第54章

I imagine that you do not like him much; but after all, in keeping you under lock and key, he is only obeying orders.""And I tell you he is happy in making me suffer.The wicked man has done but one good action in his whole life,--that was in saving you from the fury of Vorace.In consideration of this good action, I no longer tell him what I think of him, but I think it none the less, and it seems to me very singular that you should ask me to love him.""Excuse me, I do not ask you to love him, but to believe that, at heart, he loves you."At these words he became so furious, that I hastened to change the subject.

"Don't you sometimes regret Vorace?"

"It was his duty to guard me against bugaboos, but I have had no fear of them, since one of them has become my friend.

"I am superstitious, I believe in ghosts; but I defy them to approach my bed hereafter."He blushed and did not finish the sentence.Poor child! the painful misery of his destiny, far from quenching his imagination, has excited it to intoxication, and I am not surprised that he shapes friendship to the romantic turn of his thoughts.

"You're mistaken," I said to him, "it is not my image, it is botany which guards you against spirits.There is no better remedy for foolish terrors than the study of nature.""Always the pedant," he exclaimed, throwing his cap in my face.

July 23rd.

Vladimir Paulitch appeared yesterday at the end of dinner.The presence of this man occasions me an indefinable uneasiness.His coldness freezes me, and then his dogmatic tone; his smile of mocking politeness.He always knows in advance what you are going to say to him, and listens to you out of politeness.This Vladimir has the ironical intolerance characteristic of materialists.As to his professional ability there can be no doubt.The Count has entirely recovered; he is better than I have ever seen him.What vigor, what activity of mind! What confounds me is, that in our discussions, I come to see in him, in about the course of an hour, only the historian, the superior mind, the scholar; I forget entirely the man of the iron boots, the somnambulist, the persecutor of my Stephane, and I yield myself unreservedly to the charm of his conversation.Oh, men of letters! men of letters!

July 27th.

He said to me:

"I do not possess happiness yet; but it seems to me at moments, that I see it, that I touch it."July 28th.

To-day, Doctor Vladimir appeared again at dessert.He aimed a few sarcasms at me; I suspect that I do not please him much.Will his affection for the Count go so far as to make him jealous of the esteem which he evinces for me? We talked philosophy.He exerted himself to prove that everything is matter.I stung him to the quick in representing to him that all his arguments were found in d'Holbach.I endeavored to show him that matter itself is spiritual, that even the stones believe in spirit.Instead of answering, he beat about the bush.Otherwise, he spoke well, that is to say, he expressed his gross ideas with ingenuity.What he lacks most, is humor.He has something of the saturnine in his mind; his ideas have a leaden tint.The Count, prompted by good taste, saw that he held out too obstinately, without taking into account that Kostia Petrovitch himself detests the absolute as much in the negative as in the affirmative.He thanked me with a smile when I said to the doctor, in order to put an end to the discussion:

"Sir, no one could display more mind in denying its existence;" and the Count added, alluding to the doctor's meagerness of person:

"My dear Vladimir, if you deny the mind what will be left of you?"July 30th.

Yesterday, to my great chagrin, I found him in tears.

"Let this inexorable father beat me," said he, "provided he tells me his secret.I prefer bad treatment to his silence.When we were at Martinique he had attacks of such violence that they made my hair stand on end.I would gladly have sunk into the earth; Itrembled lest he should tear me in pieces; but he at least thought about me.He looked at me; I existed for him, and in spite of my terrors I felt less unhappy than now.Do not think it is my captivity which grieves me most.At my age it is certainly very hard and very humiliating to be kept out of sight and under lock and key; but I should be very easily resigned to that if it were my father who opened and closed the door.But alas! I am of so little consequence in his eyes that he deputes the task of tyrannizing over me to a serf.And then, during the brief moments when he constrains himself to submit to my presence--what a severe aspect, what threatening brows, what grim silence! Consider, too, the fact that he has never entered this tower; no, has never had the curiosity to know how my prison was made.Yet he cannot be ignorant of the fact that I lodge above a precipice.He knows, too, that once the idea of suicide took possession of me, and he has not even thought of having this window barred.""That is because he did not consider your attempt a serious one.""Then how he despises me!"

I represented to him that his father was sick, that he was the victim of a nervous disorder which deranges the most robust organizations, that Doctor Vladimir guaranteed his cure, that once recovered, his temper would change, and that then would be the moment to besiege this citadel thus rendered more vulnerable.

"We must not, however, be precipitate," said I, "let us have courage and patience."I reasoned so well that he finally overcame his despondency.When I see him yield to my reasoning, I have a strong impulse to embrace him; but it is a pleasure I deny myself, as I know by experience what it costs him.A moment afterwards, I don't know why, he spoke to me of his sister who died at Martinique.

"Why did God take her from me?"

"Alas!" said I, "she could not have supported the life to which you have been condemned.""And why not, pray?"