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A man who under the influence of mental pain or unbearably oppressive suffering sends a bullet through his own head is called a suicide; but for those who give freedom to their pitiful, soul-debasing passions in the holy days of spring and youth, there is no name in man’s vocabulary. After the bullet follows the peace of the grave: ruined youth is followed by years of grief and painful recollections. He who has profaned his spring will understand the present condition of my soul. I am not yet old, or grey, but I no longer live. Psychologists tell us that a soldier, who was wounded at Waterloo, went mad, and afterwards assured everybody - and believed it himself - that he had died at Waterloo, and that what was now considered to be him was only his shadow, a reflection of the past. I am now experiencing something resembling this semi-death…

‘I am very glad that you ate nothing at the forester’s and haven’t spoilt your appetite,’ the Count said to me as we entered the house. ‘We shall have an excellent supper… Like old times… Serve supper!’ He gave the order to Il’ya who was helping him to take off his coat and put on a dressing-gown.

We went into the dining-room. Here on the side-table life was already bubbling over. Bottles of every colour and of every imaginable size were standing in rows as on the shelves of a theatre refreshment-room, reflecting on their sides the light of the lamps while awaiting our attention. All sorts of salted and pickled viands and various hors d’œuvres stood on another table with a decanter of vodka and another of English bitters. Near the wine bottles there were two dishes, one of sucking pig and the other of cold sturgeon.

‘Well, gentlemen,’ the Count began as he poured out three glasses of vodka and shivered as if from cold. ‘To our good health! Kaetan Kazimirovich, take your glass!’

I drank mine off, the Pole only shook his head in refusal. He moved the dish of sturgeon towards himself, smelt it, and began to eat.

I must apologize to the reader. I have now to describe something not at all ‘romantic’.

‘Well, come on… Let’s have another,’ the Count said, and filled the glasses again. ‘Fire away, Lecoq!’

I took up my wineglass, looked at it and put it down again.

‘The devil take it, it’s so long since I drank,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t we drink to old times?’

Without further reflection, I filled five glasses and emptied them one after another down my throat. That was the only way I knew how to drink. Small schoolboys learn how to smoke cigarettes from big ones: the Count looked at me, poured out five glasses for himself, and, bending forwards in the form of an arch, frowning and shaking his head, he drank them off. My five glasses appeared to him to be bravado, but I drank them not at all to display my talent for drinking… I wanted to get drunk, to get properly, thoroughly drunk… Drunk as I had not been for a long time while living in my village. Having drunk them, I sat down to table and began to discuss the sucking pig.

Intoxication was not long in coming. I soon felt a slight giddiness. There was a pleasant feeling of coolness in my chest — and a happy, expansive condition set in. Without any visible transition I suddenly became very gay. The feeling of emptiness and dullness gave place to a sensation of thorough joy and gaiety. I smiled. I suddenly wanted chatter, laughter, people around me. As I chewed the sucking pig I began to feel the fullness of life, almost the self-sufficiency of life, almost happiness.

‘Why don’t you drink anything?’ I asked the Pole.

‘He never drinks,’ the Count said. ‘Don’t force him to.’

‘But surely you can drink something?’

The Pole put a large bit of sturgeon into his mouth and shook his head in refusal. His silence incensed me.

‘I say, Kaetan - what’s your patronymic? — why are you always silent?’ I asked him. ‘I have not had the pleasure of hearing your voice as yet.’

His two eyebrows that resembled the outstretched wings of a swallow were raised and he gazed at me.

‘Do you wish me to speak?’ he asked with a strong Polish accent.

‘Very much.’

‘Why do you wish it?’

‘Why, indeed! On board steamers at dinner strangers and people who are not -acquainted converse together, and here are we, who have known one another for several hours, looking at each other and not exchanging a single word! What does that look like?’

The Pole remained silent.

‘Why are you silent?’ I asked again after waiting a moment. ‘Answer something, can’t you?’

‘I do not wish to answer you. I hear laughter in your voice, and I do not like derision.’

‘He’s not laughing at all,’ the Count interposed in alarm. ‘Where did you fish up that notion, Kaetan? He’s quite friendly…’

‘Counts and Princes have never spoken to me in such a tone!’ Kaetan said, frowning. ‘I don’t like that tone.’

‘Consequently, you will not honour me with your conversation?’ I continued to worry him as I emptied another glass and laughed.

‘Do you know my real reason for coming here?’ the Count broke in, desirous of changing the conversation. ‘I haven’t told you as yet? In Petersburg I went to the doctor who has always treated me, to consult him about my health. He listened to my chest, knocked and pressed me everywhere, and said: “You’re not a coward!” Well, you know, though I’m no coward, I grew pale. “I’m not a coward,” I replied.’

‘Cut it short, brother… This is tiresome.’

‘He told me I should soon die if I did not go away from Petersburg! My liver is quite diseased from too much drink… So I decided to come here. It would have been silly to remain there. This estate is so fine — so rich… The climate alone is worth a fortune! Here, at least, I can occupy myself with my own affairs. Work is the best, the most efficacious medicine. Kaetan, is that not true? I shall look after the estate and chuck drink… The doctor did not allow me a single glass… not one!’

‘Well, then, don’t drink.’

‘I don’t drink… Today is the last time, in honour of meeting you again’ - the Count stretched towards me and gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek - ‘my dear, good friend. Tomorrow - not a drop! Today, Bacchus takes leave of me for ever… Serezha, let us have a farewell glass of cognac together?’

We drank a glass of cognac.

‘I shall get well, Serezha, golubchek, and I shall look after the estate… Rational agriculture! Urbenin — is good, kind… he understands everything, but is he the master? He sticks to routine! We must send for magazines, read, look into everything, take part in the agricultural and dairy exhibitions, but he is not educated for that! Is it possible he can be in love with Olenka? Ha-ha! I shall look into everything and keep him as my assistant… I shall take part in the elections; I shall entertain society… Eh? Even here one can live happily! What do you think? Now there you are, laughing again! Already laughing! One really can’t talk with you about anything!’

I was gay, I was amused. The Count amused me; the candles, the bottles amused me; the stucco hares and ducks that ornamented the walls of the dining-room amused me… The only thing that did not amuse me was the sober face of Kaetan Kazimirovich. The presence of this man irritated me.

‘Can’t you send that Polish nobleman to the devil?’ I whispered to the Count.

‘What? For God’s sake!’ the Count murmured, seizing both my hands as if I had been about to beat his Pole. ‘Let him sit there!’

‘I can’t look at him! I say,’ I continued, addressing Pshekhotsky, ‘you refused to talk to me; but forgive me. I have not yet given up hope of being more closely acquainted with your conversational capacities.’

‘Leave him alone!’ the Count said, pulling me by the sleeve. ‘I implore you!’

‘I shall not stop worrying you until you answer me,’ I continued. ‘Why are you frowning? Is it possible that you still hear laughter in my voice?’

‘If I had drunk as much as you have, I would talk to you; but as it is we are not fairly matched,’ the Pole replied.

‘That we are not fairly matched is what was to be proved… That is exactly what I wanted to say. A goose and a swine are no comrades; the drunkard and the sober man are no kin; the drunkard disturbs the sober man, the sober man the drunkard. In the adjoining drawing-room there is a soft and excellent sofa. It’s a good thing to lie upon it after sturgeon with horseradish. My voice will not be heard there. Do you not wish to retire to that room?’

The Count clasped his hands and walked about the dining-room with blinking eyes.

He is a coward and is always afraid of ‘big’ talk. I, on the contrary, when drunk, am amused by cross-purposes and discontentedness.

‘I don’t understand! I don’t un-der-stand!’ the Count groaned, not knowing what to say or what to do.

He knew it was difficult to stop me.

‘I am only slightly acquainted with you,’ I continued. ‘Perhaps you are an excellent man, and therefore I don’t wish to quarrel with you too soon… I won’t quarrel with you. I only invite you to understand that there is no place for a sober man among drunken ones… The presence of a sober man has an irritating effect on the drunken organism! Take that to heart!’

‘Say whatever you like!’ Pshekhotsky sighed. ‘Nothing that you can say will provoke me, young man.’

‘So nothing will provoke you? Will you also not be offended if I call you an obstinate swine?’

The Pole grew red in the face — but only that. The Count became pale, he came up to me, looked imploringly at me, and spread his arms.

‘Come, I beg you! Restrain your tongue!’

I had now quite entered into my drunken part, and wanted to go on, but fortunately at that moment the Count and the Pole heard footsteps and Urbenin entered the dining-room.

‘I wish you all a good appetite!’ he began. ‘I have come, your Excellency, to find out if you have any orders for me?’

‘I have no orders so far, but a request,’ the Count replied, I am very glad you have come, Pëtr Egorych… Sit down and have supper with us, and let us talk about the business of the estate…’

Urbenin sat down. The Count drank off a glass of cognac and began to explain his plans for the future rational management of the estate. He spoke very long and wearisomely, often repeating himself and changing the subject. Urbenin listened to him lazily and attentively as serious people listen to the prattle of children and women. He ate his fish-soup, and looked sadly at his plate.

‘I have brought some remarkable plans with me!’ the Count said among other things. ‘Remarkable plans! I will show them to you if you wish?’

Karnéev jumped up and ran into his study for the plans. Urbenin took advantage of his absence to pour out half a tumbler of vodka, gulped it down, and did not even take anything to eat after it.

‘Disgusting stuff this vodka is!’ he said, looking with abhorrence at the decanter.

‘Why didn’t you drink while the Count was here, Pëtr Egorych?’ I asked him. is it possible that you were afraid to?’

‘It is better to dissimulate, Sergey Petrovich, and drink in secret than to drink before the Count. You know what a strange character the Count has… If I stole twenty thousand from him and he knew it, he would say nothing owing to his carelessness; but if I forgot to give him an account of ten kopecks that I had spent, or drank vodka in his presence, he would begin to lament that his bailiff was a robber. You know him well.’

Urbenin half-filled the tumbler again and swigged it off.

‘I think you did not drink formerly, Pëtr Egorych,’ I said.

‘Yes, but now I drink… I drink terribly!’ he whispered. ‘Terribly, day and night, not giving myself a moment’s respite! Even the Count never drank to such an extent as I do now… It is dreadfully hard, Sergey Petrovich! God alone knows what a weight I have on my heart! It’s just grief that makes me drink… I always liked and honoured you, Sergey Petrovich, and I can tell you quite candidly… I’d often be glad to hang myself!’

‘For what reason?’

‘My own stupidity… Not only children are stupid… There are also fools at fifty. Don’t ask the cause.’

The Count reentered the room and put a stop to his effusions.

‘A most excellent liqueur,’ he said, placing a potbellied bottle with the seal of the Benedictine monks on the table instead of the ‘remarkable plans’. ‘When I passed through Moscow I got it at Depré’s. Have a glass, Sergey?’

‘I thought you had gone to fetch the plans,’ I said.

‘I? What plans? Oh, yes! But, brother, the devil himself couldn’t find anything in my portmanteaux… I rummaged and rummaged and gave it up as a bad job… The liqueur is very nice. Won’t you have some, Serezha?’

Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away. When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the Count’s. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would astonish people… In such moments I thought I could swim across the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman… The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him with venomous jests and ridicule… It was necessary to scoff at the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.

‘Why are you silent?’ I began again. ‘Speak! I am listening to you! Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces talk childish drivel! It is such mockery, such mockery of the brains of man! The face does not correspond to the brains! In order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have the countenances of Greek sages!’

I had not finished… My tongue was entangled by the thought that I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women, thousands of lights… I rose, took my glass and began walking about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole estate.

I chose a Turkish divan in the ‘mosaic hall’, lay down on it and gave myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air. Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other, took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.

It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.

The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan… He wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.

‘What a lot I have drunk today!’ he said to me. ‘This is more harmful to me than any sort of poison… But today it is for the last time… Upon my honour, the very last time… I have strength of will…’

‘All right, all right…’

‘For the last… Serezha, my dear friend, for the last time… Shouldn’t we send a telegram to town for the last time?’

‘Why not? Send it…’

‘Let’s have one last spree in the proper way… Well, get up and write it.’

The Count himself did not know how to write telegrams. They always came out too long and insufficient with him. I rose and wrote:

S — Restaurant London. Karpov, manager of the chorus.

Leave everything and come instantly by the two o’clock train - The Count.

‘It is now a quarter to eleven,’ the Count said. ‘The man will take three-quarters of an hour to ride to the station, maximum an hour… Karpov will receive the telegram before one… They should have time to catch the train… If they don’t catch it, they can come by the goods train. Yes!’