me. I fell in love with fashionable beauties and was loved by them, but
my imagination and egoism alone were aroused; my heart remained empty...
I began to read, to study--but sciences also became utterly wearisome to
me. I saw that neither fame nor happiness depends on them in the
least, because the happiest people are the uneducated, and fame is good
fortune, to attain which you have only to be smart. Then I grew bored...
Soon afterwards I was transferred to the Caucasus; and that was
the happiest time of my life. I hoped that under the bullets of the
Chechenes boredom could not exist--a vain hope! In a month I grew so
accustomed to the buzzing of the bullets and to the proximity of death
that, to tell the truth, I paid more attention to the gnats--and I
became more bored than ever, because I had lost what was almost my last
hope. When I saw Bela in my own house; when, for the first time, I held
her on my knee and kissed her black locks, I, fool that I was, thought
that she was an angel sent to me by sympathetic fate... Again I was
mistaken; the love of a savage is little better than that of your lady
of quality, the barbaric ignorance and simplicity of the one weary you
as much as the coquetry of the other. I am not saying that I do not love
her still; I am grateful to her for a few fairly sweet moments; I would
give my life for her--only I am bored with her... Whether I am a fool or
a villain I know not; but this is certain, I am also most deserving of
pity--perhaps more than she. My soul has been spoiled by the world,
my imagination is unquiet, my heart insatiate. To me everything is of
little moment. I become as easily accustomed to grief as to joy, and my
life grows emptier day by day. One expedient only is left to me--travel.

"'As soon as I can, I shall set off--but not to Europe. Heaven forfend!
I shall go to America, to Arabia, to India--perchance I shall die
somewhere on the way. At any rate, I am convinced that, thanks to storms
and bad roads, that last consolation will not quickly be exhausted!'

"For a long time he went on speaking thus, and his words have remained
stamped upon my memory, because it was the first time that I had heard
such things from a man of five-and-twenty--and Heaven grant it may
be the last. Isn't it astonishing? Tell me, please," continued the
staff-captain, appealing to me. "You used to live in the Capital, I
think, and that not so very long ago. Is it possible that the young men