The thing is that a clever "usual" man, even if he imagines himself momentarily (or perhaps throughout his life) to be a man of genius and originality, nevertheless preserves in his heart a little worm of doubt, which drives him so far that the clever man sometimes ends up in complete despair; if he submits, then he is already completely poisoned by vanity turned in upon itself.
However, we have in any case chosen an extreme instance: in the great majority of this clever category of people, things generally do not go so tragically; the liver gives out more or less towards the end of his days, and that's all.
But still, before reconciling and submitting, these people sometimes spend an extremely long time acting up, from their youth till the age of submission, and all out of a desire to be original.
One even comes upon strange cases: some honest man, out of a desire to be original, is even ready to commit a base deed; it can even happen that one of these unhappy persons is not only honest but even kind, the providence of his family, who by his labor supports and provides not only for his own but even for others—and what then? All his life he is unable to be at peace!
For him, the thought that he has fulfilled his human obligations so well brings neither peace nor comfort; on the contrary, that is even what irritates him:
"This," he says, "is what I've blown my whole life for, this is what has bound me hand and foot, this is what has kept me from discovering gunpowder!
If it hadn't been for that, I'd certainly have discovered either gunpowder or America—I don't know what for sure, but I'd certainly have discovered it!"
What is most characteristic in these gentlemen is that all their lives they are indeed unable to find out for sure what precisely they need so much to discover and what precisely they have been preparing all their lives to discover: gunpowder or America?
But of suffering, of longing for discovery, they truly have enough of a share in them for a Columbus or a Galileo.
Gavrila Ardalionovich was starting out precisely in that line; but he was only starting out.
He still had a long time ahead for acting up.
A profound and continual awareness of his talentlessness and at the same time an insuperable desire to be convinced that he was an independent man, painfully wounded his heart, even almost from the age of adolescence.
He was a young man with envious and impulsive desires and, it seemed, had even been born with frayed nerves.
He mistook the impulsiveness of his desires for their strength.
With his passionate desire to distinguish himself, he was sometimes ready for a most reckless leap; but when it came to the point of making the reckless leap, our hero always proved too clever to venture upon it.
This was killing him.
He might even have ventured, on occasion, upon an extremely base deed, so long as he achieved at least something of what he dreamed; but, as if on purpose, when it reached the limit, he always proved too honest for an extremely base deed. (On a small base deed, however, he was always ready to agree.) He looked upon the poverty and decline of his own family with loathing and hatred.
He even treated his mother haughtily and contemptuously, though he understood very well that his mother's character and reputation had so far constituted the main support of his own career.
Having entered Epanchin's service, he immediately said to himself:
"If I am to be mean, then I shall be mean to the end, so long as I win out"—and—he was almost never mean to the end.
And why did he imagine that he would absolutely have to be mean?
He had simply been frightened of Aglaya then, but he had not dropped the affair, but dragged it on just in case, though he never seriously believed that she would stoop to him.
Then, during his story with Nastasya Filippovna, he had suddenly imagined to himself that the achievement of everything lay in money.
"If it's meanness, it's meanness," he had repeated to himself every day then with self-satisfaction, but also with a certain fear; "if it's meanness, it's also getting to the top," he encouraged himself constantly, "a routine man would turn timid in this case, but we won't turn timid!"
Having lost Aglaya and been crushed by circumstances, he had lost heart completely and had actually brought the prince the money thrown to him then by a crazy woman, to whom it had also been brought by a crazy man.
Afterwards he regretted this returning of the money a thousand times, though he constantly gloried in it.
He had actually wept for three days, while the prince remained in Petersburg, but during those three days he had also come to hate the prince for looking upon him much too compassionately, whereas the fact that he had returned so much money was something "not everyone would bring himself to do."
But the noble self-recognition that all his anguish was only a constantly pinched vanity made him suffer terribly.
Only a long time afterwards did he see clearly and become convinced of how seriously his affair with such an innocent and strange being as Aglaya might have turned out.
Remorse gnawed at him; he abandoned his work and sank into anguish and dejection.
He lived in Ptitsyn's house and at his expense, with his father and mother, and despised Ptitsyn openly, though at the same time he listened to his advice and was almost always sensible enough to ask for it.
Gavrila Ardalionovich was angry, for instance, at the fact that Ptitsyn did not aim to become a Rothschild and had not set himself that goal.
"If you're a usurer, go through with it, squeeze people dry, coin money out of them, become a character, become the king of the Jews!"4 Ptitsyn was modest and quiet; he only smiled, but once he even found it necessary to have a serious talk with Ganya and even did it with a certain dignity.
He proved to Ganya that he was not doing anything dishonest and that he should not go calling him a Jew; that if money had so much value, it was not his fault; that he acted truthfully and honestly, and that in reality he was only an agent in "these" affairs, and, finally, that thanks to his accuracy in business he was already known from quite a good standpoint to some most excellent people, and that his business was expanding.
"Rothschild I won't be, and why should I," he added, laughing, "but I'll have a house on Liteinaya, maybe even two, and that will be the end of it."
"And, who knows, maybe three!" he thought to himself, but never said it aloud and kept his dream hidden.
Nature loves and coddles such people: she will certainly reward Ptitsyn not with three but with four houses, and that precisely because he has known since childhood that he would never be a Rothschild.
But beyond four houses nature will not go for anything, and with Ptitsyn matters will end there.
Gavrila Ardalionovich's little sister was an entirely different person.
She also had strong desires, but more persistent than impulsive.
There was a good deal of reasonableness in her, when things reached the final limit, but it did not abandon her before the limit either.
True, she was also one of the "usual" people, who dream of originality, but she very quickly managed to realize that she did not have a drop of any particular originality, and she did not grieve over it all that much—who knows, maybe from a peculiar sort of pride.
She had made her first practical step with extreme resoluteness by marrying Mr. Ptitsyn; but in marrying him she did not say to herself: "If I'm to be mean, I'll be mean, so long as I reach my goal"—something Gavrila Ardalionovich would not have failed to say on such an occasion (and even almost did say in her presence, when approving of her decision as an older brother).
Quite the contrary even: Varvara Ardalionovna got married after solidly convincing herself that her future husband was a modest, agreeable man, almost educated, who would never commit any great meanness.
Varvara Ardalionovna did not look into small meannesses, as too trifling; and where are there not such trifles?
No one's looking for ideals!
Besides, she knew that by marrying, she was providing a corner for her mother, her father, her brothers.
Seeing her brother in misfortune, she wanted to help him, in spite of all previous family misunderstandings.
Ptitsyn sometimes urged Ganya—in a friendly way, naturally—to find a job.
"You despise generals and generalship," he sometimes said to him jokingly, "but look, all of 'them' will end up as generals in their turn; if you live long enough, you'll see it."