Chapter 1 - Page 2

dear fellow, more than enough!' confirmed
the plain little man, opening and shutting his eyes.

'But why shouldn't the man love too?' said the traveller
thoughtfully, looking at his friend with something like pity. 'Why
shouldn't one love? Because love doesn't come ... No, to be
beloved is a misfortune. It is a misfortune to feel guilty because
you do not give something you cannot give. O my God!' he added,
with a gesture of his arm. 'If it all happened reasonably, and not
all topsy-turvy--not in our way but in a way of its own! Why, it's
as if I had stolen that love! You think so too, don't deny it. You
must think so. But will you believe it, of all the horrid and
stupid things I have found time to do in my life--and there are
many--this is one I do not and cannot repent of. Neither at the
beginning nor afterwards did I lie to myself or to her. It seemed
to me that I had at last fallen in love, but then I saw that it
was an involuntary falsehood, and that that was not the way to
love, and I could not go on, but she did. Am I to blame that I
couldn't? What was I to do?'

'Well, it's ended now!' said his friend, lighting a cigar to
master his sleepiness. 'The fact is that you have not yet loved
and do not know what love is.'

The man in the fur-lined coat was going to speak again, and put
his hands to his head, but could not express what he wanted to
say.

'Never loved! ... Yes, quite true, I never have! But after all, I
have within me a desire to love, and nothing could be stronger
than that desire! But then, again, does such love exist? There
always remains something incomplete. Ah well! What's the use of
talking? I've made an awful mess of life! But anyhow it's all over
now; you are quite right. And I feel that I am beginning a new
life.'

'Which you will again make a mess of,' said the man who lay on the
sofa playing with his watch-key. But the traveller did not listen
to him.

'I am sad and yet glad to go,' he continued. 'Why I am sad I don't
know.'

And the traveller went on talking about himself, without noticing
that this did not interest the others as much as it did him. A man
is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At
such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more
splendid and interesting than himself.

'Dmitri Andreich! The coachman won't wait any longer!' said a
young serf, entering the room in a sheepskin coat, with a scarf
tied round his head. 'The horses have been standing since twelve,
and it's now four o'clock!'

Dmitri Andreich looked at his serf, Vanyusha. The scarf round
Vanyusha's head, his felt boots and sleepy face, seemed to be
calling his master to a new life of labour,