The Possessed

IN UNDERTAKING to describe the recent and strange incidents in our town, till lately wrapped inuneventful obscurity, I find myself forced in absence of literary skill to begin my story rather farback, that is to say, with certain biographical details concerning that talented and highly-esteemedgentleman, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky. I trust that these details may at least serve as anintroduction, while my projected story itself will come later. I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular rôle among us, that of theprogressive patriot, so to say, and he was passionately fond of playing the part-so much so that Ireally believe he could not have existed without it. Not that I would put him on a level with an actorat a theatre, God forbid, for I really have a respect for him. This may all have been the effect ofhabit, or rather, more exactly of a generous propensity he had from his earliest years for indulging inan agreeable day-dream in which he figured as a picturesque public character. He fondly loved, forinstance, his position as a "persecuted" man and, so to speak, an "exile." There is a sort oftraditional glamour about those two little words that fascinated him once for all and, exalting himgradually in his own opinion, raised him in the course of years to a lofty pedestal very gratifying tovanity. In an English satire of the last century, Gulliver, returning from the land of the Lilliputianswhere the people were only three or four inches high, had grown so accustomed to consider himselfa giant among them, that as he walked along the streets of London he could not help crying out tocarriages and passers-by to be careful and get out of his way for fear he should crush them, imagining that they were little and he was still a giant. He was laughed at and abused for it, andrough coachmen even lashed at the giant with their whips. But was that just? What may not be doneby habit? Habit had brought Stepan Trofimovitch almost to the same position, but in a moreinnocent and inoffensive form, if one may use such expressions, for he was a most excellent man.