But bitter, truly bitter, are the words I’m now faced with saying in particular about my sister Liza. Here is real unhappiness, and what are all my failures beside her bitter fate! It began with Prince Sergei Petrovich not recovering and dying in the hospital without waiting for the trial. He passed away before Prince Nikolai Ivanovich. Liza was left alone with her future child. She didn’t weep and, by the look of it, was even calm; she became meek, humble; but all the former ardor of her heart was as if buried at once somewhere in her. She humbly helped mama, took care of the sick Andrei Petrovich, but she became terribly taciturn, did not even look at anyone or anything, as if it was all the same to her, as if she was just passing by. When Versilov got better, she began to sleep a lot. I brought her books, but she didn’t want to read them; she began to get awfully thin. I somehow didn’t dare to start comforting her, though I often came precisely with that intention; but in her presence I somehow had difficulty approaching her, and I couldn’t come up with the right words to begin speaking about it. So it went on until one awful occasion: she fell down our stairs, not all the way, only three steps, but she had a miscarriage, and her illness lasted almost all winter. Now she has gotten up from bed, but her health has suffered a long-lasting blow. She is silent and pensive with us as before, but she has begun to talk a little with mama. All these last days there has been a bright, high spring sun, and I kept remembering that sunny morning last autumn when she and I walked down the street, both rejoicing and hoping and loving each other. Alas, what happened after that? I don’t complain, for me a new life has begun, but her? Her future is a riddle, and now I can’t even look at her without pain.
Some three weeks ago, however, I managed to get her interested in news about Vasin. He was finally released and set completely free. This sensible man gave, they say, the most precise explanations and the most interesting information, which fully vindicated him in the opinion of the people on whom his fate depended. And his notorious manuscript turned out to be nothing more than a translation from the French—material, so to speak, that he had gathered solely for himself, intending afterwards to compose from it a useful article for a magazine. He has now gone to ———province, but his stepfather, Stebelkov, still goes on sitting in prison on his case, which, I’ve heard, keeps growing and gets more and more complicated as time goes on. Liza listened to the news about Vasin with a strange smile and even observed that something like that was bound to happen to him. But she was obviously pleased by the fact that the late Prince Sergei Petrovich’s interference had done Vasin no harm. I have nothing to tell here about Dergachev and the others.
I have finished. Maybe some readers would like to know what became of my “idea” and what this new life is that is beginning for me now and that I’ve announced so mysteriously. But this new life, this new path that has opened before me, is precisely my “idea,” the same as before, but under a totally different guise, so that it’s no longer recognizable. But it can’t be included in my “Notes” now, because it’s something quite different. The old life has totally passed, and the new has barely begun. But I will nevertheless add something necessary: Tatyana Pavlovna, my intimate and beloved friend, pesters me almost every day with exhortations that I enter the university without fail and as soon as possible. “Later, when you’ve finished your studies, you can think up other things, but now go and complete your studies.” I confess, I’m pondering her suggestion, but I have no idea what I’ll decide. Among other things, my objection to her has been that I don’t even have the right to study now, because I should work to support mama and Liza; but she offers her money for that and assures me that there’s enough for my whole time at the university. I decided, finally, to ask the advice of a certain person. Having looked around me, I chose this person carefully and critically. It was Nikolai Semyonovich, my former tutor in Moscow, Marya Ivanovna’s husband. Not that I needed anyone’s advice so much, but I simply and irrepressibly wanted to hear the opinion of this total outsider, even something of a cold egoist, but unquestionably an intelligent man. I sent him my whole manuscript, asking him to keep it a secret, because I had not yet shown it to anyone and especially not to Tatyana Pavlovna. The manuscript came back to me two weeks later with a rather long letter. I’ll make only a few excerpts from this letter, finding in them a sort of general view and something explanatory, as it were. Here are these excerpts.
III
“. . . AND NEVER, my unforgettable Arkady Makarovich, could you have employed your leisure time more usefully than now, having written these ‘Notes’ of yours! You’ve given yourself, so to speak, a conscious account of your first stormy and perilous steps on your career in life. I firmly believe that by this account you could indeed ‘re-educate yourself ’ in many ways, as you put it yourself. Naturally, I will not allow myself the least thing in the way of critical observations per se; though every page makes one ponder . . . for instance, the fact that you kept the ‘document’ so long and so persistently is in the highest degree characteristic . . . But out of hundreds of observations, that is the only one I will allow myself. I also greatly appreciate that you decided to tell, and apparently to me alone, the ‘secret of your idea,’ according to your own expression. But your request that I give my opinion of this idea per se, I must resolutely refuse: first, there would not be room enough for it in a letter, and second, I am not ready for an answer myself and still need to digest it. I will only observe that your ‘idea’ is distinguished by its originality, whereas the young men of the current generation fall mainly upon ideas that have not been thought up but given beforehand, and their supply is by no means great, and is often dangerous. Your ‘idea,’ for instance, preserved you, at least for a while, from the ideas of Messrs. Dergachev and Co., undoubtedly not so original as yours. And, finally, I concur in the highest degree with the opinion of the much-esteemed Tatyana Pavlovna, whom, though I know her personally, till now I had never been able to appreciate in the measure that she deserves. Her idea about your entering the university is in the highest degree beneficial for you. Learning and life will, in three or four years, undoubtedly open the horizon of your thoughts and aspirations still more widely, and if, after the university, you propose to turn again to your ‘idea,’ nothing will hinder that.