At length the first examination--on differentials and integrals--drew
near, but I continued in a vague state which precluded me from forming
any clear idea of what was awaiting me. Every evening, after consorting
with Zuchin and the rest, the thought would occur to me that there was
something in my convictions which I must change--something wrong and
mistaken; yet every morning the daylight would find me again satisfied
to be “comme il faut,” and desirous of no change whatsoever.
Such was the frame of mind in which I attended for the first
examination. I seated myself on the bench where the princes, counts,
and barons always sat, and began talking to them in French, with the not
unnatural result that I never gave another thought to the answers
which I was shortly to return to questions in a subject of which I
knew nothing. I gazed supinely at other students as they went up to be
examined, and even allowed myself to chaff some of them.
“Well, Grap,” I said to Ilinka (who, from our first entry into the
University, had shaken off my influence, had ceased to smile when I
spoke to him, and always remained ill-disposed towards me), “have you
survived the ordeal?”
“Yes,” retorted Ilinka. “Let us see if YOU can do so.”
I smiled contemptuously at the answer, notwithstanding that the doubt
which he had expressed had given me a momentary shock. Once again,
however, indifference overlaid that feeling, and I remained so entirely
absent-minded and supine that, the very moment after I had been examined
(a mere formality for me, as it turned out) I was making a dinner
appointment with Baron Z. When called out with Ikonin, I smoothed
the creases in my uniform, and walked up to the examiner’s table with
perfect sang froid.
True, a slight shiver of apprehension ran down my back when the young
professor--the same one as had examined me for my matriculation--looked
me straight in the face as I reached across to the envelope containing
the tickets. Ikonin, though taking a ticket with the same plunge of his
whole body as he had done at the previous examinations, did at least
return some sort of an answer this time, though a poor one. I, on the
contrary, did just as he had done on the two previous occasions, or even
worse, since I took a second ticket, yet for a second time returned no
answer. The professor looked me compassionately in the face, and said in
a quiet, but determined, voice:
“You will not pass into the second course, Monsieur Irtenieff. You had
better not complete the examinations. The faculty must be weeded out.
The same with you, Monsieur Ikonin.”
Ikonin implored leave to finish the examinations, as a great favour, but
the professor replied that he (Ikonin) was not likely to do in two days
what he had not succeeded in doing in a year, and that he had not the
smallest chance of passing. Ikonin renewed his humble, piteous appeals,
but the professor was inexorable.
“You can go, gentlemen,” he remarked in the same quiet, resolute voice.
I was only too glad to do so, for I felt ashamed of seeming, by my
silent presence, to be joining in Ikonin’s humiliating prayers for
grace. I have no recollection of how I threaded my way through the
students in the hall, nor of what I replied to their questions, nor
of how I passed into the vestibule and departed home. I was offended,
humiliated, and genuinely unhappy.
For three days I never left my room, and saw no one, but found relief
in copious tears. I should have sought a pistol to shoot myself if I had
had the necessary determination for the deed. I thought that Ilinka Grap
would spit in my face when he next met me, and that he would have the
right to do so; that Operoff would rejoice at my misfortune, and tell
every one of it; that Kolpikoff had justly shamed me that night at the
restaurant; that my stupid speeches to Princess Kornikoff had had their
fitting result; and so on, and so on. All the moments in my life which
had been for me most difficult and painful recurred to my mind. I tried
to blame some one for my calamity, and thought that some one must have
done it on purpose--must have conspired a whole intrigue against me.
Next, I murmured against the professors, against my comrades, Woloda,
Dimitri, and Papa (the last for having sent me to the University at
all). Finally, I railed at Providence for ever having let me see such
ignominy. Believing myself ruined for ever in the eyes of all who knew
me, I besought Papa to let me go into the hussars or to the Caucasus.
Naturally, Papa was anything but pleased at what had happened; yet, on
seeing my passionate grief, he comforted me by saying that, though it
was a bad business, it might yet be mended by my transferring to another
faculty. Woloda, who also saw nothing very terrible in my misfortune,
added that at least I should not be put out of countenance in a new
faculty, since I should have new comrades there. As for the ladies of
the household, they neither knew nor cared what either an examination or
a plucking meant, and condoled with me only because they saw me in
such distress. Dimitri came to see me every day, and was very kind and
consolatory throughout; but for that very reason he seemed to me to
have grown colder than before. It always hurt me and made me feel
uncomfortable when he came up to my room and seated himself in silence
beside me, much as a doctor might scat himself by the bedside of an
awkward patient. Sophia Ivanovna and Varenika sent me books for which I
had expressed a wish, as also an invitation to go and see them, but
in that very thoughtfulness of theirs I saw only proud, humiliating
condescension to one who had fallen beyond forgiveness. Although, in
three days’ time, I grew calmer, it was not until we departed for the
country that I left the house, but spent the time in nursing my grief
and wandering, fearful of all the household, through the various rooms.
One evening, as I was sitting deep in thought and listening to Avdotia
playing her waltz, I suddenly leapt to my feet, ran upstairs, got out
the copy-book whereon I had once inscribed “Rules of My Life,” opened
it, and experienced my first moment of repentance and moral resolution.
True, I burst into tears once more, but they were no longer tears of
despair. Pulling myself together, I set about writing out a fresh set
of rules, in the assured conviction that never again would I do a wrong
action, waste a single moment on frivolity, or alter the rules which I
now decided to frame.
How long that moral impulse lasted, what it consisted of, and what new
principles I devised for my moral growth I will relate when speaking of
the ensuing and happier portion of my early manhood.