But I!... I then gave up in despair, so far as I myself was concerned, and so far as my future was concerned. When sufferings reach such a pitch that they make our whole inward being crack and creak like an overloaded cart, they ought to cease being ridiculous.... But no! laughter not only accompanies tears to the end, to exhaustion, to the point where it is impossible to shed any more of them,--not at all! it still rings and resounds at a point where the tongue grows dumb and lamentation itself dies away.... And then, in the first place, as I have no intention of appearing absurd even to myself, and in the second place, as I am frightfully tired, I shall defer the continuation and, God willing, the conclusion of my story until to-morrow....
March 29. A light frost; last night there was a thaw.
Yesterday I was unable to go on with my diary; like Póprishshtchin, I lay most of the time in bed, and chatted with Teréntievna. There 's a woman for you! Sixty years ago she lost her first betrothed from the plague, she has outlived all her children, she herself is unpardonably old, she drinks tea to her heart's content, she is well-fed, warmly clad; but what do you think she talked to me about yesterday? I had ordered that the cape of an old livery-coat should be given to another utterly denuded old woman for a waistcoat (she wears a breast-piece in the shape of a waistcoat).... The cape was pretty thoroughly eaten by moths, so why should not she have it? "Well, it strikes me that I 'm your nurse.... O-okh, my dear little father, 't is a sin for you to do that.... And have n't I been tending you?".... and so forth. The merciless old woman fairly wore me out with her reproaches.... But let us return to the story.
So, then, I suffered like a dog which has had the hind part of its body run over by a wheel. Only then,--only after my expulsion from the Ozhógins' house,--did I become definitively aware how much pleasure a man may derive from the contemplation of his own unhappiness. Oh, men! ye are, in reality, a pitiful race!... Well, but that is in the nature of a philosophical remark.... I passed my days in utter solitude, and only in the most roundabout and even base ways was I able to find out what was going on in the Ozhógin family, what the Prince was doing. My servant struck up an acquaintance with the great-aunt of the wife of his coachman. This acquaintance afforded me some alleviation, and my servant speedily was able, from my hints and gifts, to divine what it behooved him to talk about with his master, when he was pulling off the latter's boots at night. Sometimes I chanced to meet in the street some member of the Ozhógin family, Bizmyónkoff, or the Prince.... With the Prince and Bizmyónkoff I exchanged bows, but I did not enter into conversation. I saw Liza thrice in all: once with her mamma, in a milliner's shop, once in an open calash with her father, her mother, and the Prince; once in church. Of course, I did not venture to approach her, and only gazed at her from afar. In the shop she was anxious but cheerful.... She was ordering something for herself, and busily trying on ribbons. Her mother was gazing at her, with hands clasped on her stomach, her nose elevated, and indulging in that stupid and affectionate smile which is permissible only to fond mothers. Liza was in the calash with the Prince.... I shall never forget that meeting! The old Ozhógins were sitting on the back seat of the calash, the Prince and Liza in front. She was paler than usual; two pink streaks were barely discernible on her cheeks. She was half-turned toward the Prince; supporting herself on her outstretched right hand (she was holding her parasol in her left), and wearily bending her head, she was gazing straight into his face with her expressive eyes. At that moment she was surrendering herself utterly to him, trusting him irrevocably. I did not have a chance to get a good look at his face,--the calash dashed past too swiftly,--but it seemed to me that he also was deeply moved.