IV
AND BY THE WAY: bringing this “new character” on stage in my “Notes” (I’m speaking of Versilov), I’ll give a brief account of his service record, which, incidentally, is of no significance. I do it to make things clearer for the reader, and because I don’t see where I might stick this record in further on in the story.
He studied at the university, but went into the guards, into a cavalry regiment. He married Miss Fanariotov and resigned. He went abroad and, returning, lived in Moscow amidst worldly pleasures. On his wife’s death, he came to his country estate; here occurred the episode with my mother. Then for a long time he lived somewhere in the south. During the war with Europe, 20he again went into military service, but did not get to the Crimea and never saw action all that while. When the war ended, he resigned, went abroad, and even took my mother, whom, however, he left in Königsberg. The poor woman occasionally told with a sort of horror and shaking her head of how she had lived for a whole six months then, alone as could be, with a little daughter, not knowing the language, as if in a forest, and in the end also without any money. Then Tatyana Pavlovna came to fetch her and took her back to somewhere in Nizhny-Novgorod province. Later Versilov joined the arbiters of the peace at the first call-up, 21and they say he performed his duties splendidly; but he soon quit and in Petersburg began to occupy himself with conducting various private civil suits. Andronikov always thought highly of his capacities, respected him very much, and said only that he didn’t understand his character. Later he also dropped that and went abroad again, this time for a long period, for several years. Then began his especially close connections with old Prince Sokolsky. During all this time his financial means underwent two or three radical changes: first he fell into poverty, then he suddenly got rich and rose again.
But anyhow, now that I’ve brought my notes precisely to this point, I’ve decided to tell about “my idea” as well. I’ll describe it in words for the first time since its conception. I’ve decided to, so to speak, disclose it to the reader, also for the clarity of the further account. And not only the reader, but I myself am beginning to get entangled in the difficulty of explaining my steps without explaining what led me and prompted me to them. Because of this “figure of omission,” I, in my lack of skill, have fallen back into those novelistic “beauties” that I myself derided above. On entering the door of my Petersburg novel, with all my disgraceful adventures in it, I find this preface necessary. But it was not “beauties” that tempted me to omission up to now, but also the essence of the matter, that is, the difficulty of the matter; even now, when all the past has already passed, I feel an insurmountable difficulty in telling about this “thought.” Besides that, I undoubtedly should explain it in the form it had then, that is, in the way it took shape and conceived itself in me at that time, and not now, and that is a new difficulty. It’s almost impossible to tell about certain things. Precisely those ideas that are the simplest, the clearest—precisely those are also hard to understand. If Columbus, before the discovery of America, had started telling his idea to others, I’m sure he wouldn’t have been understood for a terribly long time. And in fact he wasn’t. In saying this, I have no thought of equating myself with Columbus, and if anybody concludes that, he should be ashamed, that’s all.
Chapter Five
I
MY IDEA IS—to become Rothschild. I invite the reader to calmness and seriousness.
I repeat: my idea is to become Rothschild, to become as rich as Rothschild; not simply rich, but precisely like Rothschild. Why, what for, precisely what goals I pursue—of that I shall speak later. First, I shall merely prove that the achievement of my goal is mathematically assured.
The matter is very simple, the whole secret lies in two words: persistenceand continuity.
“We’ve heard all that,” I’ll be told, “it’s nothing new. Every Vater in Germany repeats it to his children, and yet your Rothschild” (that is, the late James Rothschild, the Parisian, he’s the one I’m speaking of ) “was only one, while there are millions of Vaters.”
I would answer:
“You assure me that you’ve heard it all, and yet you haven’t heard anything. True, you’re also right about one thing: if I said that this was a ‘very simple’ matter, I forgot to add that it’s also the most difficult. All the religions and moralities in the world come down to one thing: ‘We must love virtue and flee from vice.’ What, it seems, could be simpler? So go and do something virtuous and flee from at least one of your vices, give it a try—eh? It’s the same here.”
That’s why your countless Vaters in the course of countless ages can repeat these two astonishing words, which make up the whole secret, and yet Rothschild remains alone. Which means it’s the same and not the same, and the Vatersare repeating quite a different thought.
No doubt they, too, have heard about persistence and continuity; but to achieve my goal, it’s not Vater persistence and Vater continuity that are needed.
Already this one word, that he’s a Vater—I’m not speaking only of Germans—that he has a family, that he lives like everybody else, has expenses like everybody else, has duties like everybody else—here you don’t become Rothschild, but remain only a moderate man. I understand all too clearly that, having become Rothschild, or even only wishing to become him, not in a Vater-like way, but seriously—I thereby at once step outside of society.
A few years ago I read in the newspapers that on the Volga, on one of the steamboats, a certain beggar died, who had gone about in tatters, begging for alms, and was known to everybody there. After his death, they found as much as three thousand in banknotes sewn into his rags. The other day I again read about a certain beggar, from the nobility, who went around the taverns hat in hand. They arrested him and found as much as five thousand roubles on him. Two conclusions follow directly from this: first, persistencein accumulating, even by kopecks, produces enormous results later on (time means nothing here); and, second, that the most unsophisticated but continuousform of gain mathematically assures success.
And yet there are people, perhaps quite a few of them, who are respectable, intelligent, and restrained, but who (no matter how they try) do not have either three or five thousand, but who nevertheless want terribly much to have it. Why is that so? The answer is clear: because, despite all their wanting, not one of them wantsto such a degree, for instance, as to become a beggar, if there’s no other way of getting money; or is persistent to such a degree, even having become a beggar, as not to spend the very first kopecks he gets on an extra crust for himself or his family. And yet, with this method of accumulation, that is, with begging, one has to eat nothing but bread and salt in order to save so much money; at least that’s my understanding. That is surely what the two above-mentioned beggars did, that is, ate nothing but bread and lived all but under the open sky. There is no doubt that they had no intention of becoming Rothschild: these were Harpagons or Plyushkins 22in the purest form, nothing more; but conscious money-making in a completely different form, and with the goal of becoming Rothschild, will call for no less wanting and strength of will than with these two beggars. A Vaterwon’t show such strength. There is a great diversity of strengths in the world, strengths of will and wanting especially. There is the temperature of boiling water, and there is the temperature of red-hot iron.
Here it’s the same as a monastery, the same ascetic endeavor. Here’s it’s a feeling, not an idea. What for? Why? Is it moral, and is it not ugly, to go about in sackcloth and eat black bread all your life, while carrying such huge money on you? These questions are for later, but now I’m only talking about the possibility of achieving the goal.
When I thought up “my idea” (and it consists of red-hot iron), I began testing myself: am I capable of the monastery and asceticism? To that end I spent the whole first month eating nothing but bread and water. It came to no more than two and a half pounds of black bread a day. To carry it out, I had to deceive the clever Nikolai Semyonovich and the well-wishing Marya Ivanovna. I insisted, to her distress and to a certain perplexity in the most delicate Nikolai Semyonovich, that dinner be brought to my room. There I simply destroyed it: the soup I poured out the window into the nettles or a certain other place, the beef I either threw out the window to the dog, or wrapped in paper, put in my pocket, and took out later, well, and all the rest. Since they served much less than two and a half pounds of bread for dinner, I bought myself more bread on the sly. I held out for that month, only I may have upset my stomach somewhat; but the next month I added soup to the bread, and drank a glass of tea in the morning and evening—and, I assure you, I spent a whole year that way in perfect health and contentment, and morally—in rapture and continuous secret delight. Not only did I not regret the meals, I was in ecstasy. By the end of the year, having made sure that I was able to endure any fast you like, I began to eat as they did and went back to having dinner with them. Not satisfied with this test, I made a second one: apart from my upkeep, which was paid to Nikolai Semyonovich, I was allocated a monthly sum of five roubles for pocket money. I decided to spend only half of it. This was a very hard test, but in a little over two years, when I came to Petersburg, I had in my pocket, apart from other money, seventy roubles saved up solely by this economy. The result of these two experiments was tremendous for me: I learned positively that I was able to want enough to achieve my goal, and that, I repeat, is the whole of “my idea.” The rest is all trifles.