“Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful¹ history,— yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than the outcome.”

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and began:—

“To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly², and what ideas I had of conjugal³ life. I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,— that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable⁴ morality.

“The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this, I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical⁵ conjugal life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual⁶ love was to be incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless⁷. I thought thus, and all the time I marvelled⁸ at the nobility of my projects.

“At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends, and before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of special

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