I goggled my eyes at her; I was seeing double, there seemed to be two Alphonsines in front of me . . . Suddenly I noticed that she was weeping, gave a start, and realized that she had been talking to me for a very long time now, which meant that during that time I had been asleep or unconscious.
“. . . Hélas! de quoi m’aurait servi de le découvrir plutôt,” she exclaimed, “ et n’aurais-je pas autant gagné à tenir ma honte cachée toute ma vie? Peut-être, n’est-il pas honnête à une demoiselle de s’expliquer si librement devant monsieur, mais enfin je vous avoue, que s’il m’était permis de vouloir quelque chose, oh, ce serait de lui plonger au coeur mon couteau, mais en détournant les yeux, de peur que son regard exécrable ne fit trembler mon bras et ne glaçât mon courage! Il a assassiné ce pope russe, monsieur, il lui arracha sa barbe rousse pour la vendre à un artiste en cheveux au pont des Maréchaux, tout près de la Maison de monsieur Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles de Paris, linge, chemises, voussavez, n’est-ce pas? . . . Oh, monsieur, quand l’amitié rassemble à table épouse, enfants, soeurs, amis, quand une vive allégresse enflamme mon coeur, je vous le demande, monsieur: est-il bonheur préférable à celui dont tout jouit? Mais il rit, monsieur, ce monstre exécrable et inconcevable etsi ce n’était pas par l’entremise de monsieur Andrieux, jamais, oh, jamais je ne serais . . . Mais quoi, monsieur, qu’avez vous, monsieur? ” 59
She rushed to me: it seems I had a chill, and maybe had also swooned. I can’t express what a painful, morbid impression this half-crazed being made on me. Maybe she imagined that she had been ordered to entertain me; at any rate she never left me for a moment. Maybe she had been on the stage once; she declaimed awfully, fidgeted, talked nonstop, while I had long been silent. All I could understand from her stories was that she was closely connected with some “ Maison de M. Andrieux—hautes nouveautés, articles deParis, etc.” and maybe even came from la Maison de M. Andrieux, but she had somehow been torn forever from M. Andrieux par ce monstre furieux et inconcevable, 60and this was what the tragedy consisted in . . . She sobbed, but it seemed to me that it was only as a matter of course and that she wasn’t crying at all; at times I fancied that she was suddenly going to fall apart like a skeleton; she articulated her words in some crushed, cracked voice; the word préférable, for instance, she pronounced préfér-a-ableand on the syllable ableated like a sheep. Coming to my senses once, I saw her making a pirouette in the middle of the room, yet she wasn’t dancing, but this pirouette also had some relation to the story, and she was only doing an impersonation. Suddenly she rushed and opened the small, old, out-of-tune piano that was in the room, started strumming on it and singing . . . It seems that for ten minutes or more I became completely unconscious, fell asleep, but the lapdog squeaked and I came to: full consciousness suddenly returned to me for a moment and lit me up with all its light. I jumped up in horror.
“Lambert, I’m at Lambert’s!” I thought and, seizing my hat, I rushed for my fur coat.
“Où allez-vous, monsieur? ” 61cried the keen-eyed Alphonsine.
“I want to get out, I want to leave! Let me go, don’t keep me . . .”
“ Oui, monsieur!” Alphonsine concurred with all her might, and rushed to open the door to the corridor for me herself. “Mais ce n’est pas loin, monsieur, c’est pas loin du tout, ça ne vaut pas la peine de mettre votre chouba, c’est ici près, monsieur! ” 62she exclaimed to the whole corridor. Running out of the room, I turned to the right.
“Par ici, monsieur, c’est par ici! ” 63she exclaimed with all her might, clutching at my coat with her long, bony fingers, and with her other hand pointing me to the left somewhere down the corridor, where I had no wish to go. I tore myself free and ran for the door to the stairs.
“Il s’en va, il s’en va! ” 64; Alphonsine raced after me, shouting in her cracked voice. “Mais il me tuera, monsieur, il me tuera!” 65But I had already run out to the stairs, and though she even raced after me down the stairs, I managed to open the outside door, run out to the street, and jump into the first cab. I gave mama’s address . . .
IV
BUT CONSCIOUSNESS, having flashed for a moment, quickly went out. I still have a slight memory of how I was brought in and taken to mama’s, but there I fell almost at once into complete oblivion. The next day, as I was told later (though this I also remembered myself ), my reason became clear again for a moment. I remembered myself in Versilov’s room on his sofa; I remember the faces of Versilov, mama, Liza around me, remember very well how Versilov spoke to me about Zershchikov, about the prince, showed me some letter, reassured me. They told me later that I kept asking in horror about some Lambert, and kept hearing the barking of some lapdog. But the faint light of consciousness quickly dimmed; by evening of this second day I was already totally delirious. But I’ll forestall events and explain them beforehand.
When I ran out of Zershchikov’s that evening and everything calmed down somewhat there, Zershchikov, having started the game, suddenly announced in a loud voice that a lamentable error had occurred: the lost money, the four hundred roubles, had been found in a pile of other money and the accounts of the bank proved to be perfectly correct. Then the prince, who had remained in the hall, accosted Zershchikov and demanded insistently that he make a public declaration of my innocence and, besides that, offer his apologies in the form of a letter. Zershchikov, for his part, found the demand worthy of respect and gave his word, in front of everybody, to send me a letter of explanation and apology the next day. The prince gave him Versilov’s address, and indeed the very next day Versilov personally received from Zershchikov a letter in my name and over thirteen hundred roubles that belonged to me and that I had forgotten on the roulette table. Thus ended the affair at Zershchikov’s. This joyful news contributed greatly to my recovery when I regained consciousness.
The prince, on coming back from gambling, wrote two letters that same night, one to me, and the other to his former regiment, where he had had the incident with Ensign Stepanov. He sent both letters the next morning. After which he wrote a report to his superiors, and with this report in hand, early in the morning, he went in person to the commander of his regiment and announced to him that he, “a common criminal, a partner in counterfeiting the ——sky shares, surrenders himself into the hands of justice and asks to be put on trial.” With that he handed over the report, in which it was all explained in writing. He was arrested.
Here is the letter he wrote to me that night, word for word:
Priceless Arkady Makarovich,
Having tried the lackeyish “way out,” I have thereby lost the right to comfort my soul at least somewhat with the thought that I, too, was finally able to venture upon a righteous deed. I am guilty before my fatherland and before my family, and for that, as the last of my family, I am punishing myself. I do not understand how I could have seized upon the base thought of self-preservation and dreamed for some time of buying myself back from them with money. All the same, I myself, before my own conscience, would have remained forever a criminal. Those people, even if they did return the compromising notes to me, would never have left me all my life! What remained then: to live with them, to be one with them all my life—that was the lot that awaited me! I could not accept it, and finally found in myself enough firmness, or maybe just despair, to act as I am acting now.