Although for a time he held strictly to his quest, certain new and strange feelings gradually began to steal over him. At first in an absent-minded sort of way, then with some attention, and, lastly, with great curiosity he set himself to take note of his surroundings. The crowds, the din and life of the streets, the bustle and movement around him, the many unfamiliar sights which he beheld, his unfamiliar position—all this petty material of a daily existence which merely wearies the active, preoccupied habitué of St. Petersburg in a strenuous and constant, but vain, struggle for rest and quiet in the home which he has won by labour or otherwise—all this prosaic tedium and banalité evoked in Ordynov’s breast, rather, a sensation of calm, bright cheerfulness. His pale cheeks took on a faint tinge of colour, and his eyes shone with new hope as he greedily inhaled deep draughts of the chill, fresh air. Somehow he seemed to himself extraordinarily light.

The life he had hitherto led had been a quiet, absolutely solitary one. Three years ago, on taking a university degree and becoming practically his own master, he had been summoned to the house of an old man whom hitherto he had known only by name. There he had waited until at length the liveried servant had condescended to announce his presence; after which he had entered a lofty, dimly-lighted drawing-room which was almost bare of furniture—a room of the depressing type which is still to be met with in old mansions which stand as survivals from the epoch of great families and seigniorial houses. In this room he had found himself confronted by a much-bemedalled, grey-haired dotard—the friend and colleague of Ordynov’s father, and Ordynov’s guardian—who had handed to his ward what seemed to the latter a very small sum, as representing a legacy derived from some property which had just been sold under the hammer, to liquidate a debt incident upon his grandfather’s estate. Ordynov had received the money with indifference, taken his first and last leave of his guardian, and departed. The evening had been a cold, misty one in autumn, and Ordynov had felt in a meditative mood, for a sort of unconscious depression had been chafing his heart. Also, his eyes had been burning with fever, and every moment he could feel hot and cold shivers running down his body. He had calculated that, with the sum just received, he could subsist for two, for three, or, if he stinted himself carefully, even for four years. But darkness was now coming on, and rain was falling, so he had hired the first room which he had come across, and within an hour had moved his effects into it. There he had shut himself up as in a monastery where men renounced the world; and before two years were over he had become, to all intents and purposes, a savage.