The Gambler (Dostoevsky)/Chapter 6

This summary was created using artificial intelligence. It has not yet been reviewed by an editor and may contain errors.

🎩

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Gambler. Chapter 6

An Insolent Salute and Its Consequences

1866

Summary of a Chapter
from the Collection “The Gambler”

The original takes about 18 minutes to read

Microsummary

Alexis insults a German baron and his wife at Polina’s command. The General dismisses him, but Alexis threatens another confrontation before learning of a sudden departure and approaching crisis.

Chapter Summary

Two days after his public outburst, Alexis Ivanovitch reflected on the disorder he had caused. He could not decide whether confusion, despair, or a childish desire for mischief had driven him to behave so recklessly.

He blamed Polina for inspiring the incident and recalled his intense attraction to her. Her tall, slender figure, reddish hair, catlike eyes, and proud manner had fascinated him since he first saw her speaking with De Griers four months earlier.

Following Polina’s order to take off his hat to Baroness Burmergelm, Alexis stood in the carriageway and waited for the aristocratic couple. He bowed elaborately and addressed the Baroness in French as her servant, adding deliberate insolence of his own.

When the Baron angrily challenged him, Alexis repeatedly shouted “Ja wohl!” in an exaggerated Berlin accent. His strange persistence alarmed the Baron and Baroness, attracted a crowd, and finally caused the couple to retreat.

Alexis reported to Polina that he had completed the foolish act. Without looking at him, she told him to accept the consequences. He then wandered through the park and forest, ate at a roadside restaurant, and returned to the hotel at eleven.

The General summoned Alexis to his study, where De Griers was also present. He explained that Baron Burmergelm was an important man and accused Alexis of terrifying both him and his wife. Alexis responded with a deliberately childish account of the encounter.

Although Alexis admitted that his conduct had been stupid and indecent, he claimed that nervous illness had sometimes made him lose control. He then mocked fashionable legal arguments that excused crimes by asserting that offenders had temporarily been unconscious of their actions.

The General announced that the Baron had demanded satisfaction. To appease him, the General had promised to dismiss Alexis, paid the tutor his remaining wages, and declared that they were strangers. Alexis objected that, as a twenty-five-year-old graduate and gentleman, he alone was responsible for his actions.

Alexis threatened to demand a formal explanation from the Baron and implied that he might also challenge the General. Terrified of another scandal, the General first threatened to involve the police and then begged Alexis to abandon his plan, hinting that secret circumstances required exceptional caution.

Alexis privately intended to frighten Polina until she begged him to stop, hoping to prove that he was not insignificant in her eyes. He then learned that Maria Philipovna had unexpectedly left for Carlsbad after arguing with the General, apparently over Mlle. Blanche, and concluded that a decisive crisis was approaching.

Characters

Alexis Ivanovitch — narrator, 25-year-old male family tutor, university graduate and gentleman whose obsession with Polina fuels impulsive defiance, mockery, and a fierce insistence on personal independence.

Polina Alexandrovna — young woman and the General’s stepdaughter, tall and very slender with reddish hair and catlike eyes, whose proud cruelty and influence inspire Alexis’s reckless public behavior.

The General — middle-aged or older Russian man, Polina’s stepfather and Alexis’s employer, socially anxious and financially vulnerable, who dismisses Alexis to appease the Baron before desperately begging him to avoid another scandal.

Baron Burmergelm — about 45-year-old German aristocrat, tall, thin, spectacled and conceited, who angrily confronts Alexis and later demands satisfaction from the General.

Baroness Burmergelm — middle-aged German aristocratic woman, short and extremely stout with a purple face and malicious eyes, who becomes the principal target of Alexis’s theatrical bow and greeting.

Quotes

Yet it was not the General but Polina that I wanted to anger. She had treated me with such cruelty, and had got me into such a hole, that I felt a longing to force her to beseech me to stop.

I am merely your family tutor—not a son of yours, nor yet your ward, nor a person of any kind for whose acts you need be responsible. I am a judicially competent person, a man of twenty-five years of age

Let Polina, for once, have a good fright, and be forced to whistle me to heel again. But, however much she might whistle, she should see that I was at least no draggle-tailed cockerel!

This summary is based on the translation by C. J. Hogarth, first published in Poor Folk; The Gambler (London: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1915). Illustrations were created using AI.