I absolutely decline to describe my torments during the evening
following upon that luckless duel. My vanity suffered indescribably. It
was not my conscience that tortured me; the consciousness of my
imbecility crushed me. 'I have given myself the last decisive blow by
my own act!' I kept repeating, as I strode up and down my room. 'The
prince, wounded by me, and forgiving me... Yes, Liza is now his. Now
nothing can save her, nothing can hold her back on the edge of the
abyss.' I knew very well that our duel could not be kept secret, in
spite of the prince's words; in any case, it could not remain a secret
for Liza.
'The prince is not such a fool,' I murmured in a frenzy of rage, 'as
not to profit by it.'... But, meanwhile, I was mistaken. The whole town
knew of the duel and of its real cause next day, of course. But the
prince had not blabbed of it; on the contrary, when, with his head
bandaged and an explanation ready, he made his appearance before Liza,
she had already heard everything.... Whether Bizmyonkov had betrayed
me, or the news had reached her by other channels, I cannot say.
Though, indeed, can anything ever be concealed in a little town? You
can fancy how Liza received him, how all the family of the Ozhogins
received him! As for me, I suddenly became an object of universal
indignation and loathing, a monster, a jealous bloodthirsty madman. My
few acquaintances shunned me as if I were a leper. The authorities of
the town promptly addressed the prince, with a proposal to punish me in
a severe and befitting manner. Nothing but the persistent and urgent
entreaties of the prince himself averted the calamity that menaced me.
That man was fated to annihilate me in every way. By his generosity he
had shut, as it were, a coffin-lid down upon me. It's needless to say
that the Ozhogins' doors were at once closed against me. Kirilla
Matveitch even sent me back a bit of pencil I had left in his house. In
reality, he, of all people, had no reason to be angry with me. My
'insane' (that was the expression current in the town) jealousy had
pointed out, defined, so to speak, the relations of the prince to Liza.
Both the old Ozhogins themselves and their fellow-citizens began to
look on him almost as betrothed to her. This could not, as a fact, have
been quite to his liking. But he was greatly attracted by Liza; and
meanwhile, he had not at that time attained his aims. With all the
adroitness of a clever man of the world, he took advantage of his new
position, and promptly entered, as they say, into the spirit of his new
part....
But I!... For myself, for my future, I renounced all hopes, at that
time. When suffering reaches the point of making our whole being creak
and groan, like an overloaded cart, it ought to cease to be ridiculous
... but no! laughter not only accompanies tears to the end, to
exhaustion, to the impossibility of shedding more--it even rings and
echoes, where the tongue is dumb, and complaint itself is dead.... And
so, as in the first place I don't intend to expose myself as ridiculous,
even to myself, and secondly as I am fearfully tired, I will put off the
continuation, and please God the conclusion, of my story till
tomorrow....
_March 29.