Description
The Possessed
PART I
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
SOME DETAILS OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF THAT HIGHLY RESPECTED GENTLEMAN STEPAN
TROFIMOVITCH VERHOVENSKY.
I
IN UNDERTAKING to describe the recent and strange incidents in our town,
till lately wrapped in uneventful obscurity, I find myself forced in
absence of literary skill to begin my story rather far back, that is
to say, with certain biographical details concerning that talented and
highly-esteemed gentleman, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky. I trust that
these details may at least serve as an introduction, 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 the progressive patriot, so to say,
and he was passionately fond of playing the part–so much so that I
really believe he could not have existed without it. Not that I would
put him on a level with an actor at a theatre, God forbid, for I really
have a respect for him. This may all have been the effect of habit, or
rather, more exactly of a generous propensity he had from his earliest
years for indulging in an agreeable day-dream in which he figured as
a picturesque public character. He fondly loved, for instance, his
position as a “persecuted” man and, so to speak, an “exile.” There is a
sort of traditional glamour about those two little words that fascinated
him once for all and, exalting him gradually in his own opinion, raised
him in the course of years to a lofty pedestal very gratifying to
vanity. In an English satire of the last century, Gulliver, returning
from the land of the Lilliputians where the people were only three or
four inches high, had grown so accustomed to consider himself a giant
amo