f trouble. The
unhappy young man shot himself that very night when he got home. I was by
his side till the very last moment. Those Jesuit confessionals are really
my most delightful diversion at melancholy moments. Here's another
incident that happened only the other day. A little blonde Norman girl of
twenty--a buxom, unsophisticated beauty that would make your mouth
water--comes to an old priest. She bends down and whispers her sin into the
grating. 'Why, my daughter, have you fallen again already?' cries the
priest. 'O Sancta Maria, what do I hear! Not the same man this time, how
long is this going on? Aren't you ashamed!' '_Ah, mon pere_,' answers the
sinner with tears of penitence, '_ca lui fait tant de plaisir, et a moi si
peu de peine!_' Fancy, such an answer! I drew back. It was the cry of
nature, better than innocence itself, if you like. I absolved her sin on
the spot and was turning to go, but I was forced to turn back. I heard the
priest at the grating making an appointment with her for the
evening--though he was an old man hard as flint, he fell in an instant! It
was nature, the truth of nature asserted its rights! What, you are turning
up your nose again? Angry again? I don't know how to please you--"

"Leave me alone, you are beating on my brain like a haunting nightmare,"
Ivan moaned miserably, helpless before his apparition. "I am bored with
you, agonizingly and insufferably. I would give anything to be able to
shake you off!"

"I repeat, moderate your expectations, don't demand of me 'everything
great and noble' and you'll see how well we shall get on," said the
gentleman impressively. "You are really angry with me for not having
appeared to you in a red glow, with thunder and lightning, with scorched
wings, but have shown myself in such a modest form. You are wounded, in
the first place, in your esthetic feelings, and, secondly, in your pride.
How could such a vulgar devil visit such a great man as you! Yes, there is
that romantic strain in you, that was so derided by Byelinsky. I can't
help it, young man, as I got ready to come to you I did think as a joke of
appearing in the figure of a retired general who had served in the
Caucasus, with a star of the Lion and the Sun on my coat. But I was
positively afraid of doing it, for you'd have thrashed me for daring to
pin the Lion and the Sun on my coat, instead of, at least, the Polar Star
or the Sirius. And you keep on saying I am stupid, but, mercy on u