Resurrection

"Ah, how horrid!" he said to himself, looking up once more at the

half-naked woman, with the splendid marble shoulders and arms,

and the triumphant smile on her lips. "Oh, how horrid!" The bared

shoulders of the portrait reminded him of another, a young woman,

whom he had seen exposed in the same way a few days before. It

was Missy, who had devised an excuse for calling him into her

room just as she was ready to go to a ball, so that he should see

her in her ball dress. It was with disgust that he remembered her

fine shoulders and arms. "And that father of hers, with his

doubtful past and his cruelties, and the bel-esprit her mother,

with her doubtful reputation." All this disgusted him, and also

made him feel ashamed. "Shameful and horrid; horrid and shameful!"

"No, no," he thought; "freedom from all these false relations

with the Korchagins and Mary Vasilievna and the inheritance and

from all the rest must be got. Oh, to breathe freely, to go

abroad, to Rome and work at my picture!" He remembered the doubts

he had about his talent for art. "Well, never mind; only just to

breathe freely. First Constantinople, then Rome. Only just to get

through with this jury business, and arrange with the advocate

first."

Then suddenly there arose in his mind an extremely vivid picture

of a prisoner with black, slightly-squinting eyes, and how she

began to cry when the last words of the prisoners had been heard;

and he hurriedly put out his cigarette, pressing it into the

ash-pan, lit another, and began pacing up and down the room. One

after another the scenes he had lived through with her rose in

his mind. He recalled that last interview with her. He remembered

the white dress and blue sash, the early mass. "Why, I loved her,

really loved her with a good, pure love, that night; I loved her

even before: yes, I loved her when I lived with my aunts the

first time and was writing my composition." And he remembered

himself as he had been then. A breath of that freshness, youth

and fulness of life seemed to touch him, and he grew painfully

sad. The difference between what he had been then and what he was

now, was enormous--just as great, if not greater than the

difference between Katusha in church that night, and the

prostitute who had been carousing with the merchant and whom they

judged this morning. Then he was free and fearless, and

innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he

felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless,

frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating

himself even if he wished to, which he hardly did. He remembered

how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he

had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been

truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies: in the most

dreadful of lies--lies considered as the truth by all who

surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out

of these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, indulged

himself in it.