As I sat there thinking over what I had done, I could not imagine what the matter had been with me. I only felt with despair that I was for ever lost.
At first the most profound stillness around me—at least, so it appeared to me as compared with the violent internal emotion which I had been experiencing; but by and by I began to distinguish various sounds. Basil brought something downstairs which he laid upon a chest outside. It sounded like a broom-stick. Below me I could hear St. Jerome’s voice (probably he was speaking of me), and then children’s voices and laughter and footsteps; until in a few moments everything seemed to have its normal course in the house, as though nobody knew or cared to know that here was I sitting alone in the dark store-room!
I did not cry, but something lay heavy, like a stone, upon my heart. Ideas and pictures passed with extraordinary rapidity before my troubled imagination, yet through their fantastic sequence broke continually the remembrance of the misfortune which had befallen me as I once again into an interminable of as to the punishment, the fate, and the despair that were awaiting me. The thought occurred to me that there must be some reason for the general dislike—even contempt—which I fancied to be felt for me by others. I was firmly convinced that every one, from Grandmamma down to the coachman Philip, despised me, and found pleasure in my sufferings. Next an idea struck me that perhaps I was not the son of my father and mother at all, nor Woloda’s brother, but only some unfortunate who had been adopted by them out of , and this absurd notion not only afforded me a certain , but seemed to me quite probable. I found it comforting to think that I was unhappy, not through my own fault, but because I was fated to be so from my birth, and conceived that my destiny was very much like poor Karl Ivanitch’s.
“Why the secret any longer, now that I have discovered it?” I reflected. “To-morrow I will go to Papa and say to him, ‘It is in vain for you to try and conceal from me the mystery of my birth. I know it already.’ And he will answer me, ‘What else could I do, my good fellow? Sooner or later you would have had to know that you are not my son, but were adopted as such. Nevertheless, so long as you remain of my love, I will never cast you out.’ Then I shall say, ‘Papa, though I have no right to call you by that name, and am now doing so for the last time, I have always loved you, and shall always retain that love. At the same time, while I can never forget that you have been my , I cannot remain longer in your house. Nobody here loves me, and St. Jerome has my ruin. Either he or I must go , since I cannot answer for myself. I hate the man so that I could do anything—I could even kill him.’ Papa will begin to me, but I shall make a gesture, and say, ‘No, no, my friend and benefactor! We cannot live together. Let me go’—and for the last time I shall embrace him, and say in French, ‘O mon pere, O mon bienfaiteur, donne moi, pour la derniere fois, ta , et que la volonte de Dieu soit faite!’”
I bitterly at these thoughts as I sat on a trunk in that dark storeroom. Then, suddenly the punishment which was awaiting me, I would find myself back again in actuality, and the dreams had fled. Soon, again, I began to fancy myself far away from the house and alone in the world. I enter a hussar and go to war. Surrounded by the on every side, I wave my sword, and kill one of them and wound another—then a third,—then a fourth. At last, with loss of blood and , I fall to the ground and cry, “Victory!” The general comes to look for me, asking, “Where is our ?” whereupon I am
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XIV. THE RETRIBUTION
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XVI. “KEEP ON GRINDING, AND YOU’LL HAVE FLOUR”
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