"You know that I am your slave:I have never been able to resist you ...and I shall be punished for it,you will cease to love me!At least,I want to preserve my reputation ...not for myself --that you know very well!...Oh!I beseech you:do not torture me,as before,with idle doubts and feigned coldness!It may be that Ishall die soon;I feel that I am growing weaker from day to day...And,yet,I cannot think of the future life,I think only of you...You men do not understand the delights of a glance,of a pressure of the hand ...but as for me,Iswear to you that,when I listen to your voice,I feel such a deep,strange bliss that the most passionate kisses could not take its place."Meanwhile,Princess Mary had finished her song.Murmurs of praise were to be heard all around.I went up to her after all the other guests,and said something rather carelessly to her on the subject of her voice.
She made a little grimace,pouting her lower lip,and dropped a very sarcastic curtsey.
"That is all the more flattering,"she said,"because you have not been listening to me at all;but perhaps you do not like music?"...
"On the contrary,I do ...After dinner,especially.""Grushnitski is right in saying that you have very prosaic tastes ...and I see that you like music in a gastronomic respect.""You are mistaken again:I am by no means an epicure.I have a most wretched digestion.But music after dinner puts one to sleep,and to sleep after dinner is healthful;consequently I like music in a medicinal respect.In the evening,on the contrary,it excites my nerves too much:
I become either too melancholy or too gay.Both are fatiguing,where there is no positive reason for being either sorrowful or glad.And,more-over,melancholy in society is ridiculous,and too great gaiety is unbecoming"...
She did not hear me to the end,but went away and sat beside Grushnitski,and they entered into a sort of sentimental conversation.Ap-parently the Princess answered his sage phrases rather absent-mindedly and inconsequently,although endeavouring to show that she was listening to him with attention,because sometimes he looked at her in astonishment,trying to divine the cause of the inward agitation which was expressed at times in her restless glance ...
But I have found you out,my dear Princess!
Have a care!You want to pay me back in the same coin,to wound my vanity --you will not succeed!And if you declare war on me,I will be merciless!
In the course of the evening,I purposely tried a few times to join in their conversation,but she met my remarks rather coldly,and,at last,Iretired in pretended vexation.Princess Mary was triumphant,Grushnitski likewise.Triumph,my friends,and be quick about it!...You will not have long to triumph!...It cannot be otherwise.I have a presentiment...On making a woman's acquaintance I have always unerringly guessed whether she would fall in love with me or not.
The remaining part of the evening I spent at Vera's side,and talked to the full about the old days...Why does she love me so much?
In truth,I am unable to say,all the more so because she is the only woman who has understood me perfectly,with all my petty weaknesses and evil passions...Can it be that wickedness is so attractive?...
Grushnitski and I left the house together.In the street he took my arm,and,after a long silence,said:
"Well?"
"You are a fool,"I should have liked to answer.
But I restrained myself and only shrugged my shoulders.
CHAPTER VII
6th June.
ALL these days I have not once departed from my system.Princess Mary has come to like talking to me;I have told her a few of the strange events of my life,and she is beginning to look on me as an extraordinary man.I mock at everything in the world,especially feelings;and she is taking alarm.When I am present,she does not dare to embark upon sentimental discussions with Grushnitski,and already,on a few occasions,she has answered his sallies with a mocking smile.
But every time that Grushnitski comes up to her I assume an air of meekness and leave the two of them together.On the first occasion,she was glad,or tried to make it appear so;on the second,she was angry with me;on the third --with Grushnitski.
"You have very little vanity!"she said to me yesterday."What makes you think that I find Grushnitski the more entertaining?"I answered that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for the sake of the happiness of a friend.
"And my pleasure,too,"she added.
I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air.After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her...In the evening,she was pensive;this morning,at the well,more pensive still.When I went up to her,she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski,who was ap-parently falling into raptures about Nature,but,so soon as she perceived me,she began to laugh --at a most inopportune moment --pretending not to notice me.I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her.She turned away from her companion and yawned twice.
Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski --Iwill not talk to her for another two days.
CHAPTER VIII
11th June.
I OFTEN ask myself why I am so obstinately endeavouring to win the love of a young girl whom I do not wish to deceive,and whom I will never marry.Why this woman-like coquetry?
Vera loves me more than Princess Mary ever will.
Had I regarded the latter as an invincible beauty,Ishould perhaps have been allured by the difficulty of the undertaking...
However,there is no such difficulty in this case!Consequently,my present feeling is not that restless craving for love which torments us in the early days of our youth,flinging us from one woman to another until we find one who can-not endure us.And then begins our constancy --that sincere,unending passion which may be expressed mathematically by a line falling from a point into space --the secret of that endlessness lying only in the impossibility of attaining the aim,that is to say,the end.
