minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed again, and became
unrecognizable.


CHAPTER IV.

"Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,--yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome."

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:--

"To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It
must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage.
First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the
steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a
graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before
talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly,
and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other
so-called respectable people,--that is, in debauchery. And like the
majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I
was a man of irreproachable morality.

"The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this,
I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be