“Yes, but you have already tortured me.”
“Not entirely; I want to finish it. How could you dare to give it out at the risk of its destruction?”
“But I have confessed already that I have not given out; Mertsálof promised to take my place.”
“We have already said that your intention of putting her in your place was not a sufficient excuse, but by this remark you have only pleaded guilty to a new crime.” Rakhmétof again gradually assumed a serious, though not a gloomy, tone. “You say that she takes your place; is that decided?”
“Yes,” said Viéra Pavlovna, without her former jocular tone, anticipating that something really bad might result from this.
“Just look here. By whom was the matter decided? by you and by her, without any inquiry whether those fifty people would consent to the change or not, or whether they wanted somebody else, or might not find somebody else better? This is despotism, Viéra Pavlovna. So here are two great crimes on your part: heartlessness and despotism! but the third one is still more cruel. The establishment which, to a greater or less degree, corresponded with sound ideas of managing life, which should serve as a more or less important corroboration of their practicability—but practical proofs are so few, and every one of them is so valuable—this establishment you have subjected to the risk of going to destruction, of bringing it from a practical proof into an affidavit of impracticability; a refutation of your convictions, a means of showing the uselessness of ideas, which ought to be proved of real benefit to humanity. You have afforded the upholders of darkness and wickedness an argument against your holy principles. Now I am not speaking at all about the fact that you are going to injure the welfare of fifty people. What does fifty people mean? You have injured the chances of humanity; you have proved to be a traitor against progress. This, Viéra Pavlovna, in the language of the Church, is called a sin against the Holy Ghost—a sin about which is said that any other sin may be forgiven to a person, but this, never, never. Isn’t it true that you are a criminal? But it is well that everything has ended as it has, and that your sins were committed only in your imagination; but, however, you are really blushing, Viéra Pavlovna. Good! I will give you some consolation. If you were not suffering so keenly, you would not have committed such horrible crimes, even in your imagination. Consequently the real criminal in things is the one who has caused you so much trouble; but you keep repeating, ‘How kind he was! how kind he was!’ ”
“How do you make out that he is to blame for my suffering?”
“Who else? In regard to all this he has done well; I do not deny it; but why did it happen? Why all this disturbance? Nothing of the sort should have happened!”
“No, I oughtn’t to have had this feeling, but I didn’t ask for it; I did my best to overcome it.”
“That sounds well, ‘ought not to have had it’! The real cause of your sin you have not perceived; and, for what you are not to blame at all, you reproach yourself. This feeling was bound infallibly to arise as soon as your nature and Dmitri Sergéitch’s came into contact; if not one way, then another, it would have been developed anyhow; for the root of the feeling does not lie in the fact that you love another; that is a consequence: the root of the feeling is the dissatisfaction with your former relations. In what form was this dissatisfaction bound to develop? If both you and he, or either one of you, had been people of no intelligence, not refined or even bad, it would have been developed in its usual form—a quarrel between husband and wife. You would have fought like cats and dogs, if both of you had been bad; or if one of you had been bad, one would have eaten the other up, and the other would have been eaten. At all events, there would have been a domestic galleys, such as we are pleased to see almost universally in married life; and this, of course, would not have prevented the development of love for another; but the main thing would be the galleys, and the eating each other up. Your dissatisfaction could not have taken such a form, because both of you were enlightened people, and therefore it was developed in only its easiest, gentlest, and least offensive form—love towards another. Consequently there is no use in talking about love to another; that is not the main trouble at all. The essence of the matter lies in your dissatisfaction with your former position, and the cause of this dissatisfaction was the discordance of your characters. Both of you were good people, but after your character became mature, Viéra Pavlovna, and lost its childish indefiniteness, and acquired definite features, it proved that you and Dmitri Sergéitch were not very well adapted to each other. Is there anything reprehensible in either of you? Now, for example, I also am a decent man, but could you get along with me? You would hang yourself with weariness of me; how long do you suppose it would take you to come to that point?”
“A very few days,” said Viéra Pavlovna, laughing.
“He was not such a gloomy monster as I am, yet you and he are quite too little adapted to each other. Who ought to have noticed it first? Who was the older? Whose character settled sooner? Who had the more experience in life? He ought to have foreseen it, and have prepared your mind so that you would not get alarmed or worry; but he understood it only when the feeling, which he ought to have expected and did not expect, was developed; but when the
