talk together, and I have grown so accustomed to these discussions that
I feel as though something were wanting."
My anger had quite gone now, and Dimitri stood before me the same good
and lovable being as before.
"You know, perhaps, why I ran away?" I said.
"Perhaps I do," he answered, taking a seat near me. "However, though it
is possible I know why, I cannot say it straight out, whereas YOU can."
"Then I will do so. I ran away because I was angry with you--well, not
angry, but grieved. I always have an idea that you despise me for being
so young."
"Well, do you know why I always feel so attracted towards you?" he
replied, meeting my confession with a look of kind understanding, "and
why I like you better than any of my other acquaintances or than any of
the people among whom I mostly have to live? It is because I found out
at once that you have the rare and astonishing gift of sincerity."
"Yes, I always confess the things of which I am most ashamed--but only
to people in whom I trust," I said.
"Ah, but to trust a man you must be his friend completely, and we
are not friends yet, Nicolas. Remember how, when we were speaking of
friendship, we agreed that, to be real friends, we ought to trust one
another implicitly."
"I trust you in so far as that I feel convinced that you would never
repeat a word of what I might tell you," I said.
"Yet perhaps the most interesting and important thoughts of all are
just those which we never tell one another, while the mean thoughts
(the thoughts which, if we only knew that we had to confess them to
one another, would probably never have the hardihood to enter our
minds)--Well, do you know what I am thinking of, Nicolas?" he broke off,
rising and taking my hand with a smile. "I propose (and I feel sure
that it would benefit us mutually) that we should pledge our word to one
another to tell each other EVERYTHING. We should then really know each
other, and never have anything on our consciences. And, to guard against
outsiders, let us also agree never to speak of one another to a third
person. Suppose we do that?"
"I agree," I replied. And we did it. What the result was shall be told
hereafter.
Kerr has said that every attachment has two sides: one loves, and the
other allows himself to be loved; one kisses, and the other surrenders
his cheek. That is perfectly true. In the case of our own attachment it
was I who kissed, and Dimitri who surrendered his cheek--though he, in
his turn, was ready to pay me a similar salute. We loved equally because
we knew and appreciated each other thoroughly, but this did not prevent
him from exercising an influence over me, nor myself from rendering him
adoration.
It will readily be understood that Nechludoff's influence caused me
to adopt his bent of mind, the essence of which lay in an enthusiastic
reverence for ideal virtue and a firm belief in man's vocation to
perpetual perfection. To raise mankind, to abolish vice and misery,
seemed at that time a task offering no difficulties. To educate oneself
to every virtue, and so to achieve happiness, seemed a simple and easy
matter.
Only God Himself knows whether those blessed dreams of youth were
ridiculous, or whose the fault was that they never became realised.
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Youth, by Leo Tolstoy
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YOUTH
By Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi
Translated by C. J. Hogarth
------------------------------------
I. WHAT I CONSIDER TO HAVE BEEN THE BEGINNING OF MY YOUTH
I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri ("my own marvellous Mitia," as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once-that very second-apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of never again changing them.
It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.
I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the house (but more especially along the maidservants' corridor), and much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly, but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this seemed to me very shameful.
II. SPRINGTIME
Easter of the year when I entered the University fell late in April, so that the examinations were fixed for St. Thomas's Week, [Easter week.] and I had to spend Good Friday in fasting and finally getting myself ready for the ordeal.
Following upon wet snow (the kind of stuff which Karl Ivanitch used to describe as "a child following, its father"), the weather had for three days been bright and mild and still. Not a clot of snow was now to be seen in the streets, and the dirty slush had given place to wet, shining pavements and coursing rivulets. The last icicles on the roofs were fast melting in the sunshine, buds were swelling on the trees in the little garden, the path leading across the courtyard to the stables was soft instead of being a frozen ridge of mud, and mossy grass was showing green between the stones around the entrance-steps. It was just that particular time in spring when the season exercises the strongest influence upon the human soul-when clear sunlight illuminates everything, yet sheds no warmth, when rivulets run trickling under one's feet, when the air is charged with an odorous freshness, and when the bright blue sky is streaked with long, transparent clouds.