And besides, believe me, some of it was by no means badly composed… And not all of it took place on Lake Como. However, you're right, it is indeed both vulgar and vile. And what's vilest is that I've now started justifying myself before you. And viler still is that I'm now making this remark. Enough, however; otherwise there will be no end to it: things will go on getting viler and viler… I was simply incapable of dreaming for longer than three months at a time, and would begin to feel an irresistible need to rush into society. To rush into society in my case meant to go and visit my department chief, Anton Antonych Setochkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I've had in my whole life, and I'm even surprised now at this circumstance. But even to him I used to go only when such a spell came, and my dreams had reached such happiness that I needed, instantly and infallibly, to embrace people and the whole of mankind - for which I had to have available at least one really existing person. Anton Antonych, however, could be visited only on Tuesdays (his day), and consequently my need to embrace the whole of mankind always had to be adusted to a Tuesday. This Anton Antonych was located near the Five Corners, 12 on the fourth floor and in four little rooms, low-ceilinged, each one smaller than the last, of a most economical and yellow appearance. There were two daughters and their aunt, who poured tea. The daughters, one thirteen and the other fourteen, were both pug-nosed, and I was terribly abashed before them, because they constantly whispered together and giggled. The host usually sat in the study, on a leather sofa in front of the desk, along with some gray-haired guest, an official from our own or even some other department. I never saw more than two or three guests there, always the same ones. They talked about excise, negotiations in the Senate, salaries, promotions, His Excellency, ways of making oneself liked, and so on and so forth. I had patience enough to sit it out by these people like a fool for four hours on end, listening to them, myself not daring or knowing how to begin talking with them about anything. My mind would grow dull, I'd break into a sweat several times, paralysis hovered over me; but this was good and beneficial. On returning home, I'd put off for a while my desire to embrace the whole of mankind.
I had, however, another acquaintance as it were - Simonov, a former schoolfellow. No doubt there were many of my schoolfellows in Petersburg, but I did not associate with them, and had even stopped nodding to them in the street. I perhaps got myself transferred to another department so as not to be together with them and to cut off all at once the whole of that hateful childhood of mine. Curses on that school, on those terrible years of penal servitude! In short, I parted ways with my fellows as soon as I was set free. There were two or three people left whom I still greeted when we met. Among them was Simonov, who had not been distinguished for anything in our school, was quiet and equable, but in whom I distinguished a certain independence of character and even honesty. I do not even think he was so very narrow-minded. I had once had some rather bright moments with him, but they did not last long and somehow suddenly clouded over. These recollections were apparently burdensome for him, and it seemed he kept being afraid I would lapse into the former tone. I suspected that he found me quite disgusting, but I kept going to him all the same, having no sure assurance of it.
And so once, on a Thursday, unable to endure my solitude, and knowing that on Thursdays Anton Antonych's door was closed, I remembered about Simonov. On the way up to his fourth-floor apartment, I was precisely thinking that I was a burden to this gentleman and that I shouldn't be going to him. But since in the end such considerations, as if by design, always egged me on further into some ambiguous situation, I did go in. It was almost a year since I had last seen Simonov.
III
I found two more of my schoolfellows with him. They were apparently discussing an important matter. None of them paid more than the slightest attention to my coming, which was even strange, because I hadn't seen them for years. Obviously they regarded me as something like a quite ordinary fly. I had not been treated that way even at school, though everyone there hated me. Of course, I understood that they must scorn me now for the unsuccess of my career in the service and for my having gone too much to seed, walking around badly dressed, and so on - which in their eyes constituted a signboard of my incapacity and slight significance. But all the same I did not expect such a degree of scorn. Simonov was even surprised at my coming. Before, too, he had always seemed surprised at my coming. All this took me aback; I sat down in some anguish and began to listen to what they were talking about.
The conversation, a serious and even heated one, was about a farewell dinner which these gentlemen wanted to organize jointly on the very next day for their schoolfellow Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was leaving for a province far away. M'sieur Zverkov had also been my schoolfellow all the while. I had begun especially to hate him starting in the higher grades. In the lower grades he had been just a pretty, frisky boy whom everybody liked. I, however, had hated him in the lower grades as well, precisely for being a pretty and frisky boy. He was always a bad student, and got worse as he went on. Nevertheless, he graduated successfully, because he had his protectors. In his last year at school he received an inheritance, two hundred souls, 13 and since we were almost all of us poor, he even began to swagger before us. He was a vulgarian in the highest degree, but a nice fellow nonetheless, even while swaggering. And despite the external, fantastic, and highfalutin forms of honor and glory in our school, everyone, apart from a very few, minced around Zverkov, the more so the more he swaggered. They minced not for the sake of some sort of profit, but just so, because he was a man favored with the gifts of nature. Besides, it was somehow an accepted thing among us to regard Zverkov as an expert in the line of adroitness and good manners. This last particularly infuriated me. I hated the sharp, un-self-doubting tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which came out terribly stupid, though he did have a bold tongue; I hated his handsome but silly face (for which, by the way, I'd gladly have traded my intelligent one) and his free and easy officer-of-the-forties airs. I hated the things he used to say about his future successes with women (he hadn't ventured to start up with women, not having his officer's epaulettes yet, and was looking forward to them impatiently) and about how he'd be fighting duels all the time. I remember myself, always taciturn, suddenly lighting into Zverkov when he was talking with some friends about his future gallantries once during a recess, got quite playful in the end, like a puppy in the sun, and suddenly declared that he wouldn't leave a single village maiden on his estate without his attentions, that this was his droit de seigneur, 14 and if the peasants dared to protest, he'd give them all a whipping and heap a double quitrent on the bearded canaille. Our oafs applauded, but I lit into him, and not at all out of pity for maidens or their fathers, but simply because such a little snot was being so applauded. I got the best of him that time, but Zverkov, though stupid, was gay and impudent, and therefore laughed it off, and even in such a way that, in truth, I did not quite get the best of him: the laughter remained on his side. Later he got the best of me several more times, though not with spite, but just somehow jokingly, in passing, with a laugh. I spitefully and contemptuously refused to reply. Upon graduation he tried to make a step towards me, I did not resist too much, because it flattered me, but we quickly and naturally parted ways. Later I heard about his barracksy lieutenanty successes, about his carousing. Later other rumors went around - that he was succeeding in the service. Now he no longer greeted me in the street, and I suspected he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a person as insignificant as I was. I also saw him in the theater once, in the third circle, now wearing aiguillettes. He was mincing and twining around the daughters of some ancient general. In three short years he had gone very much to seed, though he was still quite handsome and adroit; he had become somehow puffy and was beginning to grow fat; one could see that by the age of thirty he would be completely flabby. It was for this finally departing Zverkov that our fellows wanted to give a dinner. They had constantly associated with him all those three years, though inwardly they did not consider themselves on an equal footing with him, I'm sure of that.
Of Simonov's two guests, one was Ferfichkin, from Russian-German stock - short, monkey-faced, a fool who comically mimicked everyone, my bitterest enemy even in the lower grades - a mean, impudent little fanfaron who played at being most ticklishly ambitious, though of course he was a coward at heart. He was one of those admirers of Zverkov who flirted with him for his own ends, and often borrowed money from him. Simonov's other guest, Trudolyubov, was an unremarkable person, a military type, tall, with a cold physiognomy, honest enough, but worshiping any success, and capable only of discussing promotions. He was some sort of distant relation of Zverkov's, and that, silly though it was, endowed him with a certain significance among us. He had always regarded me as nothing, but treated me, if not quite politely, at least passably.
