The Adolescent

“He just doesn’t say it now, but, believe me, it’s so. The man is clever, indisputably, and deeply educated; but is that the right kind of intelligence? It all happened to him after his three years abroad. And, I confess, he shocked me very much . . . he shocked everybody . . . Cher enfant, j’aime le bon Dieu¹¹ . . . I believe, I believe as much as I can, but—I was certainly beside myself then. Suppose I used a frivolous method, but I did it on purpose, in vexation—and besides, the essence of my objection was as serious as it has been from the beginning of the world: ‘If there is a supreme being,’ I say to him, ‘and it exists personally, and not in the form of some sort of spirit poured over creation in the form of a liquid or whatever (because that is still more difficult to understand)—where, then, does it live?’ My friend, c’était bête,¹² undoubtedly, but that’s what all objections boil down to. Un domicile¹³; is an important matter. He was terribly angry. He converted to Catholicism there.”

“I’ve also heard about that idea. Nonsense, surely.”

“I assure you by all that’s holy. Look at him well . . . However, you say he’s changed. Well, but at that time he tormented us all so! Would you believe, he behaved as if he were a saint and his relics were about to be revealed.¹¹ He demanded an account of our behavior from us, I swear to you! Relics! En voilà une autre! ¹⁴ Well, let him be a monk or an anchorite—but here’s a man going around in a tailcoat and all the rest . . . and then suddenly—his relics! A strange wish for a man of the world and, I confess, a strange taste. I don’t say anything about it: of course, it’s all holy, and anything can happen . . . Besides, it’s all de l’inconnu,¹⁵ but for a man of the world it’s even indecent. If it should somehow happen to me, or they should offer it to me, I swear I’d refuse. Why, suddenly I’m dining today in a club, and then suddenly—I reveal myself! No, I’d be a laughing-stock! I told him all that then . . . He wore chains.”¹²

I turned red with anger.

“Did you see the chains yourself ?”

“I didn’t myself, but . . .”

“Then I declare to you that it’s all a lie, a tissue of vile machinations and enemy slander, that is, of one enemy, the chiefest and most inhuman one, because he has only one enemy—your daughter!”

The prince flushed in his turn.

“Mon cher, I beg you and I insist that in the future my daughter’s name never be mentioned again in my presence together with this vile story.”

I rose slightly. He was beside himself; his chin was trembling.

“Cette histoire infâme!¹⁶ . . . I didn’t believe it, I never wanted to believe it, but . . . they tell me: believe it, believe it, I . . .”

Here the valet suddenly came in again and announced a visitor. I sank back down on my chair.

IV

TWO LADIES CAME in, both young, one the stepdaughter of one of the cousins of the prince’s late wife, or something of the sort, his ward, for whom he had already allotted a dowry, and who (I note it for the future) had money of her own; the other was Anna Andreevna Versilov, Versilov’s daughter, three years older than I, who lived with her brother at Mme. Fanariotov’s and whom before then I had seen only once in my life, fleetingly in the street, though I had already had a skirmish with her brother, also fleetingly, in Moscow (quite possibly I’ll mention that skirmish later on, if there’s room, though essentially it’s not worth it). This Anna Andreevna had been a special favorite of the prince’s since childhood (Versilov’s acquaintance with the prince began terribly long ago). I was so embarrassed by what had just transpired that I didn’t even stand up when they came in, though the prince stood up to meet them; and afterwards I thought it embarrassing to stand up, and remained in my place. Above all, I was thrown off, because the prince had been shouting at me just three minutes before, and I still didn’t know whether I should leave or not. But my old man had already forgotten everything completely, as was his wont, and was all pleasantly animated at the sight of the girls. He even managed, with a quick change of physiognomy and a sort of mysterious wink, to whisper to me hastily, just before they came in:

“Take a look at Olympiada, look closely, closely . . . I’ll tell you later . . .”

I looked at her quite closely and found nothing special: not a very tall girl, plump, and with extremely ruddy cheeks. Her face, however, was rather pleasant, the kind that the materialists like. Her expression was kind, perhaps, but with a wrinkle. She could not have been especially brilliant intellectually, at least not in a higher sense, but one could see cunning in her eyes. No more than nineteen years old. In short, nothing remarkable. We’d have called her a “pillow” in high school. (If I describe her in such detail, it’s solely because I’ll need it in the future.)