rse, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if
he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his
whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three
thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging
in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the charm of his social
position and his sister's and mother's position too. Above all, vanity,
pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities
too.... I am not blaming him, please don't think it; besides, it's not
my business. A special little theory came in too--a theory of a
sort--dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons,
that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their
superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that
is. It's all right as a theory, _une theorie comme une autre_. Napoleon
attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a
great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have
overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied
that he was a genius too--that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He
has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he
could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law,
and so he is not a man of genius. And that's humiliating for a young man
of any pride, in our day especially...."

"But remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?"

"Ah, Avdotya Romanovna, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was
ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas,
Avdotya Romanovna, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to
the fantastic, the chaotic. But it's a misfortune to be broad without
a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on
this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why,
you used to reproach me with breadth! Who knows, perhaps we were talking
at the very time when he was lying here thinking over his plan. There
are no sacred traditions amongst us, especially in the educated class,
Avdotya Romanovna. At the best someone will make them up somehow for
himself out of books or from some old chronicle. But those are for the
most part the learned and all old fogeys, so that it would be almost
ill-bred in a man of society. You know my opinions in general, though. I
never blame anyone. I do nothing at all,