il My moFherTiacTa presentiment at heart of sorrow \ n cpme, M he thought; " there these unquiet moods would have slept an eternal sleep; there there would have been none of the troubled ferment of this complex life. There, too, all the human passions and feelings would have come to me; vanity and pride and ambition—all would have occupied my thoughts on a small scale within the narrow limits of the district, and all would have been satisfied. The first in the district. Yes, all is relative. The divine spark of heavenly fire which in greater or less degree burns in all of us, would have shone there unseen in me, and would quickly have been extinguished in a life of indolence, or would have passed into the warmth of attachment to wife and children. Existence would not hav« been polluted. I
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should have pursued my way proudly; the path of life would have been easy: it would have seemed simple and comprehensible to me; life would have been within my powers : I should not have come into conflict with it. And love ? It would have blossomed happily and have filled my whole life. Sophia would have gone on loving me tranquilly. I should not have lost faith in anything, I should have picked the roses without recognising the thorns, without knowing anything of jealousy for want of a rival! Why was I so blindly and overmasteringly drawn to what was far off and obscure, to unequal and uncertain conflict with destiny ? And how well I understood men and life in those days! There I should have understood them still as well without an inkling of anything. I expected so much of life there, and without a persistent analysis of it I should have been expecting something of it still even up to now. How many treasures I discovered in my soul ; what has become of them ? I have bartered them with the world, I have given away the sincerity of my heart, my first innermost passion ; and what have I received for it ? a bitter disillusionment. I have learnt that all is a cheat, all is transitory, that one cannot depend either on oneself or on others, and I have begun to be afraid of others and of myself. And in the midst of this analysis I cannot acknowledge the pettiness of life and yet be contented, like my uncle and many others. And that's my present position !"
Now he desired only one thing—forgetfulness of the past, tranquillity, the slumber of the soul. He grew more and more indifferent to life, and looked at everything with drowsy eyes. From crowds of people and the noise of assemblies he found only ennui, and he fled from them, but ennui followed him.
He was amazed that people could be light-hearted and incessantly occupy themselves with something or other, and everyday be attracted by fresh interests. It seemed strange to him that all men did not go about as wearily as he, did not weep, and did not—instead of chattering about the weather—talk of their pain and their respective sufferings— if they did talk of it, it was always of a pain in their legs or some other part, rheumatism or some such ailment. They were only anxious about their body—as for their soul—it was never even mentioned ! " Empty, wretched creatures—
animals!" he thought. Yet sometimes he fell to pondering deeply. "There are so many of them, these wretched creatures," he said to himself with some uneasiness, " and I am only one; can it be—all of them are empty—wrong— and I?"
Then it struck him that it might almost be that he alone -^ was to blame, and this made him even more unhappy.
His old acquaintances he ceased to visit; meeting new faces chilled him. After his conversation with his uncle, he sank into still deeper lethargy ; his soul was wrapped in complete slumber. He fell into a kind of stony indifference, lived in indolence, and obstinately cut himself off from everything that even reminded him of the civilised world.
" What does it matter how one lives so long as one lives!" he said. " Every one is free to take life as he likes, and then to die."
He sought the society of men of sour turn of mind, of embittered feelings, and found relief for his heart in listening to their spiteful epigrams on destiny; or wasted his time with people inferior to him both in intelligence and education, most frequently of all with Kostyakoff, the old man whom Zayeshaloff had tried to introduce to riotr Ivanitch. Kostyakoff lived in Peskae, and walked about the street there in a shiny cap and a dressing-gown, tied round the waist with a pocket-handkerchief. With him lived a cook with whom he used to play cribbage in the evening.
If a fire broke out, he was the first man to be on the spot and the last to go away. If he passed by a church where a funeral service was being conducted, he would force his way through the crowd to take a look at the face of the corpse, and then would proceed to follow the funeral to the cemetery.
He was devoted to ceremonies of every kind, whether mournful or festive in character; he liked also to be present at any extraordinary events, such as street brawls, fatal accidents, roofs falling in, &c, and read with peculiar enjoyment the account of such occurrences in the newspapers. Besides this, he used to read medical books, " so as to know what is in man/ he used to say. In the winter Alexandr used to play draughts with him, and in the summer he used to make excursions out of town to go fishing with him. The old man would talk of one thing and another. When
they went into a field, he talked of the crop and of sowing; on the bank of the river he talked of fish, of navigation; in the street, he made remarks about the houses, about architecture, and building materials and rents .... no abstract ideas of any kind. He looked on life as a good thing if he had money, and vice versd. Such a man was quite without danger for Alexandr; he could not awaken any spiritual emotion.
Alexandr tried as zealously to mortify the spiritual element in himself as hermits try to mortify the flesh. At the office he was silent; if he met acquaintances he exchanged two or three words and, on the pretext of want of time, made his escape. His friend Kostyakoff, however, he saw every day. Sometimes the old man would spend the whole day at Adouev's, sometimes he would invite him home to eat cabbage soup. He had already taught Alexandr to make beverages and to cook pickled cabbage and tripe. Later they would set off together somewhere in the surrounding neighbourhood to the open country. Kostyakoff had many acquaintances everywhere. With the peasants, he would talk about their way of living, with the women he would joke, and was precisely the merry fellow that Zayeshaloff had eulogised him for being. Alexandr gave him full liberty to talk, but for his part was mostly silent.
He already felt that ideas of the world he had abandoned visited him less frequently, moved more slowly through his head, and meeting nothing to reflect them or resist them in his surroundings, did not find utterance and died away without coming to anything. His soul was in as wild and sterile a condition as an overgrown garden. He had still not quite attained the state of complete petrifaction. A few months more, and it would be over! But this is what happened.
One day Alexandr had gone fishing with Kostyakoff. Kostyakoff in a full-skirted overcoat and leather foraging cap, after setting on the bank several hooks of various sizes, with floats and little bells and reels, was smoking a short pipe, and without daring so much as to wink, was keeping guard over the whole battery of hooks, including Adouev's as well, for Alexandr was standing leaning against a tree and gazing in an opposite direction. They stood thus a long while in silence.
"You've got a bite! look, Alexandr Fedoritch," said Kostyakoff suddenly in a whisper.
Adouev looked at the water, and turned away again.
" No, it's the current makes you think so," he said.
" Look, look !" cried Kostyakoff; " it's a bite, upon my soul, it's a bite. Ah, ah ! pull it up, pull it up ! hold it!"
The float did actually plunge under water, and after it the line, and after the line the rod too began to slip from behind the bushes. Alexandr clutched the rod, and then the line.