shameful, not
only to others, but to themselves, like a bad disease.

“That was what happened to me. Begun in the early days, it continued
and increased with characteristics of fury that were ever more
pronounced. At the bottom of my soul, from the first weeks, I felt that
I was in a trap, that I had what I did not expect, and that marriage is
not a joy, but a painful trial. Like everybody else, I refused to
confess it (I should not have confessed it even now but for the
outcome). Now I am astonished to think that I did not see my real
situation. It was so easy to perceive it, in view of those quarrels,
begun for reasons so trivial that afterwards one could not recall them.

“Just as it often happens among gay young people that, in the absence
of jokes, they laugh at their own laughter, so we found no reasons for
our hatred, and we hated each other because hatred was naturally
boiling up in us. More extraordinary still was the absence of causes
for reconciliation.

“Sometimes words, explanations, or even tears, but sometimes, I
remember, after insulting words, there tacitly followed embraces and
declarations. Abomination! Why is it that I did not then perceive this
baseness?”




CHAPTER XIII.


“All of us, men and women, are brought up in these aberrations of
feeling that we call love. I from childhood had prepared myself for
this thing, and I loved, and I loved during all my youth, and I was
joyous in loving. It had been put into my head that it was the noblest
and highest occupation in the world. But when this expected feeling
came at last, and I, a man, abandoned myself to it, the lie was pierced
through and through. Theoretically a lofty love is conceivable;
practically it is an ignoble and degrading thing, which it is equally
disgusting to talk about and to remember. It is not in vain that nature
has made ceremonies, but people pretend that the ignoble and the
shameful is beautiful and lofty.

“I will tell you brutally and briefly what were the first signs of my
love. I abandoned myself to beastly excesses, not only not ashamed of
them, but proud of them, giving no thought to the intellectual life of
my wife. And not only did I not think of her intellectual life, I did
not even consider her physical life.

“I was astonished at the origin of our hostility, and yet how clear it
was! This hostility is nothing but a protest of human nature against
the beast that enslaves it. It could not be otherwise. This hatred was
the hatred of accomplices in a crime. Was it not a crime that, this
poor woman having become pregnant in the first month, our _liaison_
should have continued just the same?

“You imagine that I am wandering from my story. Not at all. I am always
giving you an account of the events that led to the murder of my wife.
The imbeciles! They think that I killed my wife on the 5th of October.
It was long before that that I immolated her, just as they all kill
now. Understand well that in our society there is an idea shared by all
that woman procures man pleasure (and _vice versa_, probably, but I
know nothing of that, I only know my own case). _Wein, Weiber und
Gesang_. So say the poets in their verses: Wine, women, and song!

“If it were only that! Take all the poetry, the painting, the
sculpture, beginning with Pouschkine’s ‘Little Feet,’ with ‘Venus and
Phryne,’ and you will see that woman is only a means of enjoyment. That
is what she is at Trouba,[*] at Gratchevka, and in a court ball-room.
And think of this diabolical trick: if she were a thing without moral
value, it might be said that woman is a fine morsel; but, in the first
place, these knights assure us that they adore woman (they adore her
and look upon her, however, as a means of enjoyment), then all assure
us that they esteem woman. Some give up their seats to her, pick up her
handkerchief; others recognize in her a right to fill all offices,
participate in government, etc., but, in spite of all that, the
essential point remains the same. She is, she remains, an object of
sensual desire, and she knows it. It is slavery, for slavery is nothing
else than the utilization of the labor of some for the enjoyment of
others. That slavery may not exist people must refuse to enjoy the
labor of others, and look upon it as a shameful act and as a sin.

[*] A suburb of Moscow.


“Actually, this is what happens. They abolish the external form, they
suppress the formal sales of slaves, and then they imagine and assure
others that slavery is abolished. They are unwilling to see that it
still exists, since people, as before, like to profit by the labor of
others, and think it good and just. This being given, there will always
be found beings stronger or more cunning than others to profit thereby.
The same thing happens in the emancipation of woman. At bottom feminine
servitude consists entirely in her assimilation with a means of
pleasure. They excite woman, they give her all sorts of rights equal to
those of men, but they continue to look upon her as an object of
sensual desire, and thus they bring her up from infancy and in public
opinion.

“She is always the humiliated and corrupt serf, and man remains always
the debauched Master. Yes, to abolish slavery, public opinion must
admit that it is shameful to exploit one’s neighbor, and, to make woman
free, public opinion must admit that it is shameful to consider woman
as an instrument of pleasure.

“The emancipation of woman is not to be effected in the public courts
or in the chamber of deputies, but in the sleeping chamber.
Prostitution is to be combated, not in the houses of ill-fame, but in
the family. They free woman in the public courts and in the chamber of
deputies, but she remains an instrument. Teach her, as she is taught
among us, to look upon herself as such, and she will always remain an
inferior being. Either, with the aid of the rascally doctors, she will
try to prevent conception, and descend, not to the level of an animal,
but to the level of a thing; or she will be what she is in the great
majority of cases,—sick, hysterical, wretched, without hope of
spiritual progress.” . . .

“But why that?” I asked.

“Oh! the most astonishing thing is that no one is willing to see this
thing, evident as it is, which the doctors must understand, but which
they take good care not to do. Man does not wish to know the law of
nature,—children. But children are born and become an embarrassment.
Then man devises means of avoiding this embarrassment. We have not yet
reached the low level of Europe, nor Paris, nor the ‘system of two
children,’ nor Mahomet. We have discovered nothing, because we have
given it no thought. We feel that there is something bad in the two
first means; but we wish to preserve the family, and our view of woman
is still worse.

“With us woman must be at the same time mistress and nurse, and her
strength is not sufficient. That is why we have hysteria, nervous
attacks, and, among the peasants, witchcraft. Note that among the young
girls of the peasantry this state of things does not exist, but only
among the wives, and the wives who live with their husbands. The reason
is clear, and this is the cause of the intellectual and moral decline
of woman, and of her abasement.

“If they would only reflect what a grand work for the wife is the
period of gestation! In her is forming the being who continues us, and
this holy work is thwarted and rendered painful . . . by what? It is
frightful to think of it! And after that they talk of the liberties and
the rights of woman! It is like the cannibals fattening their prisoners
in order to devour them, and assuring these unfortunates at the same
time that their rights and their liberties are guarded!”

All this was new to me, and astonished me very much.

“But if this is so,” said I, “it follows that one may love his wife
only once every two years; and as man” . . .

“And as man has need of her, you are going to say. At least, so the
priests of science assure us. I would force these priests to fulfil the
function of these women, who, in their opinion, are necessary to man. I
wonder what song they would sing then. Assure man that he needs brandy,
tobacco, opium, and he will believe those poisons necessary. It follows
that God did not know how to arrange matters properly, since, without
asking the opinions of the priests, he has combined things as they are.
Man needs, so they have decided, to satisfy his sensual desire, and
here this function is disturbed by the birth and the nursing of
children.

“What, then, is to be done? Why, apply to the priests; they will
arrange everything, and they have really discovered a way. When, then,
will these rascals with their lies be uncrowned! It is high time. We
have had enough of them. People go mad, and shoot each other with
revolvers, and always because of that! And how could it be otherwise?

“One would say that the animals know that descent continues their race,
and that they follow a certain law in regard thereto. Only man does not
know this, and is unwilling to know it. He cares only to have as much
sensual enjoyment as possible. The king of nature,—man! In the name of
his love he kills half the human race. Of woman, who ought to be his
aid in the movement of humanity toward liberty, he makes, in the name
of his pleasures, not an aid, but an enemy. Who is it that everywhere
puts a check upon the progressive movement of humanity? Woman. Why is
it so?

“For the reason that I have given, and for that reason only.”




CHAPTER XIV.


“Yes, much worse than the animal is man when he does not live as a man.
Thus was I. The horrible part is that I believed, inasmuch as I did not
allow myself to be seduced by other women that I was leading an honest
family life, that I was a very moral being, and that if we had
quarrels, the fault was in my wife, and in her character.

“But it is evident that the fault was not in her. She was like
everybody else, like the majority. She was brought up according to the
principles exacted by the situation of our society,—that is, as all the
young girls of our wealthy classes, without exception, are brought up,
and as they cannot fail to be brought up. How many times we hear or
read of reflections upon the abnormal condition of women, and upon what
they ought to be. But these are only vain words. The education of women
results from the real and not imaginary view which the world entertains
of women’s vocation. According to this view, the condition of women
consists in procuring pleasure and it is to that end that her education
is directed. From her infancy she is taught only those things that are
calculated to increase her charm. Every young girl is accustomed to
think only of that.

“As the serfs were brought up solely to please their masters, so woman
is brought up to attract men. It cannot be otherwise. But you will say,
perhaps, that that applies only to young girls who are badly brought
up, but that there is another education, an education that is serious,
in the schools, an education in the dead languages, an education in the
institutions of midwifery, an education in medical courses, and in
other courses. It is false.

“Every sort of feminine education has for its sole object the
attraction of men.

“Some attract by music or curly hair, others by science or by civic
virtue. The object is the same, and cannot be otherwise (since no other
object exists),—to seduce man in order to possess him. Imagine courses
of instruction for women and feminine science without men,—that is,
learned women, and men not _knowing_ them as learned. Oh, no! No
education, no instruction can change woman as long as her highest ideal
shall be marriage and not virginity, freedom from sensuality. Until
that time she will remain a serf. One need only imagine, forgetting the
universality of the case, the conditions in which our young girls are
brought up, to avoid astonishment at the debauchery of the women of our
upper classes. It is the opposite that would cause astonishment.

“Follow my reasoning. From infancy garments, ornaments, cleanliness,
grace, dances, music, reading of poetry, novels, singing, the theatre,
the concert, for use within and without, according as women listen, or
practice themselves. With that, complete physical idleness, an
excessive care of the body, a vast consumption of sweetmeats; and God
knows how the poor maidens suffer from their own sensuality, excited by
all these things. Nine out of ten are tortured intolerably during the
first period of maturity, and afterward provided they do not marry at
the age of twenty. That is what we are unwilling to see, but those who
have eyes see it all the same. And even the majority of these
unfortunate creatures are so excited by a hidden sensuality (and it is
lucky if it is hidden) that they are fit for nothing. They become
animated only in the presence of men. Their whole life is spent in
preparations for coquetry, or in coquetry itself. In the presence of
men they become too animated; they begin to live by sensual energy. But
the moment the man goes away, the life stops.

“And that, not in the presence of a certain man, but in the presence of
any man, provided he is not utterly hideous. You will say that this is
an exception. No, it is a rule. Only in some it is made very evident,
in others less so. But no one lives by her own life; they are all
dependent upon man. They cannot be otherwise, since to them the
attraction of the greatest number of men is the ideal of life (young
girls and married women), and it is for this reason that they have no
feeling stronger than that of the animal need of every female who tries
to attract the largest number of males in order to increase the
opportunities for choice. So it is in the life of young girls, and so
it continues during marriage. In the life of young girls it is
necessary in order to selection, and in marriage it is necessary in
order to rule the husband. Only one thing suppresses or interrupts
these tendencies for a time,—namely, children,—and then only when the
woman is not a monster,—that is, when she nurses her own children. Here
again the doctor interferes.

“With my wife, who desired to nurse her own children, and who did nurse
six of them, it happened that the first child was sickly. The doctors,
who cynically undressed her and felt of her everywhere, and whom I had
to thank and pay for these acts,—these dear doctors decided that she
ought not to nurse her child, and she was temporarily deprived of the
only remedy for coquetry. A nurse finished the nursing of this
first-born,—that is to say, we profited by the poverty and ignorance of
a woman to steal her from her own little one in favor of ours, and for
that purpose we dressed her in a _kakoschnik_ trimmed with gold lace.
Nevertheless, that is not the question; but there was again awakened in
my wife that coquetry which had been sleeping during the nursing
period. Thanks to that, she reawakened in me the torments of jealousy
which I had formerly known, though in a much slighter degree.”




CHAPTER XV.


“Yes, jealousy, that is another of the secrets of marriage known to all
and concealed by all. Besides the general cause of the mutual hatred of
husbands and wives resulting from complicity in the pollution of a
human being, and also from other causes, the inexhaustible source of
marital wounds is jealousy. But by tacit consent it is determined to
conceal them from all, and we conceal them. Knowing them, each one
supposes in himself that it is an unfortunate peculiarity, and not a
common destiny. So it was with me, and it had to be so. There cannot
fail to be jealousy between husbands and wives who live immorally. If
they cannot sacrifice their pleasures for the welfare of their child,
they conclude therefrom, and truly, that they will not sacrifice their
pleasures for, I will not say happiness and tranquillity (since one may
sin in secret), but even for the sake of conscience. Each one knows
very well that neither admits any high moral reasons for not betraying
the other, since in their mutual relations they fail in the
requirements of morality, and from that time distrust and watch each
other.

“Oh, what a frightful feeling of jealousy! I do not speak of that real
jealousy which has foundations (it is tormenting, but it promises an
issue), but of that unconscious jealousy which inevitably accompanies
every immoral marriage, and which, having no cause, has no end. This
jealousy is frightful. Frightful, that is the word.

“And this is it. A young man speaks to my wife. He looks at her with a
smile, and, as it seems to me, he surveys her body. How does he dare to
think of her, to think of the possibility of a romance with her? And
how can she, seeing this, tolerate him? Not only does she tolerate him,
but she seems pleased. I even see that she puts herself to trouble on
his account. And in my soul there rises such a hatred for her that each
of her words, each gesture, disgusts me. She notices it, she knows not
what to do, and how assume an air of indifferent animation? Ah! I
suffer! That makes her gay, she is content. And my hatred increases
tenfold, but I do not dare to give it free force, because at the bottom
of my soul I know that there are no real reasons for it, and I remain
in my seat, feigning indifference, and exaggerating my attention and
courtesy to _him_.

“Then I get angry with myself. I desire to leave the room, to leave
them alone, and I do, in fact, go out; but scarcely am I outside when I
am invaded by a fear of what is taking place within my absence. I go in
again, inventing some pretext. Or sometimes I do not go in; I remain
near the door, and listen. How can she humiliate herself and humiliate
me by placing me in this cowardly situation of suspicion and espionage?
Oh, abomination! Oh, the wicked animal! And he too, what does he think
of you? But he is like all men. He is what I was before my marriage. It
gives him pleasure. He even smiles when he looks at me, as much as to
say: ‘What have you to do with this? It is my turn now.’

“This feeling is horrible. Its burn is unendurable. To entertain this
feeling toward any one, to once suspect a man of lusting after my wife,
was enough to spoil this man forever in my eyes, as if he had been
sprinkled with vitriol. Let me once become jealous of a being, and
nevermore could I re-establish with him simple human relations, and my
eyes flashed when I looked at him.

“As for my wife, so many times had I enveloped her with this moral
vitriol, with this jealous hatred, that she was degraded thereby. In
the periods of this causeless hatred I gradually uncrowned her. I
covered her with shame in my imagination.

“I invented impossible knaveries. I suspected, I am ashamed to say,
that she, this queen of ‘The Thousand and One Nights,’ deceived me with
my serf, under my very eyes, and laughing at me.

“Thus, with each new access of jealousy (I speak always of causeless
jealousy), I entered into the furrow dug formerly by my filthy
suspicions, and I continually deepened it. She did the same thing. If I
have reasons to be jealous, she who knew my past had a thousand times
more. And she was more ill-natured in her jealousy than I. And the
sufferings that I felt from her jealousy were different, and likewise
very painful.

“The situation may be described thus. We are living more or less
tranquilly. I am even gay and contented. Suddenly we start a
conversation on some most commonplace subject, and directly she finds
herself disagreeing with me upon matters concerning which we have been
generally in accord. And furthermore I see that, without any necessity
therefor, she is becoming irritated. I think that she has a nervous
attack, or else that the subject of conversation is really disagreeable
to her. We talk of something else, and that begins again. Again she
torments me, and becomes irritated. I am astonished and look for a
reason. Why? For what? She keeps silence, answers me with
monosyllables, evidently making allusions to something. I begin to
divine that the reason of all this is that I have taken a few walks in
the garden with her cousin, to whom I did not give even a thought. I
begin to divine, but I cannot say so. If I say so, I confirm her
suspicions. I interrogate her, I question her. She does not answer, but
she sees that I understand, and that confirms her suspicions.

“‘What is the matter with you?’ I ask.

“‘Nothing, I am as well as usual,’ she answers.

“And at the same time, like a crazy woman, she gives utterance to the
silliest remarks, to the most inexplicable explosions of spite.

“Sometimes I am patient, but at other times I break out with anger.
Then her own irritation is launched forth in a flood of insults, in
charges of imaginary crimes and all carried to the highest degree by
sobs, tears, and retreats through the house to the most improbable
spots. I go to look for her. I am ashamed before people, before the
children, but there is nothing to be done. She is in a condition where
I feel that she is ready for anything. I run, and finally find her.
Nights of torture follow, in which both of us, with exhausted nerves,
appease each other, after the most cruel words and accusations.

“Yes, jealousy, causeless jealousy, is the condition of our debauched
conjugal life. And throughout my marriage never did I cease to feel it
and to suffer from it. There were two periods in which I suffered most
intensely. The first time was after the birth of our first child, when
the doctors had forbidden my wife to nurse it. I was particularly
jealous, in the first place, because my wife felt that restlessness
peculiar to animal matter when the regular course of life is
interrupted without occasion. But especially was I jealous because,
having seen with what facility she had thrown off her moral duties as a
mother, I concluded rightly, though unconsciously, that she would throw
off as easily her conjugal duties, feeling all the surer of this
because she was in perfect health, as was shown by the fact that, in
spite of the prohibition of the dear doctors, she nursed her following
children, and even very well.”

“I see that you have no love for the doctors,” said I, having noticed
Posdnicheff’s extraordinarily spiteful expression of face and tone of
voice whenever he spoke of them.

“It is not a question of loving them or of not loving them. They have
ruined my life, as they have ruined the lives of thousands of beings
before me, and I cannot help connecting the consequence with the cause.
I conceive that they desire, like the lawyers and the rest, to make
money. I would willingly have given them half of my income—and any one
would have done it in my place, understanding what they do—if they had
consented not to meddle in my conjugal life, and to keep themselves at
a distance. I have compiled no statistics, but I know scores of
cases—in reality, they are innumerable—where they have killed, now a
child in its mother’s womb, asserting positively that the mother could
not give birth to it (when the mother could give birth to it very
well), now mothers, under the pretext of a so-called operation. No one
has counted these murders, just as no one counted the murders of the
Inquisition, because it was supposed that they were committed for the
benefit of humanity. Innumerable are the crimes of the doctors! But all
these crimes are nothing compared with the materialistic demoralization
which they introduce into the world through women. I say nothing of the
fact that, if it were to follow their advice,—thanks to the microbe
which they see everywhere,—humanity, instead of tending to union, would
proceed straight to complete disunion. Everybody, according to their
doctrine, should isolate himself, and never remove from his mouth a
syringe filled with phenic acid (moreover, they have found out now that
it does no good). But I would pass over all these things. The supreme
poison is the perversion of people, especially of women. One can no
longer say now: ‘You live badly, live better.’ One can no longer say it
either to himself or to others, for, if you live badly (say the
doctors), the cause is in the nervous system or in something similar,
and it is necessary to go to consult them, and they will prescribe for
you thirty-five copecks’ worth of remedies to be bought at the
drug-store, and you must swallow them. Your condition grows worse?
Again to the doctors, and more remedies! An excellent business!

“But to return to our subject. I was saying that my wife nursed her
children well, that the nursing and the gestation of the children, and
the children in general, quieted my tortures of jealousy, but that, on
the other hand, they provoked torments of a different sort.”




CHAPTER XVI.


“The children came rapidly, one after another, and there happened what
happens in our society with children and doctors. Yes, children,
maternal love, it is a painful thing. Children, to a woman of our
society, are not a joy, a pride, nor a fulfilment of her vocation, but
a cause of fear, anxiety, and interminable suffering, torture. Women
say it, they think it, and they feel it too. Children to them are
really a torture, not because they do not wish to give birth to them,
nurse them, and care for them (women with a strong maternal
instinct—and such was my wife—are ready to do that), but because the
children may fall sick and die. They do not wish to give birth to them,
and then not love them; and when they love, they do not wish to feel
fear for the child’s health and life. That is why they do not wish to
nurse them. ‘If I nurse it,’ they say, ‘I shall become too fond of it.’
One would think that they preferred india-rubber children, which could
neither be sick nor die, and could always be repaired. What an
entanglement in the brains of these poor women! Why such abominations
to avoid pregnancy, and to avoid the love of the little ones?

“Love, the most joyous condition of the soul, is represented as a
danger. And why? Because, when a man does not live as a man, he is
worse than a beast. A woman cannot look upon a child otherwise than as
a pleasure. It is true that it is painful to give birth to it, but what
little hands! . . . Oh, the little hands! Oh, the little feet! Oh, its
smile! Oh, its little body! Oh, its prattle! Oh, its hiccough! In a
word, it is a feeling of animal, sensual maternity. But as for any idea
as to the mysterious significance of the appearance of a new human
being to replace us, there is scarcely a sign of it.

“Nothing of it appears in all that is said and done. No one has any
faith now in a baptism of the child, and yet that was nothing but a
reminder of the human significance of the newborn babe.

“They have rejected all that, but they have not replaced it, and there
remain only the dresses, the laces, the little hands, the little feet,
and whatever exists in the animal. But the animal has neither
imagination, nor foresight, nor reason, nor a doctor.

“No! not even a doctor! The chicken droops its head, overwhelmed, or
the calf dies; the hen clucks and the cow lows for a time, and then
these beasts continue to live, forgetting what has happened.

“With us, if the child falls sick, what is to be done, how to care for
it, what doctor to call, where to go? If it dies, there will be no more
little hands or little feet, and then what is the use of the sufferings
endured? The cow does not ask all that, and this is why children are a
source of misery. The cow has no imagination, and for that reason
cannot think how it might have saved the child if it had done this or
that, and its grief, founded in its physical being, lasts but a very
short time. It is only a condition, and not that sorrow which becomes
exaggerated to the point of despair, thanks to idleness and satiety.
The cow has not that reasoning faculty which would enable it to ask the
why. Why endure all these tortures? What was the use of so much love,
if the little ones were to die? The cow has no logic which tells it to
have no more children, and, if any come accidentally, to neither love
nor nurse them, that it may not suffer. But our wives reason, and
reason in this way, and that is why I said that, when a man does not
live as a man, he is beneath the animal.”

“But then, how is it necessary to act, in your opinion, in order to
treat children humanly?” I asked.

“How? Why, love them humanly.”

“Well, do not mothers love their children?”

“They do not love them humanly, or very seldom do, and that is why they
do not love them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose, a wolf, will
always remain to woman inaccessible ideals of animal love. It is a rare
thing for a woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life, upon an
elephant to snatch her child away, whereas a hen or a sparrow will not
fail to fly at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its children.
Observe this, also. Woman has the power to limit her physical love for
her children, which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that, because
of this, woman is inferior to the animal? No. She is superior (and even
to say superior is unjust, she is not superior, she is different), but
she has other duties, human duties. She can restrain herself in the
matter of animal love, and transfer her love to the soul of the child.
That is what woman’s _rôle_ should be, and that is precisely what we do
not see in our society. We read of the heroic acts of mothers who
sacrifice their children in the name of a superior idea, and these
things seem to us like tales of the ancient world, which do not concern
us. And yet I believe that, if the mother has not some ideal, in the
name of which she can sacrifice the animal feeling, and if this force
finds no employment, she will transfer it to chimerical attempts to
physically preserve her child, aided in this task by the doctor, and
she will suffer as she does suffer.

“So it was with my wife. Whether there was one child or five, the
feeling remained the same. In fact, it was a little better when there
had been five. Life was always poisoned with fear for the children, not
only from their real or imaginary diseases, but even by their simple
presence. For my part, at least, throughout my conjugal life, all my
interests and all my happiness depended upon the health of my children,
their condition, their studies. Children, it is needless to say, are a
serious consideration; but all ought to live, and in our days parents
can no longer live. Regular life does not exist for them. The whole
life of the family hangs by a hair. What a terrible thing it is to
suddenly receive the news that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise
has a cramp in the stomach! Immediately you abandon everything, you
forget everything, everything becomes nothing. The essential thing is
the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You cannot begin a conversation
but little Pierre comes running in with an anxious air to ask if he may
eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put on, or else it is the servant
who enters with a screaming baby.

“Regular, steady family life does not exist. Where you live, and
consequently what you do, depends upon the health of the little ones,
the health of the little ones depends upon nobody, and, thanks to the
doctors, who pretend to aid health, your entire life is disturbed. It
is a perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe ourselves out of it when a
new danger comes: more attempts to save. Always the situation of
sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it seemed to me that this was
done on purpose, that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer me,
since that solved the question so simply for her benefit. It seemed to
me that all that she did at those times was done for its effect upon
me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suffered and was tortured
on account of the little ones, their health, and their diseases.

“A torture to both of us, but to her the children were also a means of
forgetting herself, like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she was
very sad, that she was relieved, when a child fell sick, at being able
to take refuge in this intoxication. It was involuntary intoxication,
because as yet there was nothing else. On every side we heard that Mrs.
So-and-so had lost children, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of
Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all had moved from the
house in which they were living, and thereby saved the little ones. And
the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this, sustaining my wife in
her opinions. She was not prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some
word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or else—heaven help
us—diphtheria, and off she went.

“It was impossible for it to be otherwise. Women in the old days had
the belief that ‘God has given, God has taken away,’ that the soul of
the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is better to die
innocent than to die in sin. If the women of to-day had something like
this faith, they could endure more peacefully the sickness of their
children. But of all that there does not remain even a trace. And yet
it is necessary to believe in something; consequently they stupidly
believe in medicine, and not even in medicine, but in the doctor. One
believes in X, another in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see
the idiocy of their beliefs. They believe _quia absurdum_, because, in
reality, if they did not believe in a stupid way, they would see the
vanity of all that these brigands prescribe for them. Scarlatina is a
contagious disease; so, when one lives in a large city, half the family
has to move away from its residence (we did it twice), and yet every
man in the city is a centre through which pass innumerable diameters,
carrying threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no obstacle: the
baker, the tailor, the coachman, the laundresses.

“And I would undertake, for every man who moves on account of
contagion, to find in his new dwelling-place another contagion similar,
if not the same.

“But that is not all. Every one knows rich people who, after a case of
diphtheria, destroy everything in their residences, and then fall sick
in houses newly built and furnished. Every one knows, likewise, numbers
of men who come in contact with sick people and do not get infected.
Our anxieties are due to the people who circulate tall stories. One
woman says that she has an excellent doctor. ‘Pardon me,’ answers the
other, ‘he killed such a one,’ or such a one. And _vice versa_. Bring
her another, who knows no more, who learned from the same books, who
treats according to the same formulas, but who goes about in a
carriage, and asks a hundred roubles a visit, and she will have faith
in him.

“It all lies in the fact that our women are savages. They have no
belief in God, but some of them believe in the evil eye, and the others
in doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith they would know that
scarlatina, diphtheria, etc., are not so terrible, since they cannot
disturb that which man can and should love,—the soul. There can result
from them only that which none of us can avoid,—disease and death.
Without faith in God, they love only physically, and all their energy
is concentrated upon the preservation of life, which cannot be
preserved, and which the doctors promise the fools of both sexes to
save. And from that time there is nothing to be done; the doctors must
be summoned.

“Thus the presence of the children not only did not improve our
relations as husband and wife, but, on the contrary, disunited us. The
children became an additional cause of dispute, and the larger they
grew, the more they became an instrument of struggle.

“One would have said that we used them as weapons with which to combat
each other. Each of us had his favorite. I made use of little Basile
(the eldest), she of Lise. Further, when the children reached an age
where their characters began to be defined, they became allies, which
we drew each in his or her own direction. They suffered horribly from
this, the poor things, but we, in our perpetual hubbub, were not
clear-headed enough to think of them. The little girl was devoted to
me, but the eldest boy, who resembled my wife, his favorite, often
inspired me with dislike.”




CHAPTER XVII.


“We lived at first in the country, then in the city, and, if the final
misfortune had not happened, I should have lived thus until my old age
and should then have believed that I had had a good life,—not too good,
but, on the other hand, not bad,—an existence such as other people
lead. I should not have understood the abyss of misfortune and ignoble
falsehood in which I floundered about, feeling that something was not
right. I felt, in the first place, that I, a man, who, according to my
ideas, ought to be the master, wore the petticoats, and that I could
not get rid of them. The principal cause of my subjection was the
children. I should have liked to free myself, but I could not. Bringing
up the children, and resting upon them, my wife ruled. I did not then
realize that she could not help ruling, especially because, in
marrying, she was morally superior to me, as every young girl is
incomparably superior to the man, since she is incomparably purer.
Strange thing! The ordinary wife in our society is a very commonplace
person or worse, selfish, gossiping, whimsical, whereas the ordinary
young girl, until the age of twenty, is a charming being, ready for
everything that is beautiful and lofty. Why is this so? Evidently
because husbands pervert them, and lower them to their own level.

“In truth, if boys and girls are born equal, the little girls find
themselves in a better situation. In the first place, the young girl is
not subjected to the perverting conditions to which we are subjected.
She has neither cigarettes, nor wine, nor cards, nor comrades, nor
public houses, nor public functions. And then the chief thing is that
she is physically pure, and that is why, in marrying, she is superior
to her husband. She is superior to man as a young girl, and when she
becomes a wife in our society, where there is no need to work in order
to live, she becomes superior, also, by the gravity of the acts of
generation, birth, and nursing.

“Woman, in bringing a child into the world, and giving it her bosom,
sees clearly that her affair is more serious than the affair of man,
who sits in the Zemstvo, in the court. She knows that in these
functions the main thing is money, and money can be made in different
ways, and for that very reason money is not inevitably necessary, like
nursing a child. Consequently woman is necessarily superior to man, and
must rule. But man, in our society, not only does not recognize this,
but, on the contrary, always looks upon her from the height of his
grandeur, despising what she does.

“Thus my wife despised me for my work at the Zemstvo, because she gave
birth to children and nursed them. I, in turn, thought that woman’s
labor was most contemptible, which one might and should laugh at.

“Apart from the other motives, we were also separated by a mutual
contempt. Our relations grew ever more hostile, and we arrived at that
period when, not only did dissent provoke hostility, but hostility
provoked dissent. Whatever she might say, I was sure in advance to hold
a contrary opinion; and she the same. Toward the fourth year of our
marriage it was tacitly decided between us that no intellectual
community was possible, and we made no further attempts at it. As to
the simplest objects, we each held obstinately to our own opinions.
With strangers we talked upon the most varied and most intimate
matters, but not with each other. Sometimes, in listening to my wife
talk with others in my presence, I said to myself: ‘What a woman!
Everything that she says is a lie!’ And I was astonished that the
person with whom she was conversing did not see that she was lying.
When we were together; we were condemned to silence, or to
conversations which, I am sure, might have been carried on by animals.

“‘What time is it? It is bed-time. What is there for dinner to-day?
Where shall we go? What is there in the newspaper? The doctor must be
sent for, Lise has a sore throat.’

“Unless we kept within the extremely narrow limits of such
conversation, irritation was sure to ensue. The presence of a third
person relieved us, for through an intermediary we could still
communicate. She probably believed that she was always right. As for
me, in my own eyes, I was a saint beside her.

“The periods of what we call love arrived as often as formerly. They
were more brutal, without refinement, without ornament; but they were
short, and generally followed by periods of irritation without cause,
irritation fed by the most trivial pretexts. We had spats about the
coffee, the table-cloth, the carriage, games of cards,—trifles, in
short, which could not be of the least importance to either of us. As
for me, a terrible execration was continually boiling up within me. I
watched her pour the tea, swing her foot, lift her spoon to her mouth,
and blow upon hot liquids or sip them, and I detested her as if these
had been so many crimes.

“I did not notice that these periods of irritation depended very
regularly upon the periods of love. Each of the latter was followed by
one of the former. A period of intense love was followed by a long
period of anger; a period of mild love induced a mild irritation. We
did not understand that this love and this hatred were two opposite
faces of the same animal feeling. To live thus would be terrible, if
one understood the philosophy of it. But we did not perceive this, we
did not analyze it. It is at once the torture and the relief of man
that, when he lives irregularly, he can cherish illusions as to the
miseries of his situation. So did we. She tried to forget herself in
sudden and absorbing occupations, in household duties, the care of the
furniture, her dress and that of her children, in the education of the
latter, and in looking after their health. These were occupations that
did not arise from any immediate necessity, but she accomplished them
as if her life and that of her children depended on whether the pastry
was allowed to burn, whether a curtain was hanging properly, whether a
dress was a success, whether a lesson was well learned, or whether a
medicine was swallowed.

“I saw clearly that to her all this was, more than anything else, a
means of forgetting, an intoxication, just as hunting, card-playing,
and my functions at the Zemstvo served the same purpose for me. It is
true that in addition I had an intoxication literally
speaking,—tobacco, which I smoked in large quantities, and wine, upon
which I did not get drunk, but of which I took too much. Vodka before
meals, and during meals two glasses of wine, so that a perpetual mist
concealed the turmoil of existence.

“These new theories of hypnotism, of mental maladies, of hysteria are
not simple stupidities, but dangerous or evil stupidities. Charcot, I
am sure, would have said that my wife was hysterical, and of me he
would have said that I was an abnormal being, and he would have wanted
to treat me. But in us there was nothing requiring treatment. All this
mental malady was the simple result of the fact that we were living
immorally. Thanks to this immoral life, we suffered, and, to stifle our
sufferings, we tried abnormal means, which the doctors call the
‘symptoms’ of a mental malady,—_hysteria_.

“There was no occasion in all this to apply for treatment to Charcot or
to anybody else. Neither suggestion nor bromide would have been
effective in working our cure. The needful thing was an examination of
the origin of the evil. It is as when one is sitting on a nail; if you
see the nail, you see that which is irregular in your life, and you
avoid it. Then the pain stops, without any necessity of stifling it.
Our pain arose from the irregularity of our life, and also my jealousy,
my irritability, and the necessity of keeping myself in a state of
perpetual semi-intoxication by hunting, card-playing, and, above all,
the use of wine and tobacco. It was because of this irregularity that
my wife so passionately pursued her occupations. The sudden changes of
her disposition, from extreme sadness to extreme gayety, and her
babble, arose from the need of forgetting herself, of forgetting her
life, in the continual intoxication of varied and very brief
occupations.

“Thus we lived in a perpetual fog, in which we did not distinguish our
condition. We were like two galley-slaves fastened to the same ball,
cursing each other, poisoning each other’s existence, and trying to
shake each other off. I was still unaware that ninety-nine families out
of every hundred live in the same hell, and that it cannot be
otherwise. I had not learned this fact from others or from myself. The
coincidences that are met in regular, and even in irregular life, are
surprising. At the very period when the life of parents becomes
impossible, it becomes indispensable that they go to the city to live,
in order to educate their children. That is what we did.”

Posdnicheff became silent, and twice there escaped him, in the
half-darkness, sighs, which at that moment seemed to me like suppressed
sobs. Then he continued.




CHAPTER XVIII.


“So we lived in the city. In the city the wretched feel less sad. One
can live there a hundred years without being noticed, and be dead a
long time before anybody will notice it. People have no time to inquire
into your life. All are absorbed. Business, social relations, art, the
health of children, their education. And there are visits that must be
received and made; it is necessary to see this one, it is necessary to
hear that one or the other one. In the city there are always one, two,
or three celebrities that it is indispensable that one should visit.

“Now one must care for himself, or care for such or such a little one,
now it is the professor, the private tutor, the governesses, . . . and
life is absolutely empty. In this activity we were less conscious of
the sufferings of our cohabitation. Moreover, in the first of it, we
had a superb occupation,—the arrangement of the new dwelling, and then,
too, the moving from the city to the country, and from the country to
the city.

“Thus we spent a winter. The following winter an incident happened to
us which passed unnoticed, but which was the fundamental cause of all
that happened later. My wife was suffering, and the rascals (the
doctors) would not permit her to conceive a child, and taught her how
to avoid it. I was profoundly disgusted. I struggled vainly against it,
but she insisted frivolously and obstinately, and I surrendered. The
last justification of our life as wretches was thereby suppressed, and
life became baser than ever.

“The peasant and the workingman need children, and hence their conjugal
relations have a justification. But we, when we have a few children,
have no need of any more. They make a superfluous confusion of expenses
and joint heirs, and are an embarrassment. Consequently we have no
excuses for our existence as wretches, but we are so deeply degraded
that we do not see the necessity of a justification. The majority of
people in contemporary society give themselves up to this debauchery
without the slightest remorse. We have no conscience left, except, so
to speak, the conscience of public opinion and of the criminal code.
But in this matter neither of these consciences is struck. There is not
a being in society who blushes at it. Each one practices it,—X, Y, Z,
etc. What is the use of multiplying beggars, and depriving ourselves of
the joys of social life? There is no necessity of having conscience
before the criminal code, or of fearing it: low girls, soldiers’ wives
who throw their children into ponds or wells, these certainly must be
put in prison. But with us the suppression is effected opportunely and
properly.

“Thus we passed two years more. The method prescribed by the rascals
had evidently succeeded. My wife had grown stouter and handsomer. It
was the beauty of the end of summer. She felt it, and paid much
attention to her person. She had acquired that provoking beauty that
stirs men. She was in all the brilliancy of the wife of thirty years,
who conceives no children, eats heartily, and is excited. The very
sight of her was enough to frighten one. She was like a spirited
carriage-horse that has long been idle, and suddenly finds itself
without a bridle. As for my wife, she had no bridle, as for that
matter, ninety-nine hundredths of our women have none.”




CHAPTER XIX.


Posdnicheff’s face had become transformed; his eyes were pitiable;
their expression seemed strange, like that of another being than
himself; his moustache and beard turned up toward the top of his face;
his nose was diminished, and his mouth enlarged, immense, frightful.

“Yes,” he resumed “she had grown stouter since ceasing to conceive, and
her anxieties about her children began to disappear. Not even to
disappear. One would have said that she was waking from a long
intoxication, that on coming to herself she had perceived the entire
universe with its joys, a whole world in which she had not learned to
live, and which she did not understand.

“‘If only this world shall not vanish! When time is past, when old age
comes, one cannot recover it.’ Thus, I believe, she thought, or rather
felt. Moreover, she could neither think nor feel otherwise. She had
been brought up in this idea that there is in the world but one thing
worthy of attention,—love. In marrying, she had known something of this
love, but very far from everything that she had understood as promised
her, everything that she expected. How many disillusions! How much
suffering! And an unexpected torture,—the children! This torture had
told upon her, and then, thanks to the obliging doctor, she had learned
that it is possible to avoid having children. That had made her glad.
She had tried, and she was now revived for the only thing that she
knew,—for love. But love with a husband polluted by jealousy and
ill-nature was no longer her ideal. She began to think of some other
tenderness; at least, that is what I thought. She looked about her as
if expecting some event or some being. I noticed it, and I could not
help being anxious.

“Always, now, it happened that, in talking with me through a third
party (that is, in talking with others, but with the intention that I
should hear), she boldly expressed,—not thinking that an hour before
she had said the opposite,—half joking, half seriously, this idea that
maternal anxieties are a delusion; that it is not worth while to
sacrifice one’s life to children. When one is young, it is necessary to
enjoy life. So she occupied herself less with the children, not with
the same intensity as formerly, and paid more and more attention to
herself, to her face,—although she concealed it,—to her pleasures, and
even to her perfection from the worldly point of view. She began to
devote herself passionately to the piano, which had formerly stood
forgotten in the corner. There, at the piano, began the adventure.

“The _man_ appeared.”

Posdnicheff seemed embarrassed, and twice again there escaped him that
nasal sound of which I spoke above. I thought that it gave him pain to
refer to the _man_, and to remember him. He made an effort, as if to
break down the obstacle that embarrassed him, and continued with
determination.

“He was a bad man in my eyes, and not because he has played such an
important _rôle_ in my life, but because he was really such. For the
rest, from the fact that he was bad, we must conclude that he was
irresponsible. He was a musician, a violinist. Not a professional
musician, but half man of the world, half artist. His father, a country
proprietor, was a neighbor of my father’s. The father had become
ruined, and the children, three boys, were all sent away. Our man, the
youngest, was sent to his godmother at Paris. There they placed him in
the Conservatory, for he showed a taste for music. He came out a
violinist, and played in concerts.”

On the point of speaking evil of the other, Posdnicheff checked
himself, stopped, and said suddenly:

“In truth, I know not how he lived. I only know that that year he came
to Russia, and came to see me. Moist eyes of almond shape, smiling red
lips, a little moustache well waxed, hair brushed in the latest
fashion, a vulgarly pretty face,—what the women call ‘not bad,’—feebly
built physically, but with no deformity; with hips as broad as a
woman’s; correct, and insinuating himself into the familiarity of
people as far as possible, but having that keen sense that quickly
detects a false step and retires in reason,—a man, in short, observant
of the external rules of dignity, with that special Parisianism that is
revealed in buttoned boots, a gaudy cravat, and that something which
foreigners pick up in Paris, and which, in its peculiarity and novelty,
always has an influence on our women. In his manners an external and
artificial gayety, a way, you know, of referring to everything by
hints, by unfinished fragments, as if everything that one says you knew
already, recalled it, and could supply the omissions. Well, he, with
his music, was the cause of all.

“At the trial the affair was so represented that everything seemed
attributable to jealousy. It is false,—that is, not quite false, but
there was something else. The verdict was rendered that I was a
deceived husband, that I had killed in defence of my sullied honor
(that is the way they put it in their language), and thus I was
acquitted. I tried to explain the affair from my own point of view, but
they concluded that I simply wanted to rehabilitate the memory of my
wife. Her relations with the musician, whatever they may have been, are
now of no importance to me or to her. The important part is what I have
told you. The whole tragedy was due to the fact that this man came into
our house at a time when an immense abyss had already been dug between
us, that frightful tension of mutual hatred, in which the slightest
motive sufficed to precipitate the crisis. Our quarrels in the last
days were something terrible, and the more astonishing because they
were followed by a brutal passion extremely strained. If it had not
been he, some other would have come. If the pretext had not been
jealousy, I should have discovered another. I insist upon this
point,—that all husbands who live the married life that I lived must
either resort to outside debauchery, or separate from their wives, or
kill themselves, or kill their wives as I did. If there is any one in
my case to whom this does not happen, he is a very rare exception, for,
before ending as I ended, I was several times on the point of suicide,
and my wife made several attempts to poison herself.”




CHAPTER XX.


“In order that you may understand me, I must tell you how this
happened. We were living along, and all seemed well. Suddenly we began
to talk of the children’s education. I do not remember what words
either of us uttered, but a discussion began, reproaches, leaps from
one subject to another. ‘Yes, I know it. It has been so for a long
time.’ . . . ‘You said that.’ . . . ‘No, I did not say that.’ . . .
‘Then I lie?’ etc.

“And I felt that the frightful crisis was approaching when I should
desire to kill her or else myself. I knew that it was approaching; I
was afraid of it as of fire; I wanted to restrain myself. But rage took
possession of my whole being. My wife found herself in the same
condition, perhaps worse. She knew that she intentionally distorted
each of my words, and each of her words was saturated with venom. All
that was dear to me she disparaged and profaned. The farther the
quarrel went, the more furious it became. I cried, ‘Be silent,’ or
something like that.

“She bounded out of the room and ran toward the children. I tried to
hold her back to finish my insults. I grasped her by the arm, and hurt
her. She cried: ‘Children, your father is beating me.’ I cried: ‘Don’t
lie.’ She continued to utter falsehoods for the simple purpose of
irritating me further. ‘Ah, it is not the first time,’ or something of
that sort. The children rushed toward her and tried to quiet her. I
said: ‘Don’t sham.’ She said: ‘You look upon everything as a sham. You
would kill a person and say he was shamming. Now I understand you. That
is what you want to do.’ ‘Oh, if you were only dead!’ I cried.

“I remember how that terrible phrase frightened me. Never had I thought
that I could utter words so brutal, so frightful, and I was stupefied
at what had just escaped my lips. I fled into my private apartment. I
sat down and began to smoke. I heard her go into the hall and prepare
to go out. I asked her: ‘Where are you going? She did not answer.
‘Well, may the devil take you!’ said I to myself, going back into my
private room, where I lay down again and began smoking afresh.
Thousands of plans of vengeance, of ways of getting rid of her, and how
to arrange this, and act as if nothing had happened,—all this passed
through my head. I thought of these things, and I smoked, and smoked,
and smoked. I thought of running away, of making my escape, of going to
America. I went so far as to dream how beautiful it would be, after
getting rid of her, to love another woman, entirely different from her.
I should be rid of her if she should die or if I should get a divorce,
and I tried to think how that could be managed. I saw that I was
getting confused, but, in order not to see that I was not thinking
rightly, I kept on smoking.

“And the life of the house went on as usual. The children’s teacher
came and asked: ‘Where is Madame? When will she return?’

“The servants asked if they should serve the tea. I entered the
dining-room. The children, Lise, the eldest girl, looked at me with
fright, as if to question me, and she did not come. The whole evening
passed, and still she did not come. Two sentiments kept succeeding each
other in my soul,—hatred of her, since she tortured myself and the
children by her absence, but would finally return just the same, and
fear lest she might return and make some attempt upon herself. But
where should I look for her? At her sister’s? It seemed so stupid to go
to ask where one’s wife is. Moreover, may God forbid, I hoped, that she
should be at her sister’s! If she wishes to torment any one, let her
torment herself first. And suppose she were not at her sister’s.

“Suppose she were to do, or had already done, something.

“Eleven o’clock, midnight, one o’clock. . . . I did not sleep. I did
not go to my chamber. It is stupid to lie stretched out all alone, and
to wait. But in my study I did not rest. I tried to busy myself, to
write letters, to read. Impossible! I was alone, tortured, wicked, and
I listened. Toward daylight I went to sleep. I awoke. She had not
returned. Everything in the house went on as usual, and all looked at
me in astonishment, questioningly. The children’s eyes were full of
reproach for me.

“And always the same feeling of anxiety about her, and of hatred
because of this anxiety.

“Toward eleven o’clock in the morning came her sister, her
ambassadress. Then began the usual phrases: ‘She is in a terrible
state. What is the matter?’ ‘Why, nothing has happened.’ I spoke of her
asperity of character, and I added that I had done nothing, and that I
would not take the first step. If she wants a divorce, so much the
better! My sister-in-law would not listen to this idea, and went away
without having gained anything. I was obstinate, and I said boldly and
determinedly, in talking to her, that I would not take the first step.
Immediately she had gone I went into the other room, and saw the
children in a frightened and pitiful state, and there I found myself
already inclined to take this first step. But I was bound by my word.
Again I walked up and down, always smoking. At breakfast I drank brandy
and wine, and I reached the point which I unconsciously desired, the
point where I no longer saw the stupidity and baseness of my situation.

“Toward three o’clock she came. I thought that she was appeased, or
admitted her defeat. I began to tell her that I was provoked by her
reproaches. She answered me, with the same severe and terribly downcast
face, that she had not come for explanations, but to take the children,
that we could not live together. I answered that it was not my fault,
that she had put me beside myself. She looked at me with a severe and
solemn air, and said: ‘Say no more. You will repent it.’ I said that I
could not tolerate comedies. Then she cried out something that I did
not understand, and rushed toward her room. The key turned in the lock,
and she shut herself up. I pushed at the door. There was no response.
Furious, I went away.

“A half hour later Lise came running all in tears. ‘What! Has anything
happened? We cannot hear Mamma!’ We went toward my wife’s room. I
pushed the door with all my might. The bolt was scarcely drawn, and the
door opened. In a skirt, with high boots, my wife lay awkwardly on the
bed. On the table an empty opium phial. We restored her to life. Tears
and then reconciliation! Not reconciliation; internally each kept the
hatred for the other, but it was absolutely necessary for the moment to
end the scene in some way, and life began again as before. These
scenes, and even worse, came now once a week, now every month, now
every day. And invariably the same incidents. Once I was absolutely
resolved to fly, but through some inconceivable weakness I remained.

“Such were the circumstances in which we were living when the _man_
came. The man was bad, it is true. But what! No worse than we were.”




CHAPTER XXI.


“When we moved to Moscow, this gentleman—his name was
Troukhatchevsky—came to my house. It was in the morning. I received
him. In former times we had been very familiar. He tried, by various
advances, to re-establish the familiarity, but I was determined to keep
him at a distance, and soon he gave it up. He displeased me extremely.
At the first glance I saw that he was a filthy _débauché_. I was
jealous of him, even before he had seen my wife. But, strange thing!
some occult fatal power kept me from repulsing him and sending him
away, and, on the contrary, induced me to suffer this approach. What
could have been simpler than to talk with him a few minutes, and then
dismiss him coldly without introducing him to my wife? But no, as if on
purpose, I turned the conversation upon his skill as a violinist, and
he answered that, contrary to what I had heard, he now played the
violin more than formerly. He remembered that I used to play. I
answered that I had abandoned music, but that my wife played very well.

“Singular thing! Why, in the important events of our life, in those in
which a man’s fate is decided,—as mine was decided in that moment,—why
in these events is there neither a past nor a future? My relations with
Troukhatchevsky the first day, at the first hour, were such as they
might still have been after all that has happened. I was conscious that
some frightful misfortune must result from the presence of this man,
and, in spite of that, I could not help being amiable to him. I
introduced him to my wife. She was pleased with him. In the beginning,
I suppose, because of the pleasure of the violin playing, which she
adored. She had even hired for that purpose a violinist from the
theatre. But when she cast a glance at me, she understood my feelings,
and concealed her impression. Then began the mutual trickery and
deceit. I smiled agreeably, pretending that all this pleased me
extremely. He, looking at my wife, as all _débauchés_ look at beautiful
women, with an air of being interested solely in the subject of
conversation,—that is, in that which did not interest him at all.

“She tried to seem indifferent. But my expression, my jealous or false
smile, which she knew so well, and the voluptuous glances of the
musician, evidently excited her. I saw that, after the first interview,
her eyes were already glittering, glittering strangely, and that,
thanks to my jealousy, between him and her had been immediately
established that sort of electric current which is provoked by an
identity of expression in the smile and in the eyes.

“We talked, at the first interview, of music, of Paris, and of all
sorts of trivialities. He rose to go. Pressing his hat against his
swaying hip, he stood erect, looking now at her and now at me, as if
waiting to see what she would do. I remember that minute, precisely
because it was in my power not to invite him. I need not have invited
him, and then nothing would have happened. But I cast a glance first at
him, then at her. ‘Don’t flatter yourself that I can be jealous of
you,’ I thought, addressing myself to her mentally, and I invited the
other to bring his violin that very evening, and to play with my wife.
She raised her eyes toward me with astonishment, and her face turned
purple, as if she were seized with a sudden fear. She began to excuse
herself, saying that she did not play well enough. This refusal only
excited me the more. I remember the strange feeling with which I looked
at his neck, his white neck, in contrast with his black hair, separated
by a parting, when, with his skipping gait, like that of a bird, he
left my house. I could not help confessing to myself that this man’s
presence caused me suffering. ‘It is in my power,’ thought I, ‘to so
arrange things that I shall never see him again. But can it be that I,
_I_, fear him? No, I do not fear him. It would be too humiliating!’

“And there in the hall, knowing that my wife heard me, I insisted that
he should come that very evening with his violin. He promised me, and
went away. In the evening he arrived with his violin, and they played
together. But for a long time things did not go well; we had not the
necessary music, and that which we had my wife could not play at sight.
I amused myself with their difficulties. I aided them, I made
proposals, and they finally executed a few pieces,—songs without words,
and a little sonata by Mozart. He played in a marvellous manner. He had
what is called the energetic and tender tone. As for difficulties,
there were none for him. Scarcely had he begun to play, when his face
changed. He became serious, and much more sympathetic. He was, it is
needless to say, much stronger than my wife. He helped her, he advised
her simply and naturally, and at the same time played his game with
courtesy. My wife seemed interested only in the music. She was very
simple and agreeable. Throughout the evening I feigned, not only for
the others, but for myself, an interest solely in the music. Really, I
was continually tortured by jealousy. From the first minute that the
musician’s eyes met those of my wife, I saw that he did not regard her
as a disagreeable woman, with whom on occasion it would be unpleasant
to enter into intimate relations.

“If I had been pure, I should not have dreamed of what he might think
of her. But I looked at women, and that is why I understood him and was
in torture. I was in torture, especially because I was sure that toward
me she had no other feeling than of perpetual irritation, sometimes
interrupted by the customary sensuality, and that this man,—thanks to
his external elegance and his novelty, and, above all, thanks to his
unquestionably remarkable talent, thanks to the attraction exercised
under the influence of music, thanks to the impression that music
produces upon nervous natures,—this man would not only please, but
would inevitably, and without difficulty, subjugate and conquer her,
and do with her as he liked.

“I could not help seeing this. I could not help suffering, or keep from
being jealous. And I was jealous, and I suffered, and in spite of that,
and perhaps even because of that, an unknown force, in spite of my
will, impelled me to be not only polite, but more than polite, amiable.
I cannot say whether I did it for my wife, or to show him that I did
not fear _him_, or to deceive myself; but from my first relations with
him I could not be at my ease. I was obliged, that I might not give way
to a desire to kill him immediately, to ‘caress’ him. I filled his
glass at the table, I grew enthusiastic over his playing, I talked to
him with an extremely amiable smile, and I invited him to dinner the
following Sunday, and to play again. I told him that I would invite
some of my acquaintances, lovers of his art, to hear him.

“Two or three days later I was entering my house, in conversation with
a friend, when in the hall I suddenly felt something as heavy as a
stone weighing on my heart, and I could not account for it. And it was
this, it was this: in passing through the hall, I had noticed something
which reminded me of _him_. Not until I reached my study did I realize
what it was, and I returned to the hall to verify my conjecture. Yes, I
was not mistaken. It was his overcoat (everything that belonged to him,
I, without realizing it, had observed with extraordinary attention). I
questioned the servant. That was it. He had come. “I passed near the
parlor, through my children’s study-room. Lise, my daughter, was
sitting before a book, and the old nurse, with my youngest child, was
beside the table, turning the cover of something or other. In the
parlor I heard a slow _arpeggio_, and his voice, deadened, and a denial
from her. She said: ‘No, no! There is something else!’ And it seemed to
me that some one was purposely deadening the words by the aid of the
piano.

“My God! How my heart leaped! What were my imaginations! When I
remember the beast that lived in me at that moment, I am seized with
fright. My heart was first compressed, then stopped, and then began to
beat like a hammer. The principal feeling, as in every bad feeling, was
pity for myself. ‘Before the children, before the old nurse,’ thought
I, ‘she dishonors me. I will go away. I can endure it no longer. God
knows what I should do if. . . . But I must go in.’

“The old nurse raised her eyes to mine, as if she understood, and
advised me to keep a sharp watch. ‘I must go in,’ I said to myself,
and, without knowing what I did, I opened the door. He was sitting at
the piano and making _arpeggios_ with his long, white, curved fingers.
She was standing in the angle of the grand piano, before the open
score. She saw or heard me first, and raised her eyes to mine. Was she
stunned, was she pretending not to be frightened, or was she really not
frightened at all? In any case, she did not tremble, she did not stir.
She blushed, but only a little later.

“‘How glad I am that you have come! We have not decided what we will
play Sunday,’ said she, in a tone that she would not have had if she
had been alone with me.

“This tone, and the way in which she said ‘we’ in speaking of herself
and of him, revolted me. I saluted him silently. He shook hands with me
directly, with a smile that seemed to me full of mockery. He explained
to me that he had brought some scores, in order to prepare for the
Sunday concert, and that they were not in accord as to the piece to
choose,—whether difficult, classic things, notably a sonata by
Beethoven, or lighter pieces.

“And as he spoke, he looked at me. It was all so natural, so simple,
that there was absolutely nothing to be said against it. And at the
same time I saw, I was sure, that it was false, that they were in a
conspiracy to deceive me.

“One of the most torturing situations for the jealous (and in our
social life everybody is jealous) are those social conditions which
allow a very great and dangerous intimacy between a man and a woman
under certain pretexts. One must make himself the laughing stock of
everybody, if he desires to prevent associations in the ball-room, the
intimacy of doctors with their patients, the familiarity of art
occupations, and especially of music. In order that people may occupy
themselves together with the noblest art, music, a certain intimacy is
necessary, in which there is nothing blameworthy. Only a jealous fool
of a husband can have anything to say against it. A husband should not
have such thoughts, and especially should not thrust his nose into
these affairs, or prevent them. And yet, everybody knows that precisely
in these occupations, especially in music, many adulteries originate in
our society.

“I had evidently embarrassed them, because for some time I was unable
to say anything. I was like a bottle suddenly turned upside down, from
which the water does not run because it is too full. I wanted to insult
the man, and to drive him away, but I could do nothing of the kind. On
the contrary, I felt that I was disturbing them, and that it was my
fault. I made a presence of approving everything, this time also,
thanks to that strange feeling that forced me to treat him the more
amiably in proportion as his presence was more painful to me. I said
that I trusted to his taste, and I advised my wife to do the same. He
remained just as long as it was necessary in order to efface the
unpleasant impression of my abrupt entrance with a frightened face. He
went away with an air of satisfaction at the conclusions arrived at. As
for me, I was perfectly sure that, in comparison with that which
preoccupied them, the question of music was indifferent to them. I
accompanied him with especial courtesy to the hall (how can one help
accompanying a man who has come to disturb your tranquillity and ruin
the happiness of the entire family?), and I shook his white, soft hand
with fervent amiability.”




CHAPTER XXII.


“All that day I did not speak to my wife. I could not. Her proximity
excited such hatred that I feared myself. At the table she asked me, in
presence of the children, when I was to start upon a journey. I was to
go the following week to an assembly of the Zemstvo, in a neighboring
locality. I named the date. She asked me if I would need anything for
the journey. I did not answer. I sat silent at the table, and silently
I retired to my study. In those last days she never entered my study,
especially at that hour. Suddenly I heard her steps, her walk, and then
a terribly base idea entered my head that, like the wife of Uri, she
wished to conceal a fault already committed, and that it was for this
reason that she came to see me at this unseasonable hour. ‘Is it
possible,’ thought I, ‘that she is coming to see me?’ On hearing her
step as it approached: ‘If it is to see me that she is coming, then I
am right.’

“An inexpressible hatred invaded my soul. The steps drew nearer, and
nearer, and nearer yet. Would she pass by and go on to the other room?
No, the hinges creaked, and at the door her tall, graceful, languid
figure appeared. In her face, in her eyes, a timidity, an insinuating
expression, which she tried to hide, but which I saw, and of which I
understood the meaning. I came near suffocating, such were my efforts
to hold my breath, and, continuing to look at her, I took my cigarette,
and lighted it.

“‘What does this mean? One comes to talk with you, and you go to
smoking.’

“And she sat down beside me on the sofa, resting against my shoulder. I
recoiled, that I might not touch her.

“‘I see that you are displeased with what I wish to play on Sunday,’
said she.

“‘I am not at all displeased,’ said I.

“‘Can I not see?’

“‘Well, I congratulate you on your clairvoyance. Only to you every
baseness is agreeable, and I abhor it.’

“‘If you are going to swear like a trooper, I am going away.’

“‘Then go away. Only know that, if the honor of the family is nothing
to you, to me it is dear. As for you, the devil take you!’

“‘What! What is the matter?’

“‘Go away, in the name of God.’

“But she did not go away. Was she pretending not to understand, or did
she really not understand what I meant? But she was offended and became
angry.

“‘You have become absolutely impossible,’ she began, or some such
phrase as that regarding my character, trying, as usual, to give me as
much pain as possible. ‘After what you have done to my sister (she
referred to an incident with her sister, in which, beside myself, I had
uttered brutalities; she knew that that tortured me, and tried to touch
me in that tender spot) nothing will astonish me.’

“‘Yes, offended, humiliated, and dishonored, and after that to hold me
still responsible,’ thought I, and suddenly a rage, such a hatred
invaded me as I do not remember to have ever felt before. For the first
time I desired to express this hatred physically. I leaped upon her,
but at the same moment I understood my condition, and I asked myself
whether it would be well for me to abandon myself to my fury. And I
answered myself that it would be well, that it would frighten her, and,
instead of resisting, I lashed and spurred myself on, and was glad to
feel my anger boiling more and more fiercely.

“‘Go away, or I will kill you!’ I cried, purposely, with a frightful
voice, and I grasped her by the arm. She did not go away. Then I
twisted her arm, and pushed her away violently.

“‘What is the matter with you? Come to your senses!’ she shrieked.

“‘Go away,’ roared I, louder than ever, rolling my eyes wildly. ‘It
takes you to put me in such a fury. I do not answer for myself! Go
away!’

“In abandoning myself to my anger, I became steeped in it, and I wanted
to commit some violent act to show the force of my fury. I felt a
terrible desire to beat her, to kill her, but I realized that that
could not be, and I restrained myself. I drew back from her, rushed to
the table, grasped the paper-weight, and threw it on the floor by her
side. I took care to aim a little to one side, and, before she
disappeared (I did it so that she could see it), I grasped a
candlestick, which I also hurled, and then took down the barometer,
continuing to shout:

“‘Go away! I do not answer for myself!’

“She disappeared, and I immediately ceased my demonstrations. An hour
later the old servant came to me and said that my wife was in a fit of
hysterics. I went to see her. She sobbed and laughed, incapable of
expressing anything, her whole body in a tremble. She was not shamming,
she was really sick. We sent for the doctor, and all night long I cared
for her. Toward daylight she grew calmer, and we became reconciled
under the influence of that feeling which we called ‘love.’ The next
morning, when, after the reconciliation, I confessed to her that I was
jealous of Troukhatchevsky, she was not at all embarrassed, and began
to laugh in the most natural way, so strange did the possibility of
being led astray by such a man appear to her.

“‘With such a man can an honest woman entertain any feeling beyond the
pleasure of enjoying music with him? But if you like, I am ready to
never see him again, even on Sunday, although everybody has been
invited. Write him that I am indisposed, and that will end the matter.
Only one thing annoys me,—that any one could have thought him
dangerous. I am too proud not to detest such thoughts.’

“And she did not lie. She believed what she said. She hoped by her
words to provoke in herself a contempt for him, and thereby to defend
herself. But she did not succeed. Everything was directed against her,
especially that abominable music. So ended the quarrel, and on Sunday
our guests came, and Troukhatchevsky and my wife again played
together.”




CHAPTER XXIII.


“I think that it is superfluous to say that I was very vain. If one has
no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for
living. So for that Sunday I had busied myself in tastefully arranging
things for the dinner and the musical _soirée_. I had purchased myself
numerous things for the dinner, and had chosen the guests. Toward six
o’clock they arrived, and after them Troukhatchevsky, in his
dress-coat, with diamond shirt-studs, in bad taste. He bore himself
with ease. To all questions he responded promptly, with a smile of
contentment and understanding, and that peculiar expression which was
intended to mean: ‘All that you may do and say will be exactly what I
expected.’ Everything about him that was not correct I now noticed with
especial pleasure, for it all tended to tranquillize me, and prove to
me that to my wife he stood in such a degree of inferiority that, as
she had told me, she could not stoop to his level. Less because of my
wife’s assurances than because of the atrocious sufferings which I felt
in jealousy, I no longer allowed myself to be jealous.

“In spite of that, I was not at ease with the musician or with her
during dinner-time and the time that elapsed before the beginning of
the music. Involuntarily I followed each of their gestures and looks.
The dinner, like all dinners, was tiresome and conventional. Not long
afterward the music began. He went to get his violin; my wife advanced
to the piano, and rummaged among the scores. Oh, how well I remember
all the details of that evening! I remember how he brought the violin,
how he opened the box, took off the serge embroidered by a lady’s hand,
and began to tune the instrument. I can still see my wife sit down,
with a false air of indifference, under which it was plain that she hid
a great timidity, a timidity that was especially due to her comparative
lack of musical knowledge. She sat down with that false air in front of
the piano, and then began the usual preliminaries,—the _pizzicati_ of
the violin and the arrangement of the scores. I remember then how they
looked at each other, and cast a glance at their auditors who were
taking their seats. They said a few words to each other, and the music
began. They played Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata.’ Do you know the first
_presto?_ Do you know it? Ah!” . . .

Posdnicheff heaved a sigh, and was silent for a long time.

“A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the _presto!_ And a
terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it
does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it
acts frightfully (I speak for myself), but not in an ennobling way. It
acts neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating
way. How shall I say it? Music makes me forget my real situation. It
transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of
music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do
not understand, to have powers which I cannot have. Music seems to me
to act like yawning or laughter; I have no desire to sleep, but I yawn
when I see others yawn; with no reason to laugh, I laugh when I hear
others laugh. And music transports me immediately into the condition of
soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. I
become confounded with his soul, and with him I pass from one condition
to another. But why that? I know nothing about it? But he who wrote
Beethoven’s ‘Kreutzer Sonata’ knew well why he found himself in a
certain condition. That condition led him to certain actions, and for
that reason to him had a meaning, but to me none, none whatever. And
that is why music provokes an excitement which it does not bring to a
conclusion. For instance, a military march is played; the soldier
passes to the sound of this march, and the music is finished. A dance
is played; I have finished dancing, and the music is finished. A mass
is sung; I receive the sacrament, and again the music is finished. But
any other music provokes an excitement, and this excitement is not
accompanied by the thing that needs properly to be done, and that is
why music is so dangerous, and sometimes acts so frightfully.

“In China music is under the control of the State, and that is the way
it ought to be. Is it admissible that the first comer should hypnotize
one or more persons, and then do with them as he likes? And especially
that the hypnotizer should be the first immoral individual who happens
to come along? It is a frightful power in the hands of any one, no
matter whom. For instance, should they be allowed to play this
‘Kreutzer Sonata,’ the first _presto_,—and there are many like it,—in
parlors, among ladies wearing low necked dresses, or in concerts, then
finish the piece, receive the applause, and then begin another piece?
These things should be played under certain circumstances, only in
cases where it is necessary to incite certain actions corresponding to
the music. But to incite an energy of feeling which corresponds to
neither the time nor the place, and is expended in nothing, cannot fail
to act dangerously. On me in particular this piece acted in a frightful
manner. One would have said that new sentiments, new virtualities, of
which I was formerly ignorant, had developed in me. ‘Ah, yes, that’s
it! Not at all as I lived and thought before! This is the right way to
live!’

“Thus I spoke to my soul as I listened to that music. What was this new
thing that I thus learned? That I did not realize, but the
consciousness of this indefinite state filled me with joy. In that
state there was no room for jealousy. The same faces, and among them
_he_ and my wife, I saw in a different light. This music transported me
into an unknown world, where there was no room for jealousy. Jealousy
and the feelings that provoke it seemed to me trivialities, nor worth
thinking of.

“After the _presto_ followed the _andante_, not very new, with
commonplace variations, and the feeble _finale_. Then they played more,
at the request of the guests,—first an elegy by Ernst, and then various
other pieces. They were all very well, but did not produce upon me a
tenth part of the impression that the opening piece did. I felt light
and gay throughout the evening. As for my wife, never had I seen her as
she was that night. Those brilliant eyes, that severity and majestic
expression while she was playing, and then that utter languor, that
weak, pitiable, and happy smile after she had finished,—I saw them all
and attached no importance to them, believing that she felt as I did,
that to her, as to me, new sentiments had been revealed, as through a
fog. During almost the whole evening I was not jealous.

“Two days later I was to start for the assembly of the Zemstvo, and for
that reason, on taking leave of me and carrying all his scores with
him, Troukhatchevsky asked me when I should return. I inferred from
that that he believed it impossible to come to my house during my
absence, and that was agreeable to me. Now I was not to return before
his departure from the city. So we bade each other a definite farewell.
For the first time I shook his hand with pleasure, and thanked him for
the satisfaction that he had given me. He likewise took leave of my
wife, and their parting seemed to me very natural and proper. All went
marvellously. My wife and I retired, well satisfied with the evening.
We talked of our impressions in a general way, and we were nearer
together and more friendly than we had been for a long time.”




CHAPTER XXIV.


“Two days later I started for the assembly, having bid farewell to my
wife in an excellent and tranquil state of mind. In the district there
was always much to be done. It was a world and a life apart. During two
days I spent ten hours at the sessions. The evening of the second day,
on returning to my district lodgings, I found a letter from my wife,
telling me of the children, of their uncle, of the servants, and, among
other things, as if it were perfectly natural, that Troukhatchevsky had
been at the house, and had brought her the promised scores. He had also
proposed that they play again, but she had refused.

“For my part, I did not remember at all that he had promised any score.
It had seemed to me on Sunday evening that he took a definite leave,
and for this reason the news gave me a disagreeable surprise. I read
the letter again. There was something tender and timid about it. It
produced an extremely painful impression upon me. My heart swelled, and
the mad beast of jealousy began to roar in his lair, and seemed to want
to leap upon his prey. But I was afraid of this beast, and I imposed
silence upon it.

“What an abominable sentiment is jealousy! ‘What could be more natural
than what she has written?’ said I to myself. I went to bed, thinking
myself tranquil again. I thought of the business that remained to be
done, and I went to sleep without thinking of her.

“During these assemblies of the Zemstvo I always slept badly in my
strange quarters. That night I went to sleep directly, but, as
sometimes happens, a sort of sudden shock awoke me. I thought
immediately of her, of my physical love for her, of Troukhatchevsky,
and that between them everything had happened. And a feeling of rage
compressed my heart, and I tried to quiet myself.

“‘How stupid!’ said I to myself; ‘there is no reason, none at all. And
why humiliate ourselves, herself and myself, and especially myself, by
supposing such horrors? This mercenary violinist, known as a bad
man,—shall I think of him in connection with a respectable woman, the
mother of a family, _my_ wife? How silly!’ But on the other hand, I
said to myself: ‘Why should it not happen?’

“Why? Was it not the same simple and intelligible feeling in the name
of which I married, in the name of which I was living with her, the
only thing I wanted of her, and that which, consequently, others
desired, this musician among the rest? He was not married, was in good
health (I remember how his teeth ground the gristle of the cutlets, and
how eagerly he emptied the glass of wine with his red lips), was
careful of his person, well fed, and not only without principles, but
evidently with the principle that one should take advantage of the
pleasure that offers itself. There was a bond between them, music,—the
most refined form of sensual voluptuousness. What was there to restrain
them? Nothing. Everything, on the contrary, attracted them. And she,
she had been and had remained a mystery. I did not know her. I knew her
only as an animal, and an animal nothing can or should restrain. And
now I remember their faces on Sunday evening, when, after the ‘Kreutzer
Sonata,’ they played a passionate piece, written I know not by whom,
but a piece passionate to the point of obscenity.

“‘How could I have gone away?’ said I to myself, as I recalled their
faces. ‘Was it not clear that between them everything was done that
evening? Was it not clear that between them not only there were no more
obstacles, but that both—especially she—felt a certain shame after what
had happened at the piano? How weakly, pitiably, happily she smiled, as
she wiped the perspiration from her reddened face! They already avoided
each other’s eyes, and only at the supper, when she poured some water
for him, did they look at each other and smile imperceptibly.’

“Now I remember with fright that look and that scarcely perceptible
smile. ‘Yes, everything has happened,’ a voice said to me, and directly
another said the opposite. ‘Are you mad? It is impossible!’ said the
second voice.

“It was too painful to me to remain thus stretched in the darkness. I
struck a match, and the little yellow-papered room frightened me. I
lighted a cigarette, and, as always happens, when one turns in a circle
of inextricable contradiction, I began to smoke. I smoked cigarette
after cigarette to dull my senses, that I might not see my
contradictions. All night I did not sleep, and at five o’clock, when it
was not yet light, I decided that I could stand this strain no longer,
and that I would leave directly. There was a train at eight o’clock. I
awakened the keeper who was acting as my servant, and sent him to look
for horses. To the assembly of Zemstvo I sent a message that I was
called back to Moscow by pressing business, and that I begged them to
substitute for me a member of the Committee. At eight o’clock I got
into a _tarantass_ and started off.”




CHAPTER XXV.


“I had to go twenty-five versts by carriage and eight hours by train.
By carriage it was a very pleasant journey. The coolness of autumn was
accompanied by a brilliant sun. You know the weather when the wheels
imprint themselves upon the dirty road. The road was level, and the
light strong, and the air strengthening. The _tarantass_ was
comfortable. As I looked at the horses, the fields, and the people whom
we passed, I forgot where I was going. Sometimes it seemed to me that I
was travelling without an object,—simply promenading,—and that I should
go on thus to the end of the world. And I was happy when I so forgot
myself. But when I remembered where I was going, I said to myself: ‘I
shall see later. Don’t think about it.’

“When half way, an incident happened to distract me still further. The
_tarantass_, though new, broke down, and had to be repaired. The delays
in looking for a _télègue_, the repairs, the payment, the tea in the
inn, the conversation with the _dvornik_, all served to amuse me.
Toward nightfall all was ready, and I started off again. By night the
journey was still pleasanter than by day. The moon in its first
quarter, a slight frost, the road still in good condition, the horses,
the sprightly coachman, all served to put me in good spirits. I
scarcely thought of what awaited me, and was gay perhaps because of the
very thing that awaited me, and because I was about to say farewell to
the joys of life.

“But this tranquil state, the power of conquering my preoccupation, all
ended with the carriage drive. Scarcely had I entered the cars, when
the other thing began. Those eight hours on the rail were so terrible
to me that I shall never forget them in my life. Was it because on
entering the car I had a vivid imagination of having already arrived,
or because the railway acts upon people in such an exciting fashion? At
any rate, after boarding the train I could no longer control my
imagination, which incessantly, with extraordinary vivacity, drew
pictures before my eyes, each more cynical than its predecessor, which
kindled my jealousy. And always the same things about what was
happening at home during my absence. I burned with indignation, with
rage, and with a peculiar feeling which steeped me in humiliation, as I
contemplated these pictures. And I could not tear myself out of this
condition. I could not help looking at them, I could not efface them, I
could not keep from evoking them.

“The more I looked at these imaginary pictures, the more I believed in
their reality, forgetting that they had no serious foundation. The
vivacity of these images seemed to prove to me that my imaginations
were a reality. One would have said that a demon, against my will, was
inventing and breathing into me the most terrible fictions. A
conversation which dated a long time back, with the brother of
Troukhatchevsky, I remembered at that moment, in a sort of ecstasy, and
it tore my heart as I connected it with the musician and my wife. Yes,
it was very long ago. The brother of Troukhatchevsky, answering my
questions as to whether he frequented disreputable houses, said that a
respectable man does not go where he may contract a disease, in a low
and unclean spot, when one can find an honest woman. And here he, his
brother, the musician, had found the honest woman. ‘It is true that she
is no longer in her early youth. She has lost a tooth on one side, and
her face is slightly bloated,’ thought I for Troukhatchevsky. ‘But what
is to be done? One must profit by what one has.’

“‘Yes, he is bound to take her for his mistress,’ said I to myself
again; ‘and besides, she is not dangerous.’

“‘No, it is not possible’ I rejoined in fright. ‘Nothing, nothing of
the kind has happened, and there is no reason to suppose there has. Did
she not tell me that the very idea that I could be jealous of her
because of him was humiliating to her?’ ‘Yes, but she lied,’ I cried,
and all began over again.

“There were only two travellers in my compartment: an old woman with
her husband, neither of them very talkative; and even they got out at
one of the stations, leaving me all alone. I was like a beast in a
cage. Now I jumped up and approached the window, now I began to walk
back and forth, staggering as if I hoped to make the train go faster by
my efforts, and the car with its seats and its windows trembled
continually, as ours does now.”

And Posdnicheff rose abruptly, took a few steps, and sat down again.

“Oh, I am afraid, I am afraid of railway carriages. Fear seizes me. I
sat down again, and I said to myself: ‘I must think of something else.
For instance, of the inn keeper at whose house I took tea.’ And then,
in my imagination arose the _dvornik_, with his long beard, and his
grandson, a little fellow of the same age as my little Basile. My
little Basile! My little Basile! He will see the musician kiss his
mother! What thoughts will pass through his poor soul! But what does
that matter to her! She loves.

“And again it all began, the circle of the same thoughts. I suffered so
much that at last I did not know what to do with myself, and an idea
passed through my head that pleased me much,—to get out upon the rails,
throw myself under the cars, and thus finish everything. One thing
prevented me from doing so. It was pity! It was pity for myself,
evoking at the same time a hatred for her, for him, but not so much for
him. Toward him I felt a strange sentiment of my humiliation and his
victory, but toward her a terrible hatred.

“‘But I cannot kill myself and leave her free. She must suffer, she
must understand at least that I have suffered,’ said I to myself.

“At a station I saw people drinking at the lunch counter, and directly
I went to swallow a glass of vodka. Beside me stood a Jew, drinking
also. He began to talk to me, and I, in order not to be left alone in
my compartment, went with him into his third-class, dirty, full of
smoke, and covered with peelings and sunflower seeds. There I sat down
beside the Jew, and, as it seemed, he told many anecdotes.

“First I listened to him, but I did not understand what he said. He
noticed it, and exacted my attention to his person. Then I rose and
entered my own compartment.

“‘I must consider,’ said I to myself, ‘whether what I think is true,
whether there is any reason to torment myself.’ I sat down, wishing to
reflect quietly; but directly, instead of the peaceful reflections, the
same thing began again. Instead of the reasoning, the pictures.

“‘How many times have I tormented myself in this way,’ I thought (I
recalled previous and similar fits of jealousy), ‘and then seen it end
in nothing at all? It is the same now. Perhaps, yes, surely, I shall
find her quietly sleeping. She will awaken, she will be glad, and in
her words and looks I shall see that nothing has happened, that all
this is vain. Ah, if it would only so turn out!’ ‘But no, that has
happened too often! Now the end has come,’ a voice said to me.

“And again it all began. Ah, what torture! It is not to a hospital
filled with syphilitic patients that I would take a young man to
deprive him of the desire for women, but into my soul, to show him the
demon which tore it. The frightful part was that I recognized in myself
an indisputable right to the body of my wife, as if her body were
entirely mine. And at the same time I felt that I could not possess
this body, that it was not mine, that she could do with it as she
liked, and that she liked to do with it as I did not like. And I was
powerless against him and against her. He, like the Vanka of the song,
would sing, before mounting the gallows, how he would kiss her sweet
lips, etc., and he would even have the best of it before death. With
her it was still worse. If she _had not done it_, she had the desire,
she wished to do it, and I knew that she did. That was worse yet. It
would be better if she had already done it, to relieve me of my
uncertainty.

“In short, I could not say what I desired. I desired that she might not
want what she _must_ want. It was complete madness.”




CHAPTER XXVI.


“At the station before the last, when the conductor came to take the
tickets, I took my baggage and went out on the car platform, and the
consciousness that the climax was near at hand only added to my
agitation. I was cold, my jaw trembled so that my teeth chattered.
Mechanically I left the station with the crowd, I took a _tchik_, and I
started. I looked at the few people passing in the streets and at the
_dvorniks_. I read the signs, without thinking of anything. After going
half a verst my feet began to feel cold, and I remembered that in the
car I had taken off my woollen socks, and had put them in my travelling
bag. Where had I put the bag? Was it with me? Yes, and the basket?

“I bethought myself that I had totally forgotten my baggage. I took out
my check, and then decided it was not worth while to return. I
continued on my way. In spite of all my efforts to remember, I cannot
at this moment make out why I was in such a hurry. I know only that I
was conscious that a serious and menacing event was approaching in my
life. It was a case of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious because
I thought it so? Or had I a presentiment? I do not know. Perhaps, too,
after what has happened, all previous events have taken on a lugubrious
tint in my memory.

“I arrived at the steps. It was an hour past midnight. A few
_isvotchiks_ were before the door, awaiting customers, attracted by the
lighted windows (the lighted windows were those of our parlor and
reception room). Without trying to account for this late illumination,
I went up the steps, always with the same expectation of something
terrible, and I rang. The servant, a good, industrious, and very stupid
being, named Gregor, opened the door. The first thing that leaped to my
eyes in the hall, on the hat-stand, among other garments, was an
overcoat. I ought to have been astonished, but I was not astonished. I
expected it. ‘That’s it!’ I said to myself.

“When I had asked Gregor who was there, and he had named
Troukhatchevsky, I inquired whether there were other visitors. He
answered: ‘Nobody.’ I remember the air with which he said that, with a
tone that was intended to give me pleasure, and dissipate my doubts.
‘That’s it! that’s it!’ I had the air of saying to myself. ‘And the
children?’

“‘Thank God, they are very well. They went to sleep long ago.’

“I scarcely breathed, and I could not keep my jaw from trembling.

“Then it was not as I thought. I had often before returned home with
the thought that a misfortune had awaited me, but had been mistaken,
and everything was going on as usual. But now things were not going on
as usual. All that I had imagined, all that I believed to be chimeras,
all really existed. Here was the truth.

“I was on the point of sobbing, but straightway the demon whispered in
my ear: ‘Weep and be sentimental, and they will separate quietly, and
there will be no proofs, and all your life you will doubt and suffer.’
And pity for myself vanished, and there remained only the bestial need
of some adroit, cunning, and energetic action. I became a beast, an
intelligent beast.

“‘No, no,’ said I to Gregor, who was about to announce my arrival. ‘Do
this, take a carriage, and go at once for my baggage. Here is the
check. Start.’

“He went along the hall to get his overcoat. Fearing lest he might
frighten them, I accompanied him to his little room, and waited for him
to put on his things. In the dining-room could be heard the sound of
conversation and the rattling of knives and plates. They were eating.
They had not heard the ring. ‘Now if they only do not go out,’ I
thought.

“Gregor put on his fur-collared coat and went out. I closed the door
after him. I felt anxious when I was alone, thinking that directly I
should have to act. How? I did not yet know. I knew only that all was
ended, that there could be no doubt of _his_ innocence, and that in an
instant my relations with her were going to be terminated. Before, I
had still doubts. I said to myself: ‘Perhaps this is not true. Perhaps
I am mistaken.’ Now all doubt had disappeared. All was decided
irrevocably. Secretly, all alone with him, at night! It is a violation
of all duties! Or, worse yet, she may make a show of that audacity, of
that insolence in crime, which, by its excess, tends to prove
innocence. All is clear. No doubt. I feared but one thing,—that they
might run in different directions, that they might invent some new lie,
and thus deprive me of material proof, and of the sorrowful joy of
punishing, yes, of executing them.

“And to surprise them more quickly, I started on tiptoe for the
dining-room, not through the parlor, but through the hall and the
children’s rooms. In the first room slept the little boy. In the
second, the old nurse moved in her bed, and seemed on the point of
waking, and I wondered what she would think when she knew all. And pity
for myself gave me such a pang that I could not keep the tears back.
Not to wake the children, I ran lightly through the hall into my study.
I dropped upon the sofa, and sobbed. ‘I, an honest man, I, the son of
my parents, who all my life long have dreamed of family happiness, I
who have never betrayed! . . . And here my five children, and she
embracing a musician because he has red lips! No, she is not a woman!
She is a bitch, a dirty bitch! Beside the chamber of the children, whom
she had pretended to love all her life! And then to think of what she
wrote me! And how do I know? Perhaps it has always been thus. Perhaps
all these children, supposed to be mine, are the children of my
servants. And if I had arrived to-morrow, she would have come to meet
me with her _coiffure_, with her _corsage_, her indolent and graceful
movements (and I see her attractive and ignoble features), and this
jealous animal would have remained forever in my heart, tearing it.
What will the old nurse say? And Gregor? And the poor little Lise? She
already understands things. And this impudence, this falsehood, this
bestial sensuality, that I know so well,’ I said to myself.

“I tried to rise. I could not. My heart was beating so violently that I
could not hold myself upon my legs. ‘Yes, I shall die of a rush of
blood. She will kill me. That is what she wants. What is it to her to
kill? But that would be too agreeable to him, and I will not allow him
to have this pleasure.

“Yes, here I am, and there they are. They are laughing, they. . . .
Yes, in spite of the fact that she is no longer in her early youth, he
has not disdained her. At any rate, she is by no means ugly, and above
all, not dangerous to his dear health, to him. Why did I not stifle her
then?’ said I to myself, as I remembered that other scene of the
previous week, when I drove her from my study, and broke the furniture.

“And I recalled the state in which I was then. Not only did I recall
it, but I again entered into the same bestial state. And suddenly there
came to me a desire to act, and all reasoning, except such as was
necessary to action, vanished from my brain, and I was in the condition
of a beast, and of a man under the influence of physical excitement
pending a danger, who acts imperturbably, without haste, and yet
without losing a minute, pursuing a definite object.

“The first thing that I did was to take off my boots, and now, having
only stockings on, I advanced toward the wall, over the sofa, where
firearms and daggers were hanging, and I took down a curved Damascus
blade, which I had never used, and which was very sharp. I took it from
its sheath. I remember that the sheath fell upon the sofa, and that I
said to myself: ‘I must look for it later; it must not be lost.’

“Then I took off my overcoat, which I had kept on all the time, and
with wolf-like tread started for _the room_. I do not remember how I
proceeded, whether I ran or went slowly, through what chambers I
passed, how I approached the dining-room, how I opened the door, how I
entered. I remember nothing about it.”




CHAPTER XXVII.


“I remember only the expression of their faces when I opened the door.
I remember that, because it awakened in me a feeling of sorrowful joy.
It was an expression of terror, such as I desired. Never shall I forget
that desperate and sudden fright that appeared on their faces when they
saw me. He, I believe, was at the table, and, when he saw or heard me,
he started, jumped to his feet, and retreated to the sideboard. Fear
was the only sentiment that could be read with certainty in his face.
In hers, too, fear was to be read, but accompanied by other
impressions. And yet, if her face had expressed only fear, perhaps that
which happened would not have happened. But in the expression of her
face there was at the first moment—at least, I thought I saw it—a
feeling of _ennui_, of discontent, at this disturbance of her love and
happiness. One would have said that her sole desire was not to be
disturbed _in the moment of her happiness_. But these expressions
appeared upon their faces only for a moment. Terror almost immediately
gave place to interrogation. Would they lie or not? If yes, they must
begin. If not, something else was going to happen. But what?

“He gave her a questioning glance. On her face the expression of
anguish and _ennui_ changed, it seemed to me, when she looked at him,
into an expression of anxiety for _him_. For a moment I stood in the
doorway, holding the dagger hidden behind my back. Suddenly he smiled,
and in a voice that was indifferent almost to the point of ridicule, he
said:

“‘We were having some music.’

“‘I did not expect—,’ she began at the same time, chiming in with the
tone of the other.

“But neither he nor she finished their remarks. The same rage that I
had felt the previous week took possession of me. I felt the need of
giving free course to my violence and ‘the joy of wrath.’

“No, they did not finish. That other thing was going to begin, of which
he was afraid, and was going to annihilate what they wanted to say. I
threw myself upon her, still hiding the dagger, that he might not
prevent me from striking where I desired, in her bosom, under the
breast. At that moment he saw . . . and, what I did not expect on his
part, he quickly seized my hand, and cried:

“‘Come to your senses! What are you doing? Help! Help!’

“I tore my hands from his grasp, and leaped upon him. I must have been
very terrible, for he turned as white as a sheet, to his lips. His eyes
scintillated singularly, and—again what I did not expect of him—he
scrambled under the piano, toward the other room. I tried to follow
him, but a very heavy weight fell upon my left arm. It was she.

“I made an effort to clear myself. She clung more heavily than ever,
refusing to let go. This unexpected obstacle, this burden, and this
repugnant touch only irritated me the more. I perceived that I was
completely mad, that I must be frightful, and I was glad of it. With a
sudden impulse, and with all my strength, I dealt her, with my left
elbow, a blow squarely in the face.

“She uttered a cry and let go my arm. I wanted to follow the other, but
I felt that it would be ridiculous to pursue in my stockings the lover
of my wife, and I did not wish to be grotesque, I wished to be
terrible. In spite of my extreme rage, I was all the time conscious of
the impression that I was making upon others, and even this impression
partially guided me.

“I turned toward her. She had fallen on the long easy chair, and,
covering her face at the spot where I had struck her, she looked at me.
Her features exhibited fear and hatred toward me, her enemy, such as
the rat exhibits when one lifts the rat-trap. At least, I saw nothing
in her but that fear and hatred, the fear and hatred which love for
another had provoked. Perhaps I still should have restrained myself,
and should not have gone to the last extremity, if she had maintained
silence. But suddenly she began to speak; she grasped my hand that held
the dagger.

“‘Come to your senses! What are you doing? What is the matter with you?
Nothing has happened, nothing, nothing! I swear it to you!’

“I might have delayed longer, but these last words, from which I
inferred the contrary of what they affirmed,—that is, that _everything_
had happened,—these words called for a reply. And the reply must
correspond to the condition into which I had lashed myself, and which
was increasing and must continue to increase. Rage has its laws.

“‘Do not lie, wretch. Do not lie!’ I roared.

“With my left hand I seized her hands. She disengaged herself. Then,
without dropping my dagger, I seized her by the throat, forced her to
the floor, and began to strangle her. With her two hands she clutched
mine, tearing them from her throat, stifling. Then I struck her a blow
with the dagger, in the left side, between the lower ribs.

“When people say that they do not remember what they do in a fit of
fury, they talk nonsense. It is false. I remember everything.

“I did not lose my consciousness for a single moment. The more I lashed
myself to fury, the clearer my mind became, and I could not help seeing
what I did. I cannot say that I knew in advance what I would do, but at
the moment when I acted, and it seems to me even a little before, I
knew what I was doing, as if to make it possible to repent, and to be
able to say later that I could have stopped.

“I knew that I struck the blow between the ribs, and that the dagger
entered.

“At the second when I did it, I knew that I was performing a horrible
act, such as I had never performed,—an act that would have frightful
consequences. My thought was as quick as lightning, and the deed
followed immediately. The act, to my inner sense, had an extraordinary
clearness. I perceived the resistance of the corset and then something
else, and then the sinking of the knife into a soft substance. She
clutched at the dagger with her hands, and cut herself with it, but
could not restrain the blow.

“Long afterward, in prison when the moral revolution had been effected
within me, I thought of that minute, I remembered it as far as I could,
and I co-ordinated all the sudden changes. I remembered the terrible
consciousness which I felt,—that I was killing a wife, _my_ wife.

“I well remember the horror of that consciousness and I know vaguely
that, having plunged in the dagger, I drew it out again immediately,
wishing to repair and arrest my action. She straightened up and cried:

“‘Nurse, he has killed me!’

“The old nurse, who had heard the noise, was standing in the doorway. I
was still erect, waiting, and not believing myself in what had
happened. But at that moment, from under her corset, the blood gushed
forth. Then only did I understand that all reparation was impossible,
and promptly I decided that it was not even necessary, that all had
happened in accordance with my wish, and that I had fulfilled my
desire. I waited until she fell, and until the nurse, exclaiming, ‘Oh,
my God!’ ran to her; then only I threw away the dagger and went out of
the room.

“‘I must not be agitated. I must be conscious of what I am doing,’ I
said to myself, looking neither at her nor at the old nurse. The latter
cried and called the maid. I passed through the hall, and, after having
sent the maid, started for my study.

“‘What shall I do now?’ I asked myself.

“And immediately I understood what I should do. Directly after entering
the study, I went straight to the wall, took down the revolver, and
examined it attentively. It was loaded. Then I placed it on the table.
Next I picked up the sheath of the dagger, which had dropped down
behind the sofa, and then I sat down. I remained thus for a long time.
I thought of nothing, I did not try to remember anything. I heard a
stifled noise of steps, a movement of objects and of tapestries, then
the arrival of a person, and then the arrival of another person. Then I
saw Gregor bring into my room the baggage from the railway; as if any
one needed it!

“‘Have you heard what has happened?’ I asked him. ‘Have you told the
_dvornik_ to inform the police?’

“He made no answer, and went out. I rose, closed the door, took the
cigarettes and the matches, and began to smoke. I had not finished one
cigarette, when a drowsy feeling came over me and sent me into a deep
sleep. I surely slept two hours. I remember having dreamed that I was
on good terms with her, that after a quarrel we were in the act of
making up, that something prevented us, but that we were friends all
the same.

“A knock at the door awoke me.

“‘It is the police,’ thought I, as I opened my eyes. ‘I have killed, I
believe. But perhaps it is _she;_ perhaps nothing has happened.’

“Another knock. I did not answer. I was solving the question: ‘Has it
happened or not? Yes, it has happened.’

“I remembered the resistance of the corset, and then. . . . ‘Yes, it
has happened. Yes, it has happened. Yes, now I must execute myself,’
said I to myself.

“I said it, but I knew well that I should not kill myself.
Nevertheless, I rose and took the revolver, but, strange thing, I
remembered that formerly I had very often had suicidal ideas, that that
very night, on the cars, it had seemed to me easy, especially easy
because I thought how it would stupefy her. Now I not only could not
kill myself, but I could not even think of it.

“‘Why do it?’ I asked myself, without answering.

“Another knock at the door.

“‘Yes, but I must first know who is knocking. I have time enough.’

“I put the revolver back on the table, and hid it under my newspaper. I
went to the door and drew back the bolt.

“It was my wife’s sister,—a good and stupid widow.

“‘Basile, what does this mean?’ said she, and her tears, always ready,
began to flow.

“‘What do you want?’ I asked roughly.

“I saw clearly that there was no necessity of being rough with her, but
I could not speak in any other tone.

“‘Basile, she is dying. Ivan Fedorowitch says so.’

“Ivan Fedorowitch was the doctor, _her_ doctor, her counsellor.

“‘Is he here?’ I inquired.

“And all my hatred of her arose anew.

“Well, what?

“‘Basile, go to her! Ah! how terrible it is!’ said she.

“‘Go to her?’ I asked myself; and immediately I made answer to myself
that I ought to go, that probably that was the thing that is usually
done when a husband like myself kills his wife, that it was absolutely
necessary that I should go and see her.

“‘If that is the proper thing, I must go,’ I repeated to myself. ‘Yes,
if it is necessary, I shall still have time,’ said I to myself,
thinking of my intention of blowing my brains out.

“And I followed my sister-in-law. ‘Now there are going to be phrases
and grimaces, but I will not yield,’ I declared to myself.

“‘Wait,’ said I to my sister-in-law, ‘it is stupid to be without boots.
Let me at least put on my slippers.’”




CHAPTER XXVIII.


“Strange thing! Again, when I had left my study, and was passing
through the familiar rooms, again the hope came to me that nothing had
happened. But the odor of the drugs, iodoform and phenic acid, brought
me back to a sense of reality.

“‘No, everything has happened.’

“In passing through the hall, beside the children’s chamber, I saw
little Lise. She was looking at me, with eyes that were full of fear. I
even thought that all the children were looking at me. As I approached
the door of our sleeping-room, a servant opened it from within, and
came out. The first thing that I noticed was _her_ light gray dress
upon a chair, all dark with blood. On our common bed she was stretched,
with knees drawn up.

“She lay very high, upon pillows, with her chemise half open. Linen had
been placed upon the wound. A heavy smell of iodoform filled the room.
Before, and more than anything else, I was astonished at her face,
which was swollen and bruised under the eyes and over a part of the
nose. This was the result of the blow that I had struck her with my
elbow, when she had tried to hold me back. Of beauty there was no trace
left. I saw something hideous in her. I stopped upon the threshold.

“‘Approach, approach her,’ said her sister.

“‘Yes, probably she repents,’ thought I; ‘shall I forgive her? Yes, she
is dying, I must forgive her,’ I added, trying to be generous.

“I approached the bedside. With difficulty she raised her eyes, one of
which was swollen, and uttered these words haltingly:

“‘You have accomplished what you desired. You have killed me.’

“And in her face, through the physical sufferings, in spite of the
approach of death, was expressed the same old hatred, so familiar to
me.

“‘The children . . . I will not give them to you . . . all the same. .
. . She (her sister) shall take them.’ . . .

“But of that which I considered essential, of her fault, of her
treason, one would have said that she did not think it necessary to say
even a word.

“‘Yes, revel in what you have done.’

“And she sobbed.

“At the door stood her sister with the children.

“‘Yes, see what you have done!’

“I cast a glance at the children, and then at her bruised and swollen
face, and for the first time I forgot myself (my rights, my pride), and
for the first time I saw in her a human being, a sister.

“And all that which a moment before had been so offensive to me now
seemed to me so petty,—all this jealousy,—and, on the contrary, what I
had done seemed to me so important that I felt like bending over,
approaching my face to her hand, and saying:

“‘Forgive me!’

“But I did not dare. She was silent, with eyelids lowered, evidently
having no strength to speak further. Then her deformed face began to
tremble and shrivel, and she feebly pushed me back.

“‘Why has all this happened? Why?’

“‘Forgive me,’ said I.

“‘Yes, if you had not killed me,’ she cried suddenly, and her eyes
shone feverishly. ‘Forgiveness—that is nothing. . . . If I only do not
die! Ah, you have accomplished what you desired! I hate you!’

“Then she grew delirious. She was frightened, and cried:

“‘Fire, I do not fear . . . but strike them all . . . He has gone. . .
. He has gone.’ . . .

“The delirium continued. She no longer recognized the children, not
even little Lise, who had approached. Toward noon she died. As for me,
I was arrested before her death, at eight o’clock in the morning. They
took me to the police station, and then to prison, and there, during
eleven months, awaiting the verdict, I reflected upon myself, and upon
my past, and I understood it. Yes, I began to understand from the third
day. The third day they took me to the house.” . . .

Posdnicheff seemed to wish to add something, but, no longer having the
strength to repress his sobs, he stopped. After a few minutes, having
recovered his calmness, he resumed:

“I began to understand only when I saw her in the coffin.” . . .

He uttered a sob, and then immediately continued, with haste:

“Then only, when I saw her dead face, did I understand all that I had
done. I understood that it was I, I, who had killed her. I understood
that I was the cause of the fact that she, who had been a moving,
living, palpitating being, had now become motionless and cold, and that
there was no way of repairing this thing. He who has not lived through
that cannot understand it.”


We remained silent a long time. Posdnicheff sobbed and trembled before
me. His face had become delicate and long, and his mouth had grown
larger.

“Yes,” said he suddenly, “if I had known what I now know, I should
never have married her, never, not for anything.”

Again we remained silent for a long time.

“Yes, that is what I have done, that is my experience, We must
understand the real meaning of the words of the Gospel,—Matthew, v.
28,—‘that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed
adultery’; and these words relate to the wife, to the sister, and not
only to the wife of another, but especially to one’s own wife.”

THE END.