“You mean I’m simply drunk. That maybe, too. ‘Not sober!’ That’s a milder way of putting it than drunk. Oh, youth, brimming over with delicacy! But … we seem to have begun abusing one another again, and we were talking of something so interesting. Yes, my poet, if there is anything sweet and pretty left in the world it’s women.”
“Do you know, prince, I still can’t understand why you have selected me as a confidant of your secrets and your amorous propensities.”
“Hm! But I told you that you’d learn that later on, Don’t excite yourself; but what if I’ve no reason; you’re a poet, you’ll understand me, but I’ve told you that already. There’s a peculiar gratification in suddenly removing the mask, in the cynicism with which a man suddenly exposes himself before another without even deigning to consider decency in his presence. I’ll tell you an anecdote. There was a crazy official in Paris, who was afterwards put into a madhouse when it was realized that he was mad. Well, when he went out of his mind this is what he thought of to amuse himself. He undressed at home, altogether, like Adam, only keeping on his shoes and socks, put on an ample cloak that came down to his heels, wrapped himself round in it, and with a grave and majestic air went out into the street. Well, if he’s looked at sideways — he’s a man like anyone else, going for a walk in a long cloak to please himself. But whenever he met anyone in a lonely place where there was no one else about, he walked up to him in silence, and with the most serious and profoundly thoughtful air suddenly stopped before him, threw open his cloak and displayed himself in all the…purity of his heart! That used to last for a minute, then he would wrap himself up again, and in silence, without moving a muscle of his face, he would stalk by the petrified spectator, as grave and majestic as the ghost in Hamlet. That was how he used to behave with everyone, men, women, and children, and that was his only pleasure. Well, some degree of the same pleasure may be experienced when one flabbergasts some romantic Schiller, by putting out one’s tongue at him when he least expects it. Flabbergast — what a word! I met it somewhere in one of you modern writers!”
“Well, that was a madman, but you….”
“I’m in my right mind?”
“Yes.”
Prince Valkovsky chuckled.
“You’re right there, my boy!” he added, with a most insolent expression of face.
“Prince,” I said, angered by his insolence, “you hate us all, including me, and you’re revenging yourself on me for everyone and everything. It all comes from your petty vanity. You’re spiteful, and petty in your spite. We have enraged you, and perhaps what you are most angry about is that evening. Of course, there’s no way in which you could pay me out more effectually than by this absolute contempt. You throw off the most ordinary, universally obligatory civility which we all owe to one another. You want to show me clearly that you don’t even deign to consider decency before me, so openly and unexpectedly throwing off your filthy mask before me, and exhibiting yourself in such moral cynicism …”
“Why are you saying all this to me?” he asked, looking rudely and maliciously at me. “To show your insight?”
“To show that I understand you, and to put it plainly before you.”
“Quelle idle, mon cher,” he went on, changing his note and suddenly reverting to his former lighthearted, chatty and goodhumoured tone. “You are simply turning me from my subject. Buvons, mon ami, allow me to fill your glass. I only wanted to tell you about a charming and most curious adventure. I will tell it you in outline. I used at one time to know a lady; she was not in her first youth, but about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She was a beauty of the first rank. What a bust, what a figure, what a carriage! Her eyes were as keen as an eagle’s, but always stem and forbidding; her manner was majestic and unapproachable. She was reputed to be as cold as the driven snow, and frightened everyone by her immaculate, her menacing virtue. Menacing’s the word. There was no one in the whole neighbourhood so harsh in judgement as she. She punished not only vice, but the faintest weakness in other women, and punished it inflexibly, relentlessly. She had great influence in her circle. The proudest and most terribly virtuous old women respected her and even made up to her. She looked upon everyone with impartial severity, like the abbess of a mediaeval convent. Young women trembled before her glances and her criticism. A single remark, a single hint, from her was able to ruin a reputation, so great was her influence in society; even men were afraid of her. Finally she threw herself into a sort of contemplative mysticism of the same calm dignified character…. And, would you believe? You couldn’t have found a sinner more profligate than she was, and I was so happy as to gain her complete confidence. I was, in fact, her secret and mysterious lover. Our meetings were contrived in such a clever, masterly fashion that none even of her own household could have the slightest suspicion of them. Only her maid, a very charming French girl, was initiated into all her secrets, but one could rely on that girl absolutely. She had her share in the proceedings — in what way? — I won’t enter into that now. My lady’s sensuality was such that even the Marquis de Sade might have taken lessons from her. But the intensest, the most poignant thrill in this sensuality was its secrecy, the audacity of the deception. This jeering at everything which in public the countess preached as being lofty, transcendent and inviolable, this diabolic inward chuckle, in fact, and conscious trampling on everything held sacred, and all this unbridled and carried to the utmost pitch of licentiousness such as even the warmest imagination could scarcely conceive — in that, above all, lay the keenness of the gratification. Yes, she was the devil incarnate, but it was a devil supremely fascinating. I can’t think of her now without ecstasy. In the very heat of voluptuousness she would suddenly laugh like one possessed, and I understood it thoroughly, I understood that laughter and laughed too. It makes me sigh now when I think of it, though it’s long ago now. She threw me over in a year. If I had wanted to injure her I couldn’t have. Who would have believed me? A character like hers. What do you say, my young friend?”
“Foo, how disgusting!” I answered, listening to this avowal with repulsion.
“You wouldn’t be my young friend if your answer were different. I knew you’d say that. Ha-ha-ha! Wait a bit, mon ami, live longer and you’ll understand, but now, now you still need gilt on your gingerbread. No, you’re not a poet if that’s what you say. That woman understood life and knew how to make the most of it.”
“But why descend to such beastliness?”
“What beastliness?”
“To which that woman descended, and you with her.”
“Ah, you call that beastliness — a sign that you are still in bonds and leading-strings. Of course, I recognize that independence may be shown in quite an opposite direction. Let’s talk more straightforwardly, my friend…. you must admit yourself that all that’s nonsense.”
“What isn’t nonsense?”
“What isn’t nonsense is personality — myself. All is for me, the whole world is created for me. Listen, my friend, I still believe that it’s possible to live happily on earth. And that’s the best faith, for without it one can’t even live unhappily: there’s nothing left but to poison oneself. They say that this was what some fool did. He philosophised till he destroyed everything, everything, even the obligation of all normal and natural human duties, till at last he had nothing left. The sum total came to nil, and so he declared that the best thing in life was prussic acid. You say that’s Hamlet. That’s terrible despair in fact, something so grand that we could never dream of it. But you’re a poet, and I’m a simple mortal, and so I say one must look at the thing from the simplest, most practical point of view. I, for instance, have long since freed myself from all shackles, and even obligations. I only recognize obligations when I see I have something to gain by them. You, of course, can’t look at things like that, your legs are in fetters, and your taste is morbid. You talk of the ideal, of virtue. Well, my dear fellow, I am ready to admit anything you tell me to, but what am I to do if I know for a fact that at the root of all human virtues lies the completest egoism? And the more virtuous anything is, the more egoism there is in it. Love yourself, that’s the one rule I recognize. Life is