"Ce n 'est rien, nous attendrons,^[ccii] and meanwhile she can understand by intuition..."

"My friend, all I need is your heart alone!" he kept exclaiming, interrupting his narrative, "and this dear, charming look with which you are gazing at me now. Oh, do not blush! I've already told you..."

The fogginess increased greatly for poor, trapped Sofya Matveevna when the story turned almost into a whole dissertation on the subject of how no one had ever been able to understand Stepan Trofimovich and of how "talents perish in our Russia." It was "all so very intelligent," she later reported dejectedly. She listened with obvious suffering, her eyes slightly popping out. And when Stepan Trofimovich threw himself into humor and the wittiest barbs concerning our "progressive and dominating ones," she made an attempt, from grief, to smile a couple of times in response to his laughter, but it came out worse than tears, so that in the end Stepan Trofimovich himself became abashed and struck out with even greater passion and spite at the nihilists and "new people." Here he simply frightened her, and she only got a bit of respite, though a most deceptive one, when the romance proper began. A woman is always a woman, be she even a nun. She smiled, shook her head, blushed deeply all at once and lowered her eyes, thereby sending Stepan Trofimovich into utter admiration and inspiration, so that he even added quite a lot. His Varvara Petrovna came out as a most lovely brunette ("the admiration of Petersburg and a great many European capitals"), and her husband had died, "cut down by a bullet at Sebastopol," solely because he felt unworthy of her love, giving way to his rival—that is, to the same Stepan Trofimovich... "Do not be embarrassed, my quiet one, my Christian!" he exclaimed to Sofya Matveevna, himself almost believing everything he was telling her. "This was something lofty, something so fine that not even once in our lives did we declare it." The reason for such a state of affairs turned out in the ensuing narrative to be a blonde (if not Darya Pavlovna, I really don't know whom Stepan Trofimovich meant). This blonde owed everything to the brunette and, being a distant relation, had grown up in her house. The brunette, having finally noticed the blonde's love for Stepan Trofimovich, withdrew into herself. The blonde, for her part, noticing the brunette's love for Stepan Trofimovich, also withdrew into herself. And so all three of them, languishing in mutual magnanimity, were silent like this for twenty years, withdrawn into themselves. "Oh, what a passion it was, oh, what a passion!" he kept exclaiming, gasping in the most genuine rapture. "I saw the full blossom of her (the brunette's) beauty; daily 'with a sprain in my heart' I saw her passing by me, as if ashamed of her loveliness." (Once he said: "ashamed of her portliness.") At last, he had run away, abandoning all this feverish twenty-year dream. "Vingt ans!" And now, on the high road... Then, in some sort of inflammation of the brain, he began explaining to Sofya Matveevna what must be the significance of their meeting that day, "so accidentally and so fatefully, unto ages of ages." Sofya Matveevna, in terrible embarrassment, finally got up from the sofa; he even made an attempt to go on his knees before her, at which she burst into tears. Twilight was gathering; the two had already spent several hours in the closed room...

"No, you'd better let me go to the other room, sir," she murmured, "or else people might think something."

She finally tore herself away; he let her go, giving his word that he would go to bed at once. As he was saying good night, he complained of a bad headache. Sofya Matveevna had left her bag and things in the first room when she came in, intending to spend the night with the proprietors; but she did not manage to get any rest.

During the night, Stepan Trofimovich had an attack of that cholerine so well known to me and to all his friends—the usual outcome with him of any nervous strain or moral shock. Poor Sofya Matveevna did not sleep all night. Since, in tending to the sick man, she had to go in and out of the cottage fairly often through the proprietors' room, the guests and the mistress who were sleeping there kept grumbling and finally even began to curse when she decided towards morning to start the samovar. Stepan Trofimovich was half oblivious throughout the attack; at times he as if fancied that the samovar was being prepared, that he was being given something to drink (raspberry tea), that something warm was being put on his stomach, his chest. But he felt almost every moment that she was there by him; that it was she coming and going getting him out of bed and putting him back in. By three o'clock in the morning he felt better; he sat up, lowered his legs from the bed, and, not thinking of anything, collapsed on the floor in front of her. This was no longer the former kneeling; he simply fell at her feet and kissed the hem of her dress...

"You mustn't, sir, I'm not worthy at all," she murmured, trying to lift him back into bed.

"My savior," he clasped his hands reverently before her. "Vous êtes noble comme une marquise!^[cciii]I—I am a blackguard! Oh, I have been dishonest all my life ..."

"Calm yourself," Sofya Matveevna pleaded.

"What I told you earlier was all lies—for glory, for magnificence, out of idleness—all, all, to the last word, oh, blackguard, blackguard!"

The cholerine thus turned into another attack, one of hysterical self-condemnation. I have already mentioned these attacks in speaking of his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He suddenly remembered Lise, their meeting the previous morning: "It was so terrible and—there must have been some misfortune, and I didn't ask, I didn't find out! I thought only of myself! Oh, what happened to her, do you know what happened to her?" he besought Sofya Matveevna.

Then he swore that he "would not betray," that he would return to her (that is, to Varvara Petrovna). "We shall go up to her porch" (all this, that is, with Sofya Matveevna) "every day, as she's getting into her carriage to go for a morning promenade, and secretly watch... Oh, I wish her to strike me on the other cheek; it delights me to wish it! I'll turn my other cheek to her comme dans votre livre!^[cciv]Now, only now do I understand what it means to... offer the other cheek.^[203] I never understood before!"

For Sofya Matveevna there followed two of the most frightful days of her life; even now she shudders to recall them. Stepan Trofimovich became so seriously ill that he could not go on the steamer, which this time came on schedule at two o'clock in the afternoon; to leave him alone was more than she could do, so she did not go to Spasov either. By her account, he was even very glad when the steamer left.

"Well, that's fine, that's wonderful," he muttered from the bed, "and I kept being afraid we would have to go. It's so nice here, it's better than anywhere... You won't leave me? Oh, you haven't left me!"

"Here," however, was not so nice at all. He did not want to know anything about her difficulties; his head was filled with nothing but fantasies. His illness he considered a fleeting thing, a trifle, and he gave no thought to it, but thought only of how they would go and sell "these books." He asked her to read him the Gospel.

"It's a long time since I've read it ... in the original. Otherwise someone may ask and I'll make a mistake; one must also be prepared, after all."