l. I
began to wonder whether he had taken to drink--which God forbid!--or had
conceived a passion for cards; or whether something in the line of a
weakness for women had happened to him. In youth love-longings act
powerfully,--well, and in such a large city as Moscow bad examples and
occasions are not lacking. But no; nothing of that sort was discernible.
His drink was kvas[22] and water; he never looked at the female sex--and
had no intercourse with people in general. And what was most bitter of
all to me, he did not have his former confidence in me; a sort of
indifference had made its appearance, just as though everything belonging
to him had become loathsome to him. I turned the conversation on the
sciences, on the university, but even there could get no real answer. He
went to church, but he was not devoid of peculiarities there also;
everywhere he was grim and scowling, but in church he seemed always
to be grinning.

After this fashion he spent six weeks with me, then went back to Moscow.
From Moscow he wrote to me twice, and it seemed to me, from his letters,
as though he were regaining his sensibilities. But picture to yourself
my surprise, my dear sir! Suddenly, in the very middle of the winter,
just before the Christmas holidays, he presents himself before me!

"How didst thou get here? How is this? What's the matter? I know that
thou hast no vacation at this time.--Dost thou come from Moscow?"--I
ask.

"Yes."

"And how about ... the university?"

"I have left the university."

"Thou hast left it?"

"Just so."

"For good?"

"For good."

"But art thou ill, pray, Yakoff?"

"No, father," says he, "I am not ill; but just don't bother me and
question me, dear father, or I will go away from here--and that's the
last thou wilt ever see of me."

Yakoff tells me that he is not ill, but his face is such that I am
fairly frightened. It was dreadful, dark--not human, actually!--His
cheeks were drawn, his cheek-bones projected, he was mere skin and bone;
his voice sounded as though it proceeded from a barrel ... while his
eyes.... O Lord and Master! what eyes!--menacing, wild, incessantly
darting from side to side, and it was impossible to catch them; his
brows were knit, his lips seemed to be twisted on one side.... What had
happened to my Joseph Most Fair,[23] to my quiet lad? I cannot
comprehend it. "Can he have gone crazy?" I say to myself. He roams about
like a spectre by night, he does not sleep,--an