Part 11 (1/2)

What stupidity!” Still he remained silent.

”Well, father Mitri Mikolayevitch, what are you going to say about my boys'

proposal?” asked the old man.

”I should advise you absolutely not to send them away, but to have them stay at home, and work,” said Nekhliudof, suddenly collecting his wits.

”You know what I have proposed to you. Go in with me, and buy some of the crown woods and some more land”--

”But how are we going to get money to buy it, your excellency?” he asked, interrupting the prince.

”Why, it isn't very much wood, only two hundred rubles' worth,” replied Nekhliudof.

The old man gave an indignant laugh.

”Very good, if that's all. Why not buy it?” said he.

”Haven't you money enough?” asked the prince reproachfully.

”_Okh!_ Sir, your excellency!” replied the old man, with grief expressed in his tone, looking apprehensively toward the door. ”Only enough to feed my family, not enough to buy woodland.”

”But you know you have money,--what do you do with it?” insisted Nekhliudof.

The old man suddenly fell into a terrible state of excitement: his eyes flashed, his shoulders began to twitch.

”Wicked men may say all sorts of things about me,” he muttered in a trembling voice. ”But, so may G.o.d be my witness!” he said, growing more and more animated, and turning his eyes toward the ikon, ”may my eyes crack, may I perish with all my family, if I have any thing more than the fifteen silver rubles which Ilyushka brought home; and we have to pay the poll-tax, you yourself know that. And we built the hut”--

”Well, well, all right,” said the prince, rising from the bench. ”Good-by, friends.”[46]

[Footnote 46: _Proshchate_, _khozyaeva_.]

XVIII.

”My G.o.d! my G.o.d!” was Nekhliudof's mental exclamation, as with long strides he hastened home through the shady alleys of his weed-grown garden, and, absent-mindedly, snapped off the leaves and branches which fell in his way.

”Is it possible that my dreams about the ends and duties of my life are all idle nonsense? Why is it hard for me, and mournful, as though I were dissatisfied with myself because I imagined that having once begun this course I should constantly experience the fulness of the morally pleasant feeling which I had when, for the first time, these thoughts came to me?”

And with extraordinary vividness and distinctness he saw in his imagination that happy moment which he had experienced a year before.

He had arisen very early, before every one else in the house, and feeling painfully those secret, indescribable impulses of youth, he had gone aimlessly out into the garden, and from there into the woods; and, amid the energetic but tranquil nature pulsing with the new life of Maytime, he had wandered long alone, without thought, and suffering from the exuberance of some feeling, and not finding any expression for it.

Then, with all the allurement of what is unknown, his youthful imagination brought up before him the voluptuous form of a woman; and it seemed to him that was the object of his indescribable longing. But another, deeper sentiment said, _Not that_, and impelled him to search and be disturbed in mind.

Without thought or desire, as always happens after extra activity, he lay on his back under a tree, and looked at the diaphanous morning-clouds drifting over him across the deep, endless sky.

Suddenly, without any reason, the tears sprang to his eyes, and G.o.d knows in what way the thought came to him with perfect clearness, filling all his soul and giving him intense delight,--the thought that love and righteousness are the same as truth and enjoyment, and that there is only one truth, and only one possible happiness, in the world.

The deeper feeling this time did not say, _Not that_. He sat up, and began to verify this thought.

”That is it, that is it,” said he to himself, in a sort of ecstasy, measuring all his former convictions, all the phenomena of his life, by the truth just discovered to him, and as it seemed to him absolutely new.

”What stupidity! All that I knew, all that I believed in, all that I loved,” he had said to himself. ”Love is self-denying; this is the only true happiness independent of chance,” he had said over and over again, smiling and waving his hands.