Chapter 2

'I'm fond of them, very fond! ... First-rate fellows! ... Fine!'
he kept repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to
cry, who were the first-rate fellows he was so fond of--was more
than he quite knew. Now and then he looked round at some house and
wondered why it was so curiously built; sometimes he began
wondering why the post-boy and Vanyusha, who were so different
from himself, sat so near, and together with him were being jerked
about and swayed by the tugs the side-horses gave at the frozen
traces, and again he repeated: 'First rate ... very fond!' and
once he even said: 'And how it seizes one ... excellent!' and
wondered what made him say it. 'Dear me, am I drunk?' he asked
himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was not
the wine alone that was having this effect on Olenin. He
remembered all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully,
spontaneously (as he believed) addressed to him on his departure.
He remembered the clasp of hands, glances, the moments of silence,
and the sound of a voice saying, 'Good-bye, Mitya!' when he was
already in the sledge. He remembered his own deliberate frankness.
And all this had a touching significance for him. Not only friends
and relatives, not only people who had been indifferent to him,
but even those who did not like him, seemed to have agreed to
become fonder of him, or to forgive him, before his departure, as
people do before confession or death. 'Perhaps I shall not return
from the Caucasus,' he thought. And he felt that he loved his
friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But it was
not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart
that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to
rise of themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he
had never yet been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love
for himself, love full of hope--warm young love for all that was
good in his own soul (and at that moment it seemed to him that
there was nothing but good in it)--compelled him to weep and to
mutter incoherent words.

Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course,
never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some
government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune
and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done
anything or even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is
termed un jeune homme.

At the age of eighteen he was free--as only rich young Russians in
the 'forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be.
Neither physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he
could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing.
Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants,