Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/267

 end. Only three of them were well educated: B., M., and Z., who had been a professor of mathematics, a nice, good-natured old man, very eccentric and not at all clever, I think, in spite of his education. M. and B. were men of a quite different type. I got on well with M. from the first; I respected him and never quarrelled with him, but I never could get fond of him or feel any affection for him. He was a profoundly mistrustful and embittered man with a wonderful power of self-control. But this very excess of self-control was what I did not like; one somehow felt that he would never open his heart to anyone. But perhaps I am mistaken. He was a man of strong and very noble character. His extreme and almost Jesuitical skill and circumspection in dealing with people betrayed his profound inner scepticism. Yet his was a soul tormented just by this duality—scepticism and a deep steadfast faith in some of his own hopes and convictions. But for all his skill in getting on with people, he was an irreconcilable enemy of B. and of the latter’s friend T. B. was a man in ill-health, of consumptive tendency, nervous and irritable, but at bottom a very kind-hearted and even great-hearted man. His irritability sometimes reached the pitch of extreme intolerance and caprice. I could not put up with his temper, and in the end I gave up having anything to do with B., but I never ceased to love him; with M. I never quarrelled, but I never was fond of him. It happened that, through cutting off my relations with B., I had also to give up T., the young man of whom I have spoken in the last chapter when I described our “complaint.” I was very sorry for that. Though T. was not an educated man, he was kind-hearted and manly, a splendid young fellow in fact. He was so fond of B., had such a respect and reverence for him that if anyone were ever so little at variance with B. he at once looked upon him almost as an enemy. I believe in the end he was estranged even from M. on B.’s account, though he held out for a long time. But they were all morally sick, embittered, irritable and mistrustful. It was easy to understand, it was very hard for them, much worse than for us. They were far from their own country. Some of them were exiled for long periods, ten or twelve years, and what was worse they regarded every one around them with intense prejudice, saw in the convicts nothing but their brutality, could not discern any good quality, anything human in them, and had indeed no wish to do so. And, which was very easy to understand also, they were led to