"Forgive me, Sekleteya, I beg," said I.
"What!" she cried, "I owe thee thanks, not forgiveness."
"Thanks?" I asked, "how and for what?"
"I'll tell thee. Thou art this sort of man. Thou wouldst think nothing of casting me adrift in the wide world, I put myself wholly into thy hands, and thou mightest have robbed me as thou didst like, and I would not have prevented thee—and all this thou knewest. But thou hast repaid confidence with confidence, and I know how much of mine thou hast consumed in these days—about four thousand in all. Another in thy place," she said, "would have gobbled up the whole pot and emptied the saucer on the hearth as well."
That's what she said. Well, she was a kind-hearted old thing, that I will say.
I gave her a parting kiss, and with a light heart and five thousand roubles in my pocket—no doubt she had taken these also into consideration—I appeared at St. Petersburg. I lived like a baron, went to the theatre, made acquaintances, sometimes from sheer ennui played on the boards, but I played much more frequently at cards. Cards are a capital occupation. You sit down at a table, and in the course of a single night you die and rise again ten times over. It is exciting to know that within the next few moments your last roubles may dribble away, and you yourself may step down into the street a beggar, with nothing but suicide or highway robbery before you. It is also good to know that your neighbour or partner has, with reference to his last rouble, exactly the same ticklish and cruelly poignant sensation as you yourself have had not so very long before him. To see red and pale excited faces, tremulous with the terror of being beaten and with the greed of gain, to look at them and win their cards away, one after the other—ah! how strangely that excites the nerves and the blood!... You win a card—and it is just as if you stole away from the man's heart a bit of warm flesh with the nerves and blood.... That's being happy if you like! This constant risk of falling is the finest thing in life, and the finest thought in life was well expressed by the poet:
"Fierce contest is a rapturous bliss,
E'en on the marge of the abyss."
Yes, there is rapture in it, and, in general, it is only possible to feel happy when you are risking something. The more risk—the larger and fuller the life. Have you ever happened to starve? It has been my luck not to eat anything for twice twenty-four hours at a stretch.... And look you, when the belly begins to prey upon itself, when you feel your vitals drying up and dying with hunger—then, for the sake of a bit of bread, you are ready to kill a man, a child; you are ready for anything, and this capacity for crime has its own peculiar poetry, it is a very precious sensation, and, having once experienced it, you have a great respect for yourself.
However, let us continue our varied story. As it is, it is spinning itself out as long as a funeral procession, in which I occupy the place of the dear departed. Ugh! what foolish comparisons do crowd into my head. Yet it is true, I suppose, though it is none the wiser, after all, for being that. Apropos, Mr. Balzac has a very true and timely expression—"It is as stupid as a fact." Stupid? Well, let it pass. What do I care about the difference between stupid and wise? Well, as I was saying, I lived at St. Petersburg. It was a good sort of town, but it would be as good again if one half of its inhabitants were drowned in that tiresome sea which is always flop-flopping around it. I lived a merry, easy life at St Petersburg for two or three years, under the protection of a lady who had taken a great fancy to me; but then, in order to oblige a friend, I seriously offended the police, and they asked me whither I would like to go out of St. Petersburg. I suggested Tsarskoe-Selo. "No," they said, "you must go further." At last we effected a compromise, and Tula was fixed upon. "Very well, let it be Tula then," said they. "You may go even further," they said, "if you like, but you must not appear here till three years have expired. Your documents we will keep by us in the meantime as a memento of you, and permit us to offer you in exchange a transit certificate to Tula. Try within four-and-twenty hours to take your flight from hence." Well, thought I, what am I to do now? One must obey one's superiors, how can one help doing so?
Well, there I was. I sold all my property to my landlady for a mere song, and posted off to my protectress. She had given orders that I was not to be admitted, the minx! I then went on to two or three others of my acquaintances—they met me as if I were a leper. I spat upon them all, and repaired to a holy place I knew of, there to spend the last hours of my life at Petersburg. At six o'clock in the morning I issued from thence without a farthing in my pocket—I had played at cards and was stony broke! So thoroughly had a high official cleared me out that I was even lost in admiration at his talent, without feeling the least humiliation at having been beaten. What was I to do next? I went, why I know not, to the Moscow Station, entered and mingled with the crowd. I saw the train to Moscow come in. I got into a carriage and sat down. We passed two or three stations, and then they drove me out in triumph. They wanted to report me, asked who I was; but when I showed them my testimonial they left me in peace. "Go on further," said they, and I went. Ten versts I traversed, I grew tired, and felt that I must have something to eat. There was a sentry-box, belonging to a sentry of a line regiment. I went up to him: "Give me a bit of bread, dear little friend," I said. He looked at me. He gave me not only bread but a large cup of milk. I passed the night with him, for the first time in my life in vagabond fashion, in the open air, on straw, in the field behind the sentry-box. I awoke next day, the sun was shining, the air like champagne, green things all round, and the birds singing. I took some more bread from the sentry and went on further.