I have great terrors now, and its only to you I look for counsel and light.
Pyotr Stepanovitch is treating me abominably!"
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch listened with interest, and looked at him attentively.
It was evident that though Captain Lebyadkin had left off drinking he was far from being in a harmonious state of mind.
Drunkards of many years' standing, like Lebyadkin, often show traces of incoherence, of mental cloudiness, of something, as it were, damaged, and crazy, though they may deceive, cheat, and swindle, almost as well as anybody if occasion arises.
"I see that you haven't changed a bit in these four years and more, captain," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, somewhat more amiably.
"It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half."
"Grand words!
You solve the riddle of life!" said the captain, half cunningly, half in genuine and unfeigned admiration, for he was a great lover of words.
"Of all your sayings, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I remember one thing above all; you were in Petersburg when you said it:
'One must really be a great man to be able to make a stand even against common sense.'
That was it."
"Yes, and a fool as well."
"A fool as well, maybe. But you've been scattering clever sayings all your life, while they....
Imagine Liputin, imagine Pyotr Stepanovitch saying anything like that!
Oh, how cruelly Pyotr Stepanovitch has treated me!"
"But how about yourself, captain? What can you say of your behaviour?"
"Drunkenness, and the multitude of my enemies.
But now that's all over, all over, and I have a new skin, like a snake.
Do you know, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I am making my will; in fact, I've made it already?"
"That's interesting.
What are you leaving, and to whom?"
"To my fatherland, to humanity, and to the students.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I read in the paper the biography of an American.
He left all his vast fortune to factories and to the exact sciences, and his skeleton to the students of the academy there, and his skin to be made into a drum, so that the American national hymn might be beaten upon it day and night.
Alas! we are pigmies in mind compared with the soaring thought of the States of North America. Russia is the play of nature but not of mind.
If I were to try leaving my skin for a drum, for instance, to the Akmolinsky infantry regiment, in which I had the honour of beginning my service, on condition of beating the Russian national hymn upon it every day, in face of the regiment, they'd take it for liberalism and prohibit my skin... and so I confine myself to the students.
I want to leave my skeleton to the academy, but on the condition though, on the condition that a label should be stuck on the forehead forever and ever, with the words:
'A repentant free-thinker.'
There now!"
The captain spoke excitedly, and genuinely believed, of course, that there was something fine in the American will, but he was cunning too, and very anxious to entertain Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with whom he had played the part of a buffoon for a long time in the past.
But the latter did not even smile, on the contrary, he asked, as it were, suspiciously:
"So you intend to publish your will in your lifetime and get rewarded for it?"
"And what if I do, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch? What if I do?" said Lebyadkin, watching him carefully.
"What sort of luck have I had?
I've given up writing poetry, and at one time even you were amused by my verses, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. Do you remember our reading them over a bottle?
But it's all over with my pen.
I've written only one poem, like Gogol's
'The Last Story.' Do you remember he proclaimed to Russia that it broke spontaneously from his bosom?
It's the same with me; I've sung my last and it's over."
"What sort of poem?"
"'In case she were to break her leg.'"
"Wha-a-t?"
That was all the captain was waiting for.
He had an unbounded admiration for his own poems, but, through a certain cunning duplicity, he was pleased, too, that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch always made merry over his poems, and sometimes laughed at them immoderately.
In this way he killed two birds with one stone, satisfying at once his poetical aspirations and his desire to be of service; but now he had a third special and very ticklish object in view. Bringing his verses on the scene, the captain thought to exculpate himself on one point about which, for some reason, he always felt himself most apprehensive, and most guilty.
"'In case of her breaking her leg.' That is, of her riding on horseback.
It's a fantasy, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, a wild fancy, but the fancy of a poet. One day I was struck by meeting a lady on horseback, and asked myself the vital question,
'What would happen then?' That is, in case of accident.
All her followers turn away, all her suitors are gone. A pretty kettle of fish. Only the poet remains faithful, with his heart shattered in his breast, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.