Julie listened and was lost in thought, and her face grew red; but then she could not help her face growing red when she sat near a fire. She leaped to her feet, and said in a broken voice:—
"Well, well, my child, I myself should have felt that way if I had not been ruined. But I am not corrupted by those deeds that are generally thought to ruin a woman; not by what happened to me in the past, what I endured and suffered; not because of those things was my body given over to insult; but because I was used to idleness, to luxury; because I am not strong enough to live by myself; because I need other people; because I try to please; therefore I am doing what I do not like to do, and this is wretchedness. Don't listen to what I said, my child; I have been trying to ruin you. This is torment; I cannot touch the pure without polluting it. Avoid me, my child; I am a bad woman; don't think about society! They are all bad there, worse than I am. Where idleness is, there is abomination; where grandeur is, there is abomination. Run, run!"[1]
VII.
Storeshnikof kept thinking more and more frequently, "Well, now, suppose I should take and marry her?" What happened to him was a very common thing, not only with people of weak character of his stamp, but also not seldom with people of more independent character. In the histories of the nations such cases as his fill the volumes of Hume and Gibbon, Ranke and Thierry; men crowd only to one side simply because they do not hear the words, "Now strive, brethren, to take the other side"; and if by chance they hear and turn to the other side of the circle, then they go to crowding just as bad on the other side. Storeshnikof had heard and seen that rich young men were in the habit of taking poor and pretty young girls as mistresses. Well, and so he tried to make Viérotchka his mistress. No other word had entered his head; he heard the other word, "You might marry her"; well, now he begins to think about the word
- ↑ The Russian poet Nekrásof says in his poem, "Ubogaïa i Naryadnaïa" (The Poor Woman and the Luxurious), of just such a girl as Julie:—
Sryet tiébya predaiot poraganyu
I okhotno proshchaïet drugoe;Society condemns you to destruction,
But the rest of the world willingly forgives.
