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world, and he boasted of living on through you on this earth where I had no place to lay my head on. She will marry some day, he had saidand your eyes were trustful. And do you know what I said to myself? I shall steal his sisters soul from her. When we met that first morning in the gardens, and you spoke to me confidingly in the generosity of your spirit, I was thinking, Yes, he himself by talking of her trustful eyes has delivered her into my hands! If you could have looked then into my heart, you would have cried aloud with terror and disgust. Perhaps no one will believe the baseness of such an intention to be possible. Its certain that, when we parted that morning, I gloated over it. I brooded upon the best way. The old man you introduced me to insisted on walking with me. I dont know who he is. He talked of you, of your lonely, helpless state, and every word of that friend of yours was egging me on to the unpardonable sin of stealing a soul. Could he have been the devil himself in the shape of an old Englishman? Natalia Victorovna, I was possessed! I returned to look at you every day, and drink in your presence the poison of my infamous intention. But I foresaw difficulties. Then Sophia Antonovna, of whom I was not thinkingI had forgotten her existenceappears suddenly with that tale from St. Petersburg. The only thing needed to make me safea trusted revolutionist for ever. It was as if Ziemianitch had hanged himself to help me on to further crime. The strength of falsehood seemed irresistible. These people stood doomed by the folly and the illusion that was in themthey being themselves the slaves of lies. Natalia Victorovna, I embraced the might of falsehood, I exulted in itI gave myself up to it for a time. Who could have resisted! You yourself were the prize of it. I sat alone in my room, planning a life, the very thought of which makes me shudder now, like a believer who had been tempted to an atrocious sacrilege. But I brooded ardently over its images. The only thing was that there seemed to be no air in it. And also I was afraid of your mother. I never knew mine. Ive never known any kind of love. There is something in the mere word. Of you, I was not afraidforgive me for telling you this. No, not of you. You were truth itself. You could not suspect me. As to your mother, you yourself feared already that her mind had given way from grief. Who could believe anything against me? Had not Ziemianitch hanged himself from remorse? I said to myself, Lets put it to the test, and be done with it once for all. I trembled when I went in; but your mother hardly listened to what I was saying to her, and, in a little while, seemed to have forgotten my very existence. I sat looking at her. There was no longer anything between you and me. You were defencelessand soon, very soon, you would be alone. I thought of you. Defenceless. For days you have talked with meopening your heart. I remembered the shadow of your eyelashes over your grey trustful eyes. And your pure forehead! It is low like the forehead of statuescalm, unstained. It was as if your pure brow bore a light which fell on me, searched my heart and saved me from ignominy, from ultimate undoing. And it saved you too. Pardon my presumption. But there was that in your glances which seemed to tell me that you Your light! your truth! I felt that I must tell you that I had ended by loving you. And to tell you that I must first confess. Confess, go outand perish. Suddenly you stood before me! You alone in all the world to whom I must confess. You fascinated meyou have freed me from the blindness of anger and hatethe truth shining in you drew the truth out of me. Now I have done it; and as I write here, I am in the depths of anguish, but there is air to breathe at lastair! And, by the by, that old man sprang up from somewhere as I was speaking to you, and raged at me like a disappointed devil. I suffer horribly, but I am not in despair. There is only one more thing to do for me. After thatif they let meI shall go away and bury myself in obscure misery. In giving Victor Haldin up, it was myself, after all, whom I have betrayed most basely. You must believe what I say now, you cant refuse to believe this. Most basely. It is through you that I came to feel this so deeply. After all, it is they and not I who have the right on their side! theirs is the strength of invisible powers. So be it. Only dont be deceived, Natalia Victorovna, I am not converted. Have I then the soul of a slave? No! I am independent and therefore perdition is my lot. On these words, he stopped writing, shut the book, and wrapped it in the black veil he had carried off. He then ransacked the drawers for paper and string, made up a parcel which he addressed to Miss Haldin, Boulevard des Philosophes, and then flung the pen away from him into a distant corner. |
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