cause people misery!” he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess Márya.
She understood that when speaking of “trash” he referred not only to Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man who had ruined his own happiness.
“André! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!” she said, touching his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears.
“I understand you” (she looked down). “Don’t imagine that sorrow is the work of men . Men are His tools.”
She looked a little above Prince Andréy’s head with the confident, accustomed look with which one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. “Sorrow is sent by Him , not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of forgiving.”
“If I were a woman I would do so, Marie. That is a woman’s virtue. But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget,” he replied, and though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kurágin, all his unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.
“If Márya is already persuading me to forgive, it means that I ought long ago to have punished him,” he thought. And giving her no further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he would meet Kurágin who he knew was now in the army.
Princess Márya begged him to stay one day more, saying that she knew how unhappy her father would be if Andréy left without being reconciled to him, but Prince Andréy replied that he would probably soon be back again from the army and would certainly