Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/61

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
A DESPERATE CHARACTER

She sighed. 'No, no child. . . . Is it likely?' And her tears flowed faster than ever.

'And so that was how Misha's troubled wanderings had ended,' the old man P. wound up his narrative. 'You will agree with me, I am sure, that I'm right in calling him a desperate character; but you will most likely agree too that he was not like the desperate characters of to-day; still, a philosopher, you must admit, would find a family likeness between him and them. In him and in them there's the thirst for self-destruction, the wretchedness, the dissatisfaction.. . . And what it all comes from, I leave the philosopher to decide.'

Bougivalle, November 1881.

39