Here is the first one dating from two days before. (Probably there had been one also three days before, and possibly another four days before as well.)
"If he deigns to visit you to-day, not a word about me, I beg.
Not the faintest hint.
Don't speak of me, don't mention me.—V.
S."
The letter of the day before:
"If he decides to pay you a visit this morning, I think the most dignified thing would be not to receive him.
That's what I think about it; I don't know what you think.—V.
S."
To-day's, the last:
"I feel sure that you're in a regular litter and clouds of tobacco smoke.
I'm sending you Marya and Fomushka. They'll tidy you up in half an hour.
And don't hinder them, but go and sit in the kitchen while they clear up.
I'm sending you a Bokhara rug and two china vases. I've long been meaning to make you a present of them, and I'm sending you my Teniers, too, for a time!
You can put the vases in the window and hang the Teniers on the right under the portrait of Goethe; it will be more conspicuous there and it's always light there in the morning.
If he does turn up at last, receive him with the utmost courtesy but try and talk of trifling matters, of some intellectual subject, and behave as though you had seen each other lately.
Not a word about me.
Perhaps I may look in on you in the evening.—V.
S.
"P.S.—If he does not come to-day he won't come at all."
I read and was amazed that he was in such excitement over such trifles.
Looking at him inquiringly, I noticed that he had had time while I was reading to change the everlasting white tie he always wore, for a red one.
His hat and stick lay on the table.
He was pale, and his hands were positively trembling.
"I don't care a hang about her anxieties," he cried frantically, in response to my inquiring look.
"Je m'en fiche!
She has the face to be excited about Karmazinov, and she does not answer my letters.
Here is my unopened letter which she sent me back yesterday, here on the table under the book, under L'Homme qui rit.
What is it to me that she's wearing herself out over Nikolay!
Je m'en fiche, et je proclame ma liberte!
Au diable le Karmazinov!
Au diable la Lembke!
I've hidden the vases in the entry, and the Teniers in the chest of drawers, and I have demanded that she is to see me at once.
Do you hear. I've insisted!
I've sent her just such a scrap of paper, a pencil scrawl, unsealed, by Nastasya, and I'm waiting.
I want Darya Pavlovna to speak to me with her own lips, before the face of Heaven, or at least before you.
Vous me seconderez, n'est-ce pas, comme ami et temoin.
I don't want to have to blush, to lie, I don't want secrets, I won't have secrets in this matter.
Let them confess everything to me openly, frankly, honourably and then... then perhaps I may surprise the whole generation by my magnanimity....
Am I a scoundrel or not, my dear sir?" he concluded suddenly, looking menacingly at me, as though I'd considered him a scoundrel.
I offered him a sip of water; I had never seen him like this before.
All the while he was talking he kept running from one end of the room to the other, but he suddenly stood still before me in an extraordinary attitude.
"Can you suppose," he began again with hysterical haughtiness, looking me up and down, "can you imagine that I, Stepan Verhovensky, cannot find in myself the moral strength to take my bag—my beggar's bag—and laying it on my feeble shoulders to go out at the gate and vanish forever, when honour and the great principle of independence demand it!
It's not the first time that Stepan Verhovensky has had to repel despotism by moral force, even though it be the despotism of a crazy woman, that is, the most cruel and insulting despotism which can exist on earth, although you have, I fancy, forgotten yourself so much as to laugh at my phrase, my dear sir!
Oh, you don't believe that I can find the moral strength in myself to end my life as a tutor in a merchant's family, or to die of hunger in a ditch!
Answer me, answer at once; do you believe it, or don't you believe it?"
But I was purposely silent.
I even affected to hesitate to wound him by answering in the negative, but to be unable to answer affirmatively.
In all this nervous excitement of his there was something which really did offend me, and not personally, oh, no!
But... I will explain later on.