Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

scrape he blamed his father, not himself. He said:⁠—

“My father has accustomed me to a luxurious life, and then he began to blame me for wanting money. If at first he had given me what I needed without scolding, then with what he gave me afterward I should have regulated my life, and should not have needed much, but as he has always given me too little, I have had to apply to usurers, and they have extorted from me everything I had, and so nothing is left for me to live on, as a rich young man should, and I am put to shame before my companions; and yet my father can’t seem to understand this at all. He has forgotten that he was young once himself. He got me into this position, and now, if he does not give me what I ask for, I shall kill myself.”

The mother, who spoiled her son, went to his father. The father called the young man, and began to upbraid both him and his mother. The son answered the father rudely. The father struck him. The son seized his father’s arm. The father called to his slaves and ordered them to take the young man and lock him up.

When he was left alone, Julius cursed his father and the day he was born. His own death or his father’s presented itself before him as the only way of escape from the position in which he found himself.

Julius’ mother suffered more than he did. She did not comprehend who was really to blame in all this. She felt nothing but pity for her beloved child. She went to her husband and begged him to forgive the youth, but he refused to listen to her, and began to reproach her for having spoiled her son; she blamed him, and the upshot of it was the husband beat his wife. But the wife made no account of the beating. She went to the son and persuaded him to go and beg his father’s forgiveness and yield to his wishes. She promised him, if he would do so, she would give him the money he needed, and not let his father know.

The son consented, and then the mother went to her husband and urged him to pardon the young man. The father for a long time stormed at his wife and son, but at last decided to pardon him, but only on the condition that he should abandon his dissipated life and marry a rich tradesman’s daughter, whose father wished her to enter into an engagement with him.

“He shall have money from me and his wife’s dowry,” said the young man’s father, “and then let him enter upon a regular life. If he will agree to fulfil my wishes I will pardon him. But otherwise I will give him nothing, and at his first offense I will deliver him over into the hands of the prefect.”

Julius agreed to everything, and was released. He promised to marry and to abandon his wicked ways, but he had no intention of doing so; and life at home now became a perfect hell for him: his father did not speak to him, and was quarreling about him with his mother, who wept.

On the next day his mother called him to her room and secretly gave him a precious stone which she had got from her husband.

“Go, sell it; not here, but in another city, and with the money do what you need, and I will manage to conceal the loss for a time, and if it is discovered I will blame it on one of the slaves.”

Julius’ heart was touched by his mother’s words. He was horror-struck at what she had done; and he left home, but did not take the precious stone with him. He himself did not know where or wherefore he was going. He kept going on and on, away from the city, feeling the necessity of remaining alone, and thinking over all that had happened to him and was before him. As he kept going farther and farther away, he came entirely beyond the city limits and entered a grove sacred to the goddess Diana. Coming to a solitary spot, he began to think.

The first thought that occurred to him was to ask help of the goddess. But he no longer believed in his gods, and so he knew that no help was to be expected from them. But if no help came from them, then who would help him? As he thought over his position, it seemed to him too terrible. His soul was all confusion and gloom. But there was help for it. He had to appeal to his conscience, and he began to examine into his life and his acts. And both seemed to him wicked, and, more than all, stupid. Why was he tormenting himself so? He had few pleasures, and many trials and tribulations!

The principal thing was that he felt himself all alone. Hitherto he had had a beloved mother, a father; he certainly had friends; now he had no one. No one loved him. He was a burden to everyone. He had succeeded in bringing trouble into all their lives: he had caused his mother to quarrel with his father; he had wasted his father’s substance, gathered with so much labor all his life long; he had been a dangerous and disagreeable rival to his friends. There could be no doubt about it⁠—all would find it a relief if he were dead.

As he reviewed his life, he remembered Pamphilius, and his last meeting with him, and how Pamphilius had invited him to come there, to the Christians. And it occurred to him not to return home, but to go straight to the Christians, and remain with them.

“But was his position so desperate?” he asked himself, and again he proceeded to review what had happened, and again he was horror-struck because no one seemed to love him, and he loved