"In the almshouse?"
"In the almshouse? One doesn't go to the almshouse with an income of three thousand. Ah, I remember," she grinned. "Indeed, Pyotr Stepanovich once got to joking about the almshouse. Bah, but that was indeed a special almshouse, which is worth considering. It's for the most respectable persons, there are colonels there, one general even wants to go there. If you got in there with all your money, you'd find peace, satisfaction, servants. You could occupy yourself with your studies and always get up a game of preference ..."
"Passons.”
"Passons?" Varvara Petrovna winced. "But, in that case, that's all; you've been informed; from now on we live entirely separately."
"And that's all? All that's left of twenty years? Our final farewell?"
"You're terribly fond of exclaiming, Stepan Trofimovich. It's not at all the fashion nowadays. They talk crudely but plainly. You and these twenty years of ours! Twenty years of reciprocal self-love, and nothing more. Your every letter to me was written not for me but for posterity. You're a stylist, not a friend, and friendship is merely a glorified word, essentially a mutual outpouring of slops..."
"God, all in other people's words! Learned by rote! So they've already put their uniform on you, too! You, too, are in joy, you, too, are in the sun; chère, chère, for what mess of pottage[122] have you sold them your freedom!"
"I am not a parrot to repeat other people's words," Varvara Petrovna boiled up. "Rest assured that I've stored up enough words of my own. What did you do for me in these twenty years? You denied me even the books which I ordered for you and which, if it weren't for the binder, would have been left uncut. What did you give me to read when I asked you, in the first years, to be my guide? Capefigue, nothing but Capefigue.[123] You were even jealous of my development, and took measures. And meanwhile everyone laughs at you. I confess I've always regarded you as merely a critic, you are a literary critic, and that is all. When I announced, on the way to Petersburg, thatI intended to publish a magazine and dedicate my whole life to it, you at once gave me an ironic look and suddenly became terribly haughty."
"It was not that, not that ... we were afraid of persecutions then..."
"It was just that, and you could by no means have been afraid of persecutions in Petersburg. Remember how afterwards, in February, when the news swept over,[124] you suddenly came running to me all in a fright and started demanding that I at once give you a certificate, in the form of a letter, that the proposed magazine had no relation to you at all, that the young people had come to see me and not you, that you were only a tutor who lived in the house because you were still owed some salary, right? Do you remember that? You have distinguished yourself superbly throughout your life, Stepan Trofimovich."
"That was only a moment of faintheartedness, an intimate moment," he exclaimed ruefully. "But can it be, can it really be that we will break up because of such petty impressions? Can it be that nothing else has been preserved between us from all those long years?"
"You are terribly calculating; you keep wanting to make it so that I am still indebted to you. When you returned from abroad, you looked down your nose at me and wouldn't let me utter a word, and when I myself came and spoke with you later about my impressions of the Madonna, you wouldn't hear me out and began smiling haughtily into your tie, as if I really could not have the same feelings as you."
"It was not that, probably not that... J'ai oublié."[xciii]
"No, it was just that, and there was nothing to boast of before me, because it's all nonsense and merely your invention. No one, no one nowadays admires the Madonna anymore or wastes time over it, except for inveterate old men. This has been proved."
"Proved, really?"
"She serves absolutely no purpose. This mug is useful, because water can be poured into it; this pencil is useful, because everything can be written with it, but here you have a woman's face that's worse than all faces in nature. Try painting an apple and put a real apple next to it—which would you take? I'll bet you wouldn't make any mistake.
This is what your theories boil down to, once the first ray of free analysis shines on them."[125]
"So, so."
"You grin ironically. And what you said to me about charity, for example? And yet the pleasure of charity is an arrogant and immoral pleasure, a rich man's pleasure in his riches, his power, and in the comparison of his significance with the significance of a beggar. Charity corrupts both him who gives and him who takes, and, moreover, does not achieve its goal, because it only increases beggary. Sluggards who do not want to work crowd around those who give like gamblers around the gaming table, hoping to win. And yet the pitiful half-kopecks that are thrown to them are not even a hundredth part enough. How much have you given in your life? Eighty kopecks, if that, go on, use your memory. Try to remember when was the last time you gave anything—about two years ago, maybe all of four. You shout and it only hinders the cause. Charity should be forbidden by law, even in our present society. In the new order there will be no poor at all."
"Oh, what an outpouring of other people's words! So it's even gone as far as the new order? God help you, unhappy woman!"
"Yes, it has, Stepan Trofimovich; you carefully concealed from me all the new ideas that are now known to everyone, and you were doing it solely out of jealousy, so as to have more power over me. Now even this Yulia is a hundred miles ahead of me. But I, too, have now opened my eyes. I've defended you, Stepan Trofimovich, as far as I could; absolutely everyone accuses you."
"Enough!" he made as if to get up from his seat, "enough! And what else shall I wish you, if not indeed repentance?"
"Sit down for a minute, Stepan Trofimovich, there is still something I want to ask you. You have received an invitation to read at the literary matinée; that was arranged through me. Tell me, what precisely will you read?"
"Why, precisely about that queen of queens, that ideal of humanity, the Sistine Madonna, who in your opinion is not worth a glass or a pencil."
"Not from history, then?" Varvara Petrovna was ruefully surprised. "But they won't listen to you. You and your Madonna, really! Who wants it, if you just put everyone to sleep? I assure you, Stepan Trofimovich, I am speaking solely in your interest. How different if you'd take some brief but amusing little medieval court story from Spanish history, or, better, some anecdote, and pad it out with more anecdotes and witticisms of your own. They had magnificent courts there; there were such ladies, poisonings. Karmazinov says it would be strange if you couldn't at least find something amusing from Spanish history."
"Karmazinov, that written-out fool, hunts up a topic for me!"
"Karmazinov, that all but statesmanly mind! You have too bold a tongue, Stepan Trofimovich."
"Your Karmazinov is a written-out, spiteful old woman! Chère, chère, how long have you been so enslaved by them, oh, God!"
"I still cannot stand him for his self-importance, but I do justice to his intelligence. I repeat, I've defended you with all my strength, as far as I could. And why must you so necessarily show yourself as ridiculous and dull? On the contrary, come out on the stage with a venerable smile, as the representative of a past age, and tell three anecdotes, with all your wittiness, as only you sometimes know how to do. So you're an old man, so you belong to a bygone age, so you've fallen behind them, finally; but you can confess all that with a smile in your preface, and everyone will see that you are a dear, kind, witty relic ... In short, a man of the old stamp, and sufficiently advanced to be able to set the right value on all the scandalousness of certain notions he used to follow. Do give me that pleasure, I beg you."