"Listen," Vera was saying, "I don't want you to meet my husband, but you must get into the old princess's good graces. You can do it easily, you can do anything you want to. We will meet only here…"

"Nowhere else?"

She blushed and went on: "You know I am your slave, I never could resist you. And I'll be punished for it. Because you'll stop loving me! At least, I want to save my reputation... not because of myself, you know that very well. But please don't torment me as you used to with idle doubts and pretended indifference. I may die soon, for I feel I am growing weaker day by day... but in spite of that I can't think of the future, I think only of you. You men don't understand the rapture one can find in a glance or a touch of hands, but, I swear to you, the sound of your voice fills me with a deep, strange bliss that no passionate kisses ever could replace."

In the meantime Princess Mary had stopped singing. A chorus of praise broke out around her. I walked up to her last and said something very casual about her voice.

She pouted and made a mock curtsy.

"It is all the more flattering to me," she said, "because you weren't listening at all. But perhaps you don't care for music?"

"On the contrary, I do, particularly after dinner."

"Grushnitsky is right when he says that your tastes are most prosaic. Even I can see that you appreciate music from the point of view of the gourmand. . ."

"You are wrong again. I am no gourmand and I have a poor digestion. Nevertheless music after dinner lulls you to sleep and a nap after dinner is good for you; hence I like music in the medical sense. In the evening, on the contrary, it excites my nerves too much, and I find myself either too depressed or too gay. Both are tedious when there is no good reason either to mope or to rejoice. Besides, to be downcast in company is ridiculous and excessive gaiety is in bad taste... ."

She walked off without waiting for me to finish and sat down beside Grushnitsky. The two engaged in a sentimental conversation: the princess seemed to respond to his wise sayings in an absent-minded and rather inept way, though she simulated interest, and he glanced at her every now and then with a look of surprise as if trying to determine the cause of the inner turmoil reflected in her troubled eyes.

But I have unraveled your secret, my charming princess, so beware! You wish to repay me in the same currency by wounding my vanity-but you won't succeed! And if you declare war on me, I'll be ruthless.

Several times in the course of the evening I deliberately tried to join in their conversation, but she countered my remarks rather drily, and I finally withdrew pretending resentment. The princess was triumphant, and so was Grushnitsky. Triumph, my friends, while you may... you have not long to triumph! What will happen? I have a presentiment... Upon meeting a woman I have always been able to tell for certain whether she'll fall in love with me or not...

The remainder of the evening I spent with Vera, and we talked our fill about the past. I really don't know why she loves me so. Especially since she's the only woman who has ever completely understood me with all my petty frailties and evil passions... Can evil indeed be so attractive?

I left together with Grushnitsky. Outside he took my arm and after a long silence said: "Well, what do you say?"

I wanted to tell him, "You are a fool," but restrained myself and merely shrugged my shoulders.

All these days I have not once departed from my systematic plan. The young princess is beginning to enjoy my conversation. I told her some of the strange incidents of my life, and she's beginning to regard me as an unusual person. I mock at everything under the sun, emotions in particular, and this is beginning to frighten her. She doesn't dare to launch upon sentimental debates with Grushnitsky when I'm present, and already on several occasions she's replied to his efforts with an ironical smile. Yet each time Grushnitsky approaches her, I assume a humble air and leave the two alone. The first time I did so she was glad, or tried to look pleased; the second time she lost patience with me, and the third time with Grushnitsky.

"You have very little pride!" she told me yesterday. "Why do you think I prefer Grushnitsky's society?"

I replied that I was sacrificing my own pleasure for a friend's happiness.

"And my pleasure as well," she added.

I looked at her intently and put on a serious face. Then for the rest of the day I didn't talk to her... She was thoughtful last night, and even more wistful this morning at the spring. As I walked up to her, she was hardly listening to Grushnitsky who, I believe, was going on and on about the beauties of nature, but as soon as she saw me she began to laugh heartily (rather irrelevantly), pretending not to notice me. I went away a little distance and watched her out of the corner of my eye. She turned away from her companion and yawned twice. There is no doubt about it: she's bored with Grushnitsky. But I won't speak to her for another two days.

I often ask myself why it is that I so persistently seek to win the love of a young girl whom I do not wish to seduce and whom I will never marry. Why this feminine coquetry? Vera loves me better than Princess Mary ever will. Were she an unconquerable beauty, the difficulty of the undertaking might serve as an inducement...

But far from it! Hence this is not the restless craving for love that torments us in the early years of our youth and casts us from one woman to another until we meet one who cannot endure us; this is the beginning of our constancy-the true unending passion that may mathematically be represented by a line extending from a point into space, the secret of whose endlessness consists merely in the impossibility of attaining the goal, that is, the end.

What is it that spurs me on? Envy of Grushnitsky? Poor man! He doesn't deserve it. Or is it the result of that malicious but indomitable impulse to annihilate the blissful illusions of a fellow man in order to have the petty satisfaction of telling him when in desperation he asks what he should believe: "My friend, the same thing happened to me! Yet as you see, I dine, sup and sleep well, and, I hope, will be able to die without any fuss or tears!"

And yet to possess a young soul that has barely developed is a source of very deep delight. It is like a flower whose richest perfume goes out to meet the first ray of the sun. One must pluck it at that very moment and, after inhaling its perfume to one's heart's content, discard it along the wayside on the chance that someone will pick it up. I sense in myself that insatiable avidity that devours everything in its path. And I regard the sufferings and joys of others merely in relation to myself, as food to sustain my spiritual strength. Passion is no longer capable of robbing me of my sanity. My ambition has been crushed by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in a new form, for ambition is nothing but lust for power, and my greatest pleasure I derive from subordinating everything around me to my will. Is it not both the first token of power and its supreme triumph to inspire in others the emotions of love, devotion and fear? Is it not the sweetest fare for our vanity to be the cause of pain or joy for someone without the least claim thereto? And what is happiness? Pride gratified. Could I consider myself better and more powerful than anyone else in the world, I would be happy. Were everybody to love me, I'd find in myself unending wellsprings of love. Evil begets evil; one's first suffering awakens a realization of the pleasure of tormenting another. The idea of evil cannot take root in the mind of man without his desiring to apply it in practice. Someone has said that ideas are organic entities: their very birth imparts them form, and this form is action. He in whose brain the most ideas are born is more active than others, and because of this a genius shackled to an office desk must either die or lose his mind, just as a man with a powerful body who leads a modest, sedentary life dies from an apoplectic stroke.