Go to New Version of This Page
This old version has not been updated since 2016,
but we're leaving it in case you prefer it. Show What's New
Please update your links from the new version.
Strong-boxes always have keys like that…. but how degrading it all is.
The tavern, the degraded appearance of the man, the five nights in the hay barge, and the pot of spirits, and yet this poignant love for his wife and children bewildered his listener.
Show more
Tell me," he went on almost in a frenzy, "how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings?
Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading!
"If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even glance into the purse and don’t know what I had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading business?
It’s a bitter thing to spend one’s life a governess in the provinces for two hundred roubles, but I know she would rather be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with a German master than degrade her soul, and her moral dignity, by binding herself for ever to a man whom she does not respect and with whom she has nothing in common—for her own advantage.