University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX

"'LISTEN, Maksim Maksimych,' said Pechorin. 'Mine is an unfortunate disposition; whether it is the result of my upbringing or whether it is innate — I know not. I only know this, that if I am the cause of unhappiness in others I myself am no less unhappy. Of course, that is a poor consolation to them — only the fact remains that such is the case. In my early youth, from the moment I ceased to be under the guardianship of my relations, I began madly to enjoy all the pleasures which money could buy — and, of course, such pleasures became irksome to me. Then I launched out into the world of fashion — and that, too, soon palled upon me. I fell in love with fashionable beauties and was loved by them, but my imagination and egoism alone were aroused; my heart remained empty. . . I began to read, to study — but sciences also became utterly wearisome to me. I saw that neither fame nor happiness depends on them in the least, because the happiest

people are the uneducated, and fame is good fortune, to attain which you have only to be smart. Then I grew bored. . . Soon afterwards I was transferred to the Caucasus; and that was the happiest time of my life. I hoped that under the bullets of the Chechenes boredom could not exist — a vain hope! In a month I grew so accustomed to the buzzing of the bullets and to the proximity of death that, to tell the truth, I paid more attention to the gnats — and I became more bored than ever, because I had lost what was almost my last hope. When I saw Bèla in my own house; when, for the first time, I held her on my knee and kissed her black locks, I, fool that I was, thought that she was an angel sent to me by sympathetic fate. . . Again I was mistaken; the love of a savage is little better than that of your lady of quality, the barbaric ignorance and simplicity of the one weary you as much as the coquetry of the other. I am not saying that I do not love her still; I am grateful to her for a few fairly sweet moments; I would give my life for her — only I am bored with her. . . Whether I am a fool or a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of pity — perhaps more than she. My soul has been spoiled by the world, my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate. To me everything is of little moment. I become as easily accustomed to grief as to joy, and my life grows emptier day by day. One expedient only is left to me — travel.

"'As soon as I can, I shall set off — but not to Europe. Heaven forfend! I shall go to America, to Arabia, to India — perchance I shall die somewhere on the way. At any rate, I am convinced that, thanks to storms and bad roads, that last consolation will not quickly be exhausted!'

"For a long time he went on speaking thus, and his words have remained stamped upon my memory, because it was the first time that I had heard such things from a man of five-and-twenty — and Heaven grant it may be the last. Isn't it astonishing? Tell me, please," continued the staff-captain, appealing to me. "You used to live in the Capital, I think, and that not so very long ago. Is it possible that the young men there are all like that?"

I replied that there were a good many people who used the same sort of language, that, probably, there might even be some who spoke in all sincerity; that disillusionment, moreover, like all other vogues, having had its beginning in the higher strata of society, had descended to the

lower, where it was being worn threadbare, and that, now, those who were really and truly bored strove to conceal their misfortune as if it were a vice. The staff-captain did not understand these subtleties, shook his head, and smiled slyly.

"Anyhow, I suppose it was the French who introduced the fashion?"

"No, the English."

"Aha, there you are!" he answered. "They always have been arrant drunkards, you know!"

Involuntarily I recalled to mind a certain lady, living in Moscow, who used to maintain that Byron was nothing more nor less than a drunkard. However, the staff-captain's observation was more excusable; in order to abstain from strong drink, he naturally endeavoured to convince himself that all the misfortunes in the world are the result of drunkenness.