Youth | Page 4

time, when I have come of age, I shall marry.
Also, I mean to take as much exercise as ever I can, and to do
gymnastics every day, so that, when I have turned twenty-five, I shall
be stronger even than Rappo. On my first day's training I mean to hold
out half a pood [The Pood = 40 Russian pounds.] at arm's length for
five minutes, and the next day twenty-one pounds, and the third day
twenty-two pounds, and so on, until at last I can hold out four poods in
each hand, and be stronger even than a porter. Then, if ever any one
should try to insult me or should begin to speak disrespectfully of HER,
I shall take him so, by the front of his coat, and lift him up an arshin
[The arshin = 2 feet 3 inches.] or two with one hand, and just hold him
there, so that he may feel my strength and cease from his conduct. Yet
that too would not be right. No, no, it would not matter; I should not
hurt him, merely show him that I--"
Let no one blame me because the dreams of my youth were as foolish
as those of my childhood and boyhood. I am sure that, even if it be my
fate to live to extreme old age and to continue my story with the years,
I, an old man of seventy, shall be found dreaming dreams just as
impossible and childish as those I am dreaming now. I shall be
dreaming of some lovely Maria who loves me, the toothless old man, as
she might love a Mazeppa; of some imbecile son who, through some
extraordinary chance, has suddenly become a minister of state; of my
suddenly receiving a windfall of a million of roubles. I am sure that
there exists no human being, no human age, to whom or to which that
gracious, consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save
for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the dreams of
each human being, of each age of man, have their own distinguishing
characteristics. At the period upon which I look as having marked the
close of my boyhood and the beginning of my youth, four leading
sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The first of those sentiments
was love for HER--for an imaginary woman whom I always pictured
the same in my dreams, and whom I somehow expected to meet some

day and somewhere. This she of mine had a little of Sonetchka in her, a
little of Masha as Masha could look when she stood washing linen over
the clothes-tub, and a little of a certain woman with pearls round her
fair white neck whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a
box below our own. My second sentiment was a craving for love. I
wanted every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to
utter my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every one
thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me for
something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment was the
expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness that was
impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to verge upon
ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very, very soon some
unexpected chance would suddenly make me the richest and most
famous man in the world that I lived in constant, tremulous expectation
of this magic good fortune befalling me. I was always thinking to
myself that "IT is beginning," and that I should go on thereafter to
attain everything that a man could wish for. Consequently, I was for
ever hurrying from place to place, in the belief that "IT" must be
"beginning" just where I happened not to be. Lastly, my fourth and
principal sentiment of all was abhorrence of myself, mingled with
regret--yet a regret so blended with the certain expectation of happiness
to which I have referred that it had in it nothing of sorrow. It seemed to
me that it would be so easy and natural for me to tear myself away from
my past and to remake it--to forget all that had been, and to begin my
life, with all its relations, anew--that the past never troubled me, never
clung to me at all. I even found a certain pleasure in detesting the past,
and in seeing it in a darker light than the true one. This note of regret
and of a curious longing for perfection were the chief mental
impressions which I gathered from that new stage of my
growth--impressions which imparted new principles to my view of
myself, of men, and of God's world. O good and