But the pedagogue was
a calculating man, burthened with a large family and an exhausted
wife, destroyed by his masculine demands and suffering from a
multiplicity of female ills. Teaching in a female high school and
in an institute, he lived constantly in a sort of secret sensual
delirium, and only his German training, stinginess and cowardice
helped him to hold his constantly aroused desires in check. But
two or three times a year, with incredible privations, he would
cut five or ten roubles out of his beggarly budget, denying
himself in his beloved evening mug of beer and contriving to save
on the street cars, which necessitated his making enormous
distances on foot through the town. This money he set aside for
women and spent it slowly, with gusto, trying to prolong and
cheapen down the enjoyment as much as possible. And for his money
he wanted a very great deal, almost the impossible; his German
sentimental soul dimly thirsted after innocence, timidity, poesy,
in the flaxen image of Gretchen; but as a man he dreamt, desired,
and demanded that his caresses should bring a woman into rapture
and palpitation and into a sweet exhaustion.
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