He possessed everything which was requisite to make him the scourge of
his family.
He had been born healthy, he had been born rich--and during the whole
course of his long life he had remained rich and healthy; he had never
committed a single crime; he had never stumbled into any blunder; he had
not made a single slip of the tongue or mistake.
He was irreproachably honest!... And proud in the consciousness of his
honesty, he crushed every one with it: relatives, friends, and
acquaintances.
His honesty was his capital ... and he exacted usurious interest from
it.
Honesty gave him the right to be pitiless and not to do any good deed
which was not prescribed;--and he was pitiless, and he did no good ...
because good except by decree is not good.
He never troubled himself about any one, except his own very exemplary
self, and he was genuinely indignant if others did not take equally
assiduous care of it!
And, at the same time, he did not consider himself an egoist, and
upbraided and persecuted egoists and egoism more than anything
else!--Of course! Egoism in other people interfered with his own.
Not being conscious of a single failing, he did not understand, he did
not permit, a weakness in any one else. Altogether, he did not
understand anybody or anything, for he was completely surrounded by
himself on all sides, above and below, behind and before.
He did not even understand the meaning of forgiveness. He never had had
occasion to forgive himself.... Then how was he to forgive others?
Before the bar of his own conscience, before the face of his own God,
he, that marvel, that monster of virtue, rolled up his eyes, and in a
firm, clear voice uttered: "Yes; I am a worthy, a moral man!"
He repeated these words on his death-bed, and nothing quivered even then
in his stony heart,--in that heart devoid of a fleck or a crack.
O monstrosity of self-satisfied, inflexible, cheaply-acquired
virtue--thou art almost more repulsive than the undisguised monstrosity
of vice!
December, 1878.