f the crime, and to get off by the back way, and I
should have gained infinitely more than I could have imagined
possible when I took up the part of a footman. I thought that I
could hardly get a better opportunity. But instead of acting, I
looked quite unconcernedly, first at his bald patch and then at his
fur, and calmly meditated on this man's relation to his only son,
and on the fact that people spoiled by power and wealth probably
don't want to die. . . .

"Have you been long in my son's service?" he asked, writing a large
hand on the paper.

"Three months, your High Excellency."

He finished the letter and stood up. I still had time. I urged
myself on and clenched my fists, trying to wring out of my soul
some trace of my former hatred; I recalled what a passionate,
implacable, obstinate hate I had felt for him only a little while
before. . . . But it is difficult to strike a match against a
crumbling stone. The sad old face and the cold glitter of his stars
roused in me nothing but petty, cheap, unnecessary thoughts of the
transitoriness of everything earthly, of the nearness of death. . . .

"Good-day, brother," said the old man. He put on his cap and went
out.

There could be no doubt about it: I had undergone a change; I had
become different. To convince myself, I began to recall the past,
but at once I felt uneasy, as though I had accidentally peeped into
a dark, damp corner. I remembered my comrades and friends, and my
first thought was how I should blush in confusion if ever I met any
of them. What was I now? What had I to think of and to do? Where
was I to go? What was I living for?

I could make nothing of it. I only knew one thing--that I must
make haste to pack my things and be off. Before the old man's visit
my position as a flunkey had a meaning; now it was absurd. Tears
dropped into my open portmanteau; I felt insufferably sad; but how
I longed to live! I was ready to embrace and include in my short
life every possibility open to man. I wanted to speak, to read, and
to hammer in some big factory, and to stand on watch, and to plough.
I yearned for the Nevsky Prospect, for the sea and the fields--
for every place to which my imagination travelled. When Zinaida
Fyodorovna came in, I rushed to open the door for her, and with
peculiar tenderness took off her fur coat. The last time!

We had two other visitors that day besides the old man. In the
evening when it was quite dark, Gruzin came to fet