The Possessed | Page 4

all, but I am fully convinced that he might have gone on lecturing on
his Arabs as long as he liked, if he had only given the necessary
explanations. But he was too lofty, and he proceeded with peculiar
haste to assure himself that his career was ruined for ever "by the
vortex of circumstance." And if the whole truth is to be told the real
cause of the change in his career was the very delicate proposition
which had been made before and was then renewed by Varvara
Petrovna Stavrogin, a lady of great wealth, the wife of a
lieutenant-general, that he should undertake the education and the
whole intellectual development of her only son in the capacity of a
superior sort of teacher and friend, to say nothing of a magnificent
salary. This proposal had been made to him the first time in Berlin, at
the moment when he was first left a widower. His first wife was a
frivolous girl from our province, whom he married in his early and
unthinking youth, and apparently he had had a great deal of trouble
with this young person, charming as she was, owing to the lack of
means for her support; and also from other, more delicate, reasons. She
died in Paris after three years' separation from him, leaving him a son
of five years old; "the fruit of our first, joyous, and unclouded love,"
were the words the sorrowing father once let fall in my presence.
The child had, from the first, been sent back to Russia, where he was
brought up in the charge of distant cousins in some remote region.
Stepan Trofimovitch had declined Varvara Petrovna's proposal on that
occasion and had quickly married again, before the year was over, a
taciturn Berlin girl, and, what makes it more strange, there was no
particular necessity for him to do so. But apart from his marriage there
were, it appears, other reasons for his declining the situation. He was
tempted by the resounding fame of a professor, celebrated at that time,

and he, in his turn, hastened to the lecturer's chair for which he had
been preparing himself, to try his eagle wings in flight. But now with
singed wings he naturally remembered the proposition which even then
had made him hesitate. The sudden death of his second wife, who did
not live a year with him, settled the matter decisively. To put it plainly
it was all brought about by the passionate sympathy and priceless, so to
speak, classic friendship of Varvara Petrovna, if one may use such an
expression of friendship. He flung himself into the arms of this
friendship, and his position was settled for more than twenty years. I
use the expression "flung himself into the arms of," but God forbid that
anyone should fly to idle and superfluous conclusions. These embraces
must be understood only in the most loftily moral sense. The most
refined and delicate tie united these two beings, both so remarkable, for
ever.
The post of tutor was the more readily accepted too, as the propertya
very small oneleft to Stepan Trofimovitch by his first wife was close to
Skvoreshniki, the Stavrogins' magnificent estate on the outskirts of our
provincial town. Besides, in the stillness of his study, far from the
immense burden of university work, it was always possible to devote
himself to the service of science, and to enrich the literature of his
country with erudite studies. These works did not appear. But on the
other hand it did appear possible to spend the rest of his life, more than
twenty years, "a reproach incarnate," so to speak, to his native country,
in the words of a popular poet:
Reproach incarnate thou didst stand
Erect before thy Fatherland,
O Liberal idealist!
But the person to whom the popular poet referred may perhaps have
had the right to adopt that pose for the rest of his life if he had wished
to do so, though it must have been tedious. Our Stepan Trofimovitch
was, to tell the truth, only an imitator compared with such people;
moreover, he had grown weary of standing erect and often lay down for
a while. But, to do him justice, the "incarnation of reproach" was
preserved even in the recumbent attitude, the more so as that was quite
sufficient for the province. You should have seen him at our club when
he sat down to cards. His whole figure seemed to exclaim "Cards! Me
sit down to whist with you! Is it consistent? Who is responsible for it?

Who has shattered my energies and turned them to whist? Ah, perish,
Russia!" and he would majestically trump with a heart.
And to tell the truth he dearly loved a game of cards, which led him,
especially