Having come up with such a light-minded plan, he felt the flush of color on his face; he went to the mirror and was himself frightened by his sunken cheeks and the pallor of his face. He began to dress carefully; he washed, brushed his hair, put on a new tailcoat, a smart waistcoat, threw on a cloak, and went out. He breathed the fresh air and felt freshness in his heart, like a convalescent who has decided to go out for the first time after a long illness. His heart was pounding as he approached the street where he had not set foot since the fatal encounter.
He spent a long time looking for the house; his memory seemed to fail him. Twice he walked up and down the street, not knowing where to stop. Finally one seemed right to him. He quickly ran up the stairs, knocked at the door: the door opened, and who should come out to meet him? His ideal, his mysterious image, the original of his dreamt pictures, she by whom he lived, lived so terribly, so tormentingly, so sweetly. She herself stood before him. He trembled; he could barely keep his feet from weakness, overcome by an impulse of joy. She stood before him just as beautiful, though her eyes were sleepy, though pallor had already crept over her face, no longer so fresh-yet still she was beautiful.
"Ah!" she cried out, seeing Piskarev and rubbing her eyes (it was then already two o'clock). "Why did you run away from us that time?"
Exhausted, he sat down on a chair and gazed at her.
"And I just woke up. They brought me back at seven in the morning. I was completely drunk," she added with a smile.
Oh, better you were mute and totally deprived of speech than to utter such things! She had suddenly shown him the whole of her life as in a panorama. However, he mastered himself despite that and decided to try whether his admonitions might have an effect on her. Summoning his courage, he began in a trembling and at the same time fervent voice to present her terrible position to her. She listened to him with an attentive look and with that sense of astonishment which we show at the sight of something unexpected and strange. With a slight smile, she glanced at her friend who was sitting in the corner and who, abandoning the comb she was cleaning, also listened attentively to the new preacher.
"True, I'm poor," Piskarev said finally, after a long and instructive admonition, "but we'll work; we'll vie with each other in our efforts to improve our life. There's nothing more pleasant than to owe everything to oneself. I'll sit over my paintings, you'll sit by me, inspiring my labors, embroidering or doing some other handwork, and we won't lack for anything."
"What!" she interrupted his speech with an expression of some disdain. "I'm no laundress or seamstress that I should do any work!"
God! in these words all her low, all her contemptible life was expressed-a life filled with emptiness and idleness, the faithful companions of depravity.
"Marry me!" her friend, till then sitting silently in the corner, picked up with an impudent look. "If I was a wife, I'd sit like this!"
And with that she made some stupid grimace with her pathetic face which the beauty found very funny.
Oh, this was too much! This was more than he could bear! He rushed out, having lost all feeling and thought. His reason was clouded: stupidly, aimlessly, seeing, hearing, feeling nothing, he wandered about for the whole day. No one could say whether he slept anywhere or not; only the next day, following some stupid instinct, did he come to his apartment, pale, dreadful-looking, his hair disheveled, with signs of madness on his face. He locked himself in his room, let no one in and asked for nothing. Four days passed, and his locked room never once opened; finally a week went by, and the room still remained locked. They rushed to the door, began calling him, but there was no answer; finally they broke the door down and found his lifeless body with the throat cut. A bloody razor lay on the floor. From his convulsively spread arms and terribly disfigured appearance, it could be concluded that his hand had not been steady and that he had suffered for a long time before his sinful soul left his body.
Thus perished, the victim of a mad passion, poor Piskarev, quiet, timid, modest, childishly simple-hearted, who bore in himself a spark of talent which in time might have blazed up broadly and brightly. No one wept over him; no one could be seen by his lifeless body except the ordinary figure of a district inspector and the indifferent mien of a city doctor. His coffin was quietly taken to Okhta, 6 even without religious rites; only a soldier-sentry wept as he followed it, and that because he had drunk an extra dram of vodka. Not even Lieutenant Pirogov came to look at the body of the unfortunate wretch upon whom, while he lived, he had bestowed his lofty patronage. However, he could not be bothered with that; he was occupied with an extraordinary event. But let us turn to him.
I don't like corpses and dead men, and it always gives me an unpleasant feeling when a long funeral procession crosses my path and an invalid soldier, dressed like some sort of Capuchin, takes a pinch of snuff with his left hand because his right is occupied with a torch. My heart is always vexed at the sight of a rich catafalque and a velvet coffin; but my vexation is mixed with sadness when I see a drayman pulling the bare pine coffin of a poor man, and only some beggar woman met at an intersection plods after it, having nothing else to do.
It seems we left Lieutenant Pirogov at the point of his parting from poor Piskarev and rushing after the blonde. This blonde was a light, rather interesting little creature. She stopped in front of each shop window to gaze at the displays of belts, kerchiefs, earrings, gloves, and other trifles; she fidgeted constantly, looked in all directions, and glanced over her shoulder. "You're mine, litde sweetie!" Lieutenant Pirogov repeated self-confidently as he continued his pursuit, covering his face with the collar of his overcoat lest he meet some acquaintance. But it will do no harm if we inform readers of who this Lieutenant Pirogov was.
But before we tell who this Lieutenant Pirogov was, it will do no harm if we say a thing or two about the society to which Pirogov belonged. There are officers in Petersburg who constitute a sort of middle class in society. You will always find one of them at a soiree, at a dinner given by a state or actual state councillor, who earned this rank by forty long years of labor. Several pale daughters, completely colorless, like Petersburg, some of them overripe, a tea table, a piano, dancing-all this is usually inseparable from a bright epaulette shining by a lamp, between a well-behaved blonde and the black tailcoat of a brother or a friend of the family. It is very hard to stir up these cool-blooded girls and make them laugh; it takes very great art, or, better to say, no art at all. One must speak so that it is neither too intelligent nor too funny, so that it is all about the trifles that women like. In this the gentlemen under discussion should be given their due. They have a special gift for making these colorless beauties laugh and listen. Exclamations stifled by laughter-"Ah, stop it! Aren't you ashamed to make me laugh so!"-are usually their best reward. Among the upper classes they occur very rarely, or, better to say, never. They are forced out altogether by what this society calls aristocrats; however, they are considered educated and well-bred people. They like talking about literature; they praise Bulgarin, Pushkin, and Grech, and speak with contempt and barbed wit of A. A. Orlov. 7 They never miss a single public lecture, be it on accounting or even on forestry. In the theater, whatever the play, you will always find one of them, unless they are playing some Filatkas, 8 which are highly insulting to their fastidious taste. They are constantly in the theater. For theater managers, these are the most profitable people. In plays, they especially like good poetry; they also like very much to call loudly for the actors; many of them, being teachers in government schools, or preparing students for them, in the end acquire a cabriolet and a pair of horses. Then their circle widens: they finally arrive at marrying a merchant's daughter who can play the piano, with a hundred thousand or so in cash and a heap of bearded relations. However, this honor they cannot attain before being promoted to the rank of colonel at the very least. Because our Russian beards, though still giving off a whiff of cabbage, have no wish for their daughters to marry any but generals, or colonels at the very least. These are the main features of this sort of young men. But Lieutenant Pirogov had a host of talents that belonged to him personally. He declaimed verses from Dmitri Donskoy and Woe from Wit 9 superbly well, and possessed a special art of producing smoke rings from his pipe so skillfully that he could suddenly send ten of them passing one through another. He could very pleasantly tell a joke about a cannon being one thing and a unicorn something else again. However, it is rather difficult to enumerate all the talents fate had bestowed on Pirogov.