| (I may make up about the step-mother and her lover, and to what extent and degree the boy is involved in that liaison.) |
—Alfonsky has a benefactor—and indeed his chief enemy, because he is a benefactor. All the benefactor’s favours humiliate his pride. The benefactor does not like to live unless he can act the part of benefactor, but for one inch of favour demands three yards of gratitude. Both humiliate themselves, humiliate each other, and hate each other to the verge of illness.
Page 17.
—The extraordinary pride of the boy has the result that he can neither pity nor despise these men.
Nor can he be very indignant with them. He cannot sympathize either with his father or mother. At the exam, he distinguished himself unexpectedly,—he wanted to appear an imbecile. He despises himself greatly because he could not restrain himself and distinguished himself.
—The dangerous and uncommon idea that he is to become an extraordinary man possessed him from his first childhood. He thinks of it incessantly. Cleverness, skill, learning—all these he wishes to acquire as a means to being extraordinary in the future.
Again money seems to him at least not unnecessary, a power useful on all occasions, and he decides on money:
Knowledge appears to him terribly difficult.
Now again it seems to him that even if he is not to be an extraordinary man, but most ordinary, money will give him everything,—i.e. power and the right to despise—