ew sticks!' he cried, and looking round, he saw me. Assuming
an air of not knowing me, and with a ferocious, angry frown, he hastily
turned away. I felt so utterly ashamed that I didn't know where to look.
It was as if I had been detected in a disgraceful act. I dropped my
eyes, and quickly hurried home. All the way I had the drums beating and
the fifes whistling in my ears. And I heard the words, 'Brothers, have
mercy on me!' or 'Will you pat him? Will you?' My heart was full of
physical disgust that was almost sickness. So much so that I halted
several times on my way, for I had the feeling that I was going to be
really sick from all the horrors that possessed me at that sight. I do
not remember how I got home and got to bed. But the moment I was about
to fall asleep I heard and saw again all that had happened, and I sprang
up.
"'Evidently he knows something I do not know,' I thought about
the colonel. 'If I knew what he knows I should certainly
grasp--understand--what I have just seen, and it would not cause me such
suffering.'
"But however much I thought about it, I could not understand the thing
that the colonel knew. It was evening before I could get to sleep,
and then only after calling on a friend and drinking till I; was quite
drunk.
"Do you think I had come to the conclusion that the deed I had witnessed
was wicked? Oh, no. Since it was done with such assurance, and was
recognised by every one as indispensable, they doubtless knew something
which I did not know. So I thought, and tried to understand. But no
matter, I could never understand it, then or afterwards. And not being
able to grasp it, I could not enter the service as I had intended. I
don't mean only the military service: I did not enter the Civil Service
either. And so I have been of no use whatever, as you can see."
"Yes, we know how useless you've been," said one of us. "Tell us,
rather, how many people would be of any use at all if it hadn't been for
you."
"Oh, that's utter nonsense," said Ivan Vasilievich, with genuine
annoyance.
"Well; and what about the love affair?
"My love? It decreased from that day. When, as often happened, she
looked dreamy and meditative, I instantly recollected the colonel on the
parade ground, and I felt so awkward and uncomfortable that I began to
see her less frequently. So my love came to naught. Yes; such chances
arise, and they alter and direct a man's whole life," he said in summing
up. "And you
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