manoeuvre, as I was afraid of losing my balance, owing to an unnatural
stiffness in my knees.... Liza failed absolutely to understand me; she
looked in my face with amazement, gave a hasty smile, as though she
wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible, and again approached
the prince. Blind and deaf as I was, I could not but be inwardly aware
that she was not in the least angry, and was not annoyed with me at
that instant: she simply never gave me a thought. The blow was a final
one. My last hopes were shattered with a crash, just as a block of ice,
thawed by the sunshine of spring, suddenly falls into tiny morsels. I
was utterly defeated at the first skirmish, and, like the Prussians at
Jena, lost everything at once in one day. No, she was not angry with
me!...

Alas, it was quite the contrary! She too--I saw that--was being swept
off her feet by the torrent. Like a young tree, already half torn from
the bank, she bent eagerly over the stream, ready to abandon to it for
ever the first blossom of her spring and her whole life. A man whose
fate it has been to be the witness of such a passion, has lived through
bitter moments if he has loved himself and not been loved. I shall for
ever remember that devouring attention, that tender gaiety, that
innocent self-oblivion, that glance, still a child's and already a
woman's, that happy, as it were flowering smile that never left the
half-parted lips and glowing cheeks.... All that Liza had vaguely
foreshadowed during our walk in the wood had come to pass now--and she,
as she gave herself up utterly to love, was at once stiller and
brighter, like new wine, which ceases to ferment because its full
maturity has come....

I had the fortitude to sit through that first evening and the
subsequent evenings ... all to the end! I could have no hope of