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There at the gate, in Lukerya’s presence, I explained to her, amazed as she already was by the fact of my calling her outside, that I would consider it a happiness and an honor… Second: not to be surprised at my ma
Wait: naturally, I didn’t say half a word to her then about being a benefactor; on the contrary, oh, on the contrary: “It’s you,” I might have said, “who are my benefactor, not I yours” So that I even put it into words, I couldn’t help myself, and it came out stupid, perhaps, because I noticed a fleeting wrinkle on her face. But on the whole I was decidedly the wi
“Wait, I’m thinking.”
And her little face was so serious, so serious—that even then I might have read! And there I was feeling offended: “Can it be,” I thought, “that she’s choosing between me and the merchant?” Oh, I didn’t understand then! I didn’t understand anything, not anything! Until today I didn’t understand! I remember Lukerya ran out after me, as I was leaving, stopped me in the street, and said breathlessly: “God will reward you, sir, for taking our dear young lady, only don’t tell it to her, she’s proud.”
Proud, eh! I say I like the proud ones myself. The proud ones are especially good when… well, when one no longer doubts one’s power over them, eh? Oh, mean, clumsy man! Oh, how pleased I was! Do you know, she might, when she was standing at the gate then, thinking whether to say yes to me, and I got surprised, do you know, she might even have been thinking: “If it’s disaster either way, isn’t it better to choose the worst straight off, that is, the fat shopkeeper, let him get drunk and quickly beat me to death!” Eh? What do you think, could she have had such a thought?
And now, too, I don’t understand, now, too, I don’t understand anything! I only just said that she might have had this thought: to choose the worst of two disasters, that is, the merchant? But who was worse for her then—I or the merchant? The merchant or the pawnbroker quoting Goethe? That’s still a question! Why a question? And you don’t understand this: the answer’s lying on the table, and you say question! No, but spit on me! I’m not the point… And by the way, what is it to me now—whether I’m the point or not? That’s something I’m quite unable to decide. I’d better go to bed. I have a headache…
III
THE NOBLEST OF MEN, BUT I DON’T BELIEVE IT MYSELF
Didn’t fall asleep. How could I, some pulse was throbbing in my head. I want to take it all in, all this filth. Oh, filth! Oh, what filth I dragged her out of then! She really ought to have understood it, to have appreciated my action! I also liked various thoughts, for instance, that I was forty-one and she had just turned sixteen. This captivated me, this feeling of inequality, very sweet it was, very sweet.
I, for instance, wanted to do the wedding à l’anglaise,4 that is, decidedly the two of us, with perhaps two witnesses, one of them Lukerya, and then straight to the train, say, for instance, to Moscow (I happened incidentally to have business there), to a hotel, for a couple of weeks. She protested, she wouldn’t allow it, and I was forced to go visiting her aunts, honoring them as relatives from whom I was taking her. I yielded, and the aunts were rendered their due. I even gave the creatures a hundred roubles each and promised more, naturally without telling her anything about it, so as not to upset her by the mea