“‘I’ll teach you to hit him gently,’ I heard his furious voice say.  ‘Will you pat him like that?  Will you?’ and I saw how his strong hand in the suede glove struck the weak, bloodless, terrified soldier for not bringing down his stick with sufficient strength on the red neck of the Tartar.

“‘Bring new sticks!’ he cried, and looking round, he saw me.  Assuming an air of not knowing me, and with a ferocious, angry frown, he hastily turned away.  I felt so utterly ashamed that I didn’t know where to look.  It was as if I had been detected in a disgraceful act.  I dropped my eyes, and quickly hurried home.  All the way I had the drums beating and the fifes whistling in my ears.  And I heard the words, ’Brothers, have mercy on me!’ or ‘Will you pat him?  Will you?’ My heart was full of physical disgust that was almost sickness.  So much so that I halted several times on my way, for I had the feeling that I was going to be really sick from all the horrors that possessed me at that sight.  I do not remember how I got home and got to bed.  But the moment I was about to fall asleep I heard and saw again all that had happened, and I sprang up.

“‘Evidently he knows something I do not know,’ I thought about the colonel.  ’If I knew what he knows I should certainly grasp—­understand—­what I have just seen, and it would not cause me such suffering.’

“But however much I thought about it, I could not understand the thing that the colonel knew.  It was evening before I could get to sleep, and then only after calling on a friend and drinking till I; was quite drunk.

“Do you think I had come to the conclusion that the deed I had witnessed was wicked?  Oh, no.  Since it was done with such assurance, and was recognised by every one as indispensable, they doubtless knew something which I did not know.  So I thought, and tried to understand.  But no matter, I could never understand it, then or afterwards.  And not being able to grasp it, I could not enter the service as I had intended.  I don’t mean only the military service:  I did not enter the Civil Service either.  And so I have been of no use whatever, as you can see.”

“Yes, we know how useless you’ve been,” said one of us.  “Tell us, rather, how many people would be of any use at all if it hadn’t been for you.”

“Oh, that’s utter nonsense,” said Ivan Vasilievich, with genuine annoyance.

“Well; and what about the love affair?

“My love?  It decreased from that day.  When, as often happened, she looked dreamy and meditative, I instantly recollected the colonel on the parade ground, and I felt so awkward and uncomfortable that I began to see her less frequently.  So my love came to naught.  Yes; such chances arise, and they alter and direct a man’s whole life,” he said in summing up.  “And you say . . .”

ALYOSHA THE POT