"Why did she bear me? And what did she think at the time? What's my life now? She's not been a mother to me, she only bore me. Because whereas a real mother worries about her child, mine only bore me and sent me to a charitable home when I was a mere baby." "Well, you've learnt something by it--it made a man of you," said Prepolovenskaya. Volodin bent his head, wagged it to and fro and said: "No, what's my life? A dog's life. Why did she bear me? What did she think then?" Peredonov suddenly remembered yesterday's _erli._ "There," he thought, "he complains about his mother, because she bore him. He doesn't want to be Pavloushka. It's certain that he envies me. It may be that he's thinking of marrying Varvara and of getting into my skin." And he looked anxiously at Volodin. He must try to marry him to someone. * * * * * At night in the bedroom Varvara said to Peredonov: "You think that all these girls who are running after you are really good-looking? They're all trash, and I'm prettier than any of them." She quickly undressed herself and, smiling insolently, showed Peredonov her rosy, graceful, flexible and beautiful body. Though Varvara staggered from drunkenness and her face would have repelled any decent man with its flabby-lascivious expression, she really had the beautiful body of a nymph, with the head of a faded prostitute attached to it as if by some horrible black magic. And this superb body was for these two drunken and dirty-minded people merely the source of the vilest libidinousness. And so it often happens in our age that beauty is debased and abused. Peredonov laughed gruffly but boisterously as he looked at his naked companion. The entire night he dreamed of women of all colours, naked and hideous. * * * * * Varvara believed that the friction with nettles, which she applied at Prepolovenskaya's advice, helped her. It seemed to her that she got plumper almost at once. She asked all her acquaintances: "It's true, isn't it, that I'm a little fuller?" And she thought that now Peredonov would surely marry her, seeing that she was plumper, and that he would receive the forged letter. Peredonov's expectations were far from being so agreeable as hers. He had become convinced some time before that the Head-Master was hostile to him--and as a matter of fact the Head-Master considered Peredonov a lazy, incapable instructor. Peredonov imagined that the Head-Master told the boys not to respect him, which it is obvious was an absurd invention of his own. But it inspired Peredonov with the idea that he must be on his guard against the Head-Master. From spite against the Head-Master he spoke slightingly of him more than once in the classes of the older students. This pleased many of the students.