And from that time until my banishment, whenever my father thought that I had been drinking wine and that my face was flushed, he invariably attributed it to Madeira in the soup I had taken.
§9
On the present occasion, I hurried off to the scene of our revelry and found Ogaryóv and Ketcher still there. The latter looked rather the worse for wear; he was finding fault with some of last night’s arrangements and was severely critical. Ogaryóv was trying a hair of the dog that bit him, though there was little left to drink after the party, and that little was now diminished by the descent of my man Peter, who was by this time in full glory, singing a song and drumming on the kitchen table downstairs.
§10
When I recall those days, I cannot remember a single incident among our set such as might weigh upon a man’s conscience and cause shame in recollection; and this is true of every one of the group without a single exception.
Of course, there were Platonic lovers among us, and disenchanted youths of sixteen. Vadim even wrote a play, in order to set forth the “terrible experience of a broken heart.” The play began thus—A garden, with a house in the distance; there are lights in the windows. The stage is empty. A storm is blowing. The garden gate clinks and bangs in the wind.
“Are the garden and the gate your only dramatis personae?” I asked him. He was rather offended. “What nonsense you talk!” he said; “it is no joking matter but an actual experience. But if you take it so, I won’t read any more.” But he did, none the less.
There were also love affairs which were by no means Platonic, but there were none of those low intrigues which ruin the woman concerned and debase the man; there were no “kept mistresses”; that disgusting phrase did not even exist. Cool, safe, prosaic profligacy of the bourgeois fashion, profligacy by contract, was unknown to our group.
If it is said that I approve of the worst form of profligacy, in which a woman sells herself for the occasion, I say that it is you, not I, who approve of it—not you in particular but people in general. That custom rests so securely on the present constitution of society that it needs no patronage of mine.
Our interest in general questions and our social ideals saved us; and a keen interest in scientific and artistic matters helped us too. These preoccupations had a purifying effect, just as lighted paper makes grease-spots vanish. I have kept some of Ogaryóv’s letters written at that time; and they give a good idea of what was mostly in our minds. For example, he writes to me on June 7, 1833: