is one to refrain from giving utterance to the brave,
self-sufficient impulses of youth? Only long afterwards does one
remember and regret them, even as one incontinently plucks a flower
before its blooming, and subsequently finds it lying crushed and
withered on the ground.

The very next morning I, who had just been telling my friend Dimitri
that money corrupts all human relations, and had (as we have seen)
squandered the whole of my cash on pictures and Turkish pipes, accepted
a loan of twenty roubles which he suggested should pay for my travelling
expenses into the country, and remained a long while thereafter in his
debt!

XXII. INTIMATE CONVERSATION WITH MY FRIEND

THIS conversation of ours took place in a phaeton on the way to
Kuntsevo. Dimitri had invited me in the morning to go with him to his
mother's, and had called for me after luncheon; the idea being that
I should spend the evening, and perhaps also pass the night, at the
country-house where his family lived. Only when we had left the city and
exchanged its grimy streets and the unbearably deafening clatter of
its pavements for the open vista of fields and the subdued grinding of
carriage-wheels on a dusty high road (while the sweet spring air
and prospect enveloped us on every side) did I awake from the new
impressions and sensations of freedom into which the past two days had
plunged me. Dimitri was in his kind and sociable mood. That is to say,
he was neither frowning nor blinking nervously nor straightening his
neck in his collar. For my own part, I was congratulating myself on
those noble sentiments which I have expressed above, in the belief that
they had led him to overlook my shameful encounter with Kolpikoff, and
to refrain from despising me for it. Thus we talked together on many
an intimate subject which even a friend seldom mentions to a friend. He
told me about his family whose acquaintance I had not yet made--about
his mother, his aunt, and his sister, as also about her whom Woloda and
Dubkoff believed to be his "flame," and always spoke of as "the lady
with the chestnut locks." Of his mother he spoke with a certain cold and
formal commendation, as though to forestall any further mention of
her; his aunt he extolled enthusiastically, though with a touch of
condescension in his tone; his sister he scarcely mentioned at all, as
though averse to doing so in my presence; but on the subject of "the
lady with the chestnut locks" (whose re