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

murdered my own father; I caused the death of hundreds of thousands of men in wars of my making. I am a base libertine, a mean wretch, who believed in other people’s flatteries, and who considered myself the saviour of Europe, a benefactor of mankind, a model of perfection, un heureux hasard, as I once said to Madame Stahl. But in spite of it all, the Lord in His mercy did not quite forsake me, and the ever watchful voice of conscience gave me no rest. It seemed to me that everything and everybody were wrong; I only was right, and everyone failed to see it. I turned to God. At first, with Fotey’s help, I prayed to the God of the Orthodox Church; then I turned to the Catholic; then to the Protestant with Parrot; then to the god of the Mystics with Krudener; but I only prayed that others might see and be filled with admiration of me. I used to despise everybody, yet the opinion of the very people I despised was the one thing of importance to me⁠—the only thing for which I lived, and which guided all my actions. It was terrible to be left alone. Still more terrible to be alone with her⁠—with my wife. Consumptive, narrow-minded, deceitful, capricious, spiteful, hypocritical, she did more to poison my life than anything else. Nous étions censés to spend our new lune de miel, a very hell clothed in decent garb, too horrible to think of.

I felt particularly wretched on one occasion. I had received a letter from Arakcheev the night before, in which he informed me about the assassination of his mistress, and spoke of his utter grief and despair. Strange to say, in spite of his constant subtle flattery, I liked him. It was not altogether flattery, perhaps, but a real doglike devotion, which began even in my father’s time, when we both took the oath of allegiance to him unknown to my grandmother. This devotion of his made me love him⁠—if I loved any man at that time⁠—although the word love can hardly be used in connection with such a monster. What drew me to him particularly was the fact that not only had he no hand in my father’s death, as so many others had who became hateful to me afterwards as accomplices in my crime, but he had been devoted alike to him and to me. However, of this later.

Strange to say, the murder of the beautiful, wicked Nastasia⁠—she was a sensuous beauty⁠—had the effect of arousing all my desires so that I could not sleep the whole night. The fact that my consumptive wife, whom I loathed, was lying in the room next but one to me, coupled with thoughts of Mary Narishkin, who had thrown me over for an insignificant diplomat, vexed and tormented me still more. Both my father and I seemed to have been doomed to be jealous of the Gagarins. But I was carried away again. I could not sleep the whole of that night. With the first signs of dawn I pulled up my blind, slipped on a white dressing-gown, and rang for my valet. Everyone was still asleep. I dressed, put on a civilian overcoat and cap, and went out past the sentinels into the street.

It was a cool, autumn morning, the sun was just rising over the sea. I felt revived in the fresh air, and my depressing thoughts left me. I turned my steps towards the sea. The first rays of the rising sun were dancing about on its surface. I had barely reached the green-coloured house at the corner when I was attracted by sounds of drumming and piping from the square. I listened for a moment, and guessed that a punishment was going on, that someone was running the gauntlet. I had frequently sanctioned this form of punishment, but had never seen it before. All at once, as though at the instigation of Satan himself, a picture rose up in my mind of the beautiful Nastasia who had been murdered, and of the soldier’s body as it was being lashed with sticks, the two mingling together in one maddening sensation. I tried to recall this punishment in the Semijonov regiment, amongst the military settlers, hundreds of whom had been flogged to death in this way, and was suddenly seized by an overwhelming desire to witness this sight. As I was in civilian garb, it was quite possible for me to do so. The beating of the drum and the sound of the pipes grew louder as I drew nearer the square. Being shortsighted, I could not see very well without my glasses, but I could just make out a tall figure with a white back, marching along between two rows of soldiers. When I joined the crowd standing behind, I got out my glasses, and could see everything that was going on distinctly. A tall man with his bare arms tied to a bayonet, his bare back⁠—on which the blood was beginning to show itself⁠—slightly bent, was walking down an avenue of soldiers armed with sticks. This man was the image of myself⁠—my double! The same height, stooping shoulders, bald head, the same kind of whiskers without a moustache, the same cheekbones, mouth, and blue eyes. But there was no smile on those lips that opened and contorted with pain at the blows, no tender, caressing expression in those eyes that protruded horribly, now closing, now opening.

I recognised him at once. It was Strumensky, a corporal in the third company of the Semijonov regiment, well known to the guards by his likeness to me. They used to call him Alexander II in fun. I knew that he had been transferred to the garrison, together with some other rebels, and had most likely tried to escape or something of the sort, and having been caught, was undergoing punishment. I confirmed this afterwards. I stood as