A Hero of Our Time [57]
glad, or tried to make it appear so; on the second, she was angry with me; on the third -- with Grushnitski.
"You have very little vanity!" she said to me yesterday. "What makes you think that I find Grushnitski the more entertaining?"
I answered that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for the sake of the happiness of a friend.
"And my pleasure, too," she added.
I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her. . . In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was ap- parently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh -- at a most inopportune moment -- pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski -- I will not talk to her for another two days.
CHAPTER VIII
11th June.
I OFTEN ask myself why I am so obstinately endeavouring to win the love of a young girl whom I do not wish to deceive, and whom I will never marry. Why this woman-like coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary ever will. Had I regarded the latter as an invincible beauty, I should perhaps have been allured by the difficulty of the undertaking. . .
However, there is no such difficulty in this case! Consequently, my present feeling is not that restless craving for love which torments us in the early days of our youth, flinging us from one woman to another until we find one who can- not endure us. And then begins our constancy -- that sincere, unending passion which may be expressed mathematically by a line falling from a point into space -- the secret of that endlessness lying only in the impossibility of attaining the aim, that is to say, the end.
From what motive, then, am I taking all this trouble? -- Envy of Grushnitski? Poor fellow!
He is quite undeserving of it. Or, is it the result of that ugly, but invincible, feeling which causes us to destroy the sweet illusions of our neighbour in order to have the petty satisfaction of saying to him, when, in despair, he asks what he is to believe:
"My friend, the same thing happened to me, and you see, nevertheless, that I dine, sup, and sleep very peacefully, and I shall, I hope, know how to die without tears and lamentations."
There is, in sooth, a boundless enjoyment in the possession of a young, scarce-budded soul! It is like a floweret which exhales its best perfume at the kiss of the first ray of the sun. You should pluck the flower at that moment, and, breathing its fragrance to the full, cast it upon the road: perchance someone will pick it up! I feel within me that insatiate hunger which devours everything it meets upon the way; I look upon the sufferings and joys of others only from the point of view of their relation to myself, regarding them as the nutriment which sustains my spiritual forces. I myself am no longer capable of committing follies under the influence of passion; with me, ambition has been repressed by circumstances, but it has emerged in another form, because ambition is nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will. To arouse the feeling of love, devotion and awe towards oneself -- is not that the first sign, and the greatest triumph, of power? To be the cause of suffering and joy to another -- without in the least possessing any definite right to be so -- is not that the sweetest food for our pride? And what is happiness? -- Satisfied pride. Were I to consider myself the best, the most powerful man in the world, I should be happy; were all to love me, I should find within me inexhaustible springs of love. Evil begets evil; the first suffering gives us the conception of the satis- faction of torturing another. The idea of evil cannot enter the mind without arousing a desire to put
"You have very little vanity!" she said to me yesterday. "What makes you think that I find Grushnitski the more entertaining?"
I answered that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for the sake of the happiness of a friend.
"And my pleasure, too," she added.
I looked at her intently and assumed a serious air. After that for the whole day I did not speak a single word to her. . . In the evening, she was pensive; this morning, at the well, more pensive still. When I went up to her, she was listening absent-mindedly to Grushnitski, who was ap- parently falling into raptures about Nature, but, so soon as she perceived me, she began to laugh -- at a most inopportune moment -- pretending not to notice me. I went on a little further and began stealthily to observe her. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. Decidedly she had grown tired of Grushnitski -- I will not talk to her for another two days.
CHAPTER VIII
11th June.
I OFTEN ask myself why I am so obstinately endeavouring to win the love of a young girl whom I do not wish to deceive, and whom I will never marry. Why this woman-like coquetry? Vera loves me more than Princess Mary ever will. Had I regarded the latter as an invincible beauty, I should perhaps have been allured by the difficulty of the undertaking. . .
However, there is no such difficulty in this case! Consequently, my present feeling is not that restless craving for love which torments us in the early days of our youth, flinging us from one woman to another until we find one who can- not endure us. And then begins our constancy -- that sincere, unending passion which may be expressed mathematically by a line falling from a point into space -- the secret of that endlessness lying only in the impossibility of attaining the aim, that is to say, the end.
From what motive, then, am I taking all this trouble? -- Envy of Grushnitski? Poor fellow!
He is quite undeserving of it. Or, is it the result of that ugly, but invincible, feeling which causes us to destroy the sweet illusions of our neighbour in order to have the petty satisfaction of saying to him, when, in despair, he asks what he is to believe:
"My friend, the same thing happened to me, and you see, nevertheless, that I dine, sup, and sleep very peacefully, and I shall, I hope, know how to die without tears and lamentations."
There is, in sooth, a boundless enjoyment in the possession of a young, scarce-budded soul! It is like a floweret which exhales its best perfume at the kiss of the first ray of the sun. You should pluck the flower at that moment, and, breathing its fragrance to the full, cast it upon the road: perchance someone will pick it up! I feel within me that insatiate hunger which devours everything it meets upon the way; I look upon the sufferings and joys of others only from the point of view of their relation to myself, regarding them as the nutriment which sustains my spiritual forces. I myself am no longer capable of committing follies under the influence of passion; with me, ambition has been repressed by circumstances, but it has emerged in another form, because ambition is nothing more nor less than a thirst for power, and my chief pleasure is to make everything that surrounds me subject to my will. To arouse the feeling of love, devotion and awe towards oneself -- is not that the first sign, and the greatest triumph, of power? To be the cause of suffering and joy to another -- without in the least possessing any definite right to be so -- is not that the sweetest food for our pride? And what is happiness? -- Satisfied pride. Were I to consider myself the best, the most powerful man in the world, I should be happy; were all to love me, I should find within me inexhaustible springs of love. Evil begets evil; the first suffering gives us the conception of the satis- faction of torturing another. The idea of evil cannot enter the mind without arousing a desire to put