Yes, with all the savageness of his manners, everybody remained satisfied that Rakhmétof acted as he did, because it was the most simple and commonsense way of acting; and the terrible extremes to which he went, and his horrible reproaches, he spoke in such a way, that no person of common sense could be offended with them; and with all his phenomenal roughnesses, he was at heart very gentle. His preliminary talk was always of this stamp. Every embarrassing explanation he began thus:—
“You know very well that I speak without any personal feeling. If my words prove to be disagreeable, I beg you to excuse them; but I find that there is no need of getting offended when anything is kindly meant, absolutely, without intention of offending, but from necessity. However, as soon as it shall seem to you useless to listen to my words, I will stop; my rule is, to offer my opinion everywhere and always, whenever I am impelled; but never to impose it upon anyone.”
And actually he did not impose it; it was impossible to save one’s self from him expressing his opinion, if he found it necessary, but only so far that you might understand his view of it; but he did it in two or three words, and then he would add: “Now you know what the tenor of my conversation would be; do you find it useful to have such a talk?” If you said “No,” he bowed and went off.
This was the way that he spoke and managed his affairs, and he had a great many things to attend to, and none of them were matters that concerned him personally; he had no personal business, as everybody knew; but what affairs he attended to, no one in the circle knew. It could only be seen that he had a great deal of bother. He was at home very little; he was always on the go; he was always travelling, but for the most part he walked. But there were always people calling upon him; either the same people, or new ones. And on this account, he made it a rule to be always at home between two and three; at this time he talked with them and had his dinner. But very often he would not be at home for several days; then in his place, one of his friends who was devoted to him soul and body, would be at his rooms and receive callers, silent as the grave.
Two years after this glimpse of him in Kirsánof’s library with Newton’s Commentary on the Apocalypse, he left Petersburg, telling Kirsánof, and one or two of his most intimate friends, that he had nothing more to do there, that he has done all that he could, that he may be able to do more after three years, that these three years are free now, that he is thinking of availing himself of them, according as it may seem necessary for his future activity. We learned afterwards that he left for his former estate, sold the land which he had reserved, getting thirty-five thousand rubles for it, went to Kazan and Moscow, gave five thousand rubles or so to his stipendiaries, so that they might graduate, and that was all that we knew about him. Where he went after leaving Moscow is not known. After several months passed without any tidings from him, those who knew something more about him than all the rest knew ceased to hide things, about which, by his request, they had kept silent so long as he was among us. Then our little circle learned that he had stipendiaries, and also learned the larger part of his personal doings, which I have already told. We learned a great deal about his adventures, which, however, did not explain everything; in fact, explained nothing at all, but only made Rakhmétof a still more mysterious person for the whole circle; adventures, which, by their strangeness, surprised us, or entirely contradicted the opinion, which the circle entertained of him as a man who was entirely hard-hearted as far as personal feeling went; one who had not, if I may use the expression, a personal heart, beating with the sensation of personal life. To relate all of these adventures would not be in place here; I shall only quote two of them of two different kinds: one of a savage order; the other of a stamp which contradicted the former ideas entertained by the circle in his regard. I will select these histories from those told by Kirsánof.
About a year before he left Petersburg for the second, and probably the last, time, Rakhmétof said to Kirsánof, “Give me a good quantity of plaster for curing wounds from sharp weapons.” Kirsánof gave him a big jar, supposing that Rakhmétof wanted to take this medicament to some society of carpenters or other laborers, who are frequently subjected to cuts. On the next morning, Rakhmétof’s landlady came in great alarm to Kirsánof: “Bátiushka! doctor, I don’t know what has happened to my tenant; he has not been out of his room for a long time; he has locked the door; I peeked through the crack; he was lying all in blood. I began to scream, and he says to me, says he, ‘It’s nothing, Agrafyéna Antonovna.’ What does he mean by nothing? Save him bátiushka, doctor; I’m afraid it’s suicide: he is so unmerciful to himself!”
Kirsánof ran in all haste. Rakhmétof opened the door with a melancholy broad smile; the caller saw the thing from which not Agrafyéna Antonovna alone might have been frightened; the back and shoulders of his underclothes (he was dressed only in his underclothes) were soaked with blood; there was blood on the bed; the straw bed on
