There he is, sitting where I left him. That's he, surely enough!'
I looked intently. A man really was sitting with his back towards us,
awkwardly huddled up under the birch-tree. I hurriedly approached and
recognised Tyeglev's great-coat, recognised his figure, his head bowed
on his breast. 'Tyeglev!' I cried ... but he did not answer.
'Tyeglev!' I repeated, and laid my hand on his shoulder. Then he
suddenly lurched forward, quickly and obediently, as though he were
waiting for my touch, and fell onto the grass. Semyon and I raised him
at once and turned him face upwards. It was not pale, but was lifeless
and motionless; his clenched teeth gleamed white--and his eyes,
motionless, too, and wide open, kept their habitual, drowsy and
'different' look.
'Good God!' Semyon said suddenly and showed me his hand stained
crimson with blood.... The blood was coming from under Tyeglev's
great-coat, from the left side of his chest.
He had shot himself from a small, single-barreled pistol which was
lying beside him. The faint pop I had heard was the sound made by the
fatal shot.
XVII
Tyeglev's suicide did not surprise his comrades very much. I have told
you already that, according to their ideas, as a 'fatal' man he was
bound to do something extraordinary, though perhaps they had not
expected that from him. In the letter to the colonel he asked him, in
the first place, to have the name of Ilya Tyeglev removed from the
list of officers, as he had died by his own act, adding that in his
cash-box there would be found more than sufficient money to pay his
debts,--and, secondly, to forward to the important personage at that
time commanding the whole corps of guards, an unsealed letter which
was in the same envelope. This second letter, of course, we all read;
some of us took a copy of it. Tyeglev had evidently taken pains over
the composition of this letter.
'You know, Your Excellency' (so I remember the letter began), 'you are
so stern and severe over the slightest negligence in uniform when a
pale, trembling officer presents himself before you; and here am I now
going to meet our universal, righteous, incorruptible Judge, the
Supreme Being, the Being of infinitely greater consequence even than
Your Excellency, and I am going to meet him in undress, in my
great-coat, and even without a cravat round my neck.'
Oh, what a painful and unpleasant impression that phrase made upon me,
with every word, every letter of it, carefully written in the dead
man's childish handwriting! Was it worth while, I asked myself, to
invent such rubbish at such a moment? But Tyeglev had evidently been
pleased with the phrase: he had made use in it of the accumulation of
epithets and amplifications
fashion. Further on he had alluded to destiny, to persecution, to his
vocation which had remained unfulfilled, to a mystery which he would
bear with him to the grave, to people who had not cared to understand
him; he had even quoted lines from some poet who had said of the crowd
that it wore life 'like a dog-collar' and clung to vice 'like a
burdock'--and it was not free from mistakes in spelling. To tell the
truth, this last letter of poor Tyeglev was somewhat vulgar; and I can
fancy the contemptuous surprise of the great personage to whom it was
addressed--I can imagine the tone in which he would pronounce 'a
