“Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful history,—yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than the outcome.” He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and began:— “To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage. First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly, and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality. “The idea that I had of my morality...
The long-cherished ambition of my father was thus realized. There was a vacancy in the corps of pages which I could fill before I had got beyond the age to which admission was limited, and I was taken to St. Petersburg and entered the school. Only a hundred and fifty boys --- mostly children of the nobility belonging to the court --- received education in this privileged corps, which combined the character of a military school endowed with special rights and of a court institution attached to the imperial household. After a stay of four or five years in the corps of pages, those who had passed the final examinations were received as officers in any regiment of the guard or of the army they chose, irrespective of the number of vacancies in that regiment; and each year the first sixteen pupils of the highest form were nominated pages de chambre; that is, they were personally attached to the several members of the imperial family, --- the emperor, the empress, the gra...