"Maybe I shall not return from the Caucasus," he thought. And he thought that he loved his friends, and somebody else. And he was sorry for himself. But it was not the love for his friends that touched him and elevated his soul, so that he was unable to restrain those meaningless words that issued unbidden from his mouth,—nor was it the love for a woman (he had never loved) that had brought him to this state. It was the love of self, the ardent, hopeful, young love of everything good in his soul (it seemed to him that it was filled with nothing but that which was good), that caused him to weep and mutter incoherent words.
Olénin was a young man who had never finished his university course; who had never served (he was merely a supernumerary in some government office); who had spent half his fortune; and who until his twenty-fourth year had chosen no career for himself, and had never done anything. He was what is called a "young man" in Moscow society.
At eighteen years of age Olénin had been as free as only were rich young Russians of the forties who at an early age were left as orphans. He knew neither physical nor moral fetters; he could do everything, and he wanted nothing, and nothing bound him. He had neither family, nor country, nor faith, nor want. He believed in nothing, and acknowledged nothing. Yet, though he acknowledged nothing, he was not a gloomy, blasé, and meditative youth, but, on the contrary, was easily carried away.
He had decided that there was no love, and yet the presence of a young and beautiful woman made him breathless with delight. He had long known that honours and distinction were nonsense, but he experienced an involuntary pleasure when Prince Sérgi walked up to him at a ball, and addressed him graciously.
He allowed himself to be carried away by his raptures
