Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com kindled and I grasped it all.’ He stood, stupefied, wondering
how he, after all a man of intelligence, could have yielded to
such folly, have been led into such an adventure, and have
kept it up for almost twenty-four hours, fussing round this
Lyagavy, wetting his head.
‘Why, the man’s drunk, dead drunk, and he’ll go on
drinking now for a week; what’s the use of waiting here?
And what if Samsonov sent me here on purpose? What if
she —? Oh God, what have I done?’
The peasant sat watching him and grinning. Another
time Mitya might have killed the fool in a fury, but now he
felt as weak as a child. He went quietly to the bench, took up
his overcoat, put it on without a word, and went out of the
hut. He did not find the forester in the next room; there was
no one there. He took fifty copecks in small change out of
his pocket and put them on the table for his night’s lodging,
the candle, and the trouble he had given. Coming out of the
hut he saw nothing but forest all round. He walked at haz-
ard, not knowing which way to turn out of the hut, to the
right or to the left. Hurrying there the evening before with
the priest, he had not noticed the road. He had no revenge-
ful feeling for anybody, even for Samsonov, in his heart. He
strode along a narrow forest path, aimless, dazed, without
heeding where he was going. A child could have knocked
him down, so weak was he in body and soul. He got out of
the forest somehow, however, and a vista of fields, bare after
the harvest, stretched as far as the eye could see.
‘What despair! What death all round!’ he repeated, strid-
ing on and on.