Don Quixote

to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I, and what
am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody." And he
recalled his brother Nikolai, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought
of him. "Isn't he right in saying that everything in the world is
bad and vile? And are we fair in our judgment, present and past, of
brother Nikolai? Of course, from the point of view of Procophii,
seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he's a despicable person. But
I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are alike.
And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and
then came here." Levin walked up to a lamppost, read his brother's
address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a cabby. All the long
way to his brother's Levin vividly recalled all the facts, familiar to
him, of his brother Nikolai's life. He remembered how his brother,
while at the university, and for a year afterward, had, in spite of
the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all
religious rites, services and fasts, and avoiding every sort of
pleasure- especially women. And now, afterward, he had all at once
broken out: had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed
into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the scandal
over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring up, and, in
a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that proceedings were brought
against him for personal injury. Then he remembered the scandal with a
sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and
against whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he
had cheated him. (This was the money Sergei Ivanovich had paid.)
Then he remembered how he had spent a night in a police station for
disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful
proceedings he had instituted against his brother Sergei Ivanovich,
accusing him of not having paid him, apparently, his share of his
mother's estate; and the last scandal, when he had gone to a Western
province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for
assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly vile, yet to
Levin it appeared not at all as vile as it inevitably would to those
who did not know Nikolai, did not know all his story, did not know his
heart.
Levin remembered that when Nikolai had been in the devout stage, the
period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking
in religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament,
everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him- and Levin
had, too, with the others. They had teased him, calling him Noah and
Monk; yet, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but had
all turned away from him, with horror