their heads, for some reason, that I’m going to get married; but though it was spiteful I admit it was — witty!”
“Witty — but insulting!”
“Oh, cher enfant, one can’t take offence at some people. There’s nothing I prize so much in people as wit, which is evidently disappearing among us; though what Alexandra Petrovna said — can hardly be considered wit.”
“What? What did you say?” I said, catching at his words —“one can’t take offence at some people. That’s just it! Some people are not worth noticing — an excellent principle! Just the one I need. I shall make a note of it. You sometimes say the most delightful things, prince.”
He beamed all over.
“N’est ce pas? Cher enfant, true wit is vanishing; the longer one lives the more one sees it. Eh, mais . . . c’est moi qui connait les femmes! Believe me, the life of every woman, whatever she may profess, is nothing but a perpetual search for some one to submit to . . . so to speak a thirst for submission. And mark my words, there’s not a single exception.”
“Perfectly true! Magnificent!” I cried rapturously. Another time we should have launched into philosophical disquisitions on this theme, lasting for an hour, but suddenly I felt as though something had bitten me, and I flushed all over. I suddenly imagined that in admiring his bon mots I was flattering him as a prelude to asking for money, and that he would certainly think so as soon as I began to ask for it. I purposely mention this now.
“Prince, I humbly beg you to pay me at once the fifty roubles you owe me for the month,” I fired off like a shot, in a tone of irritability that was positively rude.
I remember (for I remember every detail of that morning) that there followed between us then a scene most disgusting in its realistic truth. For the first minute he did not understand me, stared at me for some time without understanding what money I was talking about. It was natural that he should not realize I was receiving a salary — and indeed, why should I? It is true that he proceeded to assure me afterwards that he had forgotten, and when he grasped the meaning of my words, he instantly began taking out fifty roubles, but he was flustered and turned crimson. Seeing how things stood, I got up and abruptly announced that I could not take the money now, that in what I had been told about a salary they had made a mistake, or deceived me to induce me to accept the situation, and that I saw only too well now, that I did nothing to earn one, for I had no duties to perform. The prince was alarmed and began assuring me that I was of the greatest use to him, that I should be still more useful to him in the future, and that fifty roubles was so little that he should certainly add to it, for he was bound to do so, and that he had made the arrangement himself with Tatyana Pavlovna, but had “unpardonably forgotten it.” I flushed crimson and declared resolutely that it was degrading for me to receive a salary for telling scandalous stories of how I had followed two draggle-tails to the ‘institutions,’ that I had not been engaged to amuse him but to do work, and that if there was no work I must stop it, and so on, and so on. I could never have imagined that anyone could have been so scared as he was by my words. Of course it ended in my ceasing to protest, and his somehow pressing the fifty roubles into my hand: to this day I recall with a blush that I took it. Everything in the world always ends in meanness, and what was worst of all, he somehow succeeded in almost proving to me that I had unmistakably earned the money, and I was so stupid as to believe it, and so it was absolutely impossible to avoid taking it.
“Cher, cher enfant!” he cried, kissing and embracing me (I must admit I was on the point of tears myself, goodness knows why, though I instantly restrained myself, and even now I blush as I write it). “My dear boy, you’re like one of the family to me now; in the course of this month you’ve won a warm place in my heart! In ‘society’ you get ‘society’ and nothing else. Katerina Nikolaevna (that was his daughter’s name) is a magnificent woman and I’m proud of her, but she often, my dear boy, very often, wounds me. And as for these girls (elles sont charmantes) and their mothers who come on my birthday, they merely bring their embroidery and never know how to tell one anything. I’ve accumulated over sixty cushions embroidered by them, all dogs and stags. I like them very much, but with you I feel as if you were my own — not son, but brother, and I particularly like it when you argue against me; you’re literary, you have read, you can be enthusiastic. . . .”
“I have read nothing, and I’m not literary at all. I used to read what I came across, but I’ve read nothing for two years and I’m not going to read.”
“Why aren’t you going to?”
“I have other objects.”
“Cher . . . it’s a pity if at the end of your life you say, like me, ‘Je sais tout, mais je ne sais rien de bon.’ I don’t know in the least what I have lived in this world for! But . . . I’m so much indebted to you . . . and I should like, in fact . . .”
He suddenly broke off, and with an air of fatigue sank into brooding. After any agitation (and he might be overcome by agitation at any minute, goodness knows why) he generally seemed for some time to lose his faculties and his power of self-control, but he soon recovered, so that it really did not matter. We sat still for a few minutes. His very full lower lip hung down . . . what surprised me most of all was that he had suddenly spoken of his daughter, and with such openness too. I put it down, of course, to his being upset.
“Cher enfant, you don’t mind my addressing you so familiarly, do you?” broke from him suddenly.
“Not in the least. I must confess that at the very first I was rather offended by it and felt inclined to address you in the same way, but I saw it was stupid because you didn’t speak like that to humiliate me.”
But he had forgotten his question and was no longer listening.
“Well, how’s your FATHER?” he said, suddenly raising his eyes and looking dreamily at me.
I winced. In the first place he called Versilov my FATHER, which he had never permitted himself to do before, and secondly, he began of himself to speak of Versilov, which he had never done before.
“He sits at home without a penny and is very gloomy,” I answered briefly, though I was burning with curiosity.
“Yes, about money. His lawsuit is being decided to-day, and I’m expecting Prince Sergay as soon as he arrives. He promised to come straight from the court to me. Their whole future turns on it. It’s a question of sixty or seventy thousand. Of course, I’ve always wished well to Andrey Petrovitch” (Versilov’s name), “and I believe he’ll win the suit, and Prince Sergay has no case. It’s a point of law.”
“The case will be decided to-day?” I cried, amazed. The thought that Versilov had not deigned to tell me even that was a great shook to me. “Then he hasn’t told my mother, perhaps not anyone,” it suddenly struck me. “What strength of will!”
“Then is Prince Sokolsky in Petersburg?” was another idea that occurred to me immediately.
“He arrived yesterday. He has come straight from Berlin expressly for this day.”
That too was an extremely important piece of news for me. And he would be here to-day, that man who had given HIM a slap in the face!
“Well, what then?” The old prince’s face suddenly changed again. “He’ll preach religion as before and . . . and . . . maybe run after little girls, unfledged girls, again. He-he! There’s a very funny little story about that going about even now. . . . He-he!”
“Who will preach? Who will run after little girls?”
“Andrey Petrovitch! Would you believe it, he used to pester us all in those days. ‘Where are we going?’ he would say. ‘What are we thinking about?’ That was about it, anyway. He frightened and chastened us. ‘If you’re religious,’ he’d say, ‘why don’t you become a monk?’ That was about what he expected. Mais quelle idee! If it’s right, isn’t it too severe? He was particularly fond of frightening me with the Day of Judgment — me of all people!”
“I’ve noticed nothing of all this, and I’ve been living with him a month,” I answered, listening with impatience. I felt fearfully vexed that he hadn’t pulled himself together and was rambling on so incoherently.
“It’s only that he doesn’t talk about that now, but, believe me, it was so. He’s a clever man, and undoubtedly very learned; but is his intellect quite sound? All this happened to him after his three years abroad. And I must own he shocked me very much and shocked every one. Cher enfant, j’aime le bon Dieu. . . . I believe, I believe as much as I can, but I really was angry at the time. Supposing I did put on a frivolous manner, I did it on purpose because I was annoyed — and besides, the basis of my objection was as serious as it has been from the beginning of the world. ‘If there is a higher Being,’ I said, ‘and He has a PERSONAL existence, and isn’t some sort of diffused spirit for creation, some sort of fluid (for that’s even more difficult to understand), where does He live?’ C’etait bete, no doubt, my dear boy, but, you know, all the arguments come to that. Un domicile is an important thing. He was awfully angry. He had become a Catholic out there.”
