What Is to Be Done?

her what a career was before me; and even if friends do not explain this to her, she will find it out for herself. She will say, ‘My dear, here you have given up for my sake the career which you anticipated.’ Well, I don’t mean money, for neither my friends nor she herself will think that I care about that. Well, it’s a good thing that she will not say to herself, ‘He remained for my sake in poverty when otherwise he might have been rich.’ This she will not think; but she may learn that I longed for scientific fame, and that I might have won it. But she will find something to worry about: ‘Akh! what a sacrifice he made for my sake!’ And I never thought of making a sacrifice; I was never so foolish as to make sacrifices, and I hope I never shall be. I have done what was for my best good. I am not a man to offer sacrifices; and there are no such men in existence. It is a false term; a sacrifice is equivalent to such nonsense as ‘top-boots with soft-boiled eggs!’ One acts in the way that’s most agreeable; now just go ahead and preach this. It is accepted in theory, but when the hard fact comes before a person, he is humiliated. ‘You,’ he says, ‘are my benefactor,’ and already the blade has shown itself. ‘You,’ he says, ‘have rescued me from the cellar. How kind you are to me!’ Why should I have bothered to set you free, if I myself had not liked to do it? Is it I who set you free, think you? Do you think that I should take all this trouble, unless it had afforded me myself some satisfaction? Maybe I have set myself free; of course. I have. I myself want to live, want to love; do you understand? I am doing everything for myself. Now, how can I manage so as not to arouse this pernicious feeling of gratefulness which would be so trying to her? Well, we’ll manage it somehow. She is sensible, and will understand that it is a mere bagatelle. Of course, I did not intend to act this way; I intended to act otherwise. I thought that if she succeeded in leaving her family, we would postpone the thing about two years. In the meantime, I should have succeeded in getting a professorship; my finances would, by that time, have been satisfactory: but it has proved to be impossible. Well, what loss has it been to me? Did I have myself in view when it seemed to me that my money matters must be in order beforehand? What does a man need? A man does not need anything. If he has boots, if he is not out at elbows, if he has shchi [cabbage soup], if he has a warm room, what more does he want? And all this I have; consequently, what loss shall I have? But for a young and pretty woman that is not enough!

“She must have pleasures; she must succeed in society; and for this there will not be money enough. Of course she will not think that she is deprived of these things; she is a sensible, virtuous girl. She will say to herself: ‘These things are trifles; it’s all nonsense, and I despise them.’ And she will despise them. But does it help when a person does not know what he is deprived of, or is even assured that he is not in need of anything. It is an illusion, a fancy. Nature is deadened by reason, circumstances, pride, and is silent, and does not speak aloud about itself to the understanding; and yet while it is silent, it works and undermines life. A young woman, especially a pretty young woman, must not live in that way; it is not agreeable to be dressed worse than others, and to be prevented from shining by being scrimped in means. I am sorry for you, my poor little girl; I thought that something better would be arranged for you. But what do I care? It is my gain. It is a question whether she would consent to marry me two years hence, and now she does.”

“Dmitri, come and drink your tea!”

“I am coming.”

Lopukhóf went into Kirsánof’s room, and on the way he had time to think: “And how true it is that I am always on the first floor! I began with self and ended with self. And why did I begin by calling it a sacrifice? What nonsense! as though I gave up my scientific reputation! as though I gave up my professorship! Is it not all the same? I shall work in the same way; I shall get a professorship just the same, and likewise I shall serve the cause of medicine. It is pleasant to a man who is a theorist to observe how egotism plays with his ideas when he comes to put them into practice.”

I intend to forewarn the reader about all things, and therefore I shall tell him not to suppose that this monologue spoken by Lopukhóf contains a mysterious hint on the part of the author as to some important motive in the further development of the relations between Lopukhóf and Viéra Pavlovna. Viéra Pavlovna’s life will not be undermined by being deprived of the means of shining in society and of dressing expensively; and her relations to Lopukhóf will not be demoralized by a “pernicious feeling of gratefulness.” I am not one of those artists in whose every word is hidden some kind of a spring. I am only relating what people have done and thought. If any kind of an action, conversation, monologue, is necessary for the characterizing of a person or a situation, I relate it, even though it may respond with no results in the further development of my story.

“Now, Aleksandr, you must not complain because I