nothing: he had only to remain silent and hold himself aloof. But it
was not owing to this reputation that I made friends with Tyeglev and,
I may say, grew fond of him. I liked him in the first place because I
was rather an unsociable creature myself--and saw in him one of my own
sort, and secondly, because he was a very good-natured fellow and in
reality, very simple-hearted. He aroused in me a feeling of something
like compassion; it seemed to me that apart from his affected
'fatality,' he really was weighed down by a tragic fate which he did
not himself suspect. I need hardly say I did not express this feeling
to him: could anything be more insulting to a 'fatal' hero than to be
an object of pity? And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me;
with me he felt at ease, with me he used to talk--in my presence he
ventured to leave the strange pedestal on which he had been placed
either by his own efforts or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as
he was, yet he was probably aware in the depths of his soul that there
was nothing to justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look
down on him ... but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him;
the dread of saying something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress
his ever-apprehensive heart in my presence. He sometimes even
chattered freely; and well it was for him that no one heard his
chatter except me! His reputation would not have lasted long. He not
only knew very little, but read hardly anything and confined himself
to picking up stories and anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in
presentiments, predictions, omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days,
in the persecution and benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious
significance of life, in fact. He even believed in certain
'climacteric' years which someone had mentioned in his presence and
the meaning of which he did not himself very well understand. 'Fatal'
men of the true stamp ought not to betray such beliefs: they ought to
inspire them in others.... But I was the only one who knew Tyeglev on
that side.
V
One day--I remember it was St. Elijah's day, July 20th--I came to stay
with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off
for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I
sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and
spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn
where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had
a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes
and talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar
who used to hang about the battery selling 'fi-ine oranges and
lemons,' a charming and lively person who in addition to other talents
could play the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he
cherished in his young days for the daughter of a policeman. Now that
he was older, this Don Juan in a gay cotton shirt had no experience of
unsuccessful love affairs. Before the doors of our barn stretched a
wide plain gradually sloping away in the distance; a little river
gleamed here and there in the winding hollows; low growing woods could
be seen further on the horizon. Night was coming on and we were left
alone. As night fell a fine damp mist descended upon the earth, and,
growing thicker and thicker, passed into a dense fog. The moon rose up
