Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/179

Rh don't want to complain and slander people for nothing. I'm not wretched at all here; that's to say, I'm not oppressed in any way; my aunt's tiny pin-pricks are really nothing to me. I'm absolutely free.'

Nezhdanov looked in bewilderment at Marianna.

'In that case all you told me just now '

'You are at liberty to laugh at me,' she said quickly; 'but if I am unhappy─it's not for my own unhappiness. It sometimes seems to me that I suffer for all the oppressed, the poor, the wretched in Russia. No, I don't suffer, but I am indignant─I am in revolt for them that I 'm ready for them  to lay down my life. I am unhappy because I'm a young lady─a hanger-on, because I can do nothing─am fit for nothing! When my father was in Siberia, while I was left with mother in Moscow─ah! how I longed to go to him! not that I had any great love or respect for him─but I so much wanted to know for myself, to see with my own eyes, how convicts and how prisoners live. And what disgust I felt for myself and all those easy-going, prosperous, well-fed people! And afterwards, when he came back, broken down, crushed, and began humiliating himself, fretting and trying to get