character. The history of peoples is full of similar cases: see the pages of Hume, Gibbon, Ranke, Thierry. Men drag themselves along in a beaten track simply because they have been told to do so; but tell them in a very loud voice to take another road, and, though they will not hear you at first, they will soon throw themselves into the new path with the same spirit. Storechnikoff had been told that, with a great fortune, a young man has only to choose among the poor the beauty whom he desires for a mistress, and that is why he had thought of making a mistress of Vérotchka. Now a new word had been thrown into his head: Marriage! And he pondered over this question: Shall I marry her? as before he had pondered over the other: Shall I make her my mistress?
That is the common trait by which Storechnikoff represented in his person, in a satisfactory manner, nine-tenths of his fellow-citizens of the world. Historians and psychologists tell us that in each special fact the common fact is individualized by local, temporary, individual elements, and that these particular elements are precisely those of most importance. Let us examine, then, our particular case. The main feature had been pointed out by Julie (as if she had taken it from Russian novels, which all speak of it): resistance excites desire. Storechnikoff had become accustomed to dream of the possession of Vérotchka. Like Julie I call things by their names, as, moreover, almost all of us do in current conversation. For some time his imagination had represented Vérotchka in poses each more voluptuous than its predecessor; these pictures had inflamed his mind, and, when he believed himself on the point of their realization, Vérotchka had blown upon his dream, and all had vanished. But if he could not have her as as mistress, he could have her as a wife; and what matters it which after all, provided his gross sensuality be satisfied, provided his wildest erotic dreams be realized? O human degradation! to possess! Who dares possess a human being? One may possess a pair of slippers, a dressing-gown. But what do I say? Each of us, men, possesses some one of you, our sisters! Are you, then, our sisters? You are our servants. There are, I know, some women who subjugate some men; but what of that? Many valets rule their masters, but that does not prevent valets from being valets.
These amorous images had developed in Storechnikoff's mind after the interview at the theatre; he had found her a hundred times more beautiful than at first he deemed her, and his polluted imagination was excited.
It is with beauty as with wit, as with all qualities; men value it by the judgment of general opinion. Every one sees that a beautiful face is beautiful, but how beautiful is it? It is at this point that the data of current opinion become necessary to classification. As long as Vérotchka sat in the galleries or in the back rows of the pit, she was not noticed; but when she appeared in one of the boxes of the second tier, several glasses were levelled at her; and how many
