What Is to Be Done?

next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, he was walking down the Nevsky, from the Admiralty to the Police Bridge, wondering which German or French bookstore would be the first to open. He took what he wanted, and read steadily for more than seventy-two hours in succession⁠—from eleven o’clock on Thursday morning till nine o’clock Sunday evening⁠—eighty-two hours. The first two nights he did not sleep at all. On the third he drank eight cups of the strongest coffee; but on the fourth night coffee refused to support his strength. He fell down on the floor, and slept for fifteen hours. At the end of a week he came to Kirsánof, asked what books further he should read, and some explanations. They became friends; and through him he afterwards met the Lopukhófs. In six months, though he was only seventeen, while they were each one and twenty, they didn’t look upon him as only a young fellow compared to themselves; and he had indeed become an extraordinary man.

What earnest was there in his past life for such a course? Not a very great one, but still there was something. His father was a man of despotic character, very clever, educated, and an ultraconservative, in the very same way as Marya Alekséyevna was ultraconservative; but he was honest. It was hard for him, of course. But that would not have made any difference to Rakhmétof. But his mother, a woman of very delicate nature, suffered much from her husband’s severity; and his whole life was bounded by the village. And this, too, would not have made any difference; there was another thing. It happened that, when he was fifteen, he fell in love with one of his father’s mistresses. Trouble ensued, which was, of course, trying to her. He pitied a woman who had suffered a great deal on his account. Thoughts began to stir in him, and Kirsánof stood in the same relation to him as Lopukhóf had stood to Viéra Pavlovna. There was an earnest in his past life; but in becoming such an extraordinary man the principal element is nature. For some time before he left the university and went back to his estate, and afterwards, while wandering over Russia, he adopted original principles in his material, moral, and intellectual life; and after he returned, they had been crystallized into a complete system, to which he unflinchingly adhered. He said to himself, “I am not going to drink a drop of wine; I shall not touch a woman.” Yet his nature was passionate.

“What is the need? There is no good of going to such extremes.”

“It is necessary. We ask, demand, for all people the full enjoyment of life. We must bear witness with our own lives, that we are demanding this, not for the gratification of our personal passions, not for ourselves personally, but for humanity in general, that we speak only in accordance with principle and not from preference, according to conviction and not individual necessity.”

Consequently, he began to lead a very severe and ascetic style of life. To become a Nikitushka Lomof, and keep up the character, he had to eat meat, a great deal of meat, and he ate a great deal. But he grudged every kopek that he spent on anything else but meat. He gave orders to his landlady73 to buy the very best meat that was to be had, and have the very best pieces for him; but all else that he ate at home was of the cheapest description. He gave up white bread and ate only black bread at his table. For weeks at a time he never had a piece of sugar in his mouth; for months at a time he never tasted fruit, or veal, or chicken. With his own money he never bought anything of the kind. “I have no right to spend money for luxuries which I can easily get along without.” Yet he was brought up at a table where luxury reigned, and his taste was refined, as was seen by his remarks on dishes, when he used to dine at the table of others. He enjoyed a good many of the dishes of which he did not partake at his own table, but some dishes he would not eat at the table of a stranger. The cause for the distinction was a solid one: “What the common people eat now and then, I, also, may eat occasionally; but whatever is not in the reach of the common people, I, too, must not eat. This I must do, so as to appreciate how wretched the lives of the people are in comparison with mine.”

Therefore, if fruits were served, he actually ate apples, but he absolutely refused apricots; oranges he would eat in Petersburg, but he would not touch them in the provinces. Don’t you see, in Petersburg the people sometimes eat them, but never in the provinces. Pies he used to eat, “because a good pirog is not worse than a pie, and pie-crust is familiar to the common people”; but he never ate sardines. He used to dress very poorly, though at one time he liked finery; and in all other respects he led the life of a Spartan; for example, he never allowed a mattress, and he slept on a bag of straw, not even allowing it to be doubled.

He had one spot on his conscience⁠—he did not give up smoking. “I cannot think without a cigar. If that is really so, then I am right; but maybe it is from weakness of will power.” And he would not smoke bad cigars, for he was brought up amid aristocratic surroundings. Out of his four hundred roubles of income, he used to spend one hundred and fifty on cigars. “It is a detestable weakness,” as he used to express himself. And only this weakness afforded some possibility of getting the best of him. If he went too far