"My cut's with the flat of the sword across the face directly I've disarmed my man."
"And a devilish effective cut too no doubt—when you have disarmed him. But you'd better be making your will and putting your things in order, instead of talking this sort of swaggering rubbish to keep your courage up. You know jolly well that Devinsky means mischief; and what always happens when he does. I don't want to frighten you, but hang it all, you know what he is."
"I'm going to pass the night in prayer," said I: and my visitor laughed boisterously at this.
"If you confess all we've done together, old man, you'll want a full night," he said.
"The prayers are for him, not for me," and at that he laughed more boisterously than before: and he began to talk of a hundred dissipated experiences we had had together. I let him talk freely as it was part of my education, and he rattled on about such a number of shameful things that I was disgusted alike with him and with the beast I was supposed to be. At length to my relief he stopped and asked me to go across to the club for the last night.
I resolved to go, thinking that if I were in his company it would seem appropriate, and I wished to paint in more of the garish colours of my new character among my fellow-officers. I made myself very offensive the moment I was inside the place. I swaggered about the rooms with an assumption of insufferable insolence. Whenever I found a man looking askance at me—and this was frequent enough—I picked him out for some special insult. I spoke freely of the "miracle" that had happened to me, and the change that had been effected. I repeated my coarse silly jest about praying all night for my antagonist: and I so behaved that before I had been in the place an hour, I had laid the foundations of enough quarrels to last me a month if I wished to have a meeting every morning.
"Ah, he knows well enough he's going to die to-morrow morning," said one man in my hearing. "It's no good challenging a man under sentence of death," said another; while a number of others held to Essaieff's view—that I was beside myself with fear, or drink, or both combined. I placed myself at the disposal of every man who had a word to say; but the main answer I received was an expression of thanks that after that night I should trouble them no more.
I left the place, hugely pleased with the result of the night's work. I had created at a stroke a new part for Alexis Petrovitch: and prepared everyone to expect and think nothing of any fresh eccentricities or further change they might observe in me in the future.
I reached my rooms in high spirits, and sat down to overhaul the place for papers, and to learn something more of myself than I at present knew.