The Cossacks | Page 3

away quickly, and so he could
not finish the sentence.
They were silent a moment. Then someone again said, 'Good-bye,' and
a voice cried, 'Ready,' and the coachman touched up the horses.
'Hy, Elisar!' One of the friends called out, and the other coachman and
the sledge-drivers began moving, clicking their tongues and pulling at
the reins. Then the stiffened carriage- wheels rolled squeaking over the
frozen snow.
'A fine fellow, that Olenin!' said one of the friends. 'But what an idea to
go to the Caucasus--as a cadet, too! I wouldn't do it for anything. ... Are
you dining at the club to-morrow?'
'Yes.'
They separated.
The traveller felt warm, his fur coat seemed too hot. He sat on the
bottom of the sledge and unfastened his coat, and the three shaggy
post-horses dragged themselves out of one dark street into another, past
houses he had never before seen. It seemed to Olenin that only

travellers starting on a long journey went through those streets. All was
dark and silent and dull around him, but his soul was full of memories,
love, regrets, and a pleasant tearful feeling.


Chapter II
'I'm fond of them, very fond! ... First-rate fellows! ... Fine!' he kept
repeating, and felt ready to cry. But why he wanted to cry, who were
the first-rate fellows he was so fond of--was more than he quite knew.
Now and then he looked round at some house and wondered why it was
so curiously built; sometimes he began wondering why the post-boy
and Vanyusha, who were so different from himself, sat so near, and
together with him were being jerked about and swayed by the tugs the
side-horses gave at the frozen traces, and again he repeated: 'First rate ...
very fond!' and once he even said: 'And how it seizes one ... excellent!'
and wondered what made him say it. 'Dear me, am I drunk?' he asked
himself. He had had a couple of bottles of wine, but it was not the wine
alone that was having this effect on Olenin. He remembered all the
words of friendship heartily, bashfully, spontaneously (as he believed)
addressed to him on his departure. He remembered the clasp of hands,
glances, the moments of silence, and the sound of a voice saying,
'Good-bye, Mitya!' when he was already in the sledge. He remembered
his own deliberate frankness. And all this had a touching significance
for him. Not only friends and relatives, not only people who had been
indifferent to him, but even those who did not like him, seemed to have
agreed to become fonder of him, or to forgive him, before his departure,
as people do before confession or death. 'Perhaps I shall not return from
the Caucasus,' he thought. And he felt that he loved his friends and
some one besides. He was sorry for himself. But it was not love for his
friends that so stirred and uplifted his heart that he could not repress the
meaningless words that seemed to rise of themselves to his lips; nor
was it love for a woman (he had never yet been in love) that had
brought on this mood. Love for himself, love full of hope--warm young
love for all that was good in his own soul (and at that moment it

seemed to him that there was nothing but good in it)--compelled him to
weep and to mutter incoherent words.
Olenin was a youth who had never completed his university course,
never served anywhere (having only a nominal post in some
government office or other), who had squandered half his fortune and
had reached the age of twenty-four without having done anything or
even chosen a career. He was what in Moscow society is termed un
jeune homme.
At the age of eighteen he was free--as only rich young Russians in the
'forties who had lost their parents at an early age could be. Neither
physical nor moral fetters of any kind existed for him; he could do as
he liked, lacking nothing and bound by nothing. Neither relatives, nor
fatherland, nor religion, nor wants, existed for him. He believed in
nothing and admitted nothing. But although he believed in nothing he
was not a morose or blase young man, nor self-opinionated, but on the
contrary continually let himself be carried away. He had come to the
conclusion that there is no such thing as love, yet his heart always
overflowed in the presence of any young and attractive woman. He had
long been aware that honours and position were nonsense, yet
involuntarily he felt pleased when at a ball Prince Sergius came up and
spoke to him affably. But he yielded to his impulses only in so far as
they did not limit his freedom. As soon