“Ah! I know who wrote it—”
But I hastily seize the first thing that comes most convenient for my purpose. I seize a napkin, because after I copied the former student’s letter, I sat down to breakfast, and so I seize the napkin, and stuff it in his mouth, “Well, keep what you know to yourself; why do you shout it all over town?”
II
Petersburg, Aug. 25, 1856.
Dear Sir—
You will understand what a degree of happiness your letter gave me. With all my soul I thank you for it. Your intimacy with the late Dmitri Sergéitch gives me the right to regard you as my friend. Allow me to use this appellation. In every word which you quoted can be seen Dmitri Sergéitch’s character. He was constantly seeking for the most secret causes of his actions, and he took pleasure in ascribing them to his theory of egotism. By the way, this is the common custom of all our society. My Aleksandr is also fond of analyzing his motives in exactly the same spirit. If you had only heard how he explained his behavior towards me and Dmitri Sergéitch in the course of three years, you would learn, if his words were to be taken literally, that he did everything through egotistical calculation for his own pleasure. And I long ago learned this custom; it interests Aleksandr and me a trifle less than it interested Dmitri Sergéitch. We agree with him entirely; but he has a stronger drawing towards it. Yes, if one were to hear us, all three of us would be taken to be such egotists as the world has never seen. And maybe this is true; maybe there never were such egotists. What think you? Yes; it seems likely.
But besides this characteristic, common to us three, in Dmitri Sergéitch’s words there is another, which belongs exclusively to his situation. Apparently the aim of his explanations was to give me peace. Not that his words lack sincerity—no, he would never say what he does not think—but he brings out too strongly only that element of the truth which can calm me. My friend, I am very grateful for it; but I, too, am an egoistka. I shall tell you that he vainly worried over my peace of mind. We justify ourselves much easier than we are justified by others; and I, to tell the truth, do not consider myself in any way blameworthy before him. I will say further, I do not even feel that I owe him any gratefulness. I prize his nobility, oh, how deeply! but I know that he was noble, not for my sake, but his own. For I, when I was not false to him, was not false, not for his sake, but for myself; not because falsity would be injurious to him, but to myself.
I said that I did not blame myself, just as he did. But, just as he did, I feel an inclination to justify myself. According to his words, which were very just, this means: I have a presentiment that others will not be as lenient as I am towards myself, in exempting me from the blame of certain parts of my behavior. I do not feel any desire whatsoever to justify myself for that part of the affair in which he justified himself; and, on the contrary, I want to justify myself for that part in which he had no need for giving justification. In all that happened until I had my dream there was nothing for which anybody will blame me, I am convinced. But afterwards, was not I the cause of the affair taking such a melodramatic course, and brought about such a terrible catastrophe? Ought I not to have looked much more rationally on that change of relations which was unavoidable, after my dream had for the first time revealed to me and Dmitri Sergéitch his situation and mine? The very evening of the day on which Dmitri Sergéitch committed suicide, I had a long talk with the formidable Rakhmétof—and what a kind, tenderhearted man he is! He told me God-knows-what horrible things about Dmitri Sergéitch. But if I repeated them in a friendly tone to Dmitri Sergéitch, instead of in the harsh, as it were, unfriendly, tone which Rakhmétof used—well, they may be true. I suspect that Dmitri Sergéitch understood well what Rakhmétof was going to say to me, and that this formed a part of his calculation. Yes, at that time it was necessary for me to listen to it; it calmed me greatly; and whoever might have arranged for that talk, I acknowledge my gratitude for it to you, my friend. But even the formidable Rakhmétof had to acknowledge that, in the last part of the affair, Dmitri Sergéitch acted finely. Rakhmétof blamed him only for the first half, and for this he was justifying himself. I am going to justify myself, though nobody has told me that I was to blame for it. But for every one of us—I am speaking about you and our friends, about all our circle—there is a severer than even Rakhmétof, and this is our own conscience.
Yes, I comprehend, my friend, that it would have been far easier for all concerned if I had looked at the matter more simply, and had not given to it a too tragical importance. According to Dmitri Sergéitch’s view, it should have been put this way more strongly; although there would have been no need of having recourse to a conclusion so theatrical and trying for all of us, yet he was led to it only by the superfluous vehemence of my anxiety. I understand how it must have seemed so to him, although he did not charge you to put that view of it before me. So much the
