The Adolescent

“Not in the least. I confess, in the beginning, the first few times, I was slightly offended and also wanted to address you familiarly, but I saw it was stupid, because you surely don’t do it to humiliate me.”

He was no longer listening and had forgotten his question.

“Well, how’s your father?” he suddenly raised his pensive eyes to me.

I simply jumped. First, he had designated Versilov as my father—something he had never allowed himself with me; and, second, he had begun speaking of Versilov, something that had never happened before.

“Sits without money and mopes,” I replied briefly, burning with curiosity myself.

“Yes, about money. Their case is to be decided today in the district court, and I’m waiting for Prince Seryozha and what he’ll come with. He promised to come to me straight from court. Their whole destiny is involved; it’s sixty or eighty thousand. Of course, I’ve also always wished the best for Andrei Petrovich” (Versilov, that is), “and it seems he’ll come out the winner and the princes will be left with nothing. Law!”

“In court today?” I exclaimed, struck.

The thought that Versilov had neglected to inform me even of that struck me in the extreme. “That means he said nothing to mother, or maybe to anybody,” it occurred to me all at once. “What character!

“And is Prince Sokolsky in Petersburg?” another thought suddenly struck me.

“Since yesterday. Straight from Berlin, especially for this day.”

Another extremely important piece of news for me. “And he’ll come here today, this man who gave him a slap!”

“Well, what of it?” The prince’s whole face suddenly changed. “He still preaches God as he used to, and, and . . . maybe still goes after the girls, after unfledged little girls? Heh, heh! Right now, too, there’s a most amusing anecdote hatching . . . Heh, heh!”

“Who preaches? Who goes after the girls?”

“Andrei Petrovich! Would you believe, he pestered us all back then like a burr—what do we eat, what do we think?—or almost like that. Frightened us and purified us: ‘If you’re religious, why don’t you go and become a monk?’ He demanded almost that. Mais quelle idee!¹⁰ Even if it’s right, isn’t it too severe? It was me especially that he liked to frighten with the Last Judgment, me of all people.”

“I haven’t noticed any of that, and I’ve lived with him for a month now,” I replied, listening impatiently. It was terribly vexing that he hadn’t quite come to his senses and mumbled so incoherently.

“He just doesn’t say it now, but, believe me, it’s so. The man is clever, indisputably, and deeply educated; but is that the right kind of intelligence? It all happened to him after his three years abroad. And, I confess, he shocked me very much . . . he shocked everybody . . . Cher enfant, j’aime le bon Dieu¹¹ . . . I believe, I believe as much as I can, but—I was certainly beside myself then. Suppose I used a frivolous method, but I did it on purpose, in vexation—and besides, the essence of my objection was as serious as it has been from the beginning of the world: ‘If there is a supreme being,’ I say to him, ‘and it exists personally, and not in the form of some sort of spirit poured over creation in the form of a liquid or whatever (because that is still more difficult to understand)—where, then, does it live?’ My friend, c’etait bete,¹² undoubtedly, but that’s what all objections boil down to. Un domicile¹³; is an important matter. He was terribly angry. He converted to Catholicism there.”

“I’ve also heard about that idea. Nonsense, surely.”

“I assure you by all that’s holy. Look at him well . . . However, you say he’s changed. Well, but at that time he tormented us all so! Would you believe, he behaved as if he were a saint and his relics were about to be revealed.¹¹ He demanded an account of our behavior from us, I swear to you! Relics! En voila une autre! ¹⁴ Well, let him be a monk or an anchorite—but here’s a man going around in a tailcoat and all the rest . . . and then suddenly—his relics! A strange wish for a man of the world and, I confess, a strange taste. I don’t say anything about it: of course, it’s all holy, and anything can happen . . . Besides, it’s all de l’inconnu,¹⁵ but for a man of the world it’s even indecent. If it should somehow happen to me, or they should offer it to me, I swear I’d refuse. Why, suddenly I’m dining today in a club, and then suddenly—I reveal myself! No, I’d be a laughing-stock! I told him all that then . . . He wore chains.”¹²

I turned red with anger.

“Did you see the chains yourself ?”

“I didn’t myself, but . . .”

“Then I declare to you that it’s all a lie, a tissue of vile machinations and enemy slander, that is, of one enemy, the chiefest and most inhuman one, because he has only one enemy—your daughter!”

The prince flushed in his turn.

“Mon cher, I beg you and I insist that in the future my daughter’s name never be mentioned again in my presence together with this vile story.”

I rose slightly. He was beside himself; his chin was trembling.

“Cette histoire infame!¹⁶ . . . I didn’t believe it, I never wanted to believe it, but . . . they tell me: believe it, believe it, I . . .”

Here the valet suddenly came in again and announced a visitor. I sank back down on my chair.

IV

TWO LADIES CAME in, both young, one the stepdaughter of one of the cousins of the prince’s late wife, or something of the sort, his ward, for whom he had already allotted a dowry, and who (I note it for the future) had money of her own; the other was Anna Andreevna Versilov, Versilov’s daughter, three years older than I, who lived with her brother at Mme. Fanariotov’s and whom before then I had seen only once in my life, fleetingly in the street, though I had already had a skirmish with her brother, also fleetingly, in Moscow (quite possibly I’ll mention that skirmish later on, if there’s room, though essentially it’s not worth it). This Anna Andreevna had been a special favorite of the prince’s since childhood (Versilov’s acquaintance with the prince began terribly long ago). I was so