“It is not true, Rakhmétof. He has never hidden from me any of his thoughts. His convictions were as well known to me as they were to you.”
“Of course, Viéra Pavlovna, to hide them would have been too much. To interfere with the development of your convictions, so as to gratify his own convictions, and for this reason to make believe think differently from what he really thinks—this would have been an absolutely dishonorable thing. Such a man you could never love. Did I call him a bad man? He was a very good man; in what respect was he not good? Yes, I shall praise him to your heart’s content. I only say that before this matter arose: after it arose, he behaved towards you very nobly; but before it arose, he acted unkindly towards you. Why did you torment yourself so? He said—and then there was no need of saying it, because it was self-evident—that you did it, so that you might not grieve him. How could this thought have occurred to you, that this would greatly grieve him? You ought not to have had such an idea. What kind of grief was that? It was stupid. What kind of jealousy is that?”
“Don’t you recognize such a thing as jealousy, Rakhmétof?”
“In an intelligent person it has no right to exist. It is a mutilated feeling, it is a false feeling, a contemptible feeling; it is the result of that order of things, according to which I don’t allow anybody to wear my underclothes, smoke my meerschaum; this is the result of viewing a person as personal property, as a chattel.”
“But, Rakhmétof, if jealousy should not be acknowledged, then there would be a horrible state of things.”
“For him who feels it there are horrible things, but for the one who does not feel it there is nothing horrible, or even important.”
“But you are advocating an absolute immorality, Rakhmétof.”
“Does it seem to you so, after living with him four years? In this respect he is to blame. How often do you dine every day? Once? Would anybody be offended if you dined twice? Of course not. Then why don’t you do so? Is it because you are afraid of offending someone? In all probability, it is simply because you do not need it, because you do not care to. But a dinner is an agreeable thing. But reason, and principally the stomach, says, that one dinner is agreeable and the second may be disagreeable. But if you have a fancy or a morbid desire to dine twice a day, would you have been kept from it by your fear of offending somebody? No; if anyone were offended, or forbade you to do it, you would only do it secretly; you would begin to eat the dishes in a bad style, you would soil your hands by your hurried seizing of the food, you would soil your dress by hiding victuals in your pockets, and that’s all. The question here has nothing whatsoever to do with morality or immorality, but only whether the contraband is a good thing. Who has the idea that jealousy is a feeling worthy of respect and mercy, that the feeling says, ‘Akh! when I do this, I shall offend him’; and whom does it compel to suffer vainly in the strife? Only a few of the most noble, for whom it is impossible to fear that their nature would draw them into immorality. For the rest are not restrained by this nonsense, but are simply driven to be cunning, deceitful; that is, it makes them really bad. That is all. Is this not well known to you?”
“Of course it is.”
“Now, how, henceforth, can you find any moral advantage in jealousy?”
“Yes, but we ourselves always used to speak together in this spirit.”
“Probably not absolutely in this sense of the word, or you spoke words, but did not believe each other, when you heard these words on each other’s tongue; and of course you really did not believe, because you constantly heard about other subjects, and maybe this very subject, words in a different sense; else why should you have suffered so long?—God knows how long! And for what reason? and from what nonsense what a great rumpus! How much trouble for all three, and particularly for you, Viéra Pavlovna! Meantime, you all three might have lived together very calmly, just as you did afterwards for a year; or, somehow, you might have arranged to move into one apartment, or to have arranged it otherwise, however it might happen, only without the least trouble. In accordance with your former style, to drink tea all three together, and, as before, to go to the opera all three together. Why, then, this suffering? Why this catastrophe? All this because there was left in your mind, thanks to his bad method of preparing you for it, the thought, ‘I am killing him,’ which was entirely a fancy. Yes; he caused you entirely too much worriment.”
“No, Rakhmétof; you are speaking terrible things.”
“Again ‘terrible things’! Terrible to me are the awful sufferings from trifles and unnecessary catastrophes.”
“And so, then, according to your view, all our history is a stupid melodrama.”
“Yes; an entirely unnecessary melodrama, with an entirely unnecessary tragedy; and for the fact that, instead of a simple conversation of the calmest tenor, arose an exciting melodrama, Dmitri Sergéitch is to blame. His honest style of action in regard to it is hardly sufficient for covering his fault in not averting this melodrama, by preparing you and himself for very calm views in regard to all this, as a mere piece of nonsense, for which it is not worth while
