… Well, so from then on it all got started. Naturally, I at once made indirect efforts to find out all the circumstances and waited with particular impatience for her to come. I did have a feeling that she would come soon. When she came, I entered into friendly conversation with unusual politeness. I’m not badly brought up and have manners. Hm. It was then I guessed that she was kind and meek. The kind and meek ones don’t resist for long, and though they don’t really open up completely, still they can’t quite avoid conversing: they reply charily, but they do reply, and the more the further, only don’t get tired yourself if it’s something you need. Naturally, she didn’t explain anything to me herself that time. It was later that I found out about The Voice and everything. She was then spending her last strength to advertise, at first, naturally, with pride, something like: “Governess, willing to relocate, send letter stating conditions,” but then: “Willing to do anything, teach, be a companion, keep house, tend the sick, can sew,” etc., etc., the same old stuff! Naturally, all this was added to the advertisement gradually, and toward the end, when things got desperate, there was even “without salary, in exchange for board.” No, she didn’t find a situation! I ventured then to test her for a last time: I suddenly take today’s Voice and show her an advertisement: “Young person, orphan, seeks position as governess of small children, preferably with an older widower. Can help with housework.”

“There, you see, this woman placed an advertisement this morning, and by evening she’ll certainly have found work. That’s how one should advertise!”

Again she flushed, again her eyes lit up, she turned and left at once. I liked that very much. However, I was already sure of everything by then and had no fear: no one was going to take cigar holders from her. And she had already run out of cigar holders. So it was, on the third day she came, so pale, alarmed—I understood that something had happened with her at home, and in fact it had. I’ll explain presently what had happened, but now I just want to recall how I suddenly displayed my chic before her then and grew taller in her eyes. The intention suddenly appeared in me. The thing was that she brought this icon (got herself to bring it)… Ah, listen! listen! Here’s where it begins, and before I kept getting confused… The thing is that I want to recall it all now, each trifle, each little feature. I keep wanting to collect my thoughts to a point and—I can’t, and now these little features, these little features …

An icon of the Mother of God. The Mother of God with the Child, from home, from her family, an old one, in a gilt silver casing—worth—well, worth about six roubles. I can see the icon is dear to her, she wants to pawn the whole icon, without removing the casing. I tell her it’s better to remove the casing and keep the icon; because it’s still an icon after all.

“Is it forbidden for you?”

“No, not really forbidden, but just so, maybe, you yourself…”

“Well, remove it, then.”

“You know what, I won’t remove it, I’ll put it on the stand over there,” I said on reflection, “with the other icons, under the lamp” (ever since I opened my shop, I’ve always kept an icon lamp burning), “and you can quite simply take ten roubles.”

“I don’t want ten, give me five, I’ll certainly buy it back.”

“You don’t want ten? The icon’s worth it,” I added, noticing that her eyes flashed again. She held her peace. I brought her five roubles.

“Don’t despise anyone, I’ve felt the same pinch myself, and even worse, and if you now see me in this occupation, miss… after all I’ve endured it’s…”

“You’re taking revenge on society, is that it?” she interrupted me suddenly with rather caustic mockery, in which, however, there was a good deal of innocence (that is, of generality, because she decidedly did not distinguish me from others then, so that she said it almost inoffensively).“Aha!” thought I, “that’s how you are, the character’s coming out, of the new tendency.”

“You see,” I observed at once, half jokingly, half mysteriously, “I—I’m part of that part of the whole that wishes to do evil, but does good…”

She glanced at me quickly and with great curiosity, in which, however, there was a good deal of childishness:

“Wait… What is that thought? Where is it from? I’ve heard it somewhere…”

“Don’t rack your brain, Mephistopheles recommends himself to Faust in those terms. Have you read Faust ?”³

“Not… not attentively.”

“That is, you haven’t read it at all. You ought to read it. However, I see a mocking twist on your lips again. Please don’t suppose me to be of so little taste as to wish to paint over my role as a pawnbroker by recommending myself as a Mephistopheles. Once a pawnbroker, always a pawnbroker. We know that, miss.”

“You’re somehow strange… I didn’t want to say anything like that at all…”

She wanted to say: I didn’t expect you to be an educated man, but she didn’t say it, though I knew she was thinking it; I pleased her terribly.

“You see,” I observed, “one can do good in any occupation. I don’t mean myself, of course, I, let’s say, do nothing but bad, but…”

“Of course one can do good in any situation,” she said, glancing at me with a quick and meaning look. “Precisely in any situation,” she suddenly added. Oh, I remember, I remember all those moments! And I also want to add that these young people, these dear young people, when they want to say something intelligent and meaningful, suddenly show, with all too much sincerity and naivete on their faces, that “here I am saying something intelligent and meaningful to you”—and not out of vanity, like our sort, but you can see that she herself values all this terribly, and believes it, and respects it, and thinks that you, too, respect it the same way she does. Oh sincerity! This is how they win one over. And it was so lovely in her!

I remember, I haven’t forgotten anything! When she left, I made up my mind all at once. That same day I went to make my final search and found out all the rest of her then current innermost secrets; all the former innermost secrets I already knew from Lukerya, who was then their servant and whom I had bribed several days earlier. These innermost secrets were so horrible that I don’t even understand how she could have laughed as she did that day and been curious about Mephistopheles’ saying, being under such horror herself. But—youth! I thought precisely that about her then, with pride and with joy, because there was magnanimity in it: on the verge of ruin, yet Goethe’s great words still shine. Youth is always magnanimous, be it ever so slightly, even lopsidedly. That is, I mean her, her alone. And, above all, I already looked at her then as mine and had no doubt of my power. You know, it is a most voluptuous thought, when one no longer has any doubts.

But what’s the matter with me. If I do it this way, when will I collect it all into a point? Quickly, quickly… this is not it at all, oh, God!

II

A MARRIAGE PROPOSAL

The “innermost secrets” I found out about her can be explained in a word: her father and mother had died, already long ago, three years before, and she was left with some disorderly aunts. That is, it’s not enough to call them disorderly. One was a widow with a big family, six children, each smaller than the next; the other was a spinster, old and nasty. They were both nasty. Her father had been in the civil service, but as a scrivener, and of merely nonhereditary nobility—in short, it all played into my hands. I came as if from a higher world: a retired staff captain, after all, of a brilliant regiment, a hereditary nobleman, independent, and so on, and as for the pawnshop, the aunts could only look upon it with respect. She had slaved for the aunts for three years, but passed an examination somewhere all the same—struggled to pass it, managed to pass it, from under her merciless daily work—and that did mean something about her yearning toward the lofty and noble! After all, why did I want to get married? Spit on me, though, that’s for later… As if that was the point! She taught her aunt’s children, did sewing, and toward the end not just sewing but, with her bad chest, also scrubbed the floors. Quite simply, they even beat her, reproached her for every crumb. In the end they were intending to sell her. Pah! I omit the filth of the details. Later she told me everything in detail. For a whole year a fat neighboring shopkeeper had been observing it all, not a simple shopkeeper, but with two grocery stores. He had already given a sweet time to two wives and was looking for a third, and so he cast an eye on her: “Quiet,” he thought, “grew up in poverty, and I’m marrying for my orphans.” In fact, he did have orphans. He sent a matchmaker, began making arrangements with the aunts, what’s more—he was fifty years old; she was horrified. It was then that she began coming to me often, so as to place advertisements in The Voice. Finally, she started asking her aunts to give her a bit of time to think it over. They gave her this bit, but just one, no more, because, they carped: “We don’t know what we’ll grub up ourselves, even without an extra mouth.” I already knew it all, and after that morning I made my decision. In the evening the merchant came, bringing a pound of candy from his shop worth fifty kopecks; she was sitting with him, and I called Lukerya out from the kitchen and told her to go and whisper to her that I was at the gate and wished to tell her something most urgently. I remained pleased with myself. And generally all that day I had been awfully pleased.