Leo Tolstoy: The Complete Novels and Novellas. Leo Tolstoy

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      ‘Ah well, I will speak out all the same... I must and will be frank with you because I am fond of you... Of course you love her — I always thought so — don’t you?’

      ‘Yes,’ answered his friend, smiling still more gently.

      ‘And perhaps... ‘

      ‘Please sir, I have orders to put out the candles,’ said the sleepy attendant, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation and wondering why gentlefolk always talk about one and the same thing. ‘To whom shall I make out the bill? To you, sir?’ he added, knowing whom to address and turning to the tall man.

      ‘To me,’ replied the tall man. ‘How much?’

      ‘Twenty-six rubles.’

      The tall man considered for a moment, but said nothing and put the bill in his pocket.

      The other two continued their talk.

      ‘Good-bye, you are a capital fellow!’ said the short plain man with the mild eyes. Tears filled the eyes of both. They stepped into the porch.

      ‘Oh, by the by,’ said the traveller, turning with a blush to the tall man, ‘will you settle Chevalier’s bill and write and let me know?’

      ‘All right, all right!’ said the tall man, pulling on his gloves. ‘How I envy you!’ he added quite unexpectedly when they were out in the porch.

      The traveller got into his sledge, wrapped his coat about him, and said: ‘Well then, come along!’ He even moved a little to make room in the sledge for the man who said he envied him — his voice trembled.

      ‘Good-bye, Mitya! I hope that with God’s help you... ‘ said the tall one. But his wish was that the other would go away quickly, and so he could not finish the sentence.

      They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, ‘Good-bye,’ and a voice cried, ‘Ready,’ and the coachman touched up the horses.

      ‘Hy, Elisar!’ One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at the reins. Then the stiffened carriage-wheels rolled squeaking over the frozen snow.

      ‘A fine fellow, that Olenin!’ said one of the friends. ‘But what an idea to go to the Caucasus — as a cadet, too! I wouldn’t do it for anything... Are you dining at the club to-morrow?’

      ‘Yes.’

      They separated.

      The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olenin that only travellers starting on a long journey went through those streets. All was dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul was full of memories, love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful feeling.

Chapter 2

      ‘I’m fond of them, very fond!... First-rate fellows!... Fine!’ he kept repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who were the first-rate fellows he was so fond of — was more than he quite knew. Now and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it was so curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy and Vanyusha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: ‘First rate... very fond!’ and once he even said: ‘And how it seizes one... excellent!’ and wondered what made him say it. ‘Dear me, am I drunk?’ he asked himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was not the wine alone that was having this effect on Olenin. He remembered all the words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he believed) addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of hands, glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice saying, ‘Good-bye, Mitya!’ when he was already in the sledge. He remembered his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching significance for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people who had been indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him, seemed to have agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him, before his departure, as people do before confession or death. ‘Perhaps I shall not return from the Caucasus,’ he thought. And he felt that he loved his friends and some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But it was not love for his friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart that he could not repress the meaningless words that seemed to rise of themselves to his lips; nor was it love for a woman (he had never yet been in love) that had brought on this mood. Love for himself, love full of hope — warm young love for all that was good in his own soul (and at that moment it seemed to him that there was nothing but good in it)— compelled him to weep and to mutter incoherent words.

      Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course, never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune and had reached the age of twenty-four without having done anything or even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is termed un jeune homme.

      At the age of eighteen he was free — as only rich young Russians in the ‘forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as they did not limit his freedom. As soon as he had yielded to any influence and became conscious of its leading on to labour and struggle, he instinctively hastened to free himself from the feeling or activity into which he was being drawn and to regain his freedom. In this way he experimented with society-life, the civil service, farming, music — to which at one time he intended to devote his life — and even with the love of women in which he did not believe. He meditated on the use to which he should devote that power of youth which is granted to man only once in a lifetime: that force which gives a man the power of making himself, or even — as it seemed to him — of making the universe, into anything he wishes: should it be to art, to science, to love of woman, or to practical activities? It is true that some people are devoid of this impulse, and on entering life at once place their necks under the first yoke that offers itself and honestly labour under it for the rest of their lives. But Olenin was too strongly conscious of the presence of that all-powerful God of Youth — of that capacity to be entirely transformed into an aspiration or idea — the capacity to wish and to do — to throw oneself headlong into a bottomless abyss without knowing why or wherefore. He bore this consciousness within himself, was proud of it and, without knowing it, was happy in that consciousness. Up to that time he had loved only himself, and could not help loving himself, for he expected nothing but good of himself and had not yet had time to be disillusioned. On leaving Moscow he was in that happy state of mind in which a young man, conscious of past mistakes, suddenly says to himself, ‘That was not the real thing.’ All that had gone before was accidental and unimportant. Till then he had not really tried to live, but now with his departure from Moscow a new life was beginning — a life in which there would be no mistakes, no remorse, and certainly nothing but happiness.

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