years after his insult to me, and my challenge would have been a
ridiculous anachronism, in spite of all the ingenuity of my letter in
disguising and explaining away the anachronism. But, thank God (to this
day I thank the Almighty with tears in my eyes) I did not send the letter to
him. Cold shivers run down my back when I think of what might have
happened if I had sent it.
And all at once I revenged myself in the simplest way, by a stroke of
genius! A brilliant thought suddenly dawned upon me. Sometimes on
holidays I used to stroll along the sunny side of the Nevsky about four
o'clock in the afternoon. Though it was hardly a stroll so much as a series of
innumerable miseries, humiliations and resentments; but no doubt that
was just what I wanted. I used to wriggle along in a most unseemly fashion,
like an eel, continually moving aside to make way for generals, for officers
of the guards and the hussars, or for ladies. At such minutes there used to be
a convulsive twinge at my heart, and I used to feel hot all down my back at
the mere thought of the wretchedness of my attire, of the wretchedness and
abjectness of my little scurrying figure. This was a regular martyrdom, a
continual, intolerable humiliation at the thought, which passed into an
incessant and direct sensation, that I was a mere fly in the eyes of all this
world, a nasty, disgusting fly--more intelligent, more highly developed,
more refined in feeling than any of them, of course--but a fly that was
continually making way for everyone, insulted and injured by everyone.
Why I inflicted this torture upon myself, why I went to the Nevsky, I don't
know. I felt simply drawn there at every possible opportunity.
Already then I began to experience a rush of the enjoyment of which I
spoke in the first chapter. After my affair with the officer I felt even more
drawn there than before: it was on the Nevsky that I met him most frequently,
<<BackPagesChoose a page of the bookForward>>