Chapter 26

I SHOW OFF

AT tea time the reading came to an end, and the ladies began to
talk among themselves of persons and things unknown to me. This I
conceived them to be doing on purpose to make me conscious (for
all their kind demeanour) of the difference which years and
position in the world had set between them and myself. In general
discussions, however, in which I could take part I sought to
atone for my late silence by exhibiting that extraordinary
cleverness and originality to which I felt compelled by my
University uniform. For instance, when the conversation turned
upon country houses, I said that Prince Ivan Ivanovitch had a
villa near Moscow which people came to see even from London and
Paris, and that it contained balustrading which had cost 380,000
roubles. Likewise, I remarked that the Prince was a very near
relation of mine, and that, when lunching with him the same day,
he had invited me to go and spend the entire summer with him at
that villa, but that I had declined, since I knew the villa well,
and had stayed in it more than once, and that all those
balustradings and bridges did not interest me, since I could not
bear ornamental work, especially in the country, where I liked
everything to be wholly countrified. After delivering myself of
this extraordinary and complicated romance, I grew confused, and
blushed so much that every one must have seen that I was lying.
Both Varenika, who was handing me a cup of tea, and Sophia
Ivanovna, who had been gazing at me throughout, turned their
heads away, and began to talk of something else with an
expression which I afterwards learnt that good-natured people
assume when a very young man has told them a manifest string of
lies--an expression which says, "Yes, we know he is lying, and
why he is doing it, the poor young fellow!"

What I had said about Prince Ivan Ivanovitch having a country
villa, I had related simply because I could find no other pretext
for mentioning both my relationship to the Prince and the fact
that I had been to luncheon with him that day; yet why I had said
all I had about the balustrading costing 380,000 roubles, and
about my having several times visited the Prince at that villa (I
had never once been there--more especially since the Prince
possessed no residences save in Moscow and Naples, as the
Nechludoffs very well knew), I could not possibly tell you.
Neither in childhood nor in adolescence nor in riper years did I
ever remark in myself the vice of falsehood--on the contrary, I
was, if anything, too outspoken and truthful. Yet, during this
first stage of my manhood, I often found myself seized with a
strange and unreasonable tendency to lie in the most desperate
fashion. I say advisedly