Read Online The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Free Book Online

quirk—only I don’t know whether it was ridiculous or not—of marrying off impoverished girls. He had been marrying them off for twentyfive years on end—distant relations, or stepdaughters of his wife’s cousins, or his goddaughters; he even married off his doorkeeper’s daughter. He started by taking them into his house while they were still little girls, brought them up with governesses and French-women, then educated them in the best schools, and in the end gave them away with a dowry. All this constantly crowded around him. The wards, naturally, once they married, would produce more girls, all the girls thus produced also aimed at becoming wards, he had to go everywhere to baptisms, all this showed up with congratulations on his birthdays, and he found it all extremely agreeable.
    On entering his service, I noticed at once that a certain painful conviction had nested in the old man’s mind—and it was quite impossible not to notice it—that everyone in society had supposedly begun to look at him strangely, that everyone had supposedly begun to treat him differently than before, when he had been in good health; this impression did not leave him even in the merriest social gatherings. The old man became insecure, began noticing something in everyone’s eyes. The thought that he was still suspected of insanity obviously tormented him; even me he sometimes studied with mistrust. And if he had learned that someone was spreading or maintaining this rumor about him, I believe this gentlest of men would have become his eternal enemy. It is this circumstance that I ask you to take note of. I will add that this also decided me from the first day not to be rude to him; I was even glad if I sometimes had the chance to cheer him up or divert him; I don’t think this confession can cast a shadow on my dignity.
    The greater part of his money was invested. After his illness, he had joined a big shareholding company, a very solid one, by the way. And though the business was conducted by the others, he was also very interested in it, came to the shareholders’ meetings, was elected a founding member, sat on the board, delivered long speeches, refuted, made noise, all with obvious pleasure. He very much liked making speeches: at least everyone could see his intelligence. And in general he began to be terribly fond of inserting especially profound things and bons mots into his conversation, even in his most intimate private life; that I understand only too well. In his house, downstairs, something like a home office was set up, and a clerk took care of the business, the accounts, and the bookkeeping, and also managed the household. This clerk, who served, besides, in a government post, would have been quite enough by himself; but, at the wish of the prince, they added me as well, as if to assist the clerk; but I was transferred at once to the study and often had no work in front of me, no papers, no books, not even for pretense.
    I’m writing now like a man who has long since sobered up, and in many respects almost like an outsider; but how shall I depict my sadness of that time (which I vividly recall right now), as it lodged itself in my heart, and, above all, my agitation of that time, which would reach such a troubled and fervid state that I even didn’t sleep at night—from my impatience, from the riddles that I set myself.
    II
    ASKING FOR MONEY is a vile affair, even when it’s your salary, if you feel somewhere in the folds of your conscience that you haven’t quite earned it. Meanwhile, the day before, my mother and sister were whispering together, in secret from Versilov (“so as not to upset Andrei Petrovich”), intending to go to a pawnshop with an icon from her icon stand, which for some reason was very dear to her. I was working for fifty roubles a month, but I had no idea how I would receive it; when I was appointed here, nobody told me anything. Some three days earlier, meeting the clerk downstairs, I had