I began to redouble my vigilance. The dressmaker was supposed to be staying only ten days in Russia, but already, after the third day, it was announced that his “creations” had so pleased our society ladies that it was proposed to prolong his visit by another ten days. What a wonderful and yet what a disturbing possibility! I was given orders to watch the well-known house of Madame Lukatchevski, where the officers of the garrison often used to gather after midnight. I knew it well, professionally, but only from the outside. Its interior I had not yet explored. I was given a so-called “expenses-allowance” of three hundred rubles and a “service” suit of tails, such as was usually shared between every three of our people in the higher division. Round my neck I hung a Greek order, a gold medal on the end of a red silk ribbon. Two of the lackeys at Madame Lukatchevski’s were in our pay. At midnight I posted myself in front of the house. After having waited until such a time as I thought my presence would attract no attention, I went in, complete with top hat, cane, opera cloak, and orders. Those of the gentlemen, in uniform and civilian dress, about whom I had precise information, I greeted as if I were an old acquaintance. They smiled back at me with the disagreeable, empty smile with which one acknowledges friend and foe and neutral in the world of the great. Some time later one of our lackeys gave me a sign to follow him. He led me up to one of those discreet rooms on the first floor, whose presence was kept a secret from the ordinary habitués of the house. Such rooms were not for love — or what passed for love; on the contrary, they were reserved for witnesses and listeners, for informers and spies. Though a slit in the thin intervening partition one could hear and see everything that went on in the next room.
And I saw, my friends — I saw Lutetia, my beloved, together with young Prince Krapotkin. Oh, I recognized him immediately, there was no possible doubt. How could I not have recognized him! At that time I was so depraved that I could recognize something horrible more quickly than something pleasant and beautiful. Yes, I even practiced this quality and tried to perfect myself in it. So I saw Lutetia, my beloved, in the arms of the man whom I had once regarded as my archenemy; in the arms of the man whom I had almost forgotten during my last shameful years; in the arms of my hated false stepbrother, Prince Krapotkin.
You may perhaps realize, my friends, what took place inside me at that moment. Suddenly — for I had long since ceased to think of it — I was reminded of my ridiculous name, “Golubchik”; suddenly I remembered that I had only the Krapotkin family to thank for my present degrading profession; suddenly I believed that the old Prince would gladly have accepted me on that summer’s day in Odessa had not the young boy burst into the room with such insolent cheerfulness; suddenly the mad vanity of my youth was reawakened — and all the bitterness. Yes, the bitterness, too! He — he was not the son of Krapotkin. I was! I! The name had only come to him by chance, and all that the name carried with it: the repute, the money, the world, and the first woman I had ever loved.
You know what that means, my friends: the first woman a man loves. She meant everything to me. I was a miserable creature, who might one day have become a decent man. Now I would never become a decent man. In that moment when I saw Krapotkin and Lutetia together, the evil in me flared up, that evil which had been within me since my birth. Till then it had only flickered gently inside me, but now it roared up in a great open blaze. My fate was sealed.
I realized my fate even then, and because of that I was able to observe closely the two objects of my emotions; that of my hate and that of my love. Never does a man see so clearly and coolly as in the hour when he feels the black precipice before his feet. In that hour I felt that the love and the hatred in my heart were as inwardly united as the pair in the next room: Lutetia and Krapotkin. Just as little as the two I was watching, were my two feelings at variance; rather they were united into an overwhelming satisfaction, which was certainly greater and stronger and more sensual than the physical union of the pair.
I felt no desire, not even jealousy; at least not the common jealousy which each of us has probably felt when he has had to watch a beloved person being snatched away from him — or rather, when he has had to see the joy with which that person lets himself be snatched away. I was not even embittered. I had not even a desire for vengeance. Rather I was like a cold and objective judge who watches the exploits of the criminals whom he will later have to judge. I pronounced judgment then. It was death. Death for Krapotkin! I only marveled that I had waited so long. Yes, I realized then that this sentence of death had long lain inside me, pronounced, recorded, and sealed. It was, I repeat, no desire for revenge that prompted me to this. It was, in my opinion, the natural consequence of ordinary, objective, normal justice. Not I alone had fallen a victim to Krapotkin. No! The effective law of common justice was also his victim. And in the name of the law I pronounced judgment. It was death.
There lived in Petersburg at that time a certain police informer by the name of Leibusch. He was a tiny little man, scarcely four foot in height, not even a dwarf, but the shadow of a dwarf. He was a highly valued ally of those in our profession. I myself had only seen him once or twice, and then only for a few seconds. But to tell the truth, although I had, as they say, been washed by many waters, I was more than a little afraid of him. There were many unscrupulous blackguards and traitors in our company, but none smarter or more unscrupulous than he. For example, at a moment’s notice he could produce proof that a confirmed criminal was as innocent as a lamb and that an innocent man had prepared a plot to assassinate the Czar. But I, although I had already sunk so low, still cherished the conviction that I did not do evil from innate wickedness but because fate had condemned me to it. Incredible as it may seem, I still considered myself a “good man.” I at least was still conscious that I acted evilly and that I must therefore justify myself to myself. Vileness had been forced upon me. My name was Golubchik. Every right which I had, from my birth onwards, had been taken away from me. At that time, my misfortune seemed, in my eyes, a totally undeserved disaster. To a certain extent, therefore, I had a fully documented right to be evil. But the others, who practiced evil upon me, had certainly no such right.
Well, I sought out our informer, Leibusch. In the first moment, when I stood before him, I was suddenly conscious of the terrible thing I was proposing to do. His yellowish skin, his red-rimmed eyes, his great pock-marks, his tiny inhuman figure almost shook my firm belief that I was a judge and an instrument of justice. Several times I hesitated before bringing myself to broach the purpose of my visit.
“Leibusch,” I said, “here is a chance for you to prove your ability.” We were in the anteroom of our chief, sitting side by side on a bright green plush sofa, and it seemed to me as though it were already the dock; yes, I was sitting in the dock at the very hour when I had taken it upon myself to judge and to condemn.
“What more do you want me to prove?” said the little man. “I’ve proved enough already!”
“I need,” I said, “material against a certain person.”
“Someone important?”
“Of course.”
“Who is it?”