Page:The Career of a Nihilist.djvu/35

This was no nightmare. It was a frightful reality. For months the harrowing vision had persecuted Andrey, and now it rose before him as if he had seen it but yesterday.

And in the meantime, while these horrors went on there, in his own country, what was he doing? He remained in ignominious security, studying clever books, admiring the beauties of nature and the wonders of art. And his conscience, stern, implacable inquisitor, whispered in his ear insidiously: Why, is there nothing besides your friends’ arguments which keeps you where you are? Are you really so anxious to give up safety and to put once more your neck into the noose, or to exchange your room for an underground cell in a ravelin of the Tzars?

In the unnatural life he led, what but empty words could he bring forward in answer to these gnawing questions? And he did not always succeed in silencing thus his terrible judge. He knew the anguish of doubt and the pangs of self-condemnation. There were moments when he deemed his former revolutionary zeal but an ebullition of youth and of love of strong sensations,—when he thought his life a failure, and himself a clod of earth aspiring to become a stone in a marble temple, a dwarf in a giant’s armour, and he felt as crestfallen, crushed, and wretched as a living soul can.

Andrey completely lost control over his thoughts. He called up these memories as the German doctor called up the spirits that waited on his will—as a pastime, a kind of spiritual enjoyment. But they were too strong for him, and now they held him in their cruel clutches, and mastered him in real earnest. No sign of enjoyment could be detected in his drooped head, or in the nervous movement of the hand which swept his bowed forehead as if to brush away these crowding recollections.

But it is all over now, sunk in oblivion and nothingness, as the ugly dreams and phantasms of the night fly before the face of morning. In this solemn moment, before crossing the fatal threshold which he was certain never to recross, he could measure himself with certainty. The long years of enervating inaction had left no trace upon his soul. It was like a sword left idle in the sheath. Now he unsheathed it before him, scrutinising it with severe and experienced eye. No, there was no rust upon it; it was clean, sharp; ready for the battle as ever.