“Of course,” he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion.  In reality this “of course,” that seemed convincing to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had passed ten times already during the last hour—­memories of happiness lost forever.  There was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation.  Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the same.

“Of course,” he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger.  He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him reeling.  He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment.  He did not recognize his room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug.  The hurried, creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing room brought him to his senses.  He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew he had shot himself.

“Idiotic!  Missed!” he said, fumbling after the revolver.  The revolver was close beside him—­he sought further off.  Still feeling for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with blood.

The elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance.  An hour later Varya, his brother’s wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.

Chapter 19

The mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die—­this mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him in all its significance.  But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart.  At his sick wife’s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of