Chapter 23

"I think that it is superfluous to say that I was very vain. If one
has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for
living. So for that Sunday I had busied myself in tastefully arranging
things for the dinner and the musical soiree. I had purchased myself
numerous things for the dinner, and had chosen the guests. Toward six
o'clock they arrived, and after them Troukhatchevsky, in his dress-coat,
with diamond shirt-studs, in bad taste. He bore himself with ease. To
all questions he responded promptly, with a smile of contentment and
understanding, and that peculiar expression which was intended to
mean: 'All that you may do and say will be exactly what I expected.'
Everything about him that was not correct I now noticed with especial
pleasure, for it all tended to tranquillize me, and prove to me that to
my wife he stood in such a degree of inferiority that, as she had
told me, she could not stoop to his level. Less because of my wife's
assurances than because of the atrocious sufferings which I felt in
jealousy, I no longer allowed myself to be jealous.

"In spite of that, I was not at ease with the musician or with her
during dinner-time and the time that elapsed before the beginning of the

music. Involuntarily I followed each of their gestures and looks.
The dinner, like all dinners, was tiresome and conventional. Not long
afterward the music began. He went to get his violin; my wife advanced
to the piano, and rummaged among the scores. Oh, how well I remember all
the details of that evening! I remember how he brought the violin, how
he opened the box, took off the serge embroidered by a lady's hand, and
began to tune the instrument. I can still see my wife sit down, with a
false air of indifference, under which it was plain that she hid a great
timidity, a timidity that was especially due to her comparative lack
of musical knowledge. She sat down with that false air in front of the
piano, and then began the usual preliminaries,--the pizzicati of the
violin and the arrangement of the scores. I remember then how they
looked at each other, and cast a glance at their auditors who were
taking their seats. They said a few words to each other, and the music
began. They played Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata.' Do you know the first
presto? Do you know it? Ah!" . . .

Posdnicheff heaved a sigh, and was silent for a long time.

"A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible
thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does?
They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts
frightfully (I speak for myself), but not in an ennobling way. It acts
neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating