LITMIR.BIZ

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he cried, “now I have quite recovered. The thunder has not extinguished my intellectual capacities; it has left, it is true, -a deafness in my right ear, due perhaps not so much to the thunder as to my fall down the steps, but what of that? And what does anyone care about Foma’s right ear!”

      Foma threw such a wealth of mournful irony into these last words, and accompanied them with such a pathetic smile, that the groans of the deeply-moved ladies resounded again. They all looked with reproach, and some also with fury, at my uncle, who was beginning to be crushed by so unanimous an expression of public opinion. Mizintchikov, with a curse, walked away to the window. Bahtcheyev kept prodding me more and more violently with his elbow; he could hardly stand still.

      “Now listen to my whole confession!’’ yelled Foma, turning upon all a proud and determined gaze, “and at the same time decide the fate of poor Opiskin! Yegor Ilyitch, for a long time past I have been watching over you, watching over you with a tremor at my heart, and I have seen everything, everything, while you were not suspecting that I was watching over you. Colonel! Perhaps I was mistaken, but I knew your egotism, your boundless vanity, your phenomenal sensuality, and who would blame me for trembling for the honour of an innocent young person?”

      “Loma, ioma! … you need not enlarge on it, Foma,” cried my uncle, looking uneasily at Nastenka’s suffering face.

      “What troubled me was not so much the innocence and trustfulness of the person in question as her inexperience,” Foma went on, as though he had not heard my uncle’s warning. “I saw that a tender feeling was blossoming in her heart, like a rose in spring, and I could not help recalling Petrarch’s saying, ‘Innocence is often but a hair’s breadth from ruin.’ I sighed, I groaned, and though I was ready to shed the last drop ot my blood to safeguard that pure pearl of maidenhood, who could answer to me for you, Yegor Ilyitch? I know the unbridled violence of your passions, and knowing that you are ready to sacrifice everything for their momentary gratification, I was plunged in the depths of alarm and apprehension for the fate of the noblest of girls. …”

      “Foma! Could you really imagine such a thing?” cried my uncle.

      “With a shudder at my heart I watched over you. And if you want to know what I have been suffering, go to Shakespeare: in his Hamlet he describes the state of my soul. I became suspicious and terrible. In my anxiety, in indignation, I saw everything in the blackest colour and that not fhe ‘black colour’ sung of in the well-known song — I can assure you. That was the cause of the desire you saw in me to remove her far away from this house: I wanted to save her; that was why you have seen me of late irritable and bitter against the whole human race. Oh! who will reconcile me with humanity? I feel that I was perhaps over-exacting and unjust to your guests, to your nephew, to Mr. Bahtcheyev, when I expected from him a knowledge of astronomy; but who will blame me for my state of mind at the time? Going to Shakespeare again, I may say that the future looked to my imagination like a gloomy gulf of unfathomed depth with a crocodile lying at the bottom. I felt that it was my duty to prevent disaster, that I was destined, appointed for that purpose — and what happened? You did not understand the generous impulse of my heart, and have been repaying me all this time with anger, with ingratitude, with jeers, with slights …”

      “Foma! If that is so … ot course I feel ..,” cried my uncle, in extreme agitation.

      “If you really do feel it, Colonel, be so kind as to listen and not interrupt me. I will continue. My whole fault lay in the fact, therefore, that I was too much troubled over the fate and the happiness of this child; for compared with you she is a child. It was the truest love for humanity that turned me all this time into a fiend of wrath and suspicion. I was ready to fall on people and tear them to pieces. And you know, Yegor Ilyitch, all your actions, as though of design, made me more suspicious every hour, and confirmed my fears. You know, Yegor Ilyitch, when you showered your gold upon me yesterday to drive me from you, I thought: ‘He is driving away in my person his conscience, so as more easily to perpetrate this wickedness. …”

      “Foma, Foma, can you have thought that yesterday?” my uncle cried out with horror. “Merciful heavens! and I hadn’t the faintest suspicion …”

      “Heaven itself inspired those suspicions,” Foma went on. “And judge for yourself: what could I suppose when chance led me that very evening to that fatal seat in the garden? What were my feelings at that moment — oh, my God! — when I saw with my own eyes that all my suspicions were justified in the most flagrant manner? But I had still one hope left, a faint one indeed, but still it was a hope, and — this morning you shattered it into dust and ashes! You sent me your letter, you alleged your intention to marry; you besought me not to make it public… . ‘But why?’ I wondered. ‘Why did he write now after I have found him out and not before? Why did he not run to me before, happy and comely — for love adorns the countenance — why did he not fly to my embrace, why did he not weep upon my bosom tears of infinite bliss and tell me all about it, all about it?’ Or am I a crocodile who would have devoured you instead of giving you good advice? Or am I some loathsome beetle who would only have bitten you and not assisted your happiness? ‘Am I his friend or the most repulsive of insects?’ that was the question I asked myself this morning. ‘With what object,’ I asked myself, ‘with what object did he invite his nephew from Petersburg and try to betroth him to this girl, if not to deceive us and his fnvolotts nephew, and meanwhile in secret to persist in his criminal designs?’ Yes, Colonel, if anyone confirmed in me the thought that your mutual love was criminal, it was you yourself and you only! What is more, you have behaved like a criminal to this young girl; for through your tactlessness and selfish mistrustfulness you have exposed her, a modest and high-principled girl, to slander and odious suspicions.”

      My uncle stood silent with bowed head, Foma’s eloquence was evidently getting the better of his convictions, and he was beginning to regard himself as a complete criminal. Madame la Générale and her followers were listening to Foma in awestruck silence, while Miss Perepelitsyn looked with spiteful triumph at poor Nastenka.

      “Overwhelmed, nervously exhausted and shattered/’ Foma went on, “I locked myself in this morning and prayed, and the Lord showed me the right path. At last I decided: for the last time and publicly to put you to the test. I may have gone about it with too much fervour, I may have given way too much to my indignation; but foi my well-meaning effort, you flung me out of the window! As I fell out of the window I thought to myself: ‘This is how virtue is rewarded all the world over.’ Then I struck the earth, and I scarcely remember what happened to me afterwauK”

      Shrieks and groans interrupted Foma Fomitth at this tragic recollection. Madame la Générale made a dash at him with a bottle of Malaga in her hand, which she had just snatched from Praskovya Uymitchna, but Foma majestically waved aside the hand and the Malaga and Madame la Générale herself.

      “Let me alone,” he shouted, “I must finish. Wnat happened after my fall — I don’t know. I know one thing only, that now, wet through and on the verge of fever, I am standing here to secure your mutual happiness. Colonel! From many signs which I do not wish now to partieularise, I am convinced at last that your love was pure and even exalted, though at the same time criminally distrustful. Beaten, humiliated, suspected of insulting a young lady in defence of whose honour I am ready like a medieval knight to shed the last drop of my blood, I have made up my mind to show you how Foma Opiskin revenges an injury. Give me your hand, Colonel!”

      “With pleasure, Foma!” cried my uncle. “And since you have now fully cleared the honour of this young lady from every aspersion, why … of course … here is my hand, Foma, together with my regrets. …”

      And my uncle gave him his hand warmly, not yet suspecting what was to come of it.

      “Give me your hand too,” went on Foma in a faint voice, parting the crowd of ladies who were pressing round him and appealing to Nastenka.

      Nastenka was taken aback and confused, she looked timidly at Foma.

      “Approach, approach, my sweet child! It is essential for your happiness,” Foma added caressingly, still holding my uncle’s hand in his.

      “What’s he up to now?” said Mizintchikov.

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