II.
"I love! I love them very much! They are fine! It is good!" he repeated, and he wanted to weep. But he was not quite sure why he wanted to weep, who were fine, and whom he loved.
He now gazed at some house, and wondered why it was built in such a strange manner; and again he wondered why the driver and Vanyúsha, who were such strangers to him, were so close to him and jolted and shook simultaneously with him from the sudden jerks of the side horses who tugged at the frozen traces, and he repeated, "They are fine, I love them," and once he even said, "There she goes! Superb!" and he wondered why he said that, and asked himself, "Am I drunk?"
It is true nearly two bottles of wine had fallen to his share, but it was not the wine alone that had produced that effect upon Olénin. He thought of what appeared to him to be the intimate words of friendship which had timidly, as though accidentally, been told him at his departure. He thought of the pressure of the hands, of the glances, the silence, and the voice of him who said "Good-bye, Mítya!" when he was seated in the sleigh. He thought of his own determined frankness. And all this touched him.
Before his departure, not only his friends and his relatives, not only indifferent people, but even those who were unsympathetic, or ill-wishing—all seemed to have been in league to love him better, and to forgive him, as before confession or death.
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