But I will note now as a curious fact that of all the impressions made on him by his stay in our town, the one most sharply imprinted on his memory was the unsightly and almost abject figure of the little provincial official, the coarse and jealous family despot, the miserly money-lender who picked up the candle-ends and scraps left from dinner, and was at the same time a passionate believer in some visionary future "social harmony," who at night gloated in ecstasies over fantastic pictures of a future phalanstery, in the approaching realisation of which, in Russia, and in our province, he believed as firmly as in his own existence.

And that in the very place where he had saved up to buy himself a "little home," where he had married for the second time, getting a dowry with his bride, where perhaps, for a hundred miles round there was not one man, himself included, who was the very least like a future member "of the universal human republic and social harmony." "God knows how these people come to exist!" Nikolay wondered, recalling sometimes the unlooked-for Fourierist.
IV Our prince travelled for over three years, so that he was almost forgotten in the town.

We learned from Stepan Trofimovitch that he had travelled all over Europe, that he had even been in Egypt and had visited Jerusalem, and then had joined some scientific expedition to Iceland, and he actually did go to Iceland.

It was reported too that he had spent one winter attending lectures in a German university.

He did not write often to his mother, twice a year, or even less, but Varvara Petrovna was not angry or offended at this.