Chapter 4

"Well, I am going then to tell you my life, and my whole frightful
history,--yes, frightful. And the story itself is more frightful than
the outcome."

He became silent for a moment, passed his hands over his eyes, and
began:--

"To be understood clearly, the whole must be told from the beginning. It
must be told how and why I married, and what I was before my marriage.
First, I will tell you who I am. The son of a rich gentleman of the
steppes, an old marshal of the nobility, I was a University pupil, a
graduate of the law school. I married in my thirtieth year. But before
talking to you of my marriage, I must tell you how I lived formerly,
and what ideas I had of conjugal life. I led the life of so many other
so-called respectable people,--that is, in debauchery. And like the
majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I
was a man of irreproachable morality.

"The idea that I had of my morality arose from the fact that in my
family there was no knowledge of those special debaucheries, so common
in the surroundings of land-owners, and also from the fact that my
father and my mother did not deceive each other. In consequence of this,
I had built from childhood a dream of high and poetical conjugal
life. My wife was to be perfection itself, our mutual love was to be
incomparable, the purity of our conjugal life stainless. I thought thus,
and all the time I marvelled at the nobility of my projects.

"At the same time, I passed ten years of my adult life without hurrying
toward marriage, and I led what I called the well-regulated and
reasonable life of a bachelor. I was proud of it before my friends,
and before all men of my age who abandoned themselves to all sorts of
special refinements. I was not a seducer, I had no unnatural tastes,
I did not make debauchery the principal object of my life; but I found
pleasure within the limits of society's rules, and innocently believed
myself a profoundly moral being. The women with whom I had relations did
not belong to me alone, and I asked of them nothing but the pleasure of
the moment.

"In all this I saw nothing abnormal. On the contrary, from the fact
that I did not engage my heart, but paid in cash, I supposed that I was
honest. I avoided those women who, by attaching themselves to me, or
presenting me with a child, could bind my future. Moreover, perhaps
there may have been children or attachments; but I so arranged matters
that I could not become aware of them.

"And living thus, I considered myself a perfectly honest man. I did not
understand that debauchery does not consist simply in physical
acts, that no matter what physical ignominy does not yet constitute
debauchery, and that real debauchery consists in freedom from the moral
bonds toward a woman with whom one enters into carnal relations, and I
regarded THIS FREEDOM as a merit. I remember that I once tortured myself
exceedingly for having forgotten to pay a woman who probably had given
herself to me through love. I only became tranquil again when, having
sent her the money, I had thus shown her that I did not consider myself
as in any way bound to her. Oh, do not shake your head as if you were
in agreement with me (he cried suddenly with vehemence). I know these
tricks. All of you, and you especially, if you are not a rare exception,
have the same ideas that I had then. If you are in agreement with me, it
is now only. Formerly you did not think so. No more did I; and, if I had
been told what I have just told you, that which has happened would not
have happened. However, it is all the same. Excuse me (he continued):
the truth is that it is frightful, frightful, frightful, this abyss
of errors and debaucheries in which we live face to face with the real
question of the rights of woman." . . .

"What do you mean by the 'real' question of the rights of woman?"

"The question of the nature of this special being, organized otherwise
than man, and how this being and man ought to view the wife. . . ."