P.S.--To conceal my sorrow I would have written this letter half
jestingly; but, the faculty of jesting has not been given me. My one
desire, however, is to afford you pleasure. Soon I will come and see
you, dearest. Without fail I will come and see you.
August 11th.
O Barbara Alexievna, I am undone--we are both of us undone! Both of
us are lost beyond recall! Everything is ruined--my reputation, my
self-respect, all that I have in the world! And you as much as I. Never
shall we retrieve what we have lost. I--I have brought you to this pass,
for I have become an outcast, my darling. Everywhere I am laughed at
and despised. Even my landlady has taken to abusing me. Today she
overwhelmed me with shrill reproaches, and abased me to the level of a
hearth-brush. And last night, when I was in Rataziaev’s rooms, one of
his friends began to read a scribbled note which I had written to
you, and then inadvertently pulled out of my pocket. Oh beloved, what
laughter there arose at the recital! How those scoundrels mocked and
derided you and myself! I walked up to them and accused Rataziaev of
breaking faith. I said that he had played the traitor. But he only
replied that I had been the betrayer in the case, by indulging in
various amours. “You have kept them very dark though, Mr. Lovelace!”
said he--and now I am known everywhere by this name of “Lovelace.” They
know EVERYTHING about us, my darling, EVERYTHING--both about you and
your affairs and about myself; and when today I was for sending Phaldoni
to the bakeshop for something or other, he refused to go, saying that
it was not his business. “But you MUST go,” said I. “I will not,” he
replied. “You have not paid my mistress what you owe her, so I am not
bound to run your errands.” At such an insult from a raw peasant I lost
my temper, and called him a fool; to which he retorted in a similar
vein. Upon this I thought that he must be drunk, and told him so;
whereupon he replied: “WHAT say you that I am? Suppose you yourself go
and sober up, for I know that the other day you went to visit a woman,
and that you got drunk with her on two grivenniks.” To such a pass have
things come! I feel ashamed to be seen alive. I am, as it were, a man
proclaimed; I am in a worse plight even than a tramp who has lost his
passport. How misfortunes are heaping themselves upon me! I am lost--I
am lost for ever!