Chapter 4

"Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,--yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome."

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:--

"To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It
must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage.
First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the
steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a
graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before
talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly,
and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other
so-called respectable people,--that is, in debauchery. And like the
majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I
was a man of irreproachable morality.

"The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this,
I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be
incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought thus,
and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.

"At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying
toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends,
and before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes,
I did not make debauchery the principal object of my life; but I found
pleasure within the limits of society's rules, and innocently believed
myself a profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations did
not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the pleasure of
the moment.

"In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the fact
that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was
honest. I avoided those women who, by attaching themselves to me, or
presenting me with a child, could bind my future. Moreover, perhaps
there may have been children or attachments; but I so arranged matters
that I could not become aware of them.

"And living thus, I considered myself a perfectly honest man. I did not
understand that debauchery does not consist simply in physical
acts, that no matter what physical ignominy does not yet constitute