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Page 38
"Then I will tell you about our evenings. I used to go--that stairway,
every flower-pot I knew,--the door-handle, all was so lovely, so familiar;
then the vestibule, her room. . . . No, it will never, never come
back to me again! Even now she writes to me: if you will let me, I will
show you her letters. But I am not what I was; I am ruined; I am no
longer worthy of her. . . . Yes, I am ruined for ever. Je suis casse.
There's no energy in me, no pride, nothing--nor even any rank. . . .
[Footnote: Blagorodstva, noble birth, nobility.] Yes, I am ruined;
and no one will ever appreciate my sufferings. Every one is indifferent.
I am a lost man. Never any chance for me to rise, because I have fallen
morally . . . into the mire--I have fallen. . . ."
At this moment there was evident in his words a genuine, deep despair:
he did not look at me, but sat motionless.
"Why are you in such despair?" I asked.
"Because I am abominable. This life has degraded me, all that was in me,
all is crushed out. It is not by pride that I hold out, but by
abjectness: there's no dignite dans le malheur. I am humiliated every
moment; I endure it all; I got myself into this abasement. This mire has
soiled me. I myself have become coarse; I have forgotten what I used to
know; I can't speak French any more; I am conscious that I am base and
low. I cannot tear myself away from these surroundings, indeed I cannot.
I might have been a hero: give me a regiment, gold epaulets, a
trumpeter, but to march in the ranks with some wild Anton Bondarenko or
the like, and feel that between me and him there was no difference at
all--that he might be killed or I might be killed--all the same, that
thought is maddening. You understand how horrible it is to think that
some ragamuffin may kill me, a man who has thoughts and feelings, and
that it would make no difference if alongside of me some Antonof were
killed,--a being not different from an animal--and that it might easily
happen that I and not this Antonof were killed, which is always UNE
FATALITE for every lofty and good man. I know that they call me a
coward: grant that I am a coward, I certainly am a coward, and can't be
anything else. Not only am I a coward, but I am in my way a low and
despicable man. Here I have just been borrowing money of you, and you
have the right to despise me. No, take back your money." And he held out
to me the crumpled bank-bill. "I want you to have a good opinion of me."
He covered his face with his hands, and burst into tears. I really did
not know what to say or do.
"Calm yourself," I said to him. "You are too sensitive; don't take
everything so to heart; don't indulge in self-analysis, look at things
more simply. You yourself say that you have character. Keep up good
heart, you won't have long to wait," I said to him, but not very
consistently, because I was much stirred both by a feeling of sympathy
and a feeling of repentance, because I had allowed myself mentally to
sin in my judgment of a man truly and deeply unhappy.
"Yes," he began, "if I had heard even once, at the time when I was in
that hell, one single word of sympathy, of advice, of friendship--one
humane word such as you have just spoken, perhaps I might have calmly
endured all; perhaps I might have struggled, and been a soldier. But now
this is horrible. . . . When I think soberly, I long for death. Why
should I love my despicable life and my own self, now that I am ruined for
all that is worth while in the world? And at the least danger, I suddenly,
in spite of myself, begin to pray for my miserable life, and to watch
over it as though it were precious, and I cannot, je ne puis pas,
control myself. That is, I could," he continued again after a minute's
silence, "but this is too hard work for me, a monstrous work, when I am
alone. With others, under special circumstances, when you are going into
action, I am brave, j'ai fait mes epreuves, because I am vain and proud:
that is my failing, and in presence of others. . . . Do you know, let me
spend the night with you: with us, they will play all night long; it
makes no difference, anywhere, on the ground."
While Nikita was making the bed, we got up, and once more began to walk
up and down in the darkness on the battery. Certainly Guskof's head must
have been very weak, because two glasses of liquor and two of wine made
him dizzy. As we got up and moved away from the candles, I noticed that
he again thrust the ten-ruble bill into his pocket, trying to do so
without my seeing it. During all the foregoing conversation, he had held
it in his hand. He continued to reiterate how he felt that he might
regain his old station if he had a man such as I were to take some
interest in him.
We were just going into the tent to go to bed when suddenly a cannon-
ball whistled over us, and buried itself in the ground not far from us.
So strange it was,--that peacefully sleeping camp, our conversation, and
suddenly the hostile cannon-ball which flew from God knows where, the
midst of our tents,--so strange that it was some time before I could
realize what it was. Our sentinel, Andreief, walking up and down on the
battery, moved toward me.
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