'What do you mean to do now, Alexander?' I asked.
He gazed at me in bewilderment, as though marvelling at the absurdity of
my question. And indeed what was there to do?
'You simply must go to them, though,' I began. 'You're bound to
ascertain how it happened; there is, possibly, a crime concealed. One
may expect anything of those people.... It is all to be thoroughly
investigated. Remember the statement in her manuscript, the pension was
to cease on her marriage, but in event of her death it was to pass to
Ratsch. In any case, one must render her the last duty, pay homage to
her remains!'
I talked to Fustov like a preceptor, like an elder brother. In the midst
of all that horror, grief, bewilderment, a sort of unconscious feeling
of superiority over Fustov had suddenly come to the surface in me....
Whether from seeing him crushed by the consciousness of his fault,
distracted, shattered, whether that a misfortune befalling a man almost
always humiliates him, lowers him in the opinion of others, 'you can't
be much,' is felt, 'if you hadn't the wit to come off better than that!'
God knows! Any way, Fustov seemed to me almost like a child, and I felt
pity for him, and saw the necessity of severity. I held out a helping
hand to him, stooping down to him from above. Only a woman's sympathy is
free from condescension.
But Fustov continued to gaze with wild and stupid eyes at me--my
authoritative tone obviously had no effect on him, and to my second
question, 'You're going to them, I suppose?' he replied--
'No, I'm not going.'
'What do you mean, really? Don't you want to ascertain for yourself, to
investigate, how, and what? Perhaps, she has left a letter... a document
of some sort....'
Fustov shook his head.
'I can't go there,' he said. 'That's what I came to you for, to ask you
to go... for me... I can't... I can't....'
Fustov suddenly sat down to the table, hid his face in both hands, and
sobbed bitterly.
'Alas, alas!' he kept repeating through his tears; 'alas, poor girl...
poor girl... I loved... I loved her... alas!'
I stood near him, and I am bound to confess, not the slightest sympathy
was excited in me by those incontestably sincere sobs. I simply
marvelled that Fustov could cry _like that_, and it seemed to me
that _now_ I knew what a small person he was, and that I should, in
his place, have acted quite differently. What's one to make of it? If
Fustov had remained quite unmoved, I should perhaps have hated him, have
conceived an aversion for him, but he would not have sunk in my
esteem.... He would have kept his prestige. Don Juan would have remained
Don Juan! Very late in life, and only after many experiences, does a man
learn, at the sight of a fellow-creature's real failing or weakness, to
sympathise with him, and help him without a secret self-congratulation
at his own virtue and strength, but on the contrary, with every humility
and comprehension of the naturalness, almost the inevitableness, of sin.