"You talk of shedding tears, but it only makes me wonder ... fills me with astonishment!..."
He shrugged his shoulders, and rubbed his forehead, looking all the time at his wife with a puzzled expression.
Suddenly she began to talk eagerly and rapidly, striving to prove to him that mankind indeed deserved to be treated pitifully. Leaning forward, and looking tenderly into his face, she talked long and earnestly, about mankind, and the heavy burden of life it was called on to bear. He, however, only watched her, thinking to himself—"Just see how they can talk when they like, these women! Where on earth did she get all these words from?"
"You, yourself, also have a pitiful heart," she said. "I have heard you say you would like to destroy the cholera if only you had strength enough. Why then should you want to destroy it? According to what you have just said it does more good than harm. As far as you are concerned it does you no harm—quite the reverse.... Have you not been better off since we had cholera in the town?"
Orloff burst out laughing.
"That's true! that's true! It has certainly been all the better for me that the cholera came t Devil take it! The people are dying all around like flies, and I am all the better off because of it!... Ha!... ha!... ha!... That's the way of the world! It's enough to drive one mad to think about it!"
He rose from his chair, and went off to his work; still laughing. As he went along the corridor the thought crossed his mind again, that it was certainly a pity no one could hear Matrona's wise talk.
"How cleverly she said it all!... Though she is only a woman, yet she speaks quite sensibly!"
He started work, still under the impression of this pleasant thought; though the moans and groans of the patients fell on his ears the moment he entered the ward.
Every day the world of his sensations enlarged, and at the same time there grew within him the need of expressing what he thought and felt It is true he was not yet in a position to formulate all that was going on within him, and give clear expression to it, for the greater part of his impressions and thoughts he was not yet able to understand himself. More especially was he pained by the consciousness that he was not able, like other people; to rejoice over the good fortune and well-being of others. There grew within him, however, daily the desire to do something great, something out of the common, and thereby attract the attention of the whole world. His position in the Infirmary seemed to him to be an awkward one; he felt himself to be between two stools. The doctors and medical students stood above him, the attendants beneath him; he was not the equal of either. A feeling of loneliness came over him, and it appeared to him as if fate, in order to make a sport of him, had tom him away from his own place, and were whirling him about like a feather in the wind. He felt pity for himself, and sought out his wife in order that she might console him. This he did often against his will, for he had an idea that his candid outspokenness might lower him in the eyes of Matrona. But he continued to confide in her all the same. He would go to her usually in a dark, angry or cynical mood, and would leave her feeling consoled and comforted. Matrona knew just the right words to use. She had no great command of language, and her words, to some, might have appeared weak, but they were inspired by conviction, and Grigori observed with surprise that she obtained more and more influence over his inner life, that his thoughts turned increasingly towards her, and that he felt more constantly the need of opening his heart to her.