The Adolescent

She rushed to me: it seems I had a chill, and maybe had also swooned. I can’t express what a painful, morbid impression this half-crazed being made on me. Maybe she imagined that she had been ordered to entertain me; at any rate she never left me for a moment. Maybe she had been on the stage once; she declaimed awfully, fidgeted, talked nonstop, while I had long been silent. All I could understand from her stories was that she was closely co

“Lambert, I’m at Lambert’s!” I thought and, seizing my hat, I rushed for my fur coat.

“Où allez-vous, monsieur? ”61 cried the keen-eyed Alphonsine.

“I want to get out, I want to leave! Let me go, don’t keep me . . .”

“Oui, monsieur! ” Alphonsine concurred with all her might, and rushed to open the door to the corridor for me herself. “Mais ce n’est pas loin, monsieur, c’est pas loin du tout, ça ne vaut pas la peine de mettre votre chouba, c’est ici près, monsieur! ”62 she exclaimed to the whole corridor. Ru

“Par ici, monsieur, c’est par ici! ”63 she exclaimed with all her might, clutching at my coat with her long, bony fingers, and with her other hand pointing me to the left somewhere down the corridor, where I had no wish to go. I tore myself free and ran for the door to the stairs.

“Il s’en va, il s’en va! ”64; Alphonsine raced after me, shouting in her cracked voice. “Mais il me tuera, monsieur, il me tuera!”65 But I had already run out to the stairs, and though she even raced after me down the stairs, I managed to open the outside door, run out to the street, and jump into the first cab. I gave mama’s address . . .

IV

BUT CONSCIOUSNESS, having flashed for a moment, quickly went out. I still have a slight memory of how I was brought in and taken to mama’s, but there I fell almost at once into complete oblivion. The next day, as I was told later (though this I also remembered myself ), my reason became clear again for a moment. I remembered myself in Versilov’s room on his sofa; I remember the faces of Versilov, mama, Liza around me, remember very well how Versilov spoke to me about Zershchikov, about the prince, showed me some letter, reassured me. They told me later that I kept asking in horror about some Lambert, and kept hearing the barking of some lapdog. But the faint light of consciousness quickly dimmed; by evening of this second day I was already totally delirious. But I’ll forestall events and explain them beforehand.

When I ran out of Zershchikov’s that evening and everything calmed down somewhat there, Zershchikov, having started the game, suddenly a

The prince, on coming back from gambling, wrote two letters that same night, one to me, and the other to his former regiment, where he had had the incident with Ensign Stepanov. He sent both letters the next morning. After which he wrote a report to his superiors, and with this report in hand, early in the morning, he went in person to the commander of his regiment and a

Here is the letter he wrote to me that night, word for word:

Priceless Arkady Makarovich,

Having tried the lackeyish “way out,” I have thereby lost the right to comfort my soul at least somewhat with the thought that I, too, was finally able to venture upon a righteous deed. I am guilty before my fatherland and before my family, and for that, as the last of my family, I am punishing myself. I do not understand how I could have seized upon the base thought of self-preservation and dreamed for some time of buying myself back from them with money. All the same, I myself, before my own conscience, would have remained forever a criminal. Those people, even if they did return the compromising notes to me, would never have left me all my life! What remained then: to live with them, to be one with them all my life—that was the lot that awaited me! I could not accept it, and finally found in myself enough firmness, or maybe just despair, to act as I am acting now.

I have written a letter to my former regiment, to my former comrades, and vindicated Stepanov. In this act there is not and ca