When I got outside I breathed deeply. I felt that I had been through one of those hours which, when one is young, one calls decisive. Later in life, one comes to recognize that many, in fact most hours are decisive. Admittedly there are crises and climaxes and so-called peripetiae, but we ourselves know nothing of them, and it is quite impossible for us to distinguish between a moment of climax and any ordinary moment. At the most, we experience this and that — and even then the experience is of no use to us. But the power to recognize and to distinguish is denied us.
Our imagination is always stronger than our conscience. Although my conscience told me that I was a scoundrel, a weakling, a wretch, I was unable to accept the miserable truth, for my imagination rode away with me at a terrible gallop. With a comfortable check in my pocket, temporarily dismissed by my chief, whom indeed I now thought as intolerable as he had previously seemed kindly, I felt free and unbounded in a free and unbounded Paris. Adventures, glorious adventures, lay on every side, and I was on my way to meet the most beautiful woman in the world and the most fashionable of all dressmakers. In that hour it seemed to me that I was at last beginning the sort of life which I had always longed for. Now I was almost a real Krapotkin. And I suppressed the importunate but almost inaudible voice of conscience which insisted that I was really on my way towards a twofold, even a threefold, captivity: firstly the captivity of my foolishness, my indiscretion, my depravity, to all of which, however, I was already accustomed; secondly to the captivity of my love; and thirdly to the captivity of my profession.
It was a mild, sunny, Parisian, winter’s afternoon. The good people were sitting on the terraces outside the cafés, and with blissful contentment I thought how, at the same time of day and year in Russia, the good people would be huddled together in hot, dark rooms. I wandered aimlessly from one café to another. Everywhere the people, the shopkeepers, the waiters seemed to be happy and benevolent, blessed with that benevolence which only a lasting happiness can give. Winter in Paris was a real spring. The women in Paris were real women. The men in Paris were cordial companions. The waiters in Paris were like happy, alert white-aproned minions of some bountiful god from the Golden Age. And in Russia, which I believed I had left for ever, it was dark and cold. It was as though I were no longer m the terrible service of that country. There lived the Golubchiks, whose miserable name I only bore because I had happened to come into the world in my father’s house. There lived the no less miserable Krapotkins, miserable in character, a princely race such as could only be found in Russia, a race which denied its own flesh and blood. Never would a French Krapotkin have behaved like that. I was, as you can see, young, stupid, miserable, and pitiable. But to myself I appeared proud, noble and victorious. Everything that I saw in this wonderful city seemed to confirm my convictions, my previous actions, and my love for Lutetia.
Only when evening came — far too early for my liking — hurried on by the artificial efforts of the street lamps, did my mood change. A feeling of despondency came over me, and I appeared to myself like some disappointed believer who has lost his gods. I hailed a fiacre and drove to my hotel And with all my strength I clung to the one hope that was left me, to Lutetia. To Lutetia and to tomorrow. Tomorrow I would see her. Tomorrow, tomorrow!
I began to do what our type always does in such circumstances: I began to drink. First beer, then wine, then schnapps. In time the heaviness began to lift from my heart, and by the early hours of the morning I had almost attained the same feeling of blissfulness as that which had filled me in the afternoon.
When I went out into the streets, no longer quite sure of my movements, the mild winter’s morning was already graying in the sky. It was raining, softly and kindly, as it can only rain in April in Russia. That and my mental confusion made me forget for a moment the time and place of my present being. I was astonished and almost frightened when I saw the servility with which the employees of the hotel treated me. I had first to remind myself that I was actually Prince Krapotkin.
The memory of it returned to me after a time, outside in the soft fresh morning rain. It was as though the rain itself had baptized me Prince Krapotkin. A Parisian Prince Krapotkin. And that, in my opinion, meant far more than a Russian one.
It rained out of the Parisian sky, softly and kindly, upon my bare head, upon my tired shoulders. I stood for a long time in front of the hotel steps. Behind my back I could feel the respectful, the elaborately indifferent, glances of the staff. And, thanks to my professional instinct, I could also feel something of mistrust in those glances. But they did me good. The rain did me good. The sky above blessed me. Morning in Paris was already beginning. Newspaper sellers moved past with curiously brisk indifference. The people of Paris were waking. And I, as though I were not a Golubchik but a real Krapotkin, a Parisian Krapotkin, yawned, with weariness indeed, but no less with arrogance. And arrogantly, leisurely, with the perfect air of a grand seigneur, I walked past the respectful, mistrustful glances of the hotel staff, whose backs were bent for a Krapotkin and whose eyes seemed to stare at the spy Golubchik.
Confused and exhausted I sank into my bed. On the windowsill outside the rain pattered monotonously.