“Is it possible that you have no friends, to whom you would like to send a last farewell?”...
I shook my head.
“Is there, really, not one woman in the world to whom you would like to leave some token in remembrance?”...
“Do you want me to reveal my soul to you, doctor?” I answered... “You see, I have outlived the years when people die with the name of the beloved on their lips and bequeathing to a friend a lock of pomaded—or unpomaded—hair. When I think that death may be near, I think of myself alone; others do not even do as much. The friends who to-morrow will forget me or, worse, will utter goodness knows what falsehoods about me; the women who, while embracing another, will laugh at me in order not to arouse his jealousy of the deceased—let them go! Out of the storm of life I have borne away only a few ideas—and not one feeling. For a long time now I have been living, not with my heart, but with my head. I weigh, analyse my own passions and actions with severe curiosity, but without sympathy. There are two personalities within me: one lives—in the complete sense of the word—the other reflects and judges him; the first, it may be, in an hour’s time, will take farewell of you and the world for ever, and the second—the second?... Look, doctor, do you see those three black figures on the cliff, to the right? They are our antagonists, I suppose?”...
We pushed on.
In the bushes at the foot of the cliff three horses were tethered; we tethered ours there too, and then we clambered up the narrow path to the ledge on which Grushnitski was awaiting us in company with the captain of dragoons and his other second, whom they called Ivan Ignatevich. His surname I never heard.
“We have been expecting you for quite a long time,” said the captain of dragoons, with an ironical smile.
I drew out my watch and showed him the time.
He apologized, saying that his watch was fast.
There was an embarrassing silence for a few moments. At length the doctor interrupted it.