clerks, discharged military
men, beggars of the higher class, and drunkards of all sorts--that he
visited their filthy families, spent days and nights in dark slums and
all sorts of low haunts, that he had sunk very low, that he was in rags,
and that apparently he liked it. He did not ask his mother for money,
he had his own little estate--once the property of his father, General
Stavrogin, which yielded at least some revenue, and which, it was
reported, he had let to a German from Saxony. At last his mother
besought him to come to her, and "Prince Harry" made his appearance
in our town. I had never set eyes him before, but now I got a very
distinct impression of him. He was a very handsome young man of
five-and-twenty, and I must own I was impressed by him. I had expected
to see a dirty ragamuffin, sodden with drink and debauchery. He was on
the contrary, the most elegant gentleman I had ever met, extremely well
dressed, with an air and manner only to be found in a man accustomed to
culture and refinement. I was not the only person surprised. It was a
surprise to all the townspeople to whom, of course, young Stavrogin's
whole biography was well known in its minutest details, though one could
not imagine how they had got hold of them, and, what was still more
surprising, half of their stories about him turned out to be true.

All our ladies were wild over the new visitor. They were sharply divided
into two parties, one of which adored him while the other half regarded
him with a hatred that was almost blood-thirsty: but both were crazy
about him. Some of them were particularly fascinated by the idea that he
had perhaps a fateful secret hidden in his soul; others were positively
delighted at the fact that he was a murderer. It appeared too that
he had had a very good education and was indeed a man of considerable
culture. No great acquirements were needed, of course, to astonish us.
But he could judge also of very interesting everyday affairs, and, what
was of the utmost value, he judged of them with remarkable good sense. I
must mention as a peculiar fact that almost from the first day we all of
us thought him a very sensible fellow. He was not very talkative, he was
elegant without exaggeration, surprisingly modest, and at the same time
bold and self-reliant, as none of us were. Our dandies gazed at him with
envy, and were completely eclipsed by him. His face, too, impressed me.
His hair was of a peculiarly intense blac