I positively skipped along as I walked, as though wings were suddenly
sprouting from my shoulders. I was not for an instant, I remember, in
uncertainty with regard to the feeling Elizaveta Kirillovna inspired in
me. I fell passionately in love with her from the first day, and from
the first day I knew I was in love. During the course of three weeks I
saw her every day. Those three weeks were the happiest time in my life;
but the recollection of them is painful to me. I can't think of them
alone; I cannot help dwelling on what followed after them, and the
intensest bitterness slowly takes possession of my softened heart.

When a man is very happy, his brain, as is well known, is not very
active. A calm and delicious sensation, the sensation of satisfaction,
pervades his whole being; he is swallowed up by it; the consciousness
of personal life vanishes in him--he is in beatitude, as badly educated
poets say. But when, at last, this 'enchantment' is over, a man is
sometimes vexed and sorry that, in the midst of his bliss, he observed
himself so little; that he did not, by reflection, by recollection,
redouble and prolong his feelings ... as though the 'beatific' man had
time, and it were worth his while to reflect on his sensations! The
happy man is what the fly is in the sunshine. And so it is that, when I
recall those three weeks, it is almost impossible for me to retain in
my mind any exact and definite impression, all the more so as during
that time nothing very remarkable took place between us.... Those
twenty days are present to my imagination as something warm, and young,
and fragrant, a sort of streak of light in my dingy, greyish life. My
memory becomes all at once remorselessly clear and trustworthy, only
from the instant when, to use the phrase of badly-educated writers, the
blows of destiny began to fall upon me.

Yes, those three weeks.... Not but what they have left some images in