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I hurried home and — marvellous to relate — I was very well satisfied with myself. That’s not the way one talks to women, of course, and to such women too — it would be truer to say such a woman, for I was not considering Tatyana Pavlovna. Perhaps it’s out of the question to say to a woman of that class that one spits on her intrigues¹, but I had said that, and it was just that that I was pleased with. Apart from anything else, I was convinced that by taking this tone I had effaced² all that was ridiculous in my position. But I had not time to think much about that: my mind was full of Kraft. Not that the thought of him distressed³ me very greatly, but yet I was shaken to my inmost depths, and so much so that the ordinary human feeling of pleasure at another man’s misfortune — at his breaking his leg or covering himself with disgrace, at his losing some one dear to him, and so on — even this ordinary feeling of mean satisfaction was completely eclipsed by another absolutely single-hearted feeling, a feeling of sorrow, of compassion⁴ for Kraft — at least I don’t know whether it was compassion, but it was a strong and warm-hearted feeling. And I was glad of this too. It’s marvellous how many irrelevant⁵ ideas can flash through the mind at the very time when one is shattered by some tremendous piece of news, which one would have thought must overpower all other feelings and banish⁶ all extraneous⁷ thoughts, especially petty ones; yet petty ones, on the contrary, obtrude⁸ themselves. I remember, too, that I was gradually overcome by a quite perceptible nervous shudder⁹, which lasted several minutes, in fact all the time I was at home and talking to Versilov.

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