Tikhon looked at him steadily:

"You are struck that the Lamb loves the cold one better than the merely lukewarm one," he said. "You do not want to be merely luke-warm. I feel that you are in the grip of an extraordinary intention, perhaps a terrible one. If so, I implore you, do not torment yourself and tell me everything you've come with."

"And you knew for certain that I had come with something?"

"I... guessed it from your face," Tikhon whispered, lowering his eyes.

Nikolai Vsevolodovich was somewhat pale, his hands were trembling slightly. For a few seconds he looked motionlessly and silently at Tikhon, as if making a final decision. Finally he took some printed pages from the side pocket of his frock coat and placed them on the table.

"These are pages intended for distribution," he said in a somewhat faltering voice. "If at least one man reads them, then you should know that I am not going to conceal them, and everyone will read them. That is decided. I don't need you at all, because I've decided everything. But read it... While you're reading, don't say anything, and when you've finished—say everything..."

"Shall I read it?" Tikhon asked hesitantly.

"Read it; I've long been at peace."

"No, I can't make it out without my glasses; the print is fine, foreign."

"Here are your glasses," Stavrogin picked them up from the table, handed them to him, and leaned back on the sofa. Tikhon immersed himself in reading.

II

The print was indeed foreign—three printed pages of ordinary, small-format stationery, sewn together. It must have been printed secretly by some Russian press abroad, and at first glance the pages looked very much like a tract. The heading read: "From Stavrogin." I introduce this document into my chronicle verbatim. One may suppose it is now known to many. I have allowed myself only to correct the spelling errors, rather numerous, which even surprised me somewhat, since the author was after all an educated man, and even a well-read one (judging relatively, of course). In the style I have made no changes, despite the errors and even obscurities. In any case, it is apparent that the author is above all not a writer.

FROM STAVROGIN

I, Nikolai Stavrogin, a retired officer, was living in Petersburg in the year 1867, giving myself over to debauchery in which I found no pleasure. For a certain stretch of time then, I had three apartments. In one of them I myself lived, in a rooming house with board and service, where Marya Lebyadkin, now my lawful wife, was then also living. My other two apartments I then rented by the month for an intrigue: in one of them I received a lady who was in love with me, and in the other her maid, and for a while I was much taken up by the intention of bringing the two together, so that the mistress and the wench should meet at my place, in the presence of my friends and the husband. Knowing both their characters, I expected to derive great pleasure from this stupid joke.

While I was leisurely preparing this meeting, I had more often to visit one of these apartments, in a large house on Gorokhovy Street, since this was where the maid used to come. I had only one room there, on the fourth floor, rented from some Russian tradespeople.^[218] They themselves occupied the next room, a smaller one, so much so that the door between the two was always left open, which was just what I wanted. The husband worked in someone's office and was away from morning till night. The wife, a woman of about forty, cut up and remade new clothes out of old ones, and also frequently left the house to deliver what she had sewn. I would be left alone with their daughter, about fourteen years old, I think, but who still looked quite a child. Her name was Matryosha. The mother loved her, but used to beat her often, and yelled at her terribly, as such women have a habit of doing. This girl served me and tidied up behind my screen. I declare that I have forgotten the number of the house. Now, on inquiring, I have learned that the old house was demolished, resold, and in place of two or three former houses there stands one very large new one. I have also forgotten the family name of my tradespeople (maybe I did not know it then, either). I remember that the woman's name was Stepanida—Mikhailovna, I think. His I don't remember. Who they were, where they came from, and what has become of them, I have no idea. I suppose if one were really to start searching and making all sorts of inquiries from the Petersburg police, one might find traces. The apartment was on the courtyard, in a corner. It all happened in June. The house was of a light blue color.

One day a penknife, which I didn't need at all and which was just lying about, disappeared from my table. I told the landlady, not even thinking she would whip her daughter. But the woman had just yelled at the child (I lived simply, and they didn't stand on ceremony with me) for the disappearance of some rag, suspecting her of filching it, and had even pulled her hair. And when this same rag was found under the tablecloth, the girl chose not to utter a word of reproach and watched silently. I noticed this, and then for the first time noticed the child's face, which before had just flitted by. She was pale-haired and freckled, an ordinary face, but with much in it that was childish and quiet, extremely quiet. The mother was displeased that the daughter did not reproach her for having beaten her for nothing, and she shook her fist at her, but did not hit her; just then my penknife came up. Indeed, there was no one there except the three of us, and only the girl had gone behind my screen. The woman went wild, because her first beating had been unjust, rushed for the broom, pulled some twigs from it, and whipped the girl so that she raised welts on her, right in front of me. Matryosha did not cry out from the birching, but somehow whimpered strangely at each stroke. And afterwards she whimpered very much, for a whole hour.

But before that here is what happened: at the same moment as the landlady was rushing to pull the twigs from the broom, I found the knife on my bed, where it had somehow fallen from the table. It immediately came into my head not to announce anything, so that she would get a birching. I decided on it instantly: such moments always take my breath away. But I intend to tell everything in the firmest words, so that nothing remains hidden any longer.

Every extremely shameful, immeasurably humiliating, mean, and, above all, ridiculous position I have happened to get into in my life has always aroused in me, along with boundless wrath, an unbelievable pleasure. Exactly the same as in moments of crime, or in moments threatening to life. If I was stealing something, I would feel, while committing the theft, intoxication from the awareness of the depth of my meanness. It was not meanness that I loved (here my reason was completely sound), but I liked the intoxication from the tormenting awareness of my baseness. In the same way, each time I stood at the barrier waiting for my adversary to shoot, I felt the same shameful and violent sensation, and once extraordinarily strongly. I confess, I often sought it out myself, because for me it is stronger than any of its sort. When I was slapped (and I have been slapped twice in my life), it was there as well, in spite of the terrible wrath. But if, for all that, the wrath can be restrained, the pleasure will exceed anything imaginable. I never spoke of it to anyone, never even hinted at it, and concealed it as a shame and a disgrace. Yet when I was badly beaten once in a pot-house in Petersburg, and dragged by the hair, I did not feel this sensation, but only unbelievable wrath, without being drunk, but just fighting. Yet if that Frenchman abroad, the vicomte who slapped me and whose lower jaw I shot off for it, had seized my hair and pulled me down, I would have felt intoxication and perhaps not even wrath. So it seemed to me then.