Chapter 26 - Page 2

Olenin had entered into the life of the Cossack village so fully
that his past seemed quite foreign to him. As to the future,
especially a future outside the world in which he was now living,
it did not interest him at all. When he received letters from
home, from relatives and friends, he was offended by the evident
distress with which they regarded him as a lost man, while he in
his village considered those as lost who did not live as he was
living. He felt sure he would never repent of having broken away
from his former surroundings and of having settled down in this
village to such a solitary and original life. When out on
expeditions, and when quartered at one of the forts, he felt happy
too; but it was here, from under Daddy Eroshka's wing, from the
forest and from his hut at the end of the village, and especially
when he thought of Maryanka and Lukashka, that he seemed to see
the falseness of his former life. That falseness used to rouse his
indignation even before, but now it seemed inexpressibly vile and
ridiculous. Here he felt freer and freer every day and more and
more of a man. The Caucasus now appeared entirely different to
what his imagination had painted it. He had found nothing at all
like his dreams, nor like the descriptions of the Caucasus he had
heard and read. 'There are none of all those chestnut steeds,
precipices, Amalet Beks, heroes or villains,' thought he. 'The
people live as nature lives: they die, are born, unite, and more
are born--they fight, eat and drink, rejoice and die, without any
restrictions but those that nature imposes on sun and grass, on
animal and tree. They have no other laws.' Therefore these people,
compared to himself, appeared to him beautiful, strong, and free,
and the sight of them made him feel ashamed and sorry for himself.
Often it seriously occurred to him to throw up everything, to get
registered as a Cossack, to buy a hut and cattle and marry a
Cossack woman (only not Maryanka, whom he conceded to Lukashka),
and to live with Daddy Eroshka and go shooting and fishing with
him, and go with the Cossacks on their expeditions. 'Why ever
don't I do it? What am I waiting for?' he asked himself, and he
egged himself on and shamed himself. 'Am I afraid of doing what I
hold to be reasonable and right? Is the wish to be a simple
Cossack, to live close to nature, not to injure anyone but even to
do good to others, more stupid than my former dreams, such as
those of becoming a minister of state or a colonel?' but a voice
seemed to say that he should wait, and not take any decision. He
was held back by a dim consciousness that he could not live
altogether like Eroshka and Lukashka because he had a different
idea of happiness--he was held back by the