A Gentle Creature by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I COULDN'T get to sleep. How could I with that pulse pounding away inside my head? I keep wanting to assimilate all that filth. Ah, the filth! The filth I extricated her from back then! I mean she must have realized it, appreciated what I was doing! There were various notions that appealed to me at the time, that I was 41, for instance, while she was barely 16. The thought entranced me, that sense of disparity, most delightful that, most delightful.

For instance, I wanted a wedding à l'anglaise, just the two of us in other words, with only the two witnesses, one of them Lukeriya, then off on the train for Moscow, say (where I had some business to see to, incidentally), and a fortnight or so in a hotel. She was opposed to this, wouldn't countenance it, so I was forced to go and see the aunts, treating them with courtesy as if they were relatives I was taking her away from. I yielded and the aunts received their due. I went so far as to present the creatures with a hundred roubles apiece and promised more, not letting on to her of course, so as not to upset her with the shabbiness of the proceeding. The aunts melted at once. There was an argument about the trousseau: she had nothing, almost literally, but then she didn't want anything. However, I managed to persuade her that to have nothing at all was out of the question, and I bought the trousseau myself-who else was to do it for her? Well, never mind about me. I did manage to get some of my ideas across to her, nevertheless, so that at least she was aware of them. I was in too much of a hurry perhaps. Anyway, the main thing is that right from the start, however much she tried to restrain herself, she would come rushing to me with love, greeting me ecstatically when I came back in the evenings, prattling away (that enchanting prattle of innocence!) about her childhood, or when she was a baby, about her parents' house, her father and mother. But I was quick to pour cold water over all this rapture. That was the point of my idea. I responded to these transports with silence, a benevolent silence, of course … but all the same she soon came to see that we were different and that I was an enigma-the very thing I was striving for! Why, that could have been the precise reason, to construct an enigma I mean, that I embarked on the whole stupid undertaking! First came discipline-it was in a spirit of discipline that I brought her into my house. Anyway, there I was, walking about quite happily, as I devised my complete system. Oh, it took shape by itself, effortlessly. Nor could it have been otherwise. I was forced to devise this system by circumstances beyond my control-why, what on earth am I doing disparaging myself! The system was genuine. No, hear me out, if a man is to be judged, let it be with full possession of the facts … Listen.