imbecile son who, through some extraordinary chance, has suddenly
become a minister of state; of my suddenly receiving a windfall
of a million of roubles. I am sure that there exists no human
being, no human age, to whom or to which that gracious,
consolatory power of dreaming is totally a stranger. Yet, save
for the one general feature of magic and impossibility, the
dreams of each human being, of each age of man, have their own
distinguishing characteristics. At the period upon which I look
as having marked the close of my boyhood and the beginning of my
youth, four leading sentiments formed the basis of my dreams. The
first of those sentiments was love for HER--for an imaginary
woman whom I always pictured the same in my dreams, and whom I
somehow expected to meet some day and somewhere. This she of mine
had a little of Sonetchka in her, a little of Masha as Masha
could look when she stood washing linen over the clothes-tub, and
a little of a certain woman with pearls round her fair white neck
whom I had once seen long, long ago at a theatre, in a box below
our own. My second sentiment was a craving for love. I wanted
every one to know me and to love me. I wanted to be able to utter
my name--Nicola Irtenieff--and at once to see every one
thunderstruck at it, and come crowding round me and thanking me
for something or another, I hardly knew what. My third sentiment
was the expectation of some extraordinary, glorious happiness
that was impending--some happiness so strong and assured as to
verge upon ecstasy. Indeed, so firmly persuaded was I that very,
very soon some unexpected chance would suddenly make me the
richest and most famous man in the world that I lived in
constant, tremulous expectation of this magic good fortune
befalling me. I was always thinking to myself that "IT is
beginning," and that I should go on thereafter to attain