Chapter 19 - Page 2

refer to the MAN, and to remember him. He made an effort, as if to
break down the obstacle that embarrassed him, and continued with
determination.

"He was a bad man in my eyes, and not because he has played such an
important role in my life, but because he was really such. For the
rest, from the fact that he was bad, we must conclude that he was
irresponsible. He was a musician, a violinist. Not a professional
musician, but half man of the world, half artist. His father, a country
proprietor, was a neighbor of my father's. The father had become ruined,
and the children, three boys, were all sent away. Our man, the youngest,
was sent to his godmother at Paris. There they placed him in the
Conservatory, for he showed a taste for music. He came out a violinist,
and played in concerts."

On the point of speaking evil of the other, Posdnicheff checked himself,
stopped, and said suddenly:

"In truth, I know not how he lived. I only know that that year he came
to Russia, and came to see me. Moist eyes of almond shape, smiling red
lips, a little moustache well waxed, hair brushed in the latest fashion,
a vulgarly pretty face,--what the women call 'not bad,'--feebly built
physically, but with no deformity; with hips as broad as a woman's;
correct, and insinuating himself into the familiarity of people as far
as possible, but having that keen sense that quickly detects a false
step and retires in reason,--a man, in short, observant of the external
rules of dignity, with that special Parisianism that is revealed in
buttoned boots, a gaudy cravat, and that something which foreigners pick
up in Paris, and which, in its peculiarity and novelty, always has
an influence on our women. In his manners an external and artificial
gayety, a way, you know, of referring to everything by hints, by
unfinished fragments, as if everything that one says you knew already,
recalled it, and could supply the omissions. Well, he, with his music,
was the cause of all.

"At the trial the affair was so represented that everything seemed
attributable to jealousy. It is false,--that is, not quite false, but
there was something else. The verdict was rendered that I was a deceived
husband, that I had killed in defence of my sullied honor (that is the
way they put it in their language), and thus I was acquitted. I tried to
explain the affair from my own point of view, but they concluded that I
simply wanted to rehabilitate the memory of my wife. Her relations with
the musician, whatever they may have been, are now of no importance
to me or to her. The important part is what I have told you. The whole
tragedy was due to the fact that this man came into our house at a time
when an immense abyss had