At this period, indeed, my friendship with Dimitri hung by a hair. I had been criticising him too long not to have discovered faults in his character, for it is only in first youth that we love passionately¹ and therefore love only perfect people. As soon as the mists engendered² by love of this kind begin to dissolve, and to be penetrated³ by the clear beams of reason, we see the object of our adoration⁴ in his true shape, and with all his virtues⁵ and failings exposed. Some of those failings strike us with the exaggerated force of the unexpected, and combine with the instinct for novelty and the hope that perfection may yet be found in a fellow-man to induce us not only to feel coldness, but even aversion, towards the late object of our adoration. Consequently, desiring it no longer, we usually cast it from us, and pass onwards to seek fresh perfection. For the circumstance that that was not what occurred with respect to my own relation to Dimitri, I was indebted to his stubborn, punctilious⁶, and more critical than impulsive⁷ attachment⁸ to myself — a tie which I felt ashamed to break. Moreover, our strange vow⁹ of frankness bound us together. We were afraid that, if we parted, we should leave in one another’s power all the incriminatory moral secrets of which we had made mutual¹⁰ confession¹¹. At the same time, our rule of frankness had long ceased to be faithfully observed, but, on the contrary, proved a frequent cause of

分享到：