Chapter 29

August 4th.

MY BELOVED BARBARA ALEXIEVNA,--These unlooked-for blows have
shaken me terribly, and these strange calamities have quite
broken my spirit. Not content with trying to bring you to a bed
of sickness, these lickspittles and pestilent old men are trying
to bring me to the same. And I assure you that they are
succeeding--I assure you that they are. Yet I would rather die
than not help you. If I cannot help you I SHALL die; but, to
enable me to help you, you must flee like a bird out of the nest
where these owls, these birds of prey, are seeking to peck you to
death. How distressed I feel, my dearest! Yet how cruel you
yourself are! Although you are enduring pain and insult, although
you, little nestling, are in agony of spirit, you actually tell
me that it grieves you to disturb me, and that you will work off
your debt to me with the labour of your own hands! In other
words, you, with your weak health, are proposing to kill yourself
in order to relieve me to term of my financial embarrassments!
Stop a moment, and think what you are saying. WHY should you sew,
and work, and torture your poor head with anxiety, and spoil your
beautiful eyes, and ruin your health? Why, indeed? Ah, little
Barbara, little Barbara! Do you not see that I shall never be any
good to you, never any good to you? At all events, I myself see
it. Yet I WILL help you in your distress. I WILL overcome every
difficulty, I WILL get extra work to do, I WILL copy out
manuscripts for authors, I WILL go to the latter and force them
to employ me, I WILL so apply myself to the work that they shall
see that I am a good copyist (and good copyists, I know, are
always in demand). Thus there will be no need for you to exhaust
your strength, nor will I allow you to do so--I will not have you
carry out your disastrous intention. . . Yes, little angel, I
will certainly borrow some money. I would rather die than not do
so. Merely tell me, my own darling, that I am not to shrink from
heavy interest, and I will not shrink from it, I will not shrink
from it--nay, I will shrink from nothing. I will ask for forty
roubles, to begin with. That will not be much, will it, little
Barbara? Yet will any one trust me even with that sum at the
first asking? Do you think that I am capable of inspiring
confidence at the first glance? Would the mere sight of my face
lead any one to form of me a favourable opinion? Have I ever been
able, remember you, to appear to anyone in a favourable light?
What think you? Personally, I see difficulties in the way, and
feel sick at heart at the mere prospect. However, of those forty
roubles I mean to set aside twenty-five for yourself, two for my
landlady, and the remainder for my own spending. Of course, I