“He challenged you?” I cried, and felt my eyes begin to glow and the blood rush to my face.
“Yes, he did. I accepted the challenge at once, but I decided that before our encounter I would send him a letter in which I would explain my view of my act, and all my regret for this terrible mistake . . . because it was only a mistake—an unfortunate, fatal mistake! I’ll note that my position in the regiment made this risky; for such a letter before an encounter, I’d be subjecting myself to public opinion . . . you understand? But in spite even of that, I resolved on it, only I had no time to send the letter, because an hour after the challenge, I again received a note from him in which he asked me to forgive him for having troubled me and to forget the challenge, adding that he regretted this ‘momentary impulse of pusillanimity and egoism’—his own words. So he has now made the step with the letter quite easy for me. I haven’t sent it yet, but I precisely came to tell the prince a word or two about it . . . And believe me, I myself have suffered from the reproaches of my conscience far more, maybe, than anybody else . . . Is this explanation sufficient for you, Arkady Makarovich, at least now, for the time being? Will you do me the honor of believing fully in my sincerity?”
I was completely won over. I saw an unquestionable straightforwardness, which for me was highly unexpected. Nor had I expected anything like it. I murmured something in reply and held out both hands to him; he joyfully shook them in his. Then he took the prince away and talked with him for about five minutes in his bedroom.
“If you want to give me particular pleasure,” he addressed me loudly and openly, as he was leaving the prince, “come with me now, and I’ll show you the letter I’m about to send to Andrei Petrovich, along with his letter to me.”
I agreed with extreme willingness. My prince began bustling about as he saw me off, and also called me to his bedroom for a moment.
“Mon ami, how glad I am, how glad . . . We’ll talk about it all later. By the way, I have two letters here in my portfolio: one needs to be delivered and explained personally, the other is to the bank—and there, too . . .”
And here he charged me with two supposedly urgent errands, which supposedly called for extraordinary effort and attention. I had to go and actually deliver them, sign, and so on.
“Ah, you sly fox!” I cried, taking the letters. “I swear it’s all nonsense, and there’s nothing to it, but you invented these two errands to convince me that I’m working and not taking money for nothing!”
“Mon enfant, I swear to you, you’re mistaken about that: these are two most urgent matters . . . Cher enfant! ” he cried suddenly, waxing terribly emotional, “my dear youth!” (He placed both hands on my head.) “I bless you and your destiny . . . let us always be pure in heart, like today . . . kind and beautiful, as far as possible . . . let us love all that’s beautiful . . . in all its various forms . . . Well, enfin . . . enfin rendons grâce . . . et je te bénis!” 32
He didn’t finish and began whimpering over my head. I confess, I almost wept, too; at least I embraced my old eccentric sincerely and with pleasure. We kissed warmly.
III
PRINCE SERYOZHA (that is, Prince Sergei Petrovich, and so I shall call him) brought me to his apartment in a jaunty droshky, and, first thing, I was surprised at the magnificence of his apartment. That is, not really magnificence, but this was an apartment such as the most “respectable people” have, with high, big, bright rooms (I saw two, the others were shut up), and the furniture once again was not God knows what Versailles or Renaissance, but soft, comfortable, abundant, in grand style; rugs, carved wood, figurines. Yet everyone said they were destitute, that they had precisely nothing. I had heard in passing, though, that this prince raised dust wherever he could, here, and in Moscow, and in his former regiment, and in Paris, that he even gambled and had debts. The frock coat I had on was wrinkled and moreover covered with down, because I had slept without undressing, and my shirt was going on its fourth day. However, my frock coat was still not totally bad, but, finding myself at the prince’s, I remembered Versilov’s offer to have clothes made for me.
“Imagine, on the occasion of a certain suicide, I slept in my clothes all night,” I remarked with an absentminded air, and since he paid attention at once, I briefly told him about it. But he was obviously occupied most of all with his letter. Above all, I found it strange that he not only had not smiled, but had not shown the smallest reaction in that sense, when I had told him directly earlier that I wanted to challenge him to a duel. Though I should have been able to prevent him from laughing, still it was strange from a man of his sort. We sat down facing each other in the middle of the room, at his enormous writing table, and he gave me an already finished fair copy of his letter to Versilov to read through. This document was very much like all he had told me earlier at my prince’s; it was even ardently written. True, I didn’t know yet how I should finally take this apparent straightforwardness and readiness for everything good, but I was already beginning to yield to it, because, in fact, why shouldn’t I have believed it? Whatever sort of man he was and whatever people told about him, he still could have good inclinations. I also looked through the last little seven-line note from Versilov—renouncing his challenge. Though he actually wrote about his “pusillanimity” and “egoism” in it, the note as a whole was as if distinguished by a certain arrogance . . . or, better, this whole action showed a sort of disdain. However, I didn’t say so out loud.
“You, though, how do you look at this renunciation?” I asked. “You don’t think he turned coward?” “Of course not,” the prince smiled, but with a somehow very serious smile, and generally he was becoming more and more preoccupied. “I know all too well that he’s a courageous man. Here, of course, there’s a special view . . . his own disposition of ideas . . .”
“Undoubtedly,” I interrupted warmly. “A certain Vasin says that his action with this letter and the renouncing of the inheritance are a ‘pedestal’ . . . In my opinion, such things aren’t done for show, but correspond to something basic, inner.”
“I know Mr. Vasin very well,” remarked the prince.
“Ah, yes, you must have seen him in Luga.”
We suddenly looked at each other and, I remember, it seems I blushed a little. In any case he broke off the conversation. I, however, wanted very much to talk. The thought of one meeting yesterday tempted me to ask him some questions, only I didn’t know how to approach it. And in general I was somehow quite out of sorts. I was also struck by his astonishing courtesy, politeness, ease of manner—in short, all that polish of their tone, which they assume almost from the cradle. In his letter I found two gross errors in grammar. And generally, in such encounters, I never belittle myself, but become more curt, which sometimes may be bad. But in the present case it was especially aggravated by the thought that I was covered with down, so that several times I even blundered into familiarity . . . I noticed on the sly that the prince occasionally studied me very intently.
“Tell me, Prince,” I suddenly popped out with a question, “don’t you find it ridiculous within yourself that I, who am still such a ‘milksop,’ wanted to challenge you to a duel, and for somebody else’s offense at that?”
“One can be very offended by an offense to one’s father. No, I don’t find it ridiculous.”
“And to me it seems terribly ridiculous . . . in someone else’s eyes . . . that is, of course, not in my own. The more so as I’m Dolgoruky and not Versilov.
