The possessed _ or_ The devils Fyodor Dostoyevsky 4668 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The possessed
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: The possessed
or, The devils

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Translator: Constance Garnett

Release date: May 1, 2005 [eBook #8117]
Most recently updated: June 5, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8117

Credits: Produced by David Moynihan, David Widger and Michelle Knight

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
POSSESSED ***

THE POSSESSED

or, The Devils

A Novel In Three Parts

By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Translated From The Russian By Constance Garnett

1916

Contents

PART I.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER II. PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING
CHAPTER III. THE SINS OF OTHERS
CHAPTER IV. THE CRIPPLE
CHAPTER V. THE SUBTLE SERPENT

PART II.
CHAPTER I. NIGHT
CHAPTER II. NIGHT (continued)
CHAPTER III. THE DUEL
CHAPTER IV. ALL IN EXPECTATION
CHAPTER V. ON THE EVE OF THE FETE
CHAPTER VI. PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY
CHAPTER VII. A MEETING
CHAPTER VIII. IVAN THE TSAREVITCH
CHAPTER IX. A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH’S
CHAPTER X. FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING

PART III.
CHAPTER I. THE FETE—FIRST PART
CHAPTER II. THE END OF THE FETE
CHAPTER III. A ROMANCE ENDED
CHAPTER IV. THE LAST RESOLUTION
CHAPTER V. A WANDERER
CHAPTER VI. A BUSY NIGHT
CHAPTER VII. STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH’S LAST WANDERING

CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION

“Strike me dead, the track has vanished,
Well, what now? We’ve lost the way,
Demons have bewitched our horses,
Led us in the wilds astray.

“What a number! Whither drift they?
What’s the mournful dirge they sing?
Do they hail a witch’s marriage
Or a goblin’s burying?”

A. Pushkin.

“And there was one herd of many swine feeding on this
mountain; and they besought him that he would suffer them to
enter into them. And he suffered them.

“Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the
swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into
the lake and were choked.

“When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and
went and told it in the city and in the country.

“Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus
and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed,
sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind;
and they were afraid.”

Luke, ch. viii. 32-37.

PART I

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
SOME DETAILS OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF THAT HIGHLY
RESPECTED GENTLEMAN STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH
VERHOVENSKY.
I
IN UNDERTAKING to describe the recent and strange incidents in our
town, till lately wrapped in uneventful obscurity, I find myself forced in
absence of literary skill to begin my story rather far back, that is to say, with
certain biographical details concerning that talented and highly-esteemed
gentleman, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky. I trust that these details may
at least serve as an introduction, while my projected story itself will come
later.
I will say at once that Stepan Trofimovitch had always filled a particular
rôle among us, that of the progressive patriot, so to say, and he was
passionately fond of playing the part—so much so that I really believe he
could not have existed without it. Not that I would put him on a level with
an actor at a theatre, God forbid, for I really have a respect for him. This
may all have been the effect of habit, or rather, more exactly of a generous
propensity he had from his earliest years for indulging in an agreeable day-
dream in which he figured as a picturesque public character. He fondly
loved, for instance, his position as a “persecuted” man and, so to speak, an
“exile.” There is a sort of traditional glamour about those two little words
that fascinated him once for all and, exalting him gradually in his own
opinion, raised him in the course of years to a lofty pedestal very gratifying
to vanity. In an English satire of the last century, Gulliver, returning from
the land of the Lilliputians where the people were only three or four inches
high, had grown so accustomed to consider himself a giant among them,
that as he walked along the streets of London he could not help crying out
to carriages and passers-by to be careful and get out of his way for fear he
should crush them, imagining that they were little and he was still a giant.
He was laughed at and abused for it, and rough coachmen even lashed at the

giant with their whips. But was that just? What may not be done by habit?
Habit had brought Stepan Trofimovitch almost to the same position, but in a
more innocent and inoffensive form, if one may use such expressions, for
he was a most excellent man.
I am even inclined to suppose that towards the end he had been entirely
forgotten everywhere; but still it cannot be said that his name had never
been known. It is beyond question that he had at one time belonged to a
certain distinguished constellation of celebrated leaders of the last
generation, and at one time—though only for the briefest moment—his
name was pronounced by many hasty persons of that day almost as though
it were on a level with the names of Tchaadaev, of Byelinsky, of Granovsky,
and of Herzen, who had only just begun to write abroad. But Stepan
Trofimovitch’s activity ceased almost at the moment it began, owing, so to
say, to a “vortex of combined circumstances.” And would you believe it? It
turned out afterwards that there had been no “vortex” and even no
“circumstances,” at least in that connection. I only learned the other day to
my intense amazement, though on the most unimpeachable authority, that
Stepan Trofimovitch had lived among us in our province not as an “exile”
as we were accustomed to believe, and had never even been under police
supervision at all. Such is the force of imagination! All his life he sincerely
believed that in certain spheres he was a constant cause of apprehension,
that every step he took was watched and noted, and that each one of the
three governors who succeeded one another during twenty years in our
province came with special and uneasy ideas concerning him, which had,
by higher powers, been impressed upon each before everything else, on
receiving the appointment. Had anyone assured the honest man on the most
irrefutable grounds that he had nothing to be afraid of, he would certainly
have been offended. Yet Stepan Trofimovitch was a most intelligent and
gifted man, even, so to say, a man of science, though indeed, in science …
well, in fact he had not done such great things in science. I believe indeed
he had done nothing at all. But that’s very often the case, of course, with
men of science among us in Russia.
He came back from abroad and was brilliant in the capacity of lecturer at
the university, towards the end of the forties. He only had time to deliver a
few lectures, I believe they were about the Arabs; he maintained, too, a
brilliant thesis on the political and Hanseatic importance of the German

town Hanau, of which there was promise in the epoch between 1413 and
1428, and on the special and obscure reasons why that promise was never
fulfilled. This dissertation was a cruel and skilful thrust at the Slavophils of
the day, and at once made him numerous and irreconcilable enemies among
them. Later on—after he had lost his post as lecturer, however—he
published (by way of revenge, so to say, and to show them what a man they
had lost) in a progressive monthly review, which translated Dickens and
advocated the views of George Sand, the beginning of a very profound
investigation into the causes, I believe, of the extraordinary moral nobility
of certain knights at a certain epoch or something of that nature.
Some lofty and exceptionally noble idea was maintained in it, anyway. It
was said afterwards that the continuation was hurriedly forbidden and even
that the progressive review had to suffer for having printed the first part.
That may very well have been so, for what was not possible in those days?
Though, in this case, it is more likely that there was nothing of the kind, and
that the author himself was too lazy to conclude his essay. He cut short his
lectures on the Arabs because, somehow and by someone (probably one of
his reactionary enemies) a letter had been seized giving an account of
certain circumstances, in consequence of which someone had demanded an
explanation from him. I don’t know whether the story is true, but it was
asserted that at the same time there was discovered in Petersburg a vast,
unnatural, and illegal conspiracy of thirty people which almost shook
society to its foundations. It was said that they were positively on the point
of translating Fourier. As though of design a poem of Stepan Trofimovitch’s
was seized in Moscow at that very time, though it had been written six
years before in Berlin in his earliest youth, and manuscript copies had been
passed round a circle consisting of two poetical amateurs and one student.
This poem is lying now on my table. No longer ago than last year I received
a recent copy in his own handwriting from Stepan Trofimovitch himself,
signed by him, and bound in a splendid red leather binding. It is not without
poetic merit, however, and even a certain talent. It’s strange, but in those
days (or to be more exact, in the thirties) people were constantly composing
in that style. I find it difficult to describe the subject, for I really do not
understand it. It is some sort of an allegory in lyrical-dramatic form,
recalling the second part of Faust. The scene opens with a chorus of
women, followed by a chorus of men, then a chorus of incorporeal powers

of some sort, and at the end of all a chorus of spirits not yet living but very
eager to come to life. All these choruses sing about something very
indefinite, for the most part about somebody’s curse, but with a tinge of the
higher humour. But the scene is suddenly changed. There begins a sort of
“festival of life” at which even insects sing, a tortoise comes on the scene
with certain sacramental Latin words, and even, if I remember aright, a
mineral sings about something that is a quite inanimate object. In fact, they
all sing continually, or if they converse, it is simply to abuse one another
vaguely, but again with a tinge of higher meaning. At last the scene is
changed again; a wilderness appears, and among the rocks there wanders a
civilized young man who picks and sucks certain herbs. Asked by a fairy
why he sucks these herbs, he answers that, conscious of a superfluity of life
in himself, he seeks forgetfulness, and finds it in the juice of these herbs,
but that his great desire is to lose his reason at once (a desire possibly
superfluous). Then a youth of indescribable beauty rides in on a black steed,
and an immense multitude of all nations follow him. The youth represents
death, for whom all the peoples are yearning. And finally, in the last scene
we are suddenly shown the Tower of Babel, and certain athletes at last
finish building it with a song of new hope, and when at length they
complete the topmost pinnacle, the lord (of Olympia, let us say) takes flight
in a comic fashion, and man, grasping the situation and seizing his place, at
once begins a new life with new insight into things. Well, this poem was
thought at that time to be dangerous. Last year I proposed to Stepan
Trofimovitch to publish it, on the ground of its perfect harmlessness
nowadays, but he declined the suggestion with evident dissatisfaction. My
view of its complete harmlessness evidently displeased him, and I even
ascribe to it a certain coldness on his part, which lasted two whole months.
And what do you think? Suddenly, almost at the time I proposed printing it
here, our poem was published abroad in a collection of revolutionary verse,
without the knowledge of Stepan Trofimovitch. He was at first alarmed,
rushed to the governor, and wrote a noble letter in self-defence to
Petersburg. He read it to me twice, but did not send it, not knowing to
whom to address it. In fact he was in a state of agitation for a whole month,
but I am convinced that in the secret recesses of his heart he was
enormously flattered. He almost took the copy of the collection to bed with
him, and kept it hidden under his mattress in the daytime; he positively

would not allow the women to turn his bed, and although he expected every
day a telegram, he held his head high. No telegram came. Then he made
friends with me again, which is a proof of the extreme kindness of his
gentle and unresentful heart.
II
Of course I don’t assert that he had never suffered for his convictions at all,
but I am fully convinced that he might have gone on lecturing on his Arabs
as long as he liked, if he had only given the necessary explanations. But he
was too lofty, and he proceeded with peculiar haste to assure himself that
his career was ruined forever “by the vortex of circumstance.” And if the
whole truth is to be told the real cause of the change in his career was the
very delicate proposition which had been made before and was then
renewed by Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin, a lady of great wealth, the wife of
a lieutenant-general, that he should undertake the education and the whole
intellectual development of her only son in the capacity of a superior sort of
teacher and friend, to say nothing of a magnificent salary. This proposal had
been made to him the first time in Berlin, at the moment when he was first
left a widower. His first wife was a frivolous girl from our province, whom
he married in his early and unthinking youth, and apparently he had had a
great deal of trouble with this young person, charming as she was, owing to
the lack of means for her support; and also from other, more delicate,
reasons. She died in Paris after three years’ separation from him, leaving
him a son of five years old; “the fruit of our first, joyous, and unclouded
love,” were the words the sorrowing father once let fall in my presence.
The child had, from the first, been sent back to Russia, where he was
brought up in the charge of distant cousins in some remote region. Stepan
Trofimovitch had declined Varvara Petrovna’s proposal on that occasion
and had quickly married again, before the year was over, a taciturn Berlin
girl, and, what makes it more strange, there was no particular necessity for
him to do so. But apart from his marriage there were, it appears, other
reasons for his declining the situation. He was tempted by the resounding
fame of a professor, celebrated at that time, and he, in his turn, hastened to
the lecturer’s chair for which he had been preparing himself, to try his eagle
wings in flight. But now with singed wings he naturally remembered the
proposition which even then had made him hesitate. The sudden death of

his second wife, who did not live a year with him, settled the matter
decisively. To put it plainly it was all brought about by the passionate
sympathy and priceless, so to speak, classic friendship of Varvara Petrovna,
if one may use such an expression of friendship. He flung himself into the
arms of this friendship, and his position was settled for more than twenty
years. I use the expression “flung himself into the arms of,” but God forbid
that anyone should fly to idle and superfluous conclusions. These embraces
must be understood only in the most loftily moral sense. The most refined
and delicate tie united these two beings, both so remarkable, forever.
The post of tutor was the more readily accepted too, as the property—a very
small one—left to Stepan Trofimovitch by his first wife was close to
Skvoreshniki, the Stavrogins’ magnificent estate on the outskirts of our
provincial town. Besides, in the stillness of his study, far from the immense
burden of university work, it was always possible to devote himself to the
service of science, and to enrich the literature of his country with erudite
studies. These works did not appear. But on the other hand it did appear
possible to spend the rest of his life, more than twenty years, “a reproach
incarnate,” so to speak, to his native country, in the words of a popular poet:
Reproach incarnate thou didst stand Erect before thy Fatherland, O Liberal
idealist!
But the person to whom the popular poet referred may perhaps have had the
right to adopt that pose for the rest of his life if he had wished to do so,
though it must have been tedious. Our Stepan Trofimovitch was, to tell the
truth, only an imitator compared with such people; moreover, he had grown
weary of standing erect and often lay down for a while. But, to do him
justice, the “incarnation of reproach” was preserved even in the recumbent
attitude, the more so as that was quite sufficient for the province. You
should have seen him at our club when he sat down to cards. His whole
figure seemed to exclaim “Cards! Me sit down to whist with you! Is it
consistent? Who is responsible for it? Who has shattered my energies and
turned them to whist? Ah, perish, Russia!” and he would majestically trump
with a heart.
And to tell the truth he dearly loved a game of cards, which led him,
especially in later years, into frequent and unpleasant skirmishes with

Varvara Petrovna, particularly as he was always losing. But of that later. I
will only observe that he was a man of tender conscience (that is,
sometimes) and so was often depressed. In the course of his twenty years’
friendship with Varvara Petrovna he used regularly, three or four times a
year, to sink into a state of “patriotic grief,” as it was called among us, or
rather really into an attack of spleen, but our estimable Varvara Petrovna
preferred the former phrase. Of late years his grief had begun to be not only
patriotic, but at times alcoholic too; but Varvara Petrovna’s alertness
succeeded in keeping him all his life from trivial inclinations. And he
needed someone to look after him indeed, for he sometimes behaved very
oddly: in the midst of his exalted sorrow he would begin laughing like any
simple peasant. There were moments when he began to take a humorous
tone even about himself. But there was nothing Varvara Petrovna dreaded
so much as a humorous tone. She was a woman of the classic type, a female
Mæcenas, invariably guided only by the highest considerations. The
influence of this exalted lady over her poor friend for twenty years is a fact
of the first importance. I shall need to speak of her more particularly, which
I now proceed to do.
III
There are strange friendships. The two friends are always ready to fly at one
another, and go on like that all their lives, and yet they cannot separate.
Parting, in fact, is utterly impossible. The one who has begun the quarrel
and separated will be the first to fall ill and even die, perhaps, if the
separation comes off. I know for a positive fact that several times Stepan
Trofimovitch has jumped up from the sofa and beaten the wall with his fists
after the most intimate and emotional tête-à-tête with Varvara Petrovna.
This proceeding was by no means an empty symbol; indeed, on one
occasion, he broke some plaster off the wall. It may be asked how I come to
know such delicate details. What if I were myself a witness of it? What if
Stepan Trofimovitch himself has, on more than one occasion, sobbed on my
shoulder while he described to me in lurid colours all his most secret
feelings. (And what was there he did not say at such times!) But what
almost always happened after these tearful outbreaks was that next day he
was ready to crucify himself for his ingratitude. He would send for me in a
hurry or run over to see me simply to assure me that Varvara Petrovna was

“an angel of honour and delicacy, while he was very much the opposite.”
He did not only run to confide in me, but, on more than one occasion,
described it all to her in the most eloquent letter, and wrote a full signed
confession that no longer ago than the day before he had told an outsider
that she kept him out of vanity, that she was envious of his talents and
erudition, that she hated him and was only afraid to express her hatred
openly, dreading that he would leave her and so damage her literary
reputation, that this drove him to self-contempt, and he was resolved to die
a violent death, and that he was waiting for the final word from her which
would decide everything, and so on and so on in the same style. You can
fancy after this what an hysterical pitch the nervous outbreaks of this most
innocent of all fifty-year-old infants sometimes reached! I once read one of
these letters after some quarrel between them, arising from a trivial matter,
but growing venomous as it went on. I was horrified and besought him not
to send it.
“I must … more honourable … duty … I shall die if I don’t confess
everything, everything!” he answered almost in delirium, and he did send
the letter.
That was the difference between them, that Varvara Petrovna never would
have sent such a letter. It is true that he was passionately fond of writing, he
wrote to her though he lived in the same house, and during hysterical
interludes he would write two letters a day. I know for a fact that she always
read these letters with the greatest attention, even when she received two a
day, and after reading them she put them away in a special drawer, sorted
and annotated; moreover, she pondered them in her heart. But she kept her
friend all day without an answer, met him as though there were nothing the
matter, exactly as though nothing special had happened the day before. By
degrees she broke him in so completely that at last he did not himself dare
to allude to what had happened the day before, and only glanced into her
eyes at times. But she never forgot anything, while he sometimes forgot too
quickly, and encouraged by her composure he would not infrequently, if
friends came in, laugh and make jokes over the champagne the very same
day. With what malignancy she must have looked at him at such moments,
while he noticed nothing! Perhaps in a week’s time, a month’s time, or even
six months later, chancing to recall some phrase in such a letter, and then
the whole letter with all its attendant circumstances, he would suddenly

grow hot with shame, and be so upset that he fell ill with one of his attacks
of “summer cholera.” These attacks of a sort of “summer cholera” were, in
some cases, the regular consequence of his nervous agitations and were an
interesting peculiarity of his physical constitution.
No doubt Varvara Petrovna did very often hate him. But there was one thing
he had not discerned up to the end: that was that he had become for her a
son, her creation, even, one may say, her invention; he had become flesh of
her flesh, and she kept and supported him not simply from “envy of his
talents.” And how wounded she must have been by such suppositions! An
inexhaustible love for him lay concealed in her heart in the midst of
continual hatred, jealousy, and contempt. She would not let a speck of dust
fall upon him, coddled him up for twenty-two years, would not have slept
for nights together if there were the faintest breath against his reputation as
a poet, a learned man, and a public character. She had invented him, and
had been the first to believe in her own invention. He was, after a fashion,
her day-dream.… But in return she exacted a great deal from him,
sometimes even slavishness. It was incredible how long she harboured
resentment. I have two anecdotes to tell about that.
IV
On one occasion, just at the time when the first rumours of the
emancipation of the serfs were in the air, when all Russia was exulting and
making ready for a complete regeneration, Varvara Petrovna was visited by
a baron from Petersburg, a man of the highest connections, and very closely
associated with the new reform. Varvara Petrovna prized such visits highly,
as her connections in higher circles had grown weaker and weaker since the
death of her husband, and had at last ceased altogether. The baron spent an
hour drinking tea with her. There was no one else present but Stepan
Trofimovitch, whom Varvara Petrovna invited and exhibited. The baron had
heard something about him before or affected to have done so, but paid
little attention to him at tea. Stepan Trofimovitch of course was incapable of
making a social blunder, and his manners were most elegant. Though I
believe he was by no means of exalted origin, yet it happened that he had
from earliest childhood been brought up in a Moscow household—of high
rank, and consequently was well bred. He spoke French like a Parisian.
Thus the baron was to have seen from the first glance the sort of people

with whom Varvara Petrovna surrounded herself, even in provincial
seclusion. But things did not fall out like this. When the baron positively
asserted the absolute truth of the rumours of the great reform, which were
then only just beginning to be heard, Stepan Trofimovitch could not contain
himself, and suddenly shouted “Hurrah!” and even made some gesticulation
indicative of delight. His ejaculation was not over-loud and quite polite, his
delight was even perhaps premeditated, and his gesture purposely studied
before the looking-glass half an hour before tea. But something must have
been amiss with it, for the baron permitted himself a faint smile, though he,
at once, with extraordinary courtesy, put in a phrase concerning the
universal and befitting emotion of all Russian hearts in view of the great
event. Shortly afterwards he took his leave and at parting did not forget to
hold out two fingers to Stepan Trofimovitch. On returning to the drawing-
room Varvara Petrovna was at first silent for two or three minutes, and
seemed to be looking for something on the table. Then she turned to Stepan
Trofimovitch, and with pale face and flashing eyes she hissed in a whisper:
“I shall never forgive you for that!”
Next day she met her friend as though nothing had happened, she never
referred to the incident, but thirteen years afterwards, at a tragic moment,
she recalled it and reproached him with it, and she turned pale, just as she
had done thirteen years before. Only twice in the course of her life did she
say to him:
“I shall never forgive you for that!”
The incident with the baron was the second time, but the first incident was
so characteristic and had so much influence on the fate of Stepan
Trofimovitch that I venture to refer to that too.
It was in 1855, in spring-time, in May, just after the news had reached
Skvoreshniki of the death of Lieutenant-General Stavrogin, a frivolous old
gentleman who died of a stomach ailment on the way to the Crimea, where
he was hastening to join the army on active service. Varvara Petrovna was
left a widow and put on deep mourning. She could not, it is true, deplore his
death very deeply, since, for the last four years, she had been completely
separated from him owing to incompatibility of temper, and was giving him
an allowance. (The Lieutenant-General himself had nothing but one

hundred and fifty serfs and his pay, besides his position and his
connections. All the money and Skvoreshniki belonged to Varvara Petrovna,
the only daughter of a very rich contractor.) Yet she was shocked by the
suddenness of the news, and retired into complete solitude. Stepan
Trofimovitch, of course, was always at her side.
May was in its full beauty. The evenings were exquisite. The wild cherry
was in flower. The two friends walked every evening in the garden and used
to sit till nightfall in the arbour, and pour out their thoughts and feelings to
one another. They had poetic moments. Under the influence of the change
in her position Varvara Petrovna talked more than usual. She, as it were,
clung to the heart of her friend, and this continued for several evenings. A
strange idea suddenly came over Stepan Trofimovitch: “Was not the
inconsolable widow reckoning upon him, and expecting from him, when
her mourning was over, the offer of his hand?” A cynical idea, but the very
loftiness of a man’s nature sometimes increases a disposition to cynical
ideas if only from the many-sidedness of his culture. He began to look more
deeply into it, and thought it seemed like it. He pondered: “Her fortune is
immense, of course, but …” Varvara Petrovna certainly could not be called
a beauty. She was a tall, yellow, bony woman with an extremely long face,
suggestive of a horse. Stepan Trofimovitch hesitated more and more, he was
tortured by doubts, he positively shed tears of indecision once or twice (he
wept not infrequently). In the evenings, that is to say in the arbour, his
countenance involuntarily began to express something capricious and
ironical, something coquettish and at the same time condescending. This is
apt to happen as it were by accident, and the more gentlemanly the man the
more noticeable it is. Goodness only knows what one is to think about it,
but it’s most likely that nothing had begun working in her heart that could
have fully justified Stepan Trofimovitch’s suspicions. Moreover, she would
not have changed her name, Stavrogin, for his name, famous as it was.
Perhaps there was nothing in it but the play of femininity on her side; the
manifestation of an unconscious feminine yearning so natural in some
extremely feminine types. However, I won’t answer for it; the depths of the
female heart have not been explored to this day. But I must continue.
It is to be supposed that she soon inwardly guessed the significance of her
friend’s strange expression; she was quick and observant, and he was
sometimes extremely guileless. But the evenings went on as before, and

their conversations were just as poetic and interesting. And behold on one
occasion at nightfall, after the most lively and poetical conversation, they
parted affectionately, warmly pressing each other’s hands at the steps of the
lodge where Stepan Trofimovitch slept. Every summer he used to move into
this little lodge which stood adjoining the huge seignorial house of
Skvoreshniki, almost in the garden. He had only just gone in, and in restless
hesitation taken a cigar, and not having yet lighted it, was standing weary
and motionless before the open window, gazing at the light feathery white
clouds gliding around the bright moon, when suddenly a faint rustle made
him start and turn round. Varvara Petrovna, whom he had left only four
minutes earlier, was standing before him again. Her yellow face was almost
blue. Her lips were pressed tightly together and twitching at the corners. For
ten full seconds she looked him in the eyes in silence with a firm relentless
gaze, and suddenly whispered rapidly:
“I shall never forgive you for this!”
When, ten years later, Stepan Trofimovitch, after closing the doors, told me
this melancholy tale in a whisper, he vowed that he had been so petrified on
the spot that he had not seen or heard how Varvara Petrovna had
disappeared. As she never once afterwards alluded to the incident and
everything went on as though nothing had happened, he was all his life
inclined to the idea that it was all an hallucination, a symptom of illness, the
more so as he was actually taken ill that very night and was indisposed for a
fortnight, which, by the way, cut short the interviews in the arbour.
But in spite of his vague theory of hallucination he seemed every day, all
his life, to be expecting the continuation, and, so to say, the dénouement of
this affair. He could not believe that that was the end of it! And if so he
must have looked strangely sometimes at his friend.
V
She had herself designed the costume for him which he wore for the rest of
his life. It was elegant and characteristic; a long black frock-coat, buttoned
almost to the top, but stylishly cut; a soft hat (in summer a straw hat) with a
wide brim, a white batiste cravat with a full bow and hanging ends, a cane
with a silver knob; his hair flowed on to his shoulders. It was dark brown,
and only lately had begun to get a little grey. He was clean-shaven. He was

said to have been very handsome in his youth. And, to my mind, he was still
an exceptionally impressive figure even in old age. Besides, who can talk of
old age at fifty-three? From his special pose as a patriot, however, he did
not try to appear younger, but seemed rather to pride himself on the solidity
of his age, and, dressed as described, tall and thin with flowing hair, he
looked almost like a patriarch, or even more like the portrait of the poet
Kukolnik, engraved in the edition of his works published in 1830 or
thereabouts. This resemblance was especially striking when he sat in the
garden in summertime, on a seat under a bush of flowering lilac, with both
hands propped on his cane and an open book beside him, musing poetically
over the setting sun. In regard to books I may remark that he came in later
years rather to avoid reading. But that was only quite towards the end. The
papers and magazines ordered in great profusion by Varvara Petrovna he
was continually reading. He never lost interest in the successes of Russian
literature either, though he always maintained a dignified attitude with
regard to them. He was at one time engrossed in the study of our home and
foreign politics, but he soon gave up the undertaking with a gesture of
despair. It sometimes happened that he would take De Tocqueville with him
into the garden while he had a Paul de Kock in his pocket. But these are
trivial matters.
I must observe in parenthesis about the portrait of Kukolnik; the engraving
had first come into the hands of Varvara Petrovna when she was a girl in a
high-class boarding-school in Moscow. She fell in love with the portrait at
once, after the habit of all girls at school who fall in love with anything they
come across, as well as with their teachers, especially the drawing and
writing masters. What is interesting in this, though, is not the characteristics
of girls but the fact that even at fifty Varvara Petrovna kept the engraving
among her most intimate and treasured possessions, so that perhaps it was
only on this account that she had designed for Stepan Trofimovitch a
costume somewhat like the poet’s in the engraving. But that, of course, is a
trifling matter too.
For the first years or, more accurately, for the first half of the time he spent
with Varvara Petrovna, Stepan Trofimovitch was still planning a book and
every day seriously prepared to write it. But during the later period he must
have forgotten even what he had done. More and more frequently he used to
say to us:

“I seem to be ready for work, my materials are collected, yet the work
doesn’t get done! Nothing is done!”
And he would bow his head dejectedly. No doubt this was calculated to
increase his prestige in our eyes as a martyr to science, but he himself was
longing for something else. “They have forgotten me! I’m no use to
anyone!” broke from him more than once. This intensified depression took
special hold of him towards the end of the fifties. Varvara Petrovna realised
at last that it was a serious matter. Besides, she could not endure the idea
that her friend was forgotten and useless. To distract him and at the same
time to renew his fame she carried him off to Moscow, where she had
fashionable acquaintances in the literary and scientific world; but it
appeared that Moscow too was unsatisfactory.
It was a peculiar time; something new was beginning, quite unlike the
stagnation of the past, something very strange too, though it was felt
everywhere, even at Skvoreshniki. Rumours of all sorts reached us. The
facts were generally more or less well known, but it was evident that in
addition to the facts there were certain ideas accompanying them, and
what’s more, a great number of them. And this was perplexing. It was
impossible to estimate and find out exactly what was the drift of these
ideas. Varvara Petrovna was prompted by the feminine composition of her
character to a compelling desire to penetrate the secret of them. She took to
reading newspapers and magazines, prohibited publications printed abroad
and even the revolutionary manifestoes which were just beginning to appear
at the time (she was able to procure them all); but this only set her head in a
whirl. She fell to writing letters; she got few answers, and they grew more
incomprehensible as time went on. Stepan Trofimovitch was solemnly
called upon to explain “these ideas” to her once for all, but she remained
distinctly dissatisfied with his explanations.
Stepan Trofimovitch’s view of the general movement was supercilious in
the extreme. In his eyes all it amounted to was that he was forgotten and of
no use. At last his name was mentioned, at first in periodicals published
abroad as that of an exiled martyr, and immediately afterwards in
Petersburg as that of a former star in a celebrated constellation. He was
even for some reason compared with Radishtchev. Then someone printed
the statement that he was dead and promised an obituary notice of him.

Stepan Trofimovitch instantly perked up and assumed an air of immense
dignity. All his disdain for his contemporaries evaporated and he began to
cherish the dream of joining the movement and showing his powers.
Varvara Petrovna’s faith in everything instantly revived and she was thrown
into a violent ferment. It was decided to go to Petersburg without a
moment’s delay, to find out everything on the spot, to go into everything
personally, and, if possible, to throw themselves heart and soul into the new
movement. Among other things she announced that she was prepared to
found a magazine of her own, and henceforward to devote her whole life to
it. Seeing what it had come to, Stepan Trofimovitch became more
condescending than ever, and on the journey began to behave almost
patronisingly to Varvara Petrovna—which she at once laid up in her heart
against him. She had, however, another very important reason for the trip,
which was to renew her connections in higher spheres. It was necessary, as
far as she could, to remind the world of her existence, or at any rate to make
an attempt to do so. The ostensible object of the journey was to see her only
son, who was just finishing his studies at a Petersburg lyceum.
VI
They spent almost the whole winter season in Petersburg. But by Lent
everything burst like a rainbow-coloured soap-bubble.
Their dreams were dissipated, and the muddle, far from being cleared up,
had become even more revoltingly incomprehensible. To begin with,
connections with the higher spheres were not established, or only on a
microscopic scale, and by humiliating exertions. In her mortification
Varvara Petrovna threw herself heart and soul into the “new ideas,” and
began giving evening receptions. She invited literary people, and they were
brought to her at once in multitudes. Afterwards they came of themselves
without invitation, one brought another. Never had she seen such literary
men. They were incredibly vain, but quite open in their vanity, as though
they were performing a duty by the display of it. Some (but by no means
all) of them even turned up intoxicated, seeming, however, to detect in this
a peculiar, only recently discovered, merit. They were all strangely proud of
something. On every face was written that they had only just discovered
some extremely important secret. They abused one another, and took credit
to themselves for it. It was rather difficult to find out what they had written

exactly, but among them there were critics, novelists, dramatists, satirists,
and exposers of abuses. Stepan Trofimovitch penetrated into their very
highest circle from which the movement was directed. Incredible heights
had to be scaled to reach this group; but they gave him a cordial welcome,
though, of course, no one of them had ever heard of him or knew anything
about him except that he “represented an idea.” His manœuvres among
them were so successful that he got them twice to Varvara Petrovna’s salon
in spite of their Olympian grandeur. These people were very serious and
very polite; they behaved nicely; the others were evidently afraid of them;
but it was obvious that they had no time to spare. Two or three former
literary celebrities who happened to be in Petersburg, and with whom
Varvara Petrovna had long maintained a most refined correspondence, came
also. But to her surprise these genuine and quite indubitable celebrities were
stiller than water, humbler than the grass, and some of them simply hung on
to this new rabble, and were shamefully cringing before them. At first
Stepan Trofimovitch was a success. People caught at him and began to
exhibit him at public literary gatherings. The first time he came on to the
platform at some public reading in which he was to take part, he was
received with enthusiastic clapping which lasted for five minutes. He
recalled this with tears nine years afterwards, though rather from his natural
artistic sensibility than from gratitude. “I swear, and I’m ready to bet,” he
declared (but only to me, and in secret), “that not one of that audience knew
anything whatever about me.” A noteworthy admission. He must have had a
keen intelligence since he was capable of grasping his position so clearly
even on the platform, even in such a state of exaltation; it also follows that
he had not a keen intelligence if, nine years afterwards, he could not recall
it without mortification. He was made to sign two or three collective
protests (against what he did not know); he signed them. Varvara Petrovna
too was made to protest against some “disgraceful action” and she signed
too. The majority of these new people, however, though they visited
Varvara Petrovna, felt themselves for some reason called upon to regard her
with contempt, and with undisguised irony. Stepan Trofimovitch hinted to
me at bitter moments afterwards that it was from that time she had been
envious of him. She saw, of course, that she could not get on with these
people, yet she received them eagerly, with all the hysterical impatience of
her sex, and, what is more, she expected something. At her parties she
talked little, although she could talk, but she listened the more. They talked

of the abolition of the censorship, and of phonetic spelling, of the
substitution of the Latin characters for the Russian alphabet, of someone’s
having been sent into exile the day before, of some scandal, of the
advantage of splitting Russia into nationalities united in a free federation, of
the abolition of the army and the navy, of the restoration of Poland as far as
the Dnieper, of the peasant reforms, and of the manifestoes, of the abolition
of the hereditary principle, of the family, of children, and of priests, of
women’s rights, of Kraevsky’s house, for which no one ever seemed able to
forgive Mr. Kraevsky, and so on, and so on. It was evident that in this mob
of new people there were many impostors, but undoubtedly there were also
many honest and very attractive people, in spite of some surprising
characteristics in them. The honest ones were far more difficult to
understand than the coarse and dishonest, but it was impossible to tell
which was being made a tool of by the other. When Varvara Petrovna
announced her idea of founding a magazine, people flocked to her in even
larger numbers, but charges of being a capitalist and an exploiter of labour
were showered upon her to her face. The rudeness of these accusations was
only equalled by their unexpectedness. The aged General Ivan Ivanovitch
Drozdov, an old friend and comrade of the late General Stavrogin’s, known
to us all here as an extremely stubborn and irritable, though very estimable,
man (in his own way, of course), who ate a great deal, and was dreadfully
afraid of atheism, quarrelled at one of Varvara Petrovna’s parties with a
distinguished young man. The latter at the first word exclaimed, “You must
be a general if you talk like that,” meaning that he could find no word of
abuse worse than “general.”
Ivan Ivanovitch flew into a terrible passion: “Yes, sir, I am a general, and a
lieutenant-general, and I have served my Tsar, and you, sir, are a puppy and
an infidel!”
An outrageous scene followed. Next day the incident was exposed in print,
and they began getting up a collective protest against Varvara Petrovna’s
disgraceful conduct in not having immediately turned the general out. In an
illustrated paper there appeared a malignant caricature in which Varvara
Petrovna, Stepan Trofimovitch, and General Drozdov were depicted as
three reactionary friends. There were verses attached to this caricature
written by a popular poet especially for the occasion. I may observe, for my
own part, that many persons of general’s rank certainly have an absurd habit

of saying, “I have served my Tsar” … just as though they had not the same
Tsar as all the rest of us, their simple fellow-subjects, but had a special Tsar
of their own.
It was impossible, of course, to remain any longer in Petersburg, all the
more so as Stepan Trofimovitch was overtaken by a complete fiasco. He
could not resist talking of the claims of art, and they laughed at him more
loudly as time went on. At his last lecture he thought to impress them with
patriotic eloquence, hoping to touch their hearts, and reckoning on the
respect inspired by his “persecution.” He did not attempt to dispute the
uselessness and absurdity of the word “fatherland,” acknowledged the
pernicious influence of religion, but firmly and loudly declared that boots
were of less consequence than Pushkin; of much less, indeed. He was
hissed so mercilessly that he burst into tears, there and then, on the
platform. Varvara Petrovna took him home more dead than alive. “On m’a
traité comme un vieux bonnet de coton,” he babbled senselessly. She was
looking after him all night, giving him laurel-drops and repeating to him till
daybreak, “You will still be of use; you will still make your mark; you will
be appreciated … in another place.”
Early next morning five literary men called on Varvara Petrovna, three of
them complete strangers, whom she had never set eyes on before. With a
stern air they informed her that they had looked into the question of her
magazine, and had brought her their decision on the subject. Varvara
Petrovna had never authorised anyone to look into or decide anything
concerning her magazine. Their decision was that, having founded the
magazine, she should at once hand it over to them with the capital to run it,
on the basis of a co-operative society. She herself was to go back to
Skvoreshniki, not forgetting to take with her Stepan Trofimovitch, who was
“out of date.” From delicacy they agreed to recognise the right of property
in her case, and to send her every year a sixth part of the net profits. What
was most touching about it was that of these five men, four certainly were
not actuated by any mercenary motive, and were simply acting in the
interests of the “cause.”
“We came away utterly at a loss,” Stepan Trofimovitch used to say
afterwards. “I couldn’t make head or tail of it, and kept muttering, I
remember, to the rumble of the train:

‘Vyek, and vyek, and Lyov Kambek,
Lyov Kambek and vyek, and vyek.’

and goodness knows what, all the way to Moscow. It was only in Moscow
that I came to myself—as though we really might find something different
there.”
“Oh, my friends!” he would exclaim to us sometimes with fervour, “you
cannot imagine what wrath and sadness overcome your whole soul when a
great idea, which you have long cherished as holy, is caught up by the
ignorant and dragged forth before fools like themselves into the street, and
you suddenly meet it in the market unrecognisable, in the mud, absurdly set
up, without proportion, without harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No!
In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove. No, no, not
this at all. I don’t recognise it.… Our day will come again and will turn all
the tottering fabric of to-day into a true path. If not, what will happen?…”
VII
Immediately on their return from Petersburg Varvara Petrovna sent her
friend abroad to “recruit”; and, indeed, it was necessary for them to part for
a time, she felt that. Stepan Trofimovitch was delighted to go.
“There I shall revive!” he exclaimed. “There, at last, I shall set to work!”
But in the first of his letters from Berlin he struck his usual note:
“My heart is broken!” he wrote to Varvara Petrovna. “I can forget nothing!
Here, in Berlin, everything brings back to me my old past, my first raptures
and my first agonies. Where is she? Where are they both? Where are you
two angels of whom I was never worthy? Where is my son, my beloved
son? And last of all, where am I, where is my old self, strong as steel, firm
as a rock, when now some Andreev, our orthodox clown with a beard, peut
briser mon existence en deux”—and so on.
As for Stepan Trofimovitch’s son, he had only seen him twice in his life, the
first time when he was born and the second time lately in Petersburg, where
the young man was preparing to enter the university. The boy had been all
his life, as we have said already, brought up by his aunts (at Varvara
Petrovna’s expense) in a remote province, nearly six hundred miles from

Skvoreshniki. As for Andreev, he was nothing more or less than our local
shopkeeper, a very eccentric fellow, a self-taught archæologist who had a
passion for collecting Russian antiquities and sometimes tried to outshine
Stepan Trofimovitch in erudition and in the progressiveness of his opinions.
This worthy shopkeeper, with a grey beard and silver-rimmed spectacles,
still owed Stepan Trofimovitch four hundred roubles for some acres of
timber he had bought on the latter’s little estate (near Skvoreshniki).
Though Varvara Petrovna had liberally provided her friend with funds when
she sent him to Berlin, yet Stepan Trofimovitch had, before starting,
particularly reckoned on getting that four hundred roubles, probably for his
secret expenditure, and was ready to cry when Andreev asked leave to defer
payment for a month, which he had a right to do, since he had brought the
first installments of the money almost six months in advance to meet Stepan
Trofimovitch’s special need at the time.
Varvara Petrovna read this first letter greedily, and underlining in pencil the
exclamation: “Where are they both?” numbered it and put it away in a
drawer. He had, of course, referred to his two deceased wives. The second
letter she received from Berlin was in a different strain:
“I am working twelve hours out of the twenty-four.” (“Eleven would be
enough,” muttered Varvara Petrovna.) “I’m rummaging in the libraries,
collating, copying, rushing about. I’ve visited the professors. I have
renewed my acquaintance with the delightful Dundasov family. What a
charming creature Lizaveta Nikolaevna is even now! She sends you her
greetings. Her young husband and three nephews are all in Berlin. I sit up
talking till daybreak with the young people and we have almost Athenian
evenings, Athenian, I mean, only in their intellectual subtlety and
refinement. Everything is in noble style; a great deal of music, Spanish airs,
dreams of the regeneration of all humanity, ideas of eternal beauty, of the
Sistine Madonna, light interspersed with darkness, but there are spots even
on the sun! Oh, my friend, my noble, faithful friend! In heart I am with you
and am yours; with you alone, always, en tout pays, even in le pays de
Makar et de ses veaux, of which we often used to talk in agitation in
Petersburg, do you remember, before we came away. I think of it with a
smile. Crossing the frontier I felt myself in safety, a sensation, strange and
new, for the first time after so many years”—and so on and so on.

“Come, it’s all nonsense!” Varvara Petrovna commented, folding up that
letter too. “If he’s up till daybreak with his Athenian nights, he isn’t at his
books for twelve hours a day. Was he drunk when he wrote it? That
Dundasov woman dares to send me greetings! But there, let him amuse
himself!”
The phrase “dans le pays de Makar et de ses veaux” meant: “wherever
Makar may drive his calves.” Stepan Trofimovitch sometimes purposely
translated Russian proverbs and traditional sayings into French in the most
stupid way, though no doubt he was able to understand and translate them
better. But he did it from a feeling that it was chic, and thought it witty.
But he did not amuse himself for long. He could not hold out for four
months, and was soon flying back to Skvoreshniki. His last letters consisted
of nothing but outpourings of the most sentimental love for his absent
friend, and were literally wet with tears. There are natures extremely
attached to home like lap-dogs. The meeting of the friends was enthusiastic.
Within two days everything was as before and even duller than before. “My
friend,” Stepan Trofimovitch said to me a fortnight after, in dead secret, “I
have discovered something awful for me … something new: je suis un
simple dependent, et rien de plus! Mais r-r-rien de plus.”
VIII
After this we had a period of stagnation which lasted nine years. The
hysterical outbreaks and sobbings on my shoulder that recurred at regular
intervals did not in the least mar our prosperity. I wonder that Stepan
Trofimovitch did not grow stout during this period. His nose was a little
redder, and his manner had gained in urbanity, that was all. By degrees a
circle of friends had formed around him, although it was never a very large
one. Though Varvara Petrovna had little to do with the circle, yet we all
recognised her as our patroness. After the lesson she had received in
Petersburg, she settled down in our town for good. In winter she lived in her
town house and spent the summer on her estate in the neighbourhood. She
had never enjoyed so much consequence and prestige in our provincial
society as during the last seven years of this period, that is up to the time of
the appointment of our present governor. Our former governor, the mild
Ivan Ossipovitch, who will never be forgotten among us, was a near relation

of Varvara Petrovna’s, and had at one time been under obligations to her.
His wife trembled at the very thought of displeasing her, while the homage
paid her by provincial society was carried almost to a pitch that suggested
idolatry. So Stepan Trofimovitch, too, had a good time. He was a member
of the club, lost at cards majestically, and was everywhere treated with
respect, though many people regarded him only as a “learned man.” Later
on, when Varvara Petrovna allowed him to live in a separate house, we
enjoyed greater freedom than before. Twice a week we used to meet at his
house. We were a merry party, especially when he was not sparing of the
champagne. The wine came from the shop of the same Andreev. The bill
was paid twice a year by Varvara Petrovna, and on the day it was paid
Stepan Trofimovitch almost invariably suffered from an attack of his
“summer cholera.”
One of the first members of our circle was Liputin, an elderly provincial
official, and a great liberal, who was reputed in the town to be an atheist. He
had married for the second time a young and pretty wife with a dowry, and
had, besides, three grown-up daughters. He brought up his family in the fear
of God, and kept a tight hand over them. He was extremely stingy, and out
of his salary had bought himself a house and amassed a fortune. He was an
uncomfortable sort of man, and had not been in the service. He was not
much respected in the town, and was not received in the best circles.
Moreover, he was a scandal-monger, and had more than once had to smart
for his back-biting, for which he had been badly punished by an officer, and
again by a country gentleman, the respectable head of a family. But we
liked his wit, his inquiring mind, his peculiar, malicious liveliness. Varvara
Petrovna disliked him, but he always knew how to make up to her.
Nor did she care for Shatov, who became one of our circle during the last
years of this period. Shatov had been a student and had been expelled from
the university after some disturbance. In his childhood he had been a
student of Stepan Trofimovitch’s and was by birth a serf of Varvara
Petrovna’s, the son of a former valet of hers, Pavel Fyodoritch, and was
greatly indebted to her bounty. She disliked him for his pride and
ingratitude and could never forgive him for not having come straight to her
on his expulsion from the university. On the contrary he had not even
answered the letter she had expressly sent him at the time, and preferred to
be a drudge in the family of a merchant of the new style, with whom he

went abroad, looking after his children more in the position of a nurse than
of a tutor. He was very eager to travel at the time. The children had a
governess too, a lively young Russian lady, who also became one of the
household on the eve of their departure, and had been engaged chiefly
because she was so cheap. Two months later the merchant turned her out of
the house for “free thinking.” Shatov took himself off after her and soon
afterwards married her in Geneva. They lived together about three weeks,
and then parted as free people recognising no bonds, though, no doubt, also
through poverty. He wandered about Europe alone for a long time
afterwards, living God knows how; he is said to have blacked boots in the
street, and to have been a porter in some dockyard. At last, a year before, he
had returned to his native place among us and settled with an old aunt,
whom he buried a month later. His sister Dasha, who had also been brought
up by Varvara Petrovna, was a favourite of hers, and treated with respect
and consideration in her house. He saw his sister rarely and was not on
intimate terms with her. In our circle he was always sullen, and never
talkative; but from time to time, when his convictions were touched upon,
he became morbidly irritable and very unrestrained in his language.
“One has to tie Shatov up and then argue with him,” Stepan Trofimovitch
would sometimes say in joke, but he liked him.
Shatov had radically changed some of his former socialistic convictions
abroad and had rushed to the opposite extreme. He was one of those
idealistic beings common in Russia, who are suddenly struck by some
overmastering idea which seems, as it were, to crush them at once, and
sometimes forever. They are never equal to coping with it, but put
passionate faith in it, and their whole life passes afterwards, as it were, in
the last agonies under the weight of the stone that has fallen upon them and
half crushed them. In appearance Shatov was in complete harmony with his
convictions: he was short, awkward, had a shock of flaxen hair, broad
shoulders, thick lips, very thick overhanging white eyebrows, a wrinkled
forehead, and a hostile, obstinately downcast, as it were shamefaced,
expression in his eyes. His hair was always in a wild tangle and stood up in
a shock which nothing could smooth. He was seven- or eight-and-twenty.
“I no longer wonder that his wife ran away from him,” Varvara Petrovna
enunciated on one occasion after gazing intently at him. He tried to be neat

in his dress, in spite of his extreme poverty. He refrained again from
appealing to Varvara Petrovna, and struggled along as best he could, doing
various jobs for tradespeople. At one time he served in a shop, at another he
was on the point of going as an assistant clerk on a freight steamer, but he
fell ill just at the time of sailing. It is hard to imagine what poverty he was
capable of enduring without thinking about it at all. After his illness Varvara
Petrovna sent him a hundred roubles, anonymously and in secret. He found
out the secret, however, and after some reflection took the money and went
to Varvara Petrovna to thank her. She received him with warmth, but on this
occasion, too, he shamefully disappointed her. He only stayed five minutes,
staring blankly at the ground and smiling stupidly in profound silence, and
suddenly, at the most interesting point, without listening to what she was
saying, he got up, made an uncouth sideways bow, helpless with confusion,
caught against the lady’s expensive inlaid work-table, upsetting it on the
floor and smashing it to atoms, and walked out nearly dead with shame.
Liputin blamed him severely afterwards for having accepted the hundred
roubles and having even gone to thank Varvara Petrovna for them, instead
of having returned the money with contempt, because it had come from his
former despotic mistress. He lived in solitude on the outskirts of the town,
and did not like any of us to go and see him. He used to turn up invariably
at Stepan Trofimovitch’s evenings, and borrowed newspapers and books
from him.
There was another young man who always came, one Virginsky, a clerk in
the service here, who had something in common with Shatov, though on the
surface he seemed his complete opposite in every respect. He was a “family
man” too. He was a pathetic and very quiet young man though he was
thirty; he had considerable education though he was chiefly self-taught. He
was poor, married, and in the service, and supported the aunt and sister of
his wife. His wife and all the ladies of his family professed the very latest
convictions, but in rather a crude form. It was a case of “an idea dragged
forth into the street,” as Stepan Trofimovitch had expressed it upon a former
occasion. They got it all out of books, and at the first hint coming from any
of our little progressive corners in Petersburg they were prepared to throw
anything overboard, so soon as they were advised to do so. Madame
Virginsky practised as a midwife in the town. She had lived a long while in

Petersburg as a girl. Virginsky himself was a man of rare single-
heartedness, and I have seldom met more honest fervour.
“I will never, never, abandon these bright hopes,” he used to say to me with
shining eyes. Of these “bright hopes” he always spoke quietly, in a blissful
half-whisper, as it were secretly. He was rather tall, but extremely thin and
narrow-shouldered, and had extraordinarily lank hair of a reddish hue. All
Stepan Trofimovitch’s condescending gibes at some of his opinions he
accepted mildly, answered him sometimes very seriously, and often
nonplussed him. Stepan Trofimovitch treated him very kindly, and indeed
he behaved like a father to all of us. “You are all half-hearted chickens,” he
observed to Virginsky in joke. “All who are like you, though in you,
Virginsky, I have not observed that narrow-mindedness I found in
Petersburg, chez ces séminaristes. But you’re a half-hatched chicken all the
same. Shatov would give anything to hatch out, but he’s half-hatched too.”
“And I?” Liputin inquired.
“You’re simply the golden mean which will get on anywhere in its own
way.” Liputin was offended.
The story was told of Virginsky, and it was unhappily only too true, that
before his wife had spent a year in lawful wedlock with him she announced
that he was superseded and that she preferred Lebyadkin. This Lebyadkin, a
stranger to the town, turned out afterwards to be a very dubious character,
and not a retired captain as he represented himself to be. He could do
nothing but twist his moustache, drink, and chatter the most inept nonsense
that can possibly be imagined. This fellow, who was utterly lacking in
delicacy, at once settled in his house, glad to live at another man’s expense,
ate and slept there and came, in the end, to treating the master of the house
with condescension. It was asserted that when Virginsky’s wife had
announced to him that he was superseded he said to her:
“My dear, hitherto I have only loved you, but now I respect you,” but I
doubt whether this renunciation, worthy of ancient Rome, was ever really
uttered. On the contrary they say that he wept violently. A fortnight after he
was superseded, all of them, in a “family party,” went one day for a picnic
to a wood outside the town to drink tea with their friends. Virginsky was in
a feverishly lively mood and took part in the dances. But suddenly, without

any preliminary quarrel, he seized the giant Lebyadkin with both hands, by
the hair, just as the latter was dancing a can-can solo, pushed him down, and
began dragging him along with shrieks, shouts, and tears. The giant was so
panic-stricken that he did not attempt to defend himself, and hardly uttered
a sound all the time he was being dragged along. But afterwards he resented
it with all the heat of an honourable man. Virginsky spent a whole night on
his knees begging his wife’s forgiveness. But this forgiveness was not
granted, as he refused to apologise to Lebyadkin; moreover, he was
upbraided for the meanness of his ideas and his foolishness, the latter
charge based on the fact that he knelt down in the interview with his wife.
The captain soon disappeared and did not reappear in our town till quite
lately, when he came with his sister, and with entirely different aims; but of
him later. It was no wonder that the poor young husband sought our society
and found comfort in it. But he never spoke of his home-life to us. On one
occasion only, returning with me from Stepan Trofimovitch’s, he made a
remote allusion to his position, but clutching my hand at once he cried
ardently:
“It’s of no consequence. It’s only a personal incident. It’s no hindrance to
the ‘cause,’ not the slightest!”
Stray guests visited our circle too; a Jew, called Lyamshin, and a Captain
Kartusov came. An old gentleman of inquiring mind used to come at one
time, but he died. Liputin brought an exiled Polish priest called
Slontsevsky, and for a time we received him on principle, but afterwards we
didn’t keep it up.
IX
At one time it was reported about the town that our little circle was a hotbed
of nihilism, profligacy, and godlessness, and the rumour gained more and
more strength. And yet we did nothing but indulge in the most harmless,
agreeable, typically Russian, light-hearted liberal chatter. “The higher
liberalism” and the “higher liberal,” that is, a liberal without any definite
aim, is only possible in Russia.
Stepan Trofimovitch, like every witty man, needed a listener, and, besides
that, he needed the consciousness that he was fulfilling the lofty duty of
disseminating ideas. And finally he had to have someone to drink

champagne with, and over the wine to exchange light-hearted views of a
certain sort, about Russia and the “Russian spirit,” about God in general,
and the “Russian God” in particular, to repeat for the hundredth time the
same Russian scandalous stories that every one knew and every one
repeated. We had no distaste for the gossip of the town which often, indeed,
led us to the most severe and loftily moral verdicts. We fell into
generalising about humanity, made stern reflections on the future of Europe
and mankind in general, authoritatively predicted that after Cæsarism
France would at once sink into the position of a second-rate power, and
were firmly convinced that this might terribly easily and quickly come to
pass. We had long ago predicted that the Pope would play the part of a
simple archbishop in a united Italy, and were firmly convinced that this
thousand-year-old question had, in our age of humanitarianism, industry,
and railways, become a trifling matter. But, of course, “Russian higher
liberalism” could not look at the question in any other way. Stepan
Trofimovitch sometimes talked of art, and very well, though rather
abstractly. He sometimes spoke of the friends of his youth—all names
noteworthy in the history of Russian progress. He talked of them with
emotion and reverence, though sometimes with envy. If we were very much
bored, the Jew, Lyamshin (a little post-office clerk), a wonderful performer
on the piano, sat down to play, and in the intervals would imitate a pig, a
thunderstorm, a confinement with the first cry of the baby, and so on, and so
on; it was only for this that he was invited, indeed. If we had drunk a great
deal—and that did happen sometimes, though not often—we flew into
raptures, and even on one occasion sang the “Marseillaise” in chorus to the
accompaniment of Lyamshin, though I don’t know how it went off. The
great day, the nineteenth of February, we welcomed enthusiastically, and for
a long time beforehand drank toasts in its honour. But that was long ago,
before the advent of Shatov or Virginsky, when Stepan Trofimovitch was
still living in the same house with Varvara Petrovna. For some time before
the great day Stepan Trofimovitch fell into the habit of muttering to himself
well-known, though rather far-fetched, lines which must have been written
by some liberal landowner of the past:
“The peasant with his axe is coming, Something terrible will happen.”
Something of that sort, I don’t remember the exact words. Varvara Petrovna
overheard him on one occasion, and crying, “Nonsense, nonsense!” she

went out of the room in a rage. Liputin, who happened to be present,
observed malignantly to Stepan Trofimovitch:
“It’ll be a pity if their former serfs really do some mischief to messieurs les
landowners to celebrate the occasion,” and he drew his forefinger round his
throat.
“Cher ami,” Stepan Trofimovitch observed, “believe me that—this (he
repeated the gesture) will never be of any use to our landowners nor to any
of us in general. We shall never be capable of organising anything even
without our heads, though our heads hinder our understanding more than
anything.”
I may observe that many people among us anticipated that something
extraordinary, such as Liputin predicted, would take place on the day of the
emancipation, and those who held this view were the so-called “authorities”
on the peasantry and the government. I believe Stepan Trofimovitch shared
this idea, so much so that almost on the eve of the great day he began
asking Varvara Petrovna’s leave to go abroad; in fact he began to be uneasy.
But the great day passed, and some time passed after it, and the
condescending smile reappeared on Stepan Trofimovitch’s lips. In our
presence he delivered himself of some noteworthy thoughts on the character
of the Russian in general, and the Russian peasant in particular.
“Like hasty people we have been in too great a hurry with our peasants,” he
said in conclusion of a series of remarkable utterances. “We have made
them the fashion, and a whole section of writers have for several years
treated them as though they were newly discovered curiosities. We have put
laurel-wreaths on lousy heads. The Russian village has given us only
‘Kamarinsky’ in a thousand years. A remarkable Russian poet who was also
something of a wit, seeing the great Rachel on the stage for the first time
cried in ecstasy, ‘I wouldn’t exchange Rachel for a peasant!’ I am prepared
to go further. I would give all the peasants in Russia for one Rachel. It’s
high time to look things in the face more soberly, and not to mix up our
national rustic pitch with bouquet de l’Impératrice.”
Liputin agreed at once, but remarked that one had to perjure oneself and
praise the peasant all the same for the sake of being progressive, that even
ladies in good society shed tears reading “Poor Anton,” and that some of

them even wrote from Paris to their bailiffs that they were, henceforward, to
treat the peasants as humanely as possible.
It happened, and as ill-luck would have it just after the rumours of the
Anton Petrov affair had reached us, that there was some disturbance in our
province too, only about ten miles from Skvoreshniki, so that a detachment
of soldiers was sent down in a hurry.
This time Stepan Trofimovitch was so much upset that he even frightened
us. He cried out at the club that more troops were needed, that they ought to
be telegraphed for from another province; he rushed off to the governor to
protest that he had no hand in it, begged him not to allow his name on
account of old associations to be brought into it, and offered to write about
his protest to the proper quarter in Petersburg. Fortunately it all passed over
quickly and ended in nothing, but I was surprised at Stepan Trofimovitch at
the time.
Three years later, as every one knows, people were beginning to talk of
nationalism, and “public opinion” first came upon the scene. Stepan
Trofimovitch laughed a great deal.
“My friends,” he instructed us, “if our nationalism has ‘dawned’ as they
keep repeating in the papers—it’s still at school, at some German
‘Peterschule,’ sitting over a German book and repeating its everlasting
German lesson, and its German teacher will make it go down on its knees
when he thinks fit. I think highly of the German teacher. But nothing has
happened and nothing of the kind has dawned and everything is going on in
the old way, that is, as ordained by God. To my thinking that should be
enough for Russia, pour notre Sainte Russie. Besides, all this Slavism and
nationalism is too old to be new. Nationalism, if you like, has never existed
among us except as a distraction for gentlemen’s clubs, and Moscow ones at
that. I’m not talking of the days of Igor, of course. And besides it all comes
of idleness. Everything in Russia comes of idleness, everything good and
fine even. It all springs from the charming, cultured, whimsical idleness of
our gentry! I’m ready to repeat it for thirty thousand years. We don’t know
how to live by our own labour. And as for the fuss they’re making now
about the ‘dawn’ of some sort of public opinion, has it so suddenly dropped
from heaven without any warning? How is it they don’t understand that

before we can have an opinion of our own we must have work, our own
work, our own initiative in things, our own experience. Nothing is to be
gained for nothing. If we work we shall have an opinion of our own. But as
we never shall work, our opinions will be formed for us by those who have
hitherto done the work instead of us, that is, as always, Europe, the
everlasting Germans—our teachers for the last two centuries. Moreover,
Russia is too big a tangle for us to unravel alone without the Germans, and
without hard work. For the last twenty years I’ve been sounding the alarm,
and the summons to work. I’ve given up my life to that appeal, and, in my
folly I put faith in it. Now I have lost faith in it, but I sound the alarm still,
and shall sound it to the tomb. I will pull at the bell-ropes until they toll for
my own requiem!”
“Alas! We could do nothing but assent. We applauded our teacher and with
what warmth, indeed! And, after all, my friends, don’t we still hear to-day,
every hour, at every step, the same “charming,” “clever,” “liberal,” old
Russian nonsense? Our teacher believed in God.
“I can’t understand why they make me out an infidel here,” he used to say
sometimes. “I believe in God, mais distinguons, I believe in Him as a Being
who is conscious of Himself in me only. I cannot believe as my Nastasya
(the servant) or like some country gentleman who believes ‘to be on the
safe side,’ or like our dear Shatov—but no, Shatov doesn’t come into it.
Shatov believes ‘on principle,’ like a Moscow Slavophil. As for
Christianity, for all my genuine respect for it, I’m not a Christian. I am more
of an antique pagan, like the great Goethe, or like an ancient Greek. The
very fact that Christianity has failed to understand woman is enough, as
George Sand has so splendidly shown in one of her great novels. As for the
bowings, fasting and all the rest of it, I don’t understand what they have to
do with me. However busy the informers may be here, I don’t care to
become a Jesuit. In the year 1847 Byelinsky, who was abroad, sent his
famous letter to Gogol, and warmly reproached him for believing in some
sort of God. Entre nous soit dit, I can imagine nothing more comic than the
moment when Gogol (the Gogol of that period!) read that phrase, and …
the whole letter! But dismissing the humorous aspect, and, as I am
fundamentally in agreement, I point to them and say—these were men!
They knew how to love their people, they knew how to suffer for them, they
knew how to sacrifice everything for them, yet they knew how to differ

from them when they ought, and did not filch certain ideas from them.
Could Byelinsky have sought salvation in Lenten oil, or peas with
radish!…” But at this point Shatov interposed.
“Those men of yours never loved the people, they didn’t suffer for them,
and didn’t sacrifice anything for them, though they may have amused
themselves by imagining it!” he growled sullenly, looking down, and
moving impatiently in his chair.
“They didn’t love the people!” yelled Stepan Trofimovitch. “Oh, how they
loved Russia!”
“Neither Russia nor the people!” Shatov yelled too, with flashing eyes.
“You can’t love what you don’t know and they had no conception of the
Russian people. All of them peered at the Russian people through their
fingers, and you do too; Byelinsky especially: from that very letter to Gogol
one can see it. Byelinsky, like the Inquisitive Man in Krylov’s fable, did not
notice the elephant in the museum of curiosities, but concentrated his whole
attention on the French Socialist beetles; he did not get beyond them. And
yet perhaps he was cleverer than any of you. You’ve not only overlooked
the people, you’ve taken up an attitude of disgusting contempt for them, if
only because you could not imagine any but the French people, the
Parisians indeed, and were ashamed that the Russians were not like them.
That’s the naked truth. And he who has no people has no God. You may be
sure that all who cease to understand their own people and lose their
connection with them at once lose to the same extent the faith of their
fathers, and become atheistic or indifferent. I’m speaking the truth! This is a
fact which will be realised. That’s why all of you and all of us now are
either beastly atheists or careless, dissolute imbeciles, and nothing more.
And you too, Stepan Trofimovitch, I don’t make an exception of you at all!
In fact, it is on your account I am speaking, let me tell you that!”
As a rule, after uttering such monologues (which happened to him pretty
frequently) Shatov snatched up his cap and rushed to the door, in the full
conviction that everything was now over, and that he had cut short all
friendly relations with Stepan Trofimovitch forever. But the latter always
succeeded in stopping him in time.

“Hadn’t we better make it up, Shatov, after all these endearments,” he
would say, benignly holding out his hand to him from his arm-chair.
Shatov, clumsy and bashful, disliked sentimentality. Externally he was
rough, but inwardly, I believe, he had great delicacy. Although he often
went too far, he was the first to suffer for it. Muttering something between
his teeth in response to Stepan Trofimovitch’s appeal, and shuffling with his
feet like a bear, he gave a sudden and unexpected smile, put down his cap,
and sat down in the same chair as before, with his eyes stubbornly fixed on
the ground. Wine was, of course, brought in, and Stepan Trofimovitch
proposed some suitable toast, for instance the memory of some leading man
of the past.

CHAPTER II. PRINCE HARRY.
MATCHMAKING.
I
THERE WAS ANOTHER being in the world to whom Varvara Petrovna
was as much attached as she was to Stepan Trofimovitch, her only son,
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch Stavrogin. It was to undertake his education that
Stepan Trofimovitch had been engaged. The boy was at that time eight
years old, and his frivolous father, General Stavrogin, was already living
apart from Varvara Petrovna, so that the child grew up entirely in his
mother’s care. To do Stepan Trofimovitch justice, he knew how to win his
pupil’s heart. The whole secret of this lay in the fact that he was a child
himself. I was not there in those days, and he continually felt the want of a
real friend. He did not hesitate to make a friend of this little creature as soon
as he had grown a little older. It somehow came to pass quite naturally that
there seemed to be no discrepancy of age between them. More than once he
awaked his ten- or eleven-year-old friend at night, simply to pour out his
wounded feelings and weep before him, or to tell him some family secret,
without realising that this was an outrageous proceeding. They threw
themselves into each other’s arms and wept. The boy knew that his mother
loved him very much, but I doubt whether he cared much for her. She
talked little to him and did not often interfere with him, but he was always
morbidly conscious of her intent, searching eyes fixed upon him. Yet the
mother confided his whole instruction and moral education to Stepan
Trofimovitch. At that time her faith in him was unshaken. One can’t help
believing that the tutor had rather a bad influence on his pupil’s nerves.
When at sixteen he was taken to a lyceum he was fragile-looking and pale,
strangely quiet and dreamy. (Later on he was distinguished by great
physical strength.) One must assume too that the friends went on weeping at
night, throwing themselves in each other’s arms, though their tears were not
always due to domestic difficulties. Stepan Trofimovitch succeeded in
reaching the deepest chords in his pupil’s heart, and had aroused in him a
vague sensation of that eternal, sacred yearning which some elect souls can

never give up for cheap gratification when once they have tasted and known
it. (There are some connoisseurs who prize this yearning more than the
most complete satisfaction of it, if such were possible.) But in any case it
was just as well that the pupil and the preceptor were, though none too
soon, parted.
For the first two years the lad used to come home from the lyceum for the
holidays. While Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovitch were staying in
Petersburg he was sometimes present at the literary evenings at his
mother’s, he listened and looked on. He spoke little, and was quiet and shy
as before. His manner to Stepan Trofimovitch was as affectionately
attentive as ever, but there was a shade of reserve in it. He unmistakably
avoided distressing, lofty subjects or reminiscences of the past. By his
mother’s wish he entered the army on completing the school course, and
soon received a commission in one of the most brilliant regiments of the
Horse Guards. He did not come to show himself to his mother in his
uniform, and his letters from Petersburg began to be infrequent. Varvara
Petrovna sent him money without stint, though after the emancipation the
revenue from her estate was so diminished that at first her income was less
than half what it had been before. She had, however, a considerable sum
laid by through years of economy. She took great interest in her son’s
success in the highest Petersburg society. Where she had failed, the wealthy
young officer with expectations succeeded. He renewed acquaintances
which she had hardly dared to dream of, and was welcomed everywhere
with pleasure. But very soon rather strange rumours reached Varvara
Petrovna. The young man had suddenly taken to riotous living with a sort of
frenzy. Not that he gambled or drank too much; there was only talk of
savage recklessness, of running over people in the street with his horses, of
brutal conduct to a lady of good society with whom he had a liaison and
whom he afterwards publicly insulted. There was a callous nastiness about
this affair. It was added, too, that he had developed into a regular bully,
insulting people for the mere pleasure of insulting them. Varvara Petrovna
was greatly agitated and distressed. Stepan Trofimovitch assured her that
this was only the first riotous effervescence of a too richly endowed nature,
that the storm would subside and that this was only like the youth of Prince
Harry, who caroused with Falstaff, Poins, and Mrs. Quickly, as described by
Shakespeare.

This time Varvara Petrovna did not cry out, “Nonsense, nonsense!” as she
was very apt to do in later years in response to Stepan Trofimovitch. On the
contrary she listened very eagerly, asked him to explain this theory more
exactly, took up Shakespeare herself and with great attention read the
immortal chronicle. But it did not comfort her, and indeed she did not find
the resemblance very striking. With feverish impatience she awaited
answers to some of her letters. She had not long to wait for them. The fatal
news soon reached her that “Prince Harry” had been involved in two duels
almost at once, was entirely to blame for both of them, had killed one of his
adversaries on the spot and had maimed the other and was awaiting his trial
in consequence. The case ended in his being degraded to the ranks, deprived
of the rights of a nobleman, and transferred to an infantry line regiment, and
he only escaped worse punishment by special favour.
In 1863 he somehow succeeded in distinguishing himself; he received a
cross, was promoted to be a non-commissioned officer, and rose rapidly to
the rank of an officer. During this period Varvara Petrovna despatched
perhaps hundreds of letters to the capital, full of prayers and supplications.
She even stooped to some humiliation in this extremity. After his promotion
the young man suddenly resigned his commission, but he did not come back
to Skvoreshniki again, and gave up writing to his mother altogether. They
learned by roundabout means that he was back in Petersburg, but that he
was not to be met in the same society as before; he seemed to be in hiding.
They found out that he was living in strange company, associating with the
dregs of the population of Petersburg, with slip-shod government clerks,
discharged military men, beggars of the higher class, and drunkards of all
sorts—that he visited their filthy families, spent days and nights in dark
slums and all sorts of low haunts, that he had sunk very low, that he was in
rags, and that apparently he liked it. He did not ask his mother for money,
he had his own little estate—once the property of his father, General
Stavrogin, which yielded at least some revenue, and which, it was reported,
he had let to a German from Saxony. At last his mother besought him to
come to her, and “Prince Harry” made his appearance in our town. I had
never set eyes on him before, but now I got a very distinct impression of
him. He was a very handsome young man of five-and-twenty, and I must
own I was impressed by him. I had expected to see a dirty ragamuffin,
sodden with drink and debauchery. He was on the contrary, the most elegant

gentleman I had ever met, extremely well dressed, with an air and manner
only to be found in a man accustomed to culture and refinement. I was not
the only person surprised. It was a surprise to all the townspeople to whom,
of course, young Stavrogin’s whole biography was well known in its
minutest details, though one could not imagine how they had got hold of
them, and, what was still more surprising, half of their stories about him
turned out to be true.
All our ladies were wild over the new visitor. They were sharply divided
into two parties, one of which adored him while the other half regarded him
with a hatred that was almost blood-thirsty: but both were crazy about him.
Some of them were particularly fascinated by the idea that he had perhaps a
fateful secret hidden in his soul; others were positively delighted at the fact
that he was a murderer. It appeared too that he had had a very good
education and was indeed a man of considerable culture. No great
acquirements were needed, of course, to astonish us. But he could judge
also of very interesting everyday affairs, and, what was of the utmost value,
he judged of them with remarkable good sense. I must mention as a peculiar
fact that almost from the first day we all of us thought him a very sensible
fellow. He was not very talkative, he was elegant without exaggeration,
surprisingly modest, and at the same time bold and self-reliant, as none of
us were. Our dandies gazed at him with envy, and were completely eclipsed
by him. His face, too, impressed me. His hair was of a peculiarly intense
black, his light-coloured eyes were peculiarly light and calm, his
complexion was peculiarly soft and white, the red in his cheeks was too
bright and clear, his teeth were like pearls, and his lips like coral—one
would have thought that he must be a paragon of beauty, yet at the same
time there seemed something repellent about him. It was said that his face
suggested a mask; so much was said though, among other things they talked
of his extraordinary physical strength. He was rather tall. Varvara Petrovna
looked at him with pride, yet with continual uneasiness. He spent about six
months among us—listless, quiet, rather morose. He made his appearance
in society, and with unfailing propriety performed all the duties demanded
by our provincial etiquette. He was related, on his father’s side, to the
governor, and was received by the latter as a near kinsman. But a few
months passed and the wild beast showed his claws.

I may observe by the way, in parenthesis, that Ivan Ossipovitch, our dear
mild governor, was rather like an old woman, though he was of good family
and highly connected—which explains the fact that he remained so long
among us, though he steadily avoided all the duties of his office. From his
munificence and hospitality he ought rather to have been a marshal of
nobility of the good old days than a governor in such busy times as ours. It
was always said in the town that it was not he, but Varvara Petrovna who
governed the province. Of course this was said sarcastically; however, it
was certainly a falsehood. And, indeed, much wit was wasted on the subject
among us. On the contrary, in later years, Varvara Petrovna purposely and
consciously withdrew from anything like a position of authority, and, in
spite of the extraordinary respect in which she was held by the whole
province, voluntarily confined her influence within strict limits set up by
herself. Instead of these higher responsibilities she suddenly took up the
management of her estate, and, within two or three years, raised the revenue
from it almost to what it had yielded in the past. Giving up her former
romantic impulses (trips to Petersburg, plans for founding a magazine, and
so on) she began to be careful and to save money. She kept even Stepan
Trofimovitch at a distance, allowing him to take lodgings in another house
(a change for which he had long been worrying her under various pretexts).
Little by little Stepan Trofimovitch began to call her a prosaic woman, or
more jestingly, “My prosaic friend.” I need hardly say he only ventured on
such jests in an extremely respectful form, and on rare, and carefully
chosen, occasions.
All of us in her intimate circle felt—Stepan Trofimovitch more acutely than
any of us—that her son had come to her almost, as it were, as a new hope,
and even as a sort of new aspiration. Her passion for her son dated from the
time of his successes in Petersburg society, and grew more intense from the
moment that he was degraded in the army. Yet she was evidently afraid of
him, and seemed like a slave in his presence. It could be seen that she was
afraid of something vague and mysterious which she could not have put
into words, and she often stole searching glances at “Nicolas,” scrutinising
him reflectively … and behold—the wild beast suddenly showed his claws.
II

Suddenly, apropos of nothing, our prince was guilty of incredible outrages
upon various persons and, what was most striking these outrages were
utterly unheard of, quite inconceivable, unlike anything commonly done,
utterly silly and mischievous, quite unprovoked and objectless. One of the
most respected of our club members, on our committee of management,
Pyotr Pavlovitch Gaganov, an elderly man of high rank in the service, had
formed the innocent habit of declaring vehemently on all sorts of occasions:
“No, you can’t lead me by the nose!” Well, there is no harm in that. But one
day at the club, when he brought out this phrase in connection with some
heated discussion in the midst of a little group of members (all persons of
some consequence) Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, who was standing on one
side, alone and unnoticed, suddenly went up to Pyotr Pavlovitch, took him
unexpectedly and firmly with two fingers by the nose, and succeeded in
leading him two or three steps across the room. He could have had no
grudge against Mr. Gaganov. It might be thought to be a mere schoolboy
prank, though, of course, a most unpardonable one. Yet, describing it
afterwards, people said that he looked almost dreamy at the very instant of
the operation, “as though he had gone out of his mind,” but that was
recalled and reflected upon long afterwards. In the excitement of the
moment all they recalled was the minute after, when he certainly saw it all
as it really was, and far from being confused smiled gaily and maliciously
“without the slightest regret.” There was a terrific outcry; he was
surrounded. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch kept turning round, looking about
him, answering nobody, and glancing curiously at the persons exclaiming
around him. At last he seemed suddenly, as it were, to sink into thought
again—so at least it was reported—frowned, went firmly up to the affronted
Pyotr Pavlovitch, and with evident vexation said in a rapid mutter:
“You must forgive me, of course … I really don’t know what suddenly
came over me … it’s silly.”
The carelessness of his apology was almost equivalent to a fresh insult. The
outcry was greater than ever. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch shrugged his
shoulders and went away. All this was very stupid, to say nothing of its
gross indecency—
A calculated and premeditated indecency as it seemed at first sight—and
therefore a premeditated and utterly brutal insult to our whole society. So it

was taken to be by every one. We began by promptly and unanimously
striking young Stavrogin’s name off the list of club members. Then it was
decided to send an appeal in the name of the whole club to the governor,
begging him at once (without waiting for the case to be formally tried in
court) to use “the administrative power entrusted to him” to restrain this
dangerous ruffian, “this duelling bully from the capital, and so protect the
tranquillity of all the gentry of our town from injurious encroachments.” It
was added with angry resentment that “a law might be found to control
even Mr. Stavrogin.” This phrase was prepared by way of a thrust at the
governor on account of Varvara Petrovna. They elaborated it with relish. As
ill luck would have it, the governor was not in the town at the time. He had
gone to a little distance to stand godfather to the child of a very charming
lady, recently left a widow in an interesting condition. But it was known
that he would soon be back. In the meanwhile they got up a regular ovation
for the respected and insulted gentleman; people embraced and kissed him;
the whole town called upon him. It was even proposed to give a
subscription dinner in his honour, and they only gave up the idea at his
earnest request—reflecting possibly at last that the man had, after all, been
pulled by the nose and that that was really nothing to congratulate him
upon. Yet, how had it happened? How could it have happened? It is
remarkable that no one in the whole town put down this savage act to
madness. They must have been predisposed to expect such actions from
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, even when he was sane. For my part I don’t
know to this day how to explain it, in spite of the event that quickly
followed and apparently explained everything, and conciliated every one. I
will add also that, four years later, in reply to a discreet question from me
about the incident at the club, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch answered,
frowning: “I wasn’t quite well at the time.” But there is no need to
anticipate events.
The general outburst of hatred with which every one fell upon the “ruffian
and duelling bully from the capital” also struck me as curious. They insisted
on seeing an insolent design and deliberate intention to insult our whole
society at once. The truth was no one liked the fellow, but, on the contrary,
he had set every one against him—and one wonders how. Up to the last
incident he had never quarrelled with anyone, nor insulted anyone, but was
as courteous as a gentleman in a fashion-plate, if only the latter were able to

speak. I imagine that he was hated for his pride. Even our ladies, who had
begun by adoring him, railed against him now, more loudly than the men.
Varvara Petrovna was dreadfully overwhelmed. She confessed afterwards to
Stepan Trofimovitch that she had had a foreboding of all this long before,
that every day for the last six months she had been expecting “just
something of that sort,” a remarkable admission on the part of his own
mother. “It’s begun!” she thought to herself with a shudder. The morning
after the incident at the club she cautiously but firmly approached the
subject with her son, but the poor woman was trembling all over in spite of
her firmness. She had not slept all night and even went out early to Stepan
Trofimovitch’s lodgings to ask his advice, and shed tears there, a thing
which she had never been known to do before anyone. She longed for
“Nicolas” to say something to her, to deign to give some explanation.
Nikolay, who was always so polite and respectful to his mother, listened to
her for some time scowling, but very seriously. He suddenly got up without
saying a word, kissed her hand and went away. That very evening, as
though by design, he perpetrated another scandal. It was of a more harmless
and ordinary character than the first. Yet, owing to the state of the public
mind, it increased the outcry in the town.
Our friend Liputin turned up and called on Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
immediately after the latter’s interview with his mother, and earnestly
begged for the honour of his company at a little party he was giving for his
wife’s birthday that evening. Varvara Petrovna had long watched with a
pang at her heart her son’s taste for such low company, but she had not
dared to speak of it to him. He had made several acquaintances besides
Liputin in the third rank of our society, and even in lower depths—he had a
propensity for making such friends. He had never been in Liputin’s house
before, though he had met the man himself. He guessed that Liputin’s
invitation now was the consequence of the previous day’s scandal, and that
as a local liberal he was delighted at the scandal, genuinely believing that
that was the proper way to treat stewards at the club, and that it was very
well done. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch smiled and promised to come.
A great number of guests had assembled. The company was not very
presentable, but very sprightly. Liputin, vain and envious, only entertained
visitors twice a year, but on those occasions he did it without stint. The
most honoured of the invited guests, Stepan Trofimovitch, was prevented

by illness from being present. Tea was handed, and there were refreshments
and vodka in plenty. Cards were played at three tables, and while waiting
for supper the young people got up a dance. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch led
out Madame Liputin—a very pretty little woman who was dreadfully shy of
him—took two turns round the room with her, sat down beside her, drew
her into conversation and made her laugh. Noticing at last how pretty she
was when she laughed, he suddenly, before all the company, seized her
round the waist and kissed her on the lips two or three times with great
relish. The poor frightened lady fainted. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch took his
hat and went up to the husband, who stood petrified in the middle of the
general excitement. Looking at him he, too, became confused and muttering
hurriedly “Don’t be angry,” went away. Liputin ran after him in the entry,
gave him his fur-coat with his own hands, and saw him down the stairs,
bowing. But next day a rather amusing sequel followed this comparatively
harmless prank—a sequel from which Liputin gained some credit, and of
which he took the fullest possible advantage.
At ten o’clock in the morning Liputin’s servant Agafya, an easy-mannered,
lively, rosy-cheeked peasant woman of thirty, made her appearance at
Stavrogin’s house, with a message for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. She
insisted on seeing “his honour himself.” He had a very bad headache, but he
went out. Varvara Petrovna succeeded in being present when the message
was given.
“Sergay Vassilyevitch” (Liputin’s name), Agafya rattled off briskly, “bade
me first of all give you his respectful greetings and ask after your health,
what sort of night your honour spent after yesterday’s doings, and how your
honour feels now after yesterday’s doings?”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch smiled.
“Give him my greetings and thank him, and tell your master from me,
Agafya, that he’s the most sensible man in the town.”
“And he told me to answer that,” Agafya caught him up still more briskly,
“that he knows that without your telling him, and wishes you the same.”
“Really! But how could he tell what I should say to you?”

“I can’t say in what way he could tell, but when I had set off and had gone
right down the street, I heard something, and there he was, running after me
without his cap. ‘I say, Agafya, if by any chance he says to you, “Tell your
master that he has more sense than all the town,” you tell him at once, don’t
forget, “The master himself knows that very well, and wishes you the
same.”’”
III
At last the interview with the governor took place too. Our dear, mild, Ivan
Ossipovitch had only just returned and only just had time to hear the angry
complaint from the club. There was no doubt that something must be done,
but he was troubled. The hospitable old man seemed also rather afraid of his
young kinsman. He made up his mind, however, to induce him to apologise
to the club and to his victim in satisfactory form, and, if required, by letter,
and then to persuade him to leave us for a time, travelling, for instance, to
improve his mind, in Italy, or in fact anywhere abroad. In the waiting-room
in which on this occasion he received Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch (who had
been at other times privileged as a relation to wander all over the house
unchecked), Alyosha Telyatnikov, a clerk of refined manners, who was also
a member of the governor’s household, was sitting in a corner opening
envelopes at a table, and in the next room, at the window nearest to the
door, a stout and sturdy colonel, a former friend and colleague of the
governor, was sitting alone reading the Golos, paying no attention, of
course, to what was taking place in the waiting-room; in fact, he had his
back turned. Ivan Ossipovitch approached the subject in a roundabout way,
almost in a whisper, but kept getting a little muddled. Nikolay looked
anything but cordial, not at all as a relation should. He was pale and sat
looking down and continually moving his eyebrows as though trying to
control acute pain.
“You have a kind heart and a generous one, Nicolas,” the old man put in
among other things, “you’re a man of great culture, you’ve grown up in the
highest circles, and here too your behaviour has hitherto been a model,
which has been a great consolation to your mother, who is so precious to all
of us.… And now again everything has appeared in such an unaccountable
light, so detrimental to all! I speak as a friend of your family, as an old man
who loves you sincerely and a relation, at whose words you cannot take

offence.… Tell me, what drives you to such reckless proceedings so
contrary to all accepted rules and habits? What can be the meaning of such
acts which seem almost like outbreaks of delirium?”
Nikolay listened with vexation and impatience. All at once there was a
gleam of something sly and mocking in his eyes.
“I’ll tell you what drives me to it,” he said sullenly, and looking round him
he bent down to Ivan Ossipovitch’s ear. The refined Alyosha Telyatnikov
moved three steps farther away towards the window, and the colonel
coughed over the Golos. Poor Ivan Ossipovitch hurriedly and trustfully
inclined his ear; he was exceedingly curious. And then something utterly
incredible, though on the other side only too unmistakable, took place. The
old man suddenly felt that, instead of telling him some interesting secret,
Nikolay had seized the upper part of his ear between his teeth and was
nipping it rather hard. He shuddered, and breath failed him.
“Nicolas, this is beyond a joke!” he moaned mechanically in a voice not his
own.
Alyosha and the colonel had not yet grasped the situation, besides they
couldn’t see, and fancied up to the end that the two were whispering
together; and yet the old man’s desperate face alarmed them. They looked at
one another with wide-open eyes, not knowing whether to rush to his
assistance as agreed or to wait. Nikolay noticed this perhaps, and bit the
harder.
“Nicolas! Nicolas!” his victim moaned again, “come … you’ve had your
joke, that’s enough!”
In another moment the poor governor would certainly have died of terror;
but the monster had mercy on him, and let go his ear. The old man’s deadly
terror lasted for a full minute, and it was followed by a sort of fit. Within
half an hour Nikolay was arrested and removed for the time to the guard-
room, where he was confined in a special cell, with a special sentinel at the
door. This decision was a harsh one, but our mild governor was so angry
that he was prepared to take the responsibility even if he had to face Varvara
Petrovna. To the general amazement, when this lady arrived at the
governor’s in haste and in nervous irritation to discuss the matter with him

at once, she was refused admittance, whereupon, without getting out of the
carriage, she returned home, unable to believe her senses.
And at last everything was explained! At two o’clock in the morning the
prisoner, who had till then been calm and had even slept, suddenly became
noisy, began furiously beating on the door with his fists,—with unnatural
strength wrenched the iron grating off the door, broke the window, and cut
his hands all over. When the officer on duty ran with a detachment of men
and the keys and ordered the cell to be opened that they might rush in and
bind the maniac, it appeared that he was suffering from acute brain fever.
He was taken home to his mother.
Everything was explained at once. All our three doctors gave it as their
opinion that the patient might well have been in a delirious state for three
days before, and that though he might have apparently been in possession of
full consciousness and cunning, yet he might have been deprived of
common sense and will, which was indeed borne out by the facts. So it
turned out that Liputin had guessed the truth sooner than any one. Ivan
Ossipovitch, who was a man of delicacy and feeling, was completely
abashed. But what was striking was that he, too, had considered Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch capable of any mad action even when in the full
possession of his faculties. At the club, too, people were ashamed and
wondered how it was they had failed to “see the elephant” and had missed
the only explanation of all these marvels: there were, of course, sceptics
among them, but they could not long maintain their position.
Nikolay was in bed for more than two months. A famous doctor was
summoned from Moscow for a consultation; the whole town called on
Varvara Petrovna. She forgave them. When in the spring Nikolay had
completely recovered and assented without discussion to his mother’s
proposal that he should go for a tour to Italy, she begged him further to pay
visits of farewell to all the neighbours, and so far as possible to apologise
where necessary. Nikolay agreed with great alacrity. It became known at the
club that he had had a most delicate explanation with Pyotr Pavlovitch
Gaganov, at the house of the latter, who had been completely satisfied with
his apology. As he went round to pay these calls Nikolay was very grave
and even gloomy. Every one appeared to receive him sympathetically, but
everybody seemed embarrassed and glad that he was going to Italy. Ivan

Ossipovitch was positively tearful, but was, for some reason, unable to
bring himself to embrace him, even at the final leave-taking. It is true that
some of us retained the conviction that the scamp had simply been making
fun of us, and that the illness was neither here nor there. He went to see
Liputin too.
“Tell me,” he said, “how could you guess beforehand what I should say
about your sense and prime Agafya with an answer to it?”
“Why,” laughed Liputin, “it was because I recognised that you were a
clever man, and so I foresaw what your answer would be.”
“Anyway, it was a remarkable coincidence. But, excuse me, did you
consider me a sensible man and not insane when you sent Agafya?”
“For the cleverest and most rational, and I only pretended to believe that
you were insane.… And you guessed at once what was in my mind, and
sent a testimonial to my wit through Agafya.”
“Well, there you’re a little mistaken. I really was … unwell …” muttered
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, frowning. “Bah!” he cried, “do you suppose I’m
capable of attacking people when I’m in my senses? What object would
there be in it?”
Liputin shrank together and didn’t know what to answer. Nikolay turned
pale or, at least, so it seemed to Liputin.
“You have a very peculiar way of looking at things, anyhow,” Nikolay went
on, “but as for Agafya, I understand, of course, that you simply sent her to
be rude to me.”
“I couldn’t challenge you to a duel, could I?”
“Oh, no, of course! I seem to have heard that you’re not fond of duels.…”
“Why borrow from the French?” said Liputin, doubling up again.
“You’re for nationalism, then?”
Liputin shrank into himself more than ever.

“Bah, bah! What do I see?” cried Nicolas, noticing a volume of Considérant
in the most conspicuous place on the table. “You don’t mean to say you’re a
Fourierist! I’m afraid you must be! And isn’t this too borrowing from the
French?” he laughed, tapping the book with his finger.
“No, that’s not taken from the French,” Liputin cried with positive fury,
jumping up from his chair. “That is taken from the universal language of
humanity, not simply from the French. From the language of the universal
social republic and harmony of mankind, let me tell you! Not simply from
the French!”
“Foo! hang it all! There’s no such language!” laughed Nikolay.
Sometimes a trifle will catch the attention and exclusively absorb it for a
time. Most of what I have to tell of young Stavrogin will come later. 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.
She accepted submissively and without repining the relations that had been
established once for all between her son and herself. She fretted for her
“Nicolas” and dreamed of him continually. She kept her dreams and
lamentations to herself. She seemed to have become less intimate even with
Stepan Trofimovitch. She was forming secret projects, and seemed to have
become more careful about money than ever. She was more than ever given
to saving money and being angry at Stepan Trofimovitch’s losses at cards.
At last, in the April of this year, she received a letter from Paris from
Praskovya Ivanovna Drozdov, the widow of the general and the friend of
Varvara Petrovna’s childhood. Praskovya Ivanovna, whom Varvara
Petrovna had not seen or corresponded with for eight years, wrote,
informing her that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had become very intimate with
them and a great friend of her only daughter, Liza, and that he was
intending to accompany them to Switzerland, to Verney-Montreux, though
in the household of Count K. (a very influential personage in Petersburg),
who was now staying in Paris. He was received like a son of the family, so
that he almost lived at the count’s. The letter was brief, and the object of it
was perfectly clear, though it contained only a plain statement of the above-
mentioned facts without drawing any inferences from them. Varvara
Petrovna did not pause long to consider; she made up her mind instantly,
made her preparations, and taking with her her protégée, Dasha (Shatov’s
sister), she set off in the middle of April for Paris, and from there went on to
Switzerland. She returned in July, alone, leaving Dasha with the Drozdovs.
She brought us the news that the Drozdovs themselves had promised to
arrive among us by the end of August.
The Drozdovs, too, were landowners of our province, but the official duties
of General Ivan Ivanovitch Drozdov (who had been a friend of Varvara
Petrovna’s and a colleague of her husband’s) had always prevented them
from visiting their magnificent estate. On the death of the general, which
had taken place the year before, the inconsolable widow had gone abroad
with her daughter, partly in order to try the grape-cure which she proposed
to carry out at Verney-Montreux during the latter half of the summer. On
their return to Russia they intended to settle in our province for good. She

had a large house in the town which had stood empty for many years with
the windows nailed up. They were wealthy people. Praskovya Ivanovna had
been, in her first marriage, a Madame Tushin, and like her school-friend,
Varvara Petrovna, was the daughter of a government contractor of the old
school, and she too had been an heiress at her marriage. Tushin, a retired
cavalry captain, was also a man of means, and of some ability. At his death
he left a snug fortune to his only daughter Liza, a child of seven. Now that
Lizaveta Nikolaevna was twenty-two her private fortune might confidently
be reckoned at 200,000 roubles, to say nothing of the property—which was
bound to come to her at the death of her mother, who had no children by her
second marriage. Varvara Petrovna seemed to be very well satisfied with
her expedition. In her own opinion she had succeeded in coming to a
satisfactory understanding with Praskovya Ivanovna, and immediately on
her arrival she confided everything to Stepan Trofimovitch. She was
positively effusive with him as she had not been for a very long time.
“Hurrah!” cried Stepan Trofimovitch, and snapped his fingers.
He was in a perfect rapture, especially as he had spent the whole time of his
friend’s absence in extreme dejection. On setting off she had not even taken
leave of him properly, and had said nothing of her plan to “that old
woman,” dreading, perhaps, that he might chatter about it. She was cross
with him at the time on account of a considerable gambling debt which she
had suddenly discovered. But before she left Switzerland she had felt that
on her return she must make up for it to her forsaken friend, especially as
she had treated him very curtly for a long time past. Her abrupt and
mysterious departure had made a profound and poignant impression on the
timid heart of Stepan Trofimovitch, and to make matters worse he was beset
with other difficulties at the same time. He was worried by a very
considerable money obligation, which had weighed upon him for a long
time and which he could never hope to meet without Varvara Petrovna’s
assistance. Moreover, in the May of this year, the term of office of our mild
and gentle Ivan Ossipovitch came to an end. He was superseded under
rather unpleasant circumstances. Then, while Varvara Petrovna was still
away, there followed the arrival of our new governor, Andrey Antonovitch
von Lembke, and with that a change began at once to be perceptible in the
attitude of almost the whole of our provincial society towards Varvara
Petrovna, and consequently towards Stepan Trofimovitch. He had already

had time anyway to make some disagreeable though valuable observations,
and seemed very apprehensive alone without Varvara Petrovna. He had an
agitating suspicion that he had already been mentioned to the governor as a
dangerous man. He knew for a fact that some of our ladies meant to give up
calling on Varvara Petrovna. Of our governor’s wife (who was only
expected to arrive in the autumn) it was reported that though she was, so it
was heard, proud, she was a real aristocrat, and “not like that poor Varvara
Petrovna.” Everybody seemed to know for a fact, and in the greatest detail,
that our governor’s wife and Varvara Petrovna had met already in society
and had parted enemies, so that the mere mention of Madame von
Lembke’s name would, it was said, make a painful impression on Varvara
Petrovna. The confident and triumphant air of Varvara Petrovna, the
contemptuous indifference with which she heard of the opinions of our
provincial ladies and the agitation in local society, revived the flagging
spirits of Stepan Trofimovitch and cheered him up at once. With peculiar,
gleefully-obsequious humour, he was beginning to describe the new
governor’s arrival.
“You are no doubt aware, excellente amie,” he said, jauntily and
coquettishly drawling his words, “what is meant by a Russian administrator,
speaking generally, and what is meant by a new Russian administrator, that
is the newly-baked, newly-established … ces interminables mots Russes!
But I don’t think you can know in practice what is meant by administrative
ardour, and what sort of thing that is.”
“Administrative ardour? I don’t know what that is.”
“Well … Vous savez chez nous … En un mot, set the most insignificant
nonentity to sell miserable tickets at a railway station, and the nonentity will
at once feel privileged to look down on you like a Jupiter, pour montrer son
pouvoir when you go to take a ticket. ‘Now then,’ he says, ‘I shall show you
my power’ … and in them it comes to a genuine, administrative ardour. En
un mot, I’ve read that some verger in one of our Russian churches abroad—
mais c’est très curieux—drove, literally drove a distinguished English
family, les dames charmantes, out of the church before the beginning of the
Lenten service … vous savez ces chants et le livre de Job … on the simple
pretext that ‘foreigners are not allowed to loaf about a Russian church, and
that they must come at the time fixed.…’ And he sent them into fainting

fits.… That verger was suffering from an attack of administrative ardour, et
il a montré son pouvoir.”
“Cut it short if you can, Stepan Trofimovitch.”
“Mr. von Lembke is making a tour of the province now. En un mot, this
Andrey Antonovitch, though he is a russified German and of the Orthodox
persuasion, and even—I will say that for him—a remarkably handsome
man of about forty …”
“What makes you think he’s a handsome man? He has eyes like a sheep’s.”
“Precisely so. But in this I yield, of course, to the opinion of our ladies.”
“Let’s get on, Stepan Trofimovitch, I beg you! By the way, you’re wearing
a red neck-tie. Is it long since you’ve taken to it?”
“I’ve … I’ve only put it on to-day.”
“And do you take your constitutional? Do you go for a four-mile walk
every day as the doctor told you to?”
“N-not … always.”
“I knew you didn’t! I felt sure of that when I was in Switzerland!” she cried
irritably. “Now you must go not four but six miles a day! You’ve grown
terribly slack, terribly, terribly! You’re not simply getting old, you’re
getting decrepit.… You shocked me when I first saw you just now, in spite
of your red tie, quelle idee rouge! Go on about Von Lembke if you’ve really
something to tell me, and do finish some time, I entreat you, I’m tired.”
“En un mot, I only wanted to say that he is one of those administrators who
begin to have power at forty, who, till they’re forty, have been stagnating in
insignificance and then suddenly come to the front through suddenly
acquiring a wife, or some other equally desperate means.… That is, he has
gone away now … that is, I mean to say, it was at once whispered in both
his ears that I am a corrupter of youth, and a hot-bed of provincial
atheism.… He began making inquiries at once.”
“Is that true?”

“I took steps about it, in fact. When he was ‘informed’ that you ‘ruled the
province,’ vous savez, he allowed himself to use the expression that ‘there
shall be nothing of that sort in the future.’”
“Did he say that?”
“That ‘there shall be nothing of the sort in future,’ and, avec cette
morgue.… His wife, Yulia Mihailovna, we shall behold at the end of
August, she’s coming straight from Petersburg.”
“From abroad. We met there.”
“Vraiment?”
“In Paris and in Switzerland. She’s related to the Drozdovs.”
“Related! What an extraordinary coincidence! They say she is ambitious
and … supposed to have great connections.”
“Nonsense! Connections indeed! She was an old maid without a farthing till
she was five-and-forty. But now she’s hooked her Von Lembke, and, of
course, her whole object is to push him forward. They’re both intriguers.”
“And they say she’s two years older than he is?”
“Five. Her mother used to wear out her skirts on my doorsteps in Moscow;
she used to beg for an invitation to our balls as a favour when my husband
was living. And this creature used to sit all night alone in a corner without
dancing, with her turquoise fly on her forehead, so that simply from pity I
used to have to send her her first partner at two o’clock in the morning. She
was five-and-twenty then, and they used to rig her out in short skirts like a
little girl. It was improper to have them about at last.”
“I seem to see that fly.”
“I tell you, as soon as I arrived I was in the thick of an intrigue. You read
Madame Drozdov’s letter, of course. What could be clearer? What did I
find? That fool Praskovya herself—she always was a fool—looked at me as
much as to ask why I’d come. You can fancy how surprised I was. I looked
round, and there was that Lembke woman at her tricks, and that cousin of
hers—old Drozdov’s nephew—it was all clear. You may be sure I changed

all that in a twinkling, and Praskovya is on my side again, but what an
intrigue!”
“In which you came off victor, however. Bismarck!”
“Without being a Bismarck I’m equal to falseness and stupidity wherever I
meet it, falseness, and Praskovya’s folly. I don’t know when I’ve met such a
flabby woman, and what’s more her legs are swollen, and she’s a good-
natured simpleton, too. What can be more foolish than a good-natured
simpleton?”
“A spiteful fool, ma bonne amie, a spiteful fool is still more foolish,”
Stepan Trofimovitch protested magnanimously.
“You’re right, perhaps. Do you remember Liza?”
“Charmante enfant!”
“But she’s not an enfant now, but a woman, and a woman of character.
She’s a generous, passionate creature, and what I like about her, she stands
up to that confiding fool, her mother. There was almost a row over that
cousin.”
“Bah, and of course he’s no relation of Lizaveta Nikolaevna’s at all.… Has
he designs on her?”
“You see, he’s a young officer, not by any means talkative, modest in fact. I
always want to be just. I fancy he is opposed to the intrigue himself, and
isn’t aiming at anything, and it was only the Von Lembke’s tricks. He had a
great respect for Nicolas. You understand, it all depends on Liza. But I left
her on the best of terms with Nicolas, and he promised he would come to us
in November. So it’s only the Von Lembke who is intriguing, and Praskovya
is a blind woman. She suddenly tells me that all my suspicions are fancy. I
told her to her face she was a fool. I am ready to repeat it at the day of
judgment. And if it hadn’t been for Nicolas begging me to leave it for a
time, I wouldn’t have come away without unmasking that false woman.
She’s been trying to ingratiate herself with Count K. through Nicolas. She
wants to come between mother and son. But Liza’s on our side, and I came
to an understanding with Praskovya. Do you know that Karmazinov is a
relation of hers?”

“What? A relation of Madame von Lembke?”
“Yes, of hers. Distant.”
“Karmazinov, the novelist?”
“Yes, the writer. Why does it surprise you? Of course he considers himself a
great man. Stuck-up creature! She’s coming here with him. Now she’s
making a fuss of him out there. She’s got a notion of setting up a sort of
literary society here. He’s coming for a month, he wants to sell his last
piece of property here. I very nearly met him in Switzerland, and was very
anxious not to. Though I hope he will deign to recognise me. He wrote
letters to me in the old days, he has been in my house. I should like you to
dress better, Stepan Trofimovitch; you’re growing more slovenly every
day.… Oh, how you torment me! What are you reading now?”
“I … I …”
“I understand. The same as ever, friends and drinking, the club and cards,
and the reputation of an atheist. I don’t like that reputation, Stepan
Trofimovitch; I don’t care for you to be called an atheist, particularly now. I
didn’t care for it in old days, for it’s all nothing but empty chatter. It must be
said at last.”
“Mais, ma chère …”
“Listen, Stepan Trofimovitch, of course I’m ignorant compared with you on
all learned subjects, but as I was travelling here I thought a great deal about
you. I’ve come to one conclusion.”
“What conclusion?”
“That you and I are not the wisest people in the world, but that there are
people wiser than we are.”
“Witty and apt. If there are people wiser than we are, then there are people
more right than we are, and we may be mistaken, you mean? Mais, ma
bonne amie, granted that I may make a mistake, yet have I not the common,
human, eternal, supreme right of freedom of conscience? I have the right
not to be bigoted or superstitious if I don’t wish to, and for that I shall
naturally be hated by certain persons to the end of time. Et puis, comme on

trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison, and as I thoroughly agree
with that …”
“What, what did you say?”
“I said, on trouve toujours plus de moines que de raison, and as I
thoroughly …”
“I’m sure that’s not your saying. You must have taken it from somewhere.”
“It was Pascal said that.”
“Just as I thought … it’s not your own. Why don’t you ever say anything
like that yourself, so shortly and to the point, instead of dragging things out
to such a length? That’s much better than what you said just now about
administrative ardour …”
“Ma foi, chère …” why? In the first place probably because I’m not a
Pascal after all, et puis … secondly, we Russians never can say anything in
our own language.… We never have said anything hitherto, at any rate.…”
“H’m! That’s not true, perhaps. Anyway, you’d better make a note of such
phrases, and remember them, you know, in case you have to talk.… Ach,
Stephan Trofimovitch. I have come to talk to you seriously, quite seriously.”
“Chère, chère amie!”
“Now that all these Von Lembkes and Karmazinovs.… Oh, my goodness,
how you have deteriorated!… Oh, my goodness, how you do torment
me!… I should have liked these people to feel a respect for you, for they’re
not worth your little finger—but the way you behave!… What will they
see? What shall I have to show them? Instead of nobly standing as an
example, keeping up the tradition of the past, you surround yourself with a
wretched rabble, you have picked up impossible habits, you’ve grown
feeble, you can’t do without wine and cards, you read nothing but Paul de
Kock, and write nothing, while all of them write; all your time’s wasted in
gossip. How can you bring yourself to be friends with a wretched creature
like your inseparable Liputin?”
“Why is he mine and inseparable?” Stepan Trofimovitch protested timidly.

“Where is he now?” Varvara Petrovna went on, sharply and sternly.
“He … he has an infinite respect for you, and he’s gone to S——k, to
receive an inheritance left him by his mother.”
“He seems to do nothing but get money. And how’s Shatov? Is he just the
same?”
“Irascible, mais bon.”
“I can’t endure your Shatov. He’s spiteful and he thinks too much of
himself.”
“How is Darya Pavlovna?”
“You mean Dasha? What made you think of her?” Varvara Petrovna looked
at him inquisitively. “She’s quite well. I left her with the Drozdovs. I heard
something about your son in Switzerland. Nothing good.”
“Oh, c’est un histoire bien bête! Je vous attendais, ma bonne amie, pour
vous raconter …”
“Enough, Stepan Trofimovitch. Leave me in peace. I’m worn out. We shall
have time to talk to our heart’s content, especially of what’s unpleasant.
You’ve begun to splutter when you laugh, it’s a sign of senility! And what a
strange way of laughing you’ve taken to!… Good Heavens, what a lot of
bad habits you’ve fallen into! Karmazinov won’t come and see you! And
people are only too glad to make the most of anything as it is.… You’ve
betrayed yourself completely now. Well, come, that’s enough, that’s
enough, I’m tired. You really might have mercy upon one!”
Stepan Trofimovitch “had mercy,” but he withdrew in great perturbation.
V
Our friend certainly had fallen into not a few bad habits, especially of late.
He had obviously and rapidly deteriorated; and it was true that he had
become slovenly. He drank more and had become more tearful and nervous;
and had grown too impressionable on the artistic side. His face had acquired
a strange facility for changing with extraordinary quickness, from the most
solemn expression, for instance, to the most absurd, and even foolish. He

could not endure solitude, and was always craving for amusement. One had
always to repeat to him some gossip, some local anecdote, and every day a
new one. If no one came to see him for a long time he wandered
disconsolately about the rooms, walked to the window, puckering up his
lips, heaved deep sighs, and almost fell to whimpering at last. He was
always full of forebodings, was afraid of something unexpected and
inevitable; he had become timorous; he began to pay great attention to his
dreams.
He spent all that day and evening in great depression, he sent for me, was
very much agitated, talked a long while, gave me a long account of things,
but all rather disconnected. Varvara Petrovna had known for a long time
that he concealed nothing from me. It seemed to me at last that he was
worried about something particular, and was perhaps unable to form a
definite idea of it himself. As a rule when we met tête-à-tête and he began
making long complaints to me, a bottle was almost always brought in after
a little time, and things became much more comfortable. This time there
was no wine, and he was evidently struggling all the while against the
desire to send for it.
“And why is she always so cross?” he complained every minute, like a
child. “Tous les hommes de génie et de progrès en Russie étaient, sont, et
seront toujours des gamblers et des drunkards qui boivent in outbreaks …
and I’m not such a gambler after all, and I’m not such a drunkard. She
reproaches me for not writing anything. Strange idea!… She asks why I lie
down? She says I ought to stand, ‘an example and reproach.’ Mais, entre
nous soit dit, what is a man to do who is destined to stand as a ‘reproach,’ if
not to lie down? Does she understand that?”
And at last it became clear to me what was the chief particular trouble
which was worrying him so persistently at this time. Many times that
evening he went to the looking-glass, and stood a long while before it. At
last he turned from the looking-glass to me, and with a sort of strange
despair, said: “Mon cher, je suis un broken-down man.” Yes, certainly, up to
that time, up to that very day there was one thing only of which he had
always felt confident in spite of the “new views,” and of the “change in
Varvara Petrovna’s ideas,” that was, the conviction that still he had a
fascination for her feminine heart, not simply as an exile or a celebrated

man of learning, but as a handsome man. For twenty years this soothing and
flattering opinion had been rooted in his mind, and perhaps of all his
convictions this was the hardest to part with. Had he any presentiment that
evening of the colossal ordeal which was preparing for him in the
immediate future?
VI
I will now enter upon the description of that almost forgotten incident with
which my story properly speaking begins.
At last at the very end of August the Drozdovs returned. Their arrival made
a considerable sensation in local society, and took place shortly before their
relation, our new governor’s wife, made her long-expected appearance. But
of all these interesting events I will speak later. For the present I will
confine myself to saying that Praskovya Ivanovna brought Varvara
Petrovna, who was expecting her so impatiently, a most perplexing
problem: Nikolay had parted from them in July, and, meeting Count K. on
the Rhine, had set off with him and his family for Petersburg. (N.B.—The
Count’s three daughters were all of marriageable age.)
“Lizaveta is so proud and obstinate that I could get nothing out of her,”
Praskovya Ivanovna said in conclusion. “But I saw for myself that
something had happened between her and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. I don’t
know the reasons, but I fancy, my dear Varvara Petrovna, that you will have
to ask your Darya Pavlovna for them. To my thinking Liza was offended.
I’m glad. I can tell you that I’ve brought you back your favourite at last and
handed her over to you; it’s a weight off my mind.”
These venomous words were uttered with remarkable irritability. It was
evident that the “flabby” woman had prepared them and gloated beforehand
over the effect they would produce. But Varvara Petrovna was not the
woman to be disconcerted by sentimental effects and enigmas. She sternly
demanded the most precise and satisfactory explanations. Praskovya
Ivanovna immediately lowered her tone and even ended by dissolving into
tears and expressions of the warmest friendship. This irritable but
sentimental lady, like Stepan Trofimovitch, was forever yearning for true
friendship, and her chief complaint against her daughter Lizaveta
Nikolaevna was just that “her daughter was not a friend to her.”

But from all her explanations and outpourings nothing certain could be
gathered but that there actually had been some sort of quarrel between Liza
and Nikolay, but of the nature of the quarrel Praskovya Ivanovna was
obviously unable to form a definite idea. As for her imputations against
Darya Pavlovna, she not only withdrew them completely in the end, but
even particularly begged Varvara Petrovna to pay no attention to her words,
because “they had been said in irritation.” In fact, it had all been left very
far from clear—suspicious, indeed. According to her account the quarrel
had arisen from Liza’s “obstinate and ironical character.” “Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch is proud, too, and though he was very much in love, yet he
could not endure sarcasm, and began to be sarcastic himself. Soon
afterwards we made the acquaintance of a young man, the nephew, I
believe, of your ‘Professor’ and, indeed, the surname’s the same.”
“The son, not the nephew,” Varvara Petrovna corrected her.
Even in old days Praskovya Ivanovna had been always unable to recall
Stepan Trofimovitch’s name, and had always called him the “Professor.”
“Well, his son, then; so much the better. Of course, it’s all the same to me.
An ordinary young man, very lively and free in his manners, but nothing
special in him. Well, then, Liza herself did wrong, she made friends with the
young man with the idea of making Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch jealous. I
don’t see much harm in that; it’s the way of girls, quite usual, even
charming in them. Only instead of being jealous Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
made friends with the young man himself, just as though he saw nothing
and didn’t care. This made Liza furious. The young man soon went away
(he was in a great hurry to get somewhere) and Liza took to picking
quarrels with Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at every opportunity. She noticed
that he used sometimes to talk to Dasha; and, well, she got in such a frantic
state that even my life wasn’t worth living, my dear. The doctors have
forbidden my being irritated, and I was so sick of their lake they make such
a fuss about, it simply gave me toothache, I had such rheumatism. It’s stated
in print that the Lake of Geneva does give people the toothache. It’s a
feature of the place. Then Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch suddenly got a letter
from the countess and he left us at once. He packed up in one day. They
parted in a friendly way, and Liza became very cheerful and frivolous, and
laughed a great deal seeing him off; only that was all put on. When he had

gone she became very thoughtful, and she gave up speaking of him
altogether and wouldn’t let me mention his name. And I should advise you,
dear Varvara Petrovna, not to approach the subject with Liza, you’ll only do
harm. But if you hold your tongue she’ll begin to talk of it herself, and then
you’ll learn more. I believe they’ll come together again, if only Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch doesn’t put off coming, as he promised.”
“I’ll write to him at once. If that’s how it was, there was nothing in the
quarrel; all nonsense! And I know Darya too well. It’s nonsense!”
“I’m sorry for what I said about Dashenka, I did wrong. Their conversations
were quite ordinary and they talked out loud, too. But it all upset me so
much at the time, my dear. And Liza, I saw, got on with her again as
affectionately as before.…”
That very day Varvara Petrovna wrote to Nikolay, and begged him to come,
if only one month, earlier than the date he had fixed. But yet she still felt
that there was something unexplained and obscure in the matter. She
pondered over it all the evening and all night. Praskovya’s opinion seemed
to her too innocent and sentimental. “Praskovya has always been too
sentimental from the old schooldays upwards,” she reflected. “Nicolas is
not the man to run away from a girl’s taunts. There’s some other reason for
it, if there really has been a breach between them. That officer’s here
though, they’ve brought him with them. As a relation he lives in their
house. And, as for Darya, Praskovya was in too much haste to apologise.
She must have kept something to herself, which she wouldn’t tell me.”
By the morning Varvara Petrovna had matured a project for putting a stop
once for all to one misunderstanding at least; a project amazing in its
unexpectedness. What was in her heart when she conceived it? It would be
hard to decide and I will not undertake to explain beforehand all the
incongruities of which it was made up. I simply confine myself as
chronicler to recording events precisely as they happened, and it is not my
fault if they seem incredible. Yet I must once more testify that by the
morning there was not the least suspicion of Dasha left in Varvara
Petrovna’s mind, though in reality there never had been any—she had too
much confidence in her. Besides, she could not admit the idea that
“Nicolas” could be attracted by her Darya. Next morning when Darya

Pavlovna was pouring out tea at the table Varvara Petrovna looked for a
long while intently at her and, perhaps for the twentieth time since the
previous day, repeated to herself: “It’s all nonsense!”
All she noticed was that Dasha looked rather tired, and that she was even
quieter and more apathetic than she used to be. After their morning tea,
according to their invariable custom, they sat down to needlework. Varvara
Petrovna demanded from her a full account of her impressions abroad,
especially of nature, of the inhabitants, of the towns, the customs, their arts
and commerce—of everything she had time to observe. She asked no
questions about the Drozdovs or how she had got on with them. Dasha,
sitting beside her at the work-table helping her with the embroidery, talked
for half an hour in her even, monotonous, but rather weak voice.
“Darya!” Varvara Petrovna interrupted suddenly, “is there nothing special
you want to tell me?”
“No, nothing,” said Dasha, after a moment’s thought, and she glanced at
Varvara Petrovna with her light-coloured eyes.
“Nothing on your soul, on your heart, or your conscience?”
“Nothing,” Dasha repeated, quietly, but with a sort of sullen firmness.
“I knew there wasn’t! Believe me, Darya, I shall never doubt you. Now sit
still and listen. In front of me, on that chair. I want to see the whole of you.
That’s right. Listen, do you want to be married?”
Dasha responded with a long, inquiring, but not greatly astonished look.
“Stay, hold your tongue. In the first place there is a very great difference in
age, but of course you know better than anyone what nonsense that is.
You’re a sensible girl, and there must be no mistakes in your life. Besides,
he’s still a handsome man … In short, Stepan Trofimovitch, for whom you
have always had such a respect. Well?”
Dasha looked at her still more inquiringly, and this time not simply with
surprise; she blushed perceptibly.
“Stay, hold your tongue, don’t be in a hurry! Though you will have money
under my will, yet when I die, what will become of you, even if you have

money? You’ll be deceived and robbed of your money, you’ll be lost in fact.
But married to him you’re the wife of a distinguished man. Look at him on
the other hand. Though I’ve provided for him, if I die what will become of
him? But I could trust him to you. Stay, I’ve not finished. He’s frivolous,
shilly-shally, cruel, egoistic, he has low habits. But mind you think highly
of him, in the first place because there are many worse. I don’t want to get
you off my hands by marrying you to a rascal, you don’t imagine anything
of that sort, do you? And, above all, because I ask you, you’ll think highly
of him,”—
She broke off suddenly and irritably. “Do you hear? Why won’t you say
something?”
Dasha still listened and did not speak.
“Stay, wait a little. He’s an old woman, but you know, that’s all the better
for you. Besides, he’s a pathetic old woman. He doesn’t deserve to be loved
by a woman at all, but he deserves to be loved for his helplessness, and you
must love him for his helplessness. You understand me, don’t you? Do you
understand me?”
Dasha nodded her head affirmatively.
“I knew you would. I expected as much of you. He will love you because he
ought, he ought; he ought to adore you.” Varvara Petrovna almost shrieked
with peculiar exasperation. “Besides, he will be in love with you without
any ought about it. I know him. And another thing, I shall always be here.
You may be sure I shall always be here. He will complain of you, he’ll
begin to say things against you behind your back, he’ll whisper things
against you to any stray person he meets, he’ll be for ever whining and
whining; he’ll write you letters from one room to another, two a day, but he
won’t be able to get on without you all the same, and that’s the chief thing.
Make him obey you. If you can’t make him you’ll be a fool. He’ll want to
hang himself and threaten, to—don’t you believe it. It’s nothing but
nonsense. Don’t believe it; but still keep a sharp look-out, you never can
tell, and one day he may hang himself. It does happen with people like that.
It’s not through strength of will but through weakness that people hang
themselves, and so never drive him to an extreme, that’s the first rule in
married life. Remember, too, that he’s a poet. Listen, Dasha, there’s no

greater happiness than self-sacrifice. And besides, you’ll be giving me great
satisfaction and that’s the chief thing. Don’t think I’ve been talking
nonsense. I understand what I’m saying. I’m an egoist, you be an egoist,
too. Of course I’m not forcing you. It’s entirely for you to decide. As you
say, so it shall be. Well, what’s the good of sitting like this. Speak!”
“I don’t mind, Varvara Petrovna, if I really must be married,” said Dasha
firmly.
“Must? What are you hinting at?” Varvara Petrovna looked sternly and
intently at her.
Dasha was silent, picking at her embroidery canvas with her needle.
“Though you’re a clever girl, you’re talking nonsense; though it is true that
I have certainly set my heart on marrying you, yet it’s not because it’s
necessary, but simply because the idea has occurred to me, and only to
Stepan Trofimovitch. If it had not been for Stepan Trofimovitch, I should
not have thought of marrying you yet, though you are twenty.… Well?”
“I’ll do as you wish, Varvara Petrovna.”
“Then you consent! Stay, be quiet. Why are you in such a hurry? I haven’t
finished. In my will I’ve left you fifteen thousand roubles. I’ll give you that
at once, on your wedding-day. You will give eight thousand of it to him;
that is, not to him but to me. He has a debt of eight thousand. I’ll pay it, but
he must know that it is done with your money. You’ll have seven thousand
left in your hands. Never let him touch a farthing of it. Don’t pay his debts
ever. If once you pay them, you’ll never be free of them. Besides, I shall
always be here. You shall have twelve hundred roubles a year from me,
with extras, fifteen hundred, besides board and lodging, which shall be at
my expense, just as he has it now. Only you must set up your own servants.
Your yearly allowance shall be paid to you all at once straight into your
hands. But be kind, and sometimes give him something, and let his friends
come to see him once a week, but if they come more often, turn them out.
But I shall be here, too. And if I die, your pension will go on till his death,
do you hear, till his death, for it’s his pension, not yours. And besides the
seven thousand you’ll have now, which you ought to keep untouched if
you’re not foolish, I’ll leave you another eight thousand in my will. And

you’ll get nothing more than that from me, it’s right that you should know
it. Come, you consent, eh? Will you say something at last?”
“I have told you already, Varvara Petrovna.”
“Remember that you’re free to decide. As you like, so it shall be.”
“Then, may I ask, Varvara Petrovna, has Stepan Trofimovitch said anything
yet?”
“No, he hasn’t said anything, he doesn’t know … but he will speak
directly.”
She jumped up at once and threw on a black shawl. Dasha flushed a little
again, and watched her with questioning eyes. Varvara Petrovna turned
suddenly to her with a face flaming with anger.
“You’re a fool!” She swooped down on her like a hawk. “An ungrateful
fool! What’s in your mind? Can you imagine that I’d compromise you, in
any way, in the smallest degree. Why, he shall crawl on his knees to ask
you, he must be dying of happiness, that’s how it shall be arranged. Why,
you know that I’d never let you suffer. Or do you suppose he’ll take you for
the sake of that eight thousand, and that I’m hurrying off to sell you? You’re
a fool, a fool! You’re all ungrateful fools. Give me my umbrella!”
And she flew off to walk by the wet brick pavements and the wooden
planks to Stepan Trofimovitch’s.
VII
It was true that she would never have let Dasha suffer; on the contrary, she
considered now that she was acting as her benefactress. The most generous
and legitimate indignation was glowing in her soul, when, as she put on her
shawl, she caught fixed upon her the embarrassed and mistrustful eyes of
her protégée. She had genuinely loved the girl from her childhood upwards.
Praskovya Ivanovna had with justice called Darya Pavlovna her favourite.
Long ago Varvara Petrovna had made up her mind once for all that “Darya’s
disposition was not like her brother’s” (not, that is, like Ivan Shatov’s), that
she was quiet and gentle, and capable of great self-sacrifice; that she was
distinguished by a power of devotion, unusual modesty, rare

reasonableness, and, above all, by gratitude. Till that time Dasha had, to all
appearances, completely justified her expectations.
“In that life there will be no mistakes,” said Varvara Petrovna when the girl
was only twelve years old, and as it was characteristic of her to attach
herself doggedly and passionately to any dream that fascinated her, any new
design, any idea that struck her as noble, she made up her mind at once to
educate Dasha as though she were her own daughter. She at once set aside a
sum of money for her, and sent for a governess, Miss Criggs, who lived
with them until the girl was sixteen, but she was for some reason suddenly
dismissed. Teachers came for her from the High School, among them a real
Frenchman, who taught Dasha French. He, too, was suddenly dismissed,
almost turned out of the house. A poor lady, a widow of good family, taught
her to play the piano. Yet her chief tutor was Stepan Trofimovitch.
In reality he first discovered Dasha. He began teaching the quiet child even
before Varvara Petrovna had begun to think about her. I repeat again, it was
wonderful how children took to him. Lizaveta Nikolaevna Tushin had been
taught by him from the age of eight till eleven (Stepan Trofimovitch took no
fees, of course, for his lessons, and would not on any account have taken
payment from the Drozdovs). But he fell in love with the charming child
and used to tell her poems of a sort about the creation of the world, about
the earth, and the history of humanity. His lectures about the primitive
peoples and primitive man were more interesting than the Arabian Nights.
Liza, who was ecstatic over these stories, used to mimic Stepan
Trofimovitch very funnily at home. He heard of this and once peeped in on
her unawares. Liza, overcome with confusion, flung herself into his arms
and shed tears; Stepan Trofimovitch wept too with delight. But Liza soon
after went away, and only Dasha was left. When Dasha began to have other
teachers, Stepan Trofimovitch gave up his lessons with her, and by degrees
left off noticing her. Things went on like this for a long time. Once when
she was seventeen he was struck by her prettiness. It happened at Varvara
Petrovna’s table. He began to talk to the young girl, was much pleased with
her answers, and ended by offering to give her a serious and comprehensive
course of lessons on the history of Russian literature. Varvara Petrovna
approved, and thanked him for his excellent idea, and Dasha was delighted.
Stepan Trofimovitch proceeded to make special preparations for the
lectures, and at last they began. They began with the most ancient period.

The first lecture went off enchantingly. Varvara Petrovna was present.
When Stepan Trofimovitch had finished, and as he was going informed his
pupil that the next time he would deal with “The Story of the Expedition of
Igor,” Varvara Petrovna suddenly got up and announced that there would be
no more lessons. Stepan Trofimovitch winced, but said nothing, and Dasha
flushed crimson. It put a stop to the scheme, however. This had happened
just three years before Varvara Petrovna’s unexpected fancy.
Poor Stepan Trofimovitch was sitting alone free from all misgivings.
Plunged in mournful reveries he had for some time been looking out of the
window to see whether any of his friends were coming. But nobody would
come. It was drizzling. It was turning cold, he would have to have the stove
heated. He sighed. Suddenly a terrible apparition flashed upon his eyes:
Varvara Petrovna in such weather and at such an unexpected hour to see
him! And on foot! He was so astounded that he forgot to put on his coat,
and received her as he was, in his everlasting pink-wadded dressing-jacket.
“Ma bonne amie!” he cried faintly, to greet her. “You’re alone; I’m glad; I
can’t endure your friends. How you do smoke! Heavens, what an
atmosphere! You haven’t finished your morning tea and it’s nearly twelve
o’clock. It’s your idea of bliss—disorder! You take pleasure in dirt. What’s
that torn paper on the floor? Nastasya, Nastasya! What is your Nastasya
about? Open the window, the casement, the doors, fling everything wide
open. And we’ll go into the drawing-room. I’ve come to you on a matter of
importance. And you sweep up, my good woman, for once in your life.”
“They make such a muck!” Nastasya whined in a voice of plaintive
exasperation.
“Well, you must sweep, sweep it up fifteen times a day! You’ve a wretched
drawing-room” (when they had gone into the drawing-room). “Shut the
door properly. She’ll be listening. You must have it repapered. Didn’t I send
a paperhanger to you with patterns? Why didn’t you choose one? Sit down,
and listen. Do sit down, I beg you. Where are you off to? Where are you off
to? Where are you off to?”
“I’ll be back directly,” Stepan Trofimovitch cried from the next room.
“Here I am again.”

“Ah,—you’ve changed your coat.” She scanned him mockingly. (He had
flung his coat on over the dressing-jacket.) “Well, certainly that’s more
suited to our subject. Do sit down, I entreat you.”
She told him everything at once, abruptly and impressively. She hinted at
the eight thousand of which he stood in such terrible need. She told him in
detail of the dowry. Stepan Trofimovitch sat trembling, opening his eyes
wider and wider. He heard it all, but he could not realise it clearly. He tried
to speak, but his voice kept breaking. All he knew was that everything
would be as she said, that to protest and refuse to agree would be useless,
and that he was a married man irrevocably.
“Mais, ma bonne amie! … for the third time, and at my age … and to such
a child.” He brought out at last, “Mais, c’est une enfant!”
“A child who is twenty years old, thank God. Please don’t roll your eyes, I
entreat you, you’re not on the stage. You’re very clever and learned, but you
know nothing at all about life. You will always want a nurse to look after
you. I shall die, and what will become of you? She will be a good nurse to
you; she’s a modest girl, strong-willed, reasonable; besides, I shall be here
too, I shan’t die directly. She’s fond of home, she’s an angel of gentleness.
This happy thought came to me in Switzerland. Do you understand if I tell
you myself that she is an angel of gentleness!” she screamed with sudden
fury. “Your house is dirty, she will bring in order, cleanliness. Everything
will shine like a mirror. Good gracious, do you expect me to go on my
knees to you with such a treasure, to enumerate all the advantages, to court
you! Why, you ought to be on your knees.… Oh, you shallow, shallow,
faint-hearted man!”
“But … I’m an old man!”
“What do your fifty-three years matter! Fifty is the middle of life, not the
end of it. You are a handsome man and you know it yourself. You know,
too, what a respect she has for you. If I die, what will become of her? But
married to you she’ll be at peace, and I shall be at peace. You have renown,
a name, a loving heart. You receive a pension which I look upon as an
obligation. You will save her perhaps, you will save her! In any case you
will be doing her an honour. You will form her for life, you will develop her
heart, you will direct her ideas. How many people come to grief nowadays

because their ideas are wrongly directed. By that time your book will be
ready, and you will at once set people talking about you again.”
“I am, in fact,” he muttered, at once flattered by Varvara Petrovna’s adroit
insinuations. “I was just preparing to sit down to my ‘Tales from Spanish
History.’”
“Well, there you are. It’s just come right.”
“But … she? Have you spoken to her?”
“Don’t worry about her. And there’s no need for you to be inquisitive. Of
course, you must ask her yourself, entreat her to do you the honour, you
understand? But don’t be uneasy. I shall be here. Besides, you love her.”
Stepan Trofimovitch felt giddy. The walls were going round. There was one
terrible idea underlying this to which he could not reconcile himself.
“Excellente amie,” his voice quivered suddenly. “I could never have
conceived that you would make up your mind to give me in marriage to
another … woman.”
“You’re not a girl, Stepan Trofimovitch. Only girls are given in marriage.
You are taking a wife,” Varvara Petrovna hissed malignantly.
“Oui, j’ai pris un mot pour un autre. Mais c’est égal.” He gazed at her with
a hopeless air.
“I see that c’est égal,” she muttered contemptuously through her teeth.
“Good heavens! Why he’s going to faint. Nastasya, Nastasya, water!”
But water was not needed. He came to himself. Varvara Petrovna took up
her umbrella.
“I see it’s no use talking to you now.…”
“Oui, oui, je suis incapable.”
“But by to-morrow you’ll have rested and thought it over. Stay at home. If
anything happens let me know, even if it’s at night. Don’t write letters, I
shan’t read them. To-morrow I’ll come again at this time alone, for a final

answer, and I trust it will be satisfactory. Try to have nobody here and no
untidiness, for the place isn’t fit to be seen. Nastasya, Nastasya!”
The next day, of course, he consented, and, indeed, he could do nothing
else. There was one circumstance …
VIII
Stepan Trofimovitch’s estate, as we used to call it (which consisted of fifty
souls, reckoning in the old fashion, and bordered on Skvoreshniki), was not
really his at all, but his first wife’s, and so belonged now to his son Pyotr
Stepanovitch Verhovensky. Stepan Trofimovitch was simply his trustee, and
so, when the nestling was full-fledged, he had given his father a formal
authorisation to manage the estate. This transaction was a profitable one for
the young man. He received as much as a thousand roubles a year by way
of revenue from the estate, though under the new regime it could not have
yielded more than five hundred, and possibly not that. God knows how such
an arrangement had arisen. The whole sum, however, was sent the young
man by Varvara Petrovna, and Stepan Trofimovitch had nothing to do with
a single rouble of it. On the other hand, the whole revenue from the land
remained in his pocket, and he had, besides, completely ruined the estate,
letting it to a mercenary rogue, and without the knowledge of Varvara
Petrovna selling the timber which gave the estate its chief value. He had
some time before sold the woods bit by bit. It was worth at least eight
thousand, yet he had only received five thousand for it. But he sometimes
lost too much at the club, and was afraid to ask Varvara Petrovna for the
money. She clenched her teeth when she heard at last of everything. And
now, all at once, his son announced that he was coming himself to sell his
property for what he could get for it, and commissioned his father to take
steps promptly to arrange the sale. It was clear that Stepan Trofimovitch,
being a generous and disinterested man, felt ashamed of his treatment of ce
cher enfant (whom he had seen for the last time nine years before as a
student in Petersburg). The estate might originally have been worth thirteen
or fourteen thousand. Now it was doubtful whether anyone would give five
for it. No doubt Stepan Trofimovitch was fully entitled by the terms of the
trust to sell the wood, and taking into account the incredibly large yearly
revenue of a thousand roubles which had been sent punctually for so many
years, he could have put up a good defence of his management. But Stepan

Trofimovitch was a generous man of exalted impulses. A wonderfully fine
inspiration occurred to his mind: when Petrusha returned, to lay on the table
before him the maximum price of fifteen thousand roubles without a hint at
the sums that had been sent him hitherto, and warmly and with tears to
press ce cher fils to his heart, and so to make an end of all accounts between
them. He began cautiously and indirectly unfolding this picture before
Varvara Petrovna. He hinted that this would add a peculiarly noble note to
their friendship … to their “idea.” This would set the parents of the last
generation—and people of the last generation generally—in such a
disinterested and magnanimous light in comparison with the new frivolous
and socialistic younger generation. He said a great deal more, but Varvara
Petrovna was obstinately silent. At last she informed him airily that she was
prepared to buy their estate, and to pay for it the maximum price, that is, six
or seven thousand (though four would have been a fair price for it). Of the
remaining eight thousand which had vanished with the woods she said not a
word.
This conversation took place a month before the match was proposed to
him. Stepan Trofimovitch was overwhelmed, and began to ponder. There
might in the past have been a hope that his son would not come, after all—
an outsider, that is to say, might have hoped so. Stepan Trofimovitch as a
father would have indignantly rejected the insinuation that he could
entertain such a hope. Anyway queer rumours had hitherto been reaching us
about Petrusha. To begin with, on completing his studies at the university
six years before, he had hung about in Petersburg without getting work.
Suddenly we got the news that he had taken part in issuing some
anonymous manifesto and that he was implicated in the affair. Then he
suddenly turned up abroad in Switzerland at Geneva—he had escaped, very
likely.
“It’s surprising to me,” Stepan Trofimovitch commented, greatly
disconcerted. “Petrusha, c’est une si pauvre tête! He’s good, noble-hearted,
very sensitive, and I was so delighted with him in Petersburg, comparing
him with the young people of to-day. But c’est un pauvre sire, tout de
même.… And you know it all comes from that same half-bakedness, that
sentimentality. They are fascinated, not by realism, but by the emotional
ideal side of socialism, by the religious note in it, so to say, by the poetry of
it … second-hand, of course. And for me, for me, think what it means! I

have so many enemies here and more still there, they’ll put it down to the
father’s influence. Good God! Petrusha a revolutionist! What times we live
in!”
Very soon, however, Petrusha sent his exact address from Switzerland for
money to be sent him as usual; so he could not be exactly an exile. And
now, after four years abroad, he was suddenly making his appearance again
in his own country, and announced that he would arrive shortly, so there
could be no charge against him. What was more, someone seemed to be
interested in him and protecting him. He wrote now from the south of
Russia, where he was busily engaged in some private but important
business. All this was capital, but where was his father to get that other
seven or eight thousand, to make up a suitable price for the estate? And
what if there should be an outcry, and instead of that imposing picture it
should come to a lawsuit? Something told Stepan Trofimovitch that the
sensitive Petrusha would not relinquish anything that was to his interest.
“Why is it—as I’ve noticed,” Stepan Trofimovitch whispered to me once,
“why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are at the same
time such incredible skinflints, so avaricious, so keen over property, and, in
fact, the more socialistic, the more extreme they are, the keener they are
over property … why is it? Can that, too, come from sentimentalism?” I
don’t know whether there is any truth in this observation of Stepan
Trofimovitch’s. I only know that Petrusha had somehow got wind of the
sale of the woods and the rest of it, and that Stepan Trofimovitch was aware
of the fact. I happened, too, to read some of Petrusha’s letters to his father.
He wrote extremely rarely, once a year, or even less often. Only recently, to
inform him of his approaching visit, he had sent two letters, one almost
immediately after the other. All his letters were short, dry, consisting only of
instructions, and as the father and son had, since their meeting in
Petersburg, adopted the fashionable “thou” and “thee,” Petrusha’s letters
had a striking resemblance to the missives that used to be sent by
landowners of the old school from the town to their serfs whom they had
left in charge of their estates. And now suddenly this eight thousand which
would solve the difficulty would be wafted to him by Varvara Petrovna’s
proposition. And at the same time she made him distinctly feel that it never
could be wafted to him from anywhere else. Of course Stepan Trofimovitch
consented.

He sent for me directly she had gone and shut himself up for the whole day,
admitting no one else. He cried, of course, talked well and talked a great
deal, contradicted himself continually, made a casual pun, and was much
pleased with it. Then he had a slight attack of his “summer cholera”—
everything in fact followed the usual course. Then he brought out the
portrait of his German bride, now twenty years deceased, and began
plaintively appealing to her: “Will you forgive me?” In fact he seemed
somehow distracted. Our grief led us to get a little drunk. He soon fell into a
sweet sleep, however. Next morning he tied his cravat in masterly fashion,
dressed with care, and went frequently to look at himself in the glass. He
sprinkled his handkerchief with scent, only a slight dash of it, however, and
as soon as he saw Varvara Petrovna out of the window he hurriedly took
another handkerchief and hid the scented one under the pillow.
“Excellent!” Varvara Petrovna approved, on receiving his consent. “In the
first place you show a fine decision, and secondly you’ve listened to the
voice of reason, to which you generally pay so little heed in your private
affairs. There’s no need of haste, however,” she added, scanning the knot of
his white tie, “for the present say nothing, and I will say nothing. It will
soon be your birthday; I will come to see you with her. Give us tea in the
evening, and please without wine or other refreshments, but I’ll arrange it
all myself. Invite your friends, but we’ll make the list together. You can talk
to her the day before, if necessary. And at your party we won’t exactly
announce it, or make an engagement of any sort, but only hint at it, and let
people know without any sort of ceremony. And then the wedding a
fortnight later, as far as possible without any fuss.… You two might even go
away for a time after the wedding, to Moscow, for instance. I’ll go with
you, too, perhaps … The chief thing is, keep quiet till then.”
Stepan Trofimovitch was surprised. He tried to falter that he could not do
like that, that he must talk it over with his bride. But Varvara Petrovna flew
at him in exasperation.
“What for? In the first place it may perhaps come to nothing.”
“Come to nothing!” muttered the bridegroom, utterly dumbfoundered.
“Yes. I’ll see.… But everything shall be as I’ve told you, and don’t be
uneasy. I’ll prepare her myself. There’s really no need for you. Everything

necessary shall be said and done, and there’s no need for you to meddle.
Why should you? In what character? Don’t come and don’t write letters.
And not a sight or sound of you, I beg. I will be silent too.”
She absolutely refused to explain herself, and went away, obviously upset.
Stepan Trofimovitch’s excessive readiness evidently impressed her. Alas! he
was utterly unable to grasp his position, and the question had not yet
presented itself to him from certain other points of view. On the contrary a
new note was apparent in him, a sort of conquering and jaunty air. He
swaggered.
“I do like that!” he exclaimed, standing before me, and flinging wide his
arms. “Did you hear? She wants to drive me to refusing at last. Why, I may
lose patience, too, and … refuse! ‘Sit still, there’s no need for you to go to
her.’ But after all, why should I be married? Simply because she’s taken an
absurd fancy into her heart. But I’m a serious man, and I can refuse to
submit to the idle whims of a giddy-woman! I have duties to my son and …
and to myself! I’m making a sacrifice. Does she realise that? I have agreed,
perhaps, because I am weary of life and nothing matters to me. But she may
exasperate me, and then it will matter. I shall resent it and refuse. Et enfin,
le ridicule … what will they say at the club? What will … what will …
Laputin say? ‘Perhaps nothing will come of it’—what a thing to say! That
beats everything. That’s really … what is one to say to that?… Je suis un
forçat, un Badinguet, un man pushed to the wall.…”
And at the same time a sort of capricious complacency, something frivolous
and playful, could be seen in the midst of all these plaintive exclamations.
In the evening we drank too much again.

CHAPTER III. THE SINS OF OTHERS
I
ABOUT A WEEK had passed, and the position had begun to grow more
complicated.
I may mention in passing that I suffered a great deal during that unhappy
week, as I scarcely left the side of my affianced friend, in the capacity of his
most intimate confidant. What weighed upon him most was the feeling of
shame, though we saw no one all that week, and sat indoors alone. But he
was even ashamed before me, and so much so that the more he confided to
me the more vexed he was with me for it. He was so morbidly apprehensive
that he expected that every one knew about it already, the whole town, and
was afraid to show himself, not only at the club, but even in his circle of
friends. He positively would not go out to take his constitutional till well
after dusk, when it was quite dark.
A week passed and he still did not know whether he were betrothed or not,
and could not find out for a fact, however much he tried. He had not yet
seen his future bride, and did not know whether she was to be his bride or
not; did not, in fact, know whether there was anything serious in it at all.
Varvara Petrovna, for some reason, resolutely refused to admit him to her
presence. In answer to one of his first letters to her (and he wrote a great
number of them) she begged him plainly to spare her all communications
with him for a time, because she was very busy, and having a great deal of
the utmost importance to communicate to him she was waiting for a more
free moment to do so, and that she would let him know in time when he
could come to see her. She declared she would send back his letters
unopened, as they were “simple self-indulgence.” I read that letter myself—
he showed it me.
Yet all this harshness and indefiniteness were nothing compared with his
chief anxiety. That anxiety tormented him to the utmost and without
ceasing. He grew thin and dispirited through it. It was something of which
he was more ashamed than of anything else, and of which he would not on

any account speak, even to me; on the contrary, he lied on occasion, and
shuffled before me like a little boy; and at the same time he sent for me
himself every day, could not stay two hours without me, needing me as
much as air or water.
Such conduct rather wounded my vanity. I need hardly say that I had long
ago privately guessed this great secret of his, and saw through it completely.
It was my firmest conviction at the time that the revelation of this secret,
this chief anxiety of Stepan Trofimovitch’s would not have redounded to his
credit, and, therefore, as I was still young, I was rather indignant at the
coarseness of his feelings and the ugliness of some of his suspicions. In my
warmth—and, I must confess, in my weariness of being his confidant—I
perhaps blamed him too much. I was so cruel as to try and force him to
confess it all to me himself, though I did recognise that it might be difficult
to confess some things. He, too, saw through me; that is, he clearly
perceived that I saw through him, and that I was angry with him indeed, and
he was angry with me too for being angry with him and seeing through him.
My irritation was perhaps petty and stupid; but the unrelieved solitude of
two friends together is sometimes extremely prejudicial to true friendship.
From a certain point of view he had a very true understanding of some
aspects of his position, and defined it, indeed, very subtly on those points
about which he did not think it necessary to be secret.
“Oh, how different she was then!” he would sometimes say to me about
Varvara Petrovna. “How different she was in the old days when we used to
talk together.… Do you know that she could talk in those days! Can you
believe that she had ideas in those days, original ideas! Now, everything has
changed! She says all that’s only old-fashioned twaddle. She despises the
past.… Now she’s like some shopman or cashier, she has grown hard-
hearted, and she’s always cross.…”
“Why is she cross now if you are carrying out her orders?” I answered.
He looked at me subtly.
“Cher ami; if I had not agreed she would have been dreadfully angry,
dread-ful-ly! But yet less than now that I have consented.”

He was pleased with this saying of his, and we emptied a bottle between us
that evening. But that was only for a moment, next day he was worse and
more ill-humoured than ever.
But what I was most vexed with him for was that he could not bring himself
to call on the Drozdovs, as he should have done on their arrival, to renew
the acquaintance of which, so we heard they were themselves desirous,
since they kept asking about him. It was a source of daily distress to him.
He talked of Lizaveta Nikolaevna with an ecstasy which I was at a loss to
understand. No doubt he remembered in her the child whom he had once
loved. But besides that, he imagined for some unknown reason that he
would at once find in her company a solace for his present misery, and even
the solution of his more serious doubts. He expected to meet in Lizaveta
Nikolaevna an extraordinary being. And yet he did not go to see her though
he meant to do so every day. The worst of it was that I was desperately
anxious to be presented to her and to make her acquaintance, and I could
look to no one but Stepan Trofimovitch to effect this. I was frequently
meeting her, in the street of course, when she was out riding, wearing a
riding-habit and mounted on a fine horse, and accompanied by her cousin,
so-called, a handsome officer, the nephew of the late General Drozdov—
and these meetings made an extraordinary impression on me at the time.
My infatuation lasted only a moment, and I very soon afterwards
recognised the impossibility of my dreams myself—but though it was a
fleeting impression it was a very real one, and so it may well be imagined
how indignant I was at the time with my poor friend for keeping so
obstinately secluded.
All the members of our circle had been officially informed from the
beginning that Stepan Trofimovitch would see nobody for a time, and
begged them to leave him quite alone. He insisted on sending round a
circular notice to this effect, though I tried to dissuade him. I went round to
every one at his request and told everybody that Varvara Petrovna had given
“our old man” (as we all used to call Stepan Trofimovitch among ourselves)
a special job, to arrange in order some correspondence lasting over many
years; that he had shut himself up to do it and I was helping him. Liputin
was the only one I did not have time to visit, and I kept putting it off—to
tell the real truth I was afraid to go to him. I knew beforehand that he would
not believe one word of my story, that he would certainly imagine that there

was some secret at the bottom of it, which they were trying to hide from
him alone, and as soon as I left him he would set to work to make inquiries
and gossip all over the town. While I was picturing all this to myself I
happened to run across him in the street. It turned out that he had heard all
about it from our friends, whom I had only just informed. But, strange to
say, instead of being inquisitive and asking questions about Stepan
Trofimovitch, he interrupted me, when I began apologising for not having
come to him before, and at once passed to other subjects. It is true that he
had a great deal stored up to tell me. He was in a state of great excitement,
and was delighted to have got hold of me for a listener. He began talking of
the news of the town, of the arrival of the governor’s wife, “with new topics
of conversation,” of an opposition party already formed in the club, of how
they were all in a hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this
suited him, and so on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly
that I could not tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I
must admit he had the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he
was very angry at something. This man was, in my opinion, a regular spy
from his very nature. At every moment he knew the very latest gossip and
all the trifling incidents of our town, especially the unpleasant ones, and it
was surprising to me how he took things to heart that were sometimes
absolutely no concern of his. It always seemed to me that the leading
feature of his character was envy. When I told Stepan Trofimovitch the
same evening of my meeting Liputin that morning and our conversation, the
latter to my amazement became greatly agitated, and asked me the wild
question: “Does Liputin know or not?”
I began trying to prove that there was no possibility of his finding it out so
soon, and that there was nobody from whom he could hear it. But Stepan
Trofimovitch was not to be shaken. “Well, you may believe it or not,” he
concluded unexpectedly at last, “but I’m convinced that he not only knows
every detail of ‘our’ position, but that he knows something else besides,
something neither you nor I know yet, and perhaps never shall, or shall only
know when it’s too late, when there’s no turning back!…”
I said nothing, but these words suggested a great deal. For five whole days
after that we did not say one word about Liputin; it was clear to me that
Stepan Trofimovitch greatly regretted having let his tongue run away with
him, and having revealed such suspicions before me.

II
One morning, on the seventh or eighth day after Stepan Trofimovitch had
consented to become “engaged,” about eleven o’clock, when I was hurrying
as usual to my afflicted friend, I had an adventure on the way.
I met Karmazinov, “the great writer,” as Liputin called him. I had read
Karmazinov from a child. His novels and tales were well known to the past
and even to the present generation. I revelled in them; they were the great
enjoyment of my childhood and youth. Afterwards I grew rather less
enthusiastic over his work. I did not care so much for the novels with a
purpose which he had been writing of late as for his first, early works,
which were so full of spontaneous poetry, and his latest publications I had
not liked at all. Speaking generally, if I may venture to express my opinion
on so delicate a subject, all these talented gentlemen of the middling sort
who are sometimes in their lifetime accepted almost as geniuses, pass out of
memory quite suddenly and without a trace when they die, and what’s
more, it often happens that even during their lifetime, as soon as a new
generation grows up and takes the place of the one in which they have
flourished, they are forgotten and neglected by every one in an incredibly
short time. This somehow happens among us quite suddenly, like the
shifting of the scenes on the stage. Oh, it’s not at all the same as with
Pushkin, Gogol, Molière, Voltaire, all those great men who really had a new
original word to say! It’s true, too, that these talented gentlemen of the
middling sort in the decline of their venerable years usually write
themselves out in the most pitiful way, though they don’t observe the fact
themselves. It happens not infrequently that a writer who has been for a
long time credited with extraordinary profundity and expected to exercise a
great and serious influence on the progress of society, betrays in the end
such poverty, such insipidity in his fundamental ideas that no one regrets
that he succeeded in writing himself out so soon. But the old grey-beards
don’t notice this, and are angry. Their vanity sometimes, especially towards
the end of their career, reaches proportions that may well provoke wonder.
God knows what they begin to take themselves for—for gods at least!
People used to say about Karmazinov that his connections with aristocratic
society and powerful personages were dearer to him than his own soul,
people used to say that on meeting you he would be cordial, that he would
fascinate and enchant you with his open-heartedness, especially if you were

of use to him in some way, and if you came to him with some preliminary
recommendation. But that before any stray prince, any stray countess,
anyone that he was afraid of, he would regard it as his sacred duty to forget
your existence with the most insulting carelessness, like a chip of wood,
like a fly, before you had even time to get out of his sight; he seriously
considered this the best and most aristocratic style. In spite of the best of
breeding and perfect knowledge of good manners he is, they say, vain to
such an hysterical pitch that he cannot conceal his irritability as an author
even in those circles of society where little interest is taken in literature. If
anyone were to surprise him by being indifferent, he would be morbidly
chagrined, and try to revenge himself.
A year before, I had read an article of his in a review, written with an
immense affectation of naïve poetry, and psychology too. He described the
wreck of some steamer on the English coast, of which he had been the
witness, and how he had seen the drowning people saved, and the dead
bodies brought ashore. All this rather long and verbose article was written
solely with the object of self-display. One seemed to read between the lines:
“Concentrate yourselves on me. Behold what I was like at those moments.
What are the sea, the storm, the rocks, the splinters of wrecked ships to
you? I have described all that sufficiently to you with my mighty pen. Why
look at that drowned woman with the dead child in her dead arms? Look
rather at me, see how I was unable to bear that sight and turned away from
it. Here I stood with my back to it; here I was horrified and could not bring
myself to look; I blinked my eyes—isn’t that interesting?” When I told
Stepan Trofimovitch my opinion of Karmazinov’s article he quite agreed
with me.
When rumours had reached us of late that Karmazinov was coming to the
neighbourhood I was, of course, very eager to see him, and, if possible, to
make his acquaintance. I knew that this might be done through Stepan
Trofimovitch, they had once been friends. And now I suddenly met him at
the cross-roads. I knew him at once. He had been pointed out to me two or
three days before when he drove past with the governor’s wife. He was a
short, stiff-looking old man, though not over fifty-five, with a rather red
little face, with thick grey locks of hair clustering under his chimney-pot
hat, and curling round his clean little pink ears. His clean little face was not
altogether handsome with its thin, long, crafty-looking lips, with its rather

fleshy nose, and its sharp, shrewd little eyes. He was dressed somewhat
shabbily in a sort of cape such as would be worn in Switzerland or North
Italy at that time of year. But, at any rate, all the minor details of his
costume, the little studs, and collar, the buttons, the tortoise-shell lorgnette
on a narrow black ribbon, the signet-ring, were all such as are worn by
persons of the most irreproachable good form. I am certain that in summer
he must have worn light prunella shoes with mother-of-pearl buttons at the
side. When we met he was standing still at the turning and looking about
him, attentively. Noticing that I was looking at him with interest, he asked
me in a sugary, though rather shrill voice:
“Allow me to ask, which is my nearest way to Bykovy Street?”
“To Bykovy Street? Oh, that’s here, close by,” I cried in great excitement.
“Straight on along this street and the second turning to the left.”
“Very much obliged to you.”
A curse on that minute! I fancy I was shy, and looked cringing. He instantly
noticed all that, and of course realised it all at once; that is, realised that I
knew who he was, that I had read him and revered him from a child, and
that I was shy and looked at him cringingly. He smiled, nodded again, and
walked on as I had directed him. I don’t know why I turned back to follow
him; I don’t know why I ran for ten paces beside him. He suddenly stood
still again.
“And could you tell me where is the nearest cab-stand?” he shouted out to
me again.
It was a horrid shout! A horrid voice!
“A cab-stand? The nearest cab-stand is … by the Cathedral; there are
always cabs standing there,” and I almost turned to run for a cab for him. I
almost believe that that was what he expected me to do. Of course I
checked myself at once, and stood still, but he had noticed my movement
and was still watching me with the same horrid smile. Then something
happened which I shall never forget.
He suddenly dropped a tiny bag, which he was holding in his left hand;
though indeed it was not a bag, but rather a little box, or more probably

some part of a pocket-book, or to be more accurate a little reticule, rather
like an old-fashioned lady’s reticule, though I really don’t know what it
was. I only know that I flew to pick it up.
I am convinced that I did not really pick it up, but my first motion was
unmistakable. I could not conceal it, and, like a fool, I turned crimson. The
cunning fellow at once got all that could be got out of the circumstance.
“Don’t trouble, I’ll pick it up,” he pronounced charmingly; that is, when he
was quite sure that I was not going to pick up the reticule, he picked it up as
though forestalling me, nodded once more, and went his way, leaving me to
look like a fool. It was as good as though I had picked it up myself. For five
minutes I considered myself utterly disgraced forever, but as I reached
Stepan Trofimovitch’s house I suddenly burst out laughing; the meeting
struck me as so amusing that I immediately resolved to entertain Stepan
Trofimovitch with an account of it, and even to act the whole scene to him.
III
But this time to my surprise I found an extraordinary change in him. He
pounced on me with a sort of avidity, it is true, as soon as I went in, and
began listening to me, but with such a distracted air that at first he evidently
did not take in my words. But as soon as I pronounced the name of
Karmazinov he suddenly flew into a frenzy.
“Don’t speak of him! Don’t pronounce that name!” he exclaimed, almost in
a fury. “Here, look, read it! Read it!”
He opened the drawer and threw on the table three small sheets of paper,
covered with a hurried pencil scrawl, all from Varvara Petrovna. The first
letter was dated the day before yesterday, the second had come yesterday,
and the last that day, an hour before. Their contents were quite trivial, and
all referred to Karmazinov and betrayed the vain and fussy uneasiness of
Varvara Petrovna and her apprehension that Karmazinov might forget to
pay her a visit. Here is the first one dating from two days before. (Probably
there had been one also three days before, and possibly another four days
before as well.)
“If he deigns to visit you to-day, not a word about me, I beg. Not the
faintest hint. Don’t speak of me, don’t mention me.—V. S.”

The letter of the day before:
“If he decides to pay you a visit this morning, I think the most dignified
thing would be not to receive him. That’s what I think about it; I don’t know
what you think.—V. S.”
To-day’s, the last:
“I feel sure that you’re in a regular litter and clouds of tobacco smoke. I’m
sending you Marya and Fomushka. They’ll tidy you up in half an hour. And
don’t hinder them, but go and sit in the kitchen while they clear up. I’m
sending you a Bokhara rug and two china vases. I’ve long been meaning to
make you a present of them, and I’m sending you my Teniers, too, for a
time! You can put the vases in the window and hang the Teniers on the right
under the portrait of Goethe; it will be more conspicuous there and it’s
always light there in the morning. If he does turn up at last, receive him
with the utmost courtesy but try and talk of trifling matters, of some
intellectual subject, and behave as though you had seen each other lately.
Not a word about me. Perhaps I may look in on you in the evening.—V. S.
“P.S.—If he does not come to-day he won’t come at all.”
I read and was amazed that he was in such excitement over such trifles.
Looking at him inquiringly, I noticed that he had had time while I was
reading to change the everlasting white tie he always wore, for a red one.
His hat and stick lay on the table. He was pale, and his hands were
positively trembling.
“I don’t care a hang about her anxieties,” he cried frantically, in response to
my inquiring look. “Je m’en fiche! She has the face to be excited about
Karmazinov, and she does not answer my letters. Here is my unopened
letter which she sent me back yesterday, here on the table under the book,
under L’Homme qui rit. What is it to me that she’s wearing herself out over
Nikolay! Je m’en fiche, et je proclame ma liberté! Au diable le Karmazinov!
Au diable la Lembke! I’ve hidden the vases in the entry, and the Teniers in
the chest of drawers, and I have demanded that she is to see me at once. Do
you hear. I’ve insisted! I’ve sent her just such a scrap of paper, a pencil
scrawl, unsealed, by Nastasya, and I’m waiting. I want Darya Pavlovna to
speak to me with her own lips, before the face of Heaven, or at least before

you. Vous me seconderez, n’est-ce pas, comme ami et témoin. I don’t want
to have to blush, to lie, I don’t want secrets, I won’t have secrets in this
matter. Let them confess everything to me openly, frankly, honourably and
then … then perhaps I may surprise the whole generation by my
magnanimity.… Am I a scoundrel or not, my dear sir?” he concluded
suddenly, looking menacingly at me, as though I’d considered him a
scoundrel.
I offered him a sip of water; I had never seen him like this before. All the
while he was talking he kept running from one end of the room to the other,
but he suddenly stood still before me in an extraordinary attitude.
“Can you suppose,” he began again with hysterical haughtiness, looking me
up and down, “can you imagine that I, Stepan Verhovensky, cannot find in
myself the moral strength to take my bag—my beggar’s bag—and laying it
on my feeble shoulders to go out at the gate and vanish forever, when
honour and the great principle of independence demand it! It’s not the first
time that Stepan Verhovensky has had to repel despotism by moral force,
even though it be the despotism of a crazy woman, that is, the most cruel
and insulting despotism which can exist on earth, although you have, I
fancy, forgotten yourself so much as to laugh at my phrase, my dear sir! Oh,
you don’t believe that I can find the moral strength in myself to end my life
as a tutor in a merchant’s family, or to die of hunger in a ditch! Answer me,
answer at once; do you believe it, or don’t you believe it?”
But I was purposely silent. I even affected to hesitate to wound him by
answering in the negative, but to be unable to answer affirmatively. In all
this nervous excitement of his there was something which really did offend
me, and not personally, oh, no! But … I will explain later on. He positively
turned pale.
“Perhaps you are bored with me, G——v (this is my surname), and you
would like … not to come and see me at all?” he said in that tone of pale
composure which usually precedes some extraordinary outburst. I jumped
up in alarm. At that moment Nastasya came in, and, without a word, handed
Stepan Trofimovitch a piece of paper, on which something was written in
pencil. He glanced at it and flung it to me. On the paper, in Varvara
Petrovna’s hand three words were written: “Stay at home.”

Stepan Trofimovitch snatched up his hat and stick in silence and went
quickly out of the room. Mechanically I followed him. Suddenly voices and
sounds of rapid footsteps were heard in the passage. He stood still, as
though thunder-struck.
“It’s Liputin; I am lost!” he whispered, clutching at my arm.
At the same instant Liputin walked into the room.
IV
Why he should be lost owing to Liputin I did not know, and indeed I did not
attach much significance to the words; I put it all down to his nerves. His
terror, however, was remarkable, and I made up my mind to keep a careful
watch on him.
The very appearance of Liputin as he came in assured us that he had on this
occasion a special right to come in, in spite of the prohibition. He brought
with him an unknown gentleman, who must have been a new arrival in the
town. In reply to the senseless stare of my petrified friend, he called out
immediately in a loud voice:
“I’m bringing you a visitor, a special one! I make bold to intrude on your
solitude. Mr. Kirillov, a very distinguished civil engineer. And what’s more
he knows your son, the much esteemed Pyotr Stepanovitch, very intimately;
and he has a message from him. He’s only just arrived.”
“The message is your own addition,” the visitor observed curtly. “There’s
no message at all. But I certainly do know Verhovensky. I left him in the X.
province, ten days ahead of us.”
Stepan Trofimovitch mechanically offered his hand and motioned him to sit
down. He looked at me, he looked at Liputin, and then as though suddenly
recollecting himself sat down himself, though he still kept his hat and stick
in his hands without being aware of it.
“Bah, but you were going out yourself! I was told that you were quite
knocked up with work.”
“Yes, I’m ill, and you see, I meant to go for a walk, I …” Stepan
Trofimovitch checked himself, quickly flung his hat and stick on the sofa

and—turned crimson.
Meantime, I was hurriedly examining the visitor. He was a young man,
about twenty-seven, decently dressed, well made, slender and dark, with a
pale, rather muddy-coloured face and black lustreless eyes. He seemed
rather thoughtful and absent-minded, spoke jerkily and ungrammatically,
transposing words in rather a strange way, and getting muddled if he
attempted a sentence of any length. Liputin was perfectly aware of Stepan
Trofimovitch’s alarm, and was obviously pleased at it. He sat down in a
wicker chair which he dragged almost into the middle of the room, so as to
be at an equal distance between his host and the visitor, who had installed
themselves on sofas on opposite sides of the room. His sharp eyes darted
inquisitively from one corner of the room to another.
“It’s.… a long while since I’ve seen Petrusha.… You met abroad?” Stepan
Trofimovitch managed to mutter to the visitor.
“Both here and abroad.”
“Alexey Nilitch has only just returned himself after living four years
abroad,” put in Liputin. “He has been travelling to perfect himself in his
speciality and has come to us because he has good reasons to expect a job
on the building of our railway bridge, and he’s now waiting for an answer
about it. He knows the Drozdovs and Lizaveta Nikolaevna, through Pyotr
Stepanovitch.”
The engineer sat, as it were, with a ruffled air, and listened with awkward
impatience. It seemed to me that he was angry about something.
“He knows Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch too.”
“Do you know Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch?” inquired Stepan Trofimovitch.
“I know him too.”
“It’s … it’s a very long time since I’ve seen Petrusha, and … I feel I have so
little right to call myself a father … c’est le mot; I … how did you leave
him?”
“Oh, yes, I left him … he comes himself,” replied Mr. Kirillov, in haste to
be rid of the question again. He certainly was angry.

“He’s coming! At last I … you see, it’s very long since I’ve seen Petrusha!”
Stepan Trofimovitch could not get away from this phrase. “Now I expect
my poor boy to whom … to whom I have been so much to blame! That is, I
mean to say, when I left him in Petersburg, I … in short, I looked on him as
a nonentity, quelque chose dans ce genre. He was a very nervous boy, you
know, emotional, and … very timid. When he said his prayers going to bed
he used to bow down to the ground, and make the sign of the cross on his
pillow that he might not die in the night.… Je m’en souviens. Enfin, no
artistic feeling whatever, not a sign of anything higher, of anything
fundamental, no embryo of a future ideal … c’était comme un petit idiot,
but I’m afraid I am incoherent; excuse me … you came upon me …”
“You say seriously that he crossed his pillow?” the engineer asked suddenly
with marked curiosity.
“Yes, he used to …”
“All right. I just asked. Go on.”
Stepan Trofimovitch looked interrogatively at Liputin.
“I’m very grateful to you for your visit. But I must confess I’m … not in a
condition … just now … But allow me to ask where you are lodging.”
“At Filipov’s, in Bogoyavlensky Street.”
“Ach, that’s where Shatov lives,” I observed involuntarily.
“Just so, in the very same house,” cried Liputin, “only Shatov lodges above,
in the attic, while he’s down below, at Captain Lebyadkin’s. He knows
Shatov too, and he knows Shatov’s wife. He was very intimate with her,
abroad.”
“Comment! Do you really know anything about that unhappy marriage de
ce pauvre ami and that woman,” cried Stepan Trofimovitch, carried away
by sudden feeling. “You are the first man I’ve met who has known her
personally; and if only …”
“What nonsense!” the engineer snapped out, flushing all over. “How you
add to things, Liputin! I’ve not seen Shatov’s wife; I’ve only once seen her

in the distance and not at all close.… I know Shatov. Why do you add
things of all sorts?”
He turned round sharply on the sofa, clutched his hat, then laid it down
again, and settling himself down once more as before, fixed his angry black
eyes on Stepan Trofimovitch with a sort of defiance. I was at a loss to
understand such strange irritability.
“Excuse me,” Stepan Trofimovitch observed impressively. “I understand
that it may be a very delicate subject.…”
“No sort of delicate subject in it, and indeed it’s shameful, and I didn’t
shout at you that it’s nonsense, but at Liputin, because he adds things.
Excuse me if you took it to yourself. I know Shatov, but I don’t know his
wife at all … I don’t know her at all!”
“I understand. I understand. And if I insisted, it’s only because I’m very
fond of our poor friend, notre irascible ami, and have always taken an
interest in him.… In my opinion that man changed his former, possibly
over-youthful but yet sound ideas, too abruptly. And now he says all sorts of
things about notre Sainte Russie to such a degree that I’ve long explained
this upheaval in his whole constitution, I can only call it that, to some
violent shock in his family life, and, in fact, to his unsuccessful marriage. I,
who know my poor Russia like the fingers on my hand, and have devoted
my whole life to the Russian people, I can assure you that he does not know
the Russian people, and what’s more …”
“I don’t know the Russian people at all, either, and I haven’t time to study
them,” the engineer snapped out again, and again he turned sharply on the
sofa. Stepan Trofimovitch was pulled up in the middle of his speech.
“He is studying them, he is studying them,” interposed Liputin. “He has
already begun the study of them, and is writing a very interesting article
dealing with the causes of the increase of suicide in Russia, and, generally
speaking, the causes that lead to the increase or decrease of suicide in
society. He has reached amazing results.”
The engineer became dreadfully excited. “You have no right at all,” he
muttered wrathfully. “I’m not writing an article. I’m not going to do silly
things. I asked you confidentially, quite by chance. There’s no article at all.

I’m not publishing, and you haven’t the right …” Liputin was obviously
enjoying himself.
“I beg your pardon, perhaps I made a mistake in calling your literary work
an article. He is only collecting observations, and the essence of the
question, or, so to say, its moral aspect he is not touching at all. And,
indeed, he rejects morality itself altogether, and holds with the last new
principle of general destruction for the sake of ultimate good. He demands
already more than a hundred million heads for the establishment of
common sense in Europe; many more than they demanded at the last Peace
Congress. Alexey Nilitch goes further than anyone in that sense.” The
engineer listened with a pale and contemptuous smile. For half a minute
every one was silent.
“All this is stupid, Liputin,” Mr. Kirillov observed at last, with a certain
dignity. “If I by chance had said some things to you, and you caught them
up again, as you like. But you have no right, for I never speak to anyone. I
scorn to talk.… If one has a conviction then it’s clear to me.… But you’re
doing foolishly. I don’t argue about things when everything’s settled. I can’t
bear arguing. I never want to argue.…”
“And perhaps you are very wise,” Stepan Trofimovitch could not resist
saying.
“I apologise to you, but I am not angry with anyone here,” the visitor went
on, speaking hotly and rapidly. “I have seen few people for four years. For
four years I have talked little and have tried to see no one, for my own
objects which do not concern anyone else, for four years. Liputin found this
out and is laughing. I understand and don’t mind. I’m not ready to take
offence, only annoyed at his liberty. And if I don’t explain my ideas to you,”
he concluded unexpectedly, scanning us all with resolute eyes, “it’s not at
all that I’m afraid of your giving information to the government; that’s not
so; please do not imagine nonsense of that sort.”
No one made any reply to these words. We only looked at each other. Even
Liputin forgot to snigger.
“Gentlemen, I’m very sorry”—Stepan Trofimovitch got up resolutely from
the sofa—“but I feel ill and upset. Excuse me.”

“Ach, that’s for us to go.” Mr. Kirillov started, snatching up his cap. “It’s a
good thing you told us. I’m so forgetful.”
He rose, and with a good-natured air went up to Stepan Trofimovitch,
holding out his hand.
“I’m sorry you’re not well, and I came.”
“I wish you every success among us,” answered Stepan Trofimovitch,
shaking hands with him heartily and without haste. “I understand that, if as
you say you have lived so long abroad, cutting yourself off from people for
objects of your own and forgetting Russia, you must inevitably look with
wonder on us who are Russians to the backbone, and we must feel the same
about you. Mais cela passera. I’m only puzzled at one thing: you want to
build our bridge and at the same time you declare that you hold with the
principle of universal destruction. They won’t let you build our bridge.”
“What! What’s that you said? Ach, I say!” Kirillov cried, much struck, and
he suddenly broke into the most frank and good-humoured laughter. For a
moment his face took a quite childlike expression, which I thought suited
him particularly. Liputin rubbed his hand with delight at Stepan
Trofimovitch’s witty remark. I kept wondering to myself why Stepan
Trofimovitch was so frightened of Liputin, and why he had cried out “I am
lost” when he heard him coming.
V
We were all standing in the doorway. It was the moment when hosts and
guests hurriedly exchange the last and most cordial words, and then part to
their mutual gratification.
“The reason he’s so cross to-day,” Liputin dropped all at once, as it were
casually, when he was just going out of the room, “is because he had a
disturbance to-day with Captain Lebyadkin over his sister. Captain
Lebyadkin thrashes that precious sister of his, the mad girl, every day with a
whip, a real Cossack whip, every morning and evening. So Alexey Nilitch
has positively taken the lodge so as not to be present. Well, good-bye.”
“A sister? An invalid? With a whip?” Stepan Trofimovitch cried out, as
though he had suddenly been lashed with a whip himself. “What sister?

What Lebyadkin?” All his former terror came back in an instant.
“Lebyadkin! Oh, that’s the retired captain; he used only to call himself a
lieutenant before.…”
“Oh, what is his rank to me? What sister? Good heavens!… You say
Lebyadkin? But there used to be a Lebyadkin here.…”
“That’s the very man. ‘Our’ Lebyadkin, at Virginsky’s, you remember?”
“But he was caught with forged papers?”
“Well, now he’s come back. He’s been here almost three weeks and under
the most peculiar circumstances.”
“Why, but he’s a scoundrel?”
“As though no one could be a scoundrel among us,” Liputin grinned
suddenly, his knavish little eyes seeming to peer into Stepan Trofimovitch’s
soul.
“Good heavens! I didn’t mean that at all … though I quite agree with you
about that, with you particularly. But what then, what then? What did you
mean by that? You certainly meant something by that.”
“Why, it’s all so trivial.… This captain to all appearances went away from
us at that time; not because of the forged papers, but simply to look for his
sister, who was in hiding from him somewhere, it seems; well, and now he’s
brought her and that’s the whole story. Why do you seem frightened, Stepan
Trofimovitch? I only tell this from his drunken chatter though, he doesn’t
speak of it himself when he’s sober. He’s an irritable man, and, so to speak,
æsthetic in a military style; only he has bad taste. And this sister is lame as
well as mad. She seems to have been seduced by someone, and Mr.
Lebyadkin has, it seems, for many years received a yearly grant from the
seducer by way of compensation for the wound to his honour, so it would
seem at least from his chatter, though I believe it’s only drunken talk. It’s
simply his brag. Besides, that sort of thing is done much cheaper. But that
he has a sum of money is perfectly certain. Ten days ago he was walking
barefoot, and now I’ve seen hundreds in his hands. His sister has fits of
some sort every day, she shrieks and he ‘keeps her in order’ with the whip.

You must inspire a woman with respect, he says. What I can’t understand is
how Shatov goes on living above him. Alexey Nilitch has only been three
days with them. They were acquainted in Petersburg, and now he’s taken
the lodge to get away from the disturbance.”
“Is this all true?” said Stepan Trofimovitch, addressing the engineer.
“You do gossip a lot, Liputin,” the latter muttered wrathfully.
“Mysteries, secrets! Where have all these mysteries and secrets among us
sprung from?” Stepan Trofimovitch could not refrain from exclaiming.
The engineer frowned, flushed red, shrugged his shoulders and went out of
the room.
“Alexey Nilitch positively snatched the whip out of his hand, broke it and
threw it out of the window, and they had a violent quarrel,” added Liputin.
“Why are you chattering, Liputin; it’s stupid. What for?” Alexey Nilitch
turned again instantly.
“Why be so modest and conceal the generous impulses of one’s soul; that
is, of your soul? I’m not speaking of my own.”
“How stupid it is … and quite unnecessary. Lebyadkin’s stupid and quite
worthless—and no use to the cause, and … utterly mischievous. Why do
you keep babbling all sorts of things? I’m going.”
“Oh, what a pity!” cried Liputin with a candid smile, “or I’d have amused
you with another little story, Stepan Trofimovitch. I came, indeed, on
purpose to tell you, though I dare say you’ve heard it already. Well, till
another time, Alexey Nilitch is in such a hurry. Good-bye for the present.
The story concerns Varvara Petrovna. She amused me the day before
yesterday; she sent for me on purpose. It’s simply killing. Good-bye.”
But at this Stepan Trofimovitch absolutely would not let him go. He seized
him by the shoulders, turned him sharply back into the room, and sat him
down in a chair. Liputin was positively scared.
“Why, to be sure,” he began, looking warily at Stepan Trofimovitch from
his chair, “she suddenly sent for me and asked me ‘confidentially’ my

private opinion, whether Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch is mad or in his right
mind. Isn’t that astonishing?”
“You’re out of your mind!” muttered Stepan Trofimovitch, and suddenly, as
though he were beside himself: “Liputin, you know perfectly well that you
only came here to tell me something insulting of that sort and … something
worse!”
In a flash, I recalled his conjecture that Liputin knew not only more than we
did about our affair, but something else which we should never know.
“Upon my word, Stepan Trofimovitch,” muttered Liputin, seeming greatly
alarmed, “upon my word …”
“Hold your tongue and begin! I beg you, Mr. Kirillov, to come back too,
and be present. I earnestly beg you! Sit down, and you, Liputin, begin
directly, simply and without any excuses.”
“If I had only known it would upset you so much I wouldn’t have begun at
all. And of course I thought you knew all about it from Varvara Petrovna
herself.”
“You didn’t think that at all. Begin, begin, I tell you.”
“Only do me the favour to sit down yourself, or how can I sit here when
you are running about before me in such excitement. I can’t speak
coherently.”
Stepan Trofimovitch restrained himself and sank impressively into an easy
chair. The engineer stared gloomily at the floor. Liputin looked at them with
intense enjoyment,
“How am I to begin?… I’m too overwhelmed.…”
VI
“The day before yesterday a servant was suddenly sent to me: ‘You are
asked to call at twelve o’clock,’ said he. Can you fancy such a thing? I
threw aside my work, and precisely at midday yesterday I was ringing at the
bell. I was let into the drawing room; I waited a minute—she came in; she
made me sit down and sat down herself, opposite. I sat down, and I couldn’t

believe it; you know how she has always treated me. She began at once
without beating about the bush, you know her way. ‘You remember,’ she
said, ‘that four years ago when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was ill he did
some strange things which made all the town wonder till the position was
explained. One of those actions concerned you personally. When Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch recovered he went at my request to call on you. I know
that he talked to you several times before, too. Tell me openly and candidly
what you … (she faltered a little at this point) what you thought of Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch then … what was your view of him altogether … what
idea you were able to form of him at that time … and still have?’
“Here she was completely confused, so that she paused for a whole minute,
and suddenly flushed. I was alarmed. She began again—touchingly is not
quite the word, it’s not applicable to her—but in a very impressive tone:
“‘I want you,’ she said, ‘to understand me clearly and without mistake. I’ve
sent for you now because I look upon you as a keen-sighted and quick-
witted man, qualified to make accurate observations.’ (What compliments!)
‘You’ll understand too,’ she said, ‘that I am a mother appealing to you.…
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch has suffered some calamities and has passed
through many changes of fortune in his life. All that,’ she said, ‘might well
have affected the state of his mind. I’m not speaking of madness, of course,’
she said, ‘that’s quite out of the question!’ (This was uttered proudly and
resolutely.) ‘But there might be something strange, something peculiar,
some turn of thought, a tendency to some particular way of looking at
things.’ (Those were her exact words, and I admired, Stepan Trofimovitch,
the exactness with which Varvara Petrovna can put things. She’s a lady of
superior intellect!) ‘I have noticed in him, anyway,’ she said, ‘a perpetual
restlessness and a tendency to peculiar impulses. But I am a mother and you
are an impartial spectator, and therefore qualified with your intelligence to
form a more impartial opinion. I implore you, in fact’ (yes, that word,
‘implore’ was uttered!), ‘to tell me the whole truth, without mincing
matters. And if you will give me your word never to forget that I have
spoken to you in confidence, you may reckon upon my always being ready
to seize every opportunity in the future to show my gratitude.’ Well, what
do you say to that?”

“You have … so amazed me …” faltered Stepan Trofimovitch, “that I don’t
believe you.”
“Yes, observe, observe,” cried Liputin, as though he had not heard Stepan
Trofimovitch, “observe what must be her agitation and uneasiness if she
stoops from her grandeur to appeal to a man like me, and even condescends
to beg me to keep it secret. What do you call that? Hasn’t she received some
news of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, something unexpected?”
“I don’t know … of news of any sort … I haven’t seen her for some days,
but … but I must say …” lisped Stepan Trofimovitch, evidently hardly able
to think clearly, “but I must say, Liputin, that if it was said to you in
confidence, and here you’re telling it before every one …”
“Absolutely in confidence! But God strike me dead if I … But as for telling
it here … what does it matter? Are we strangers, even Alexey Nilitch?”
“I don’t share that attitude. No doubt we three here will keep the secret, but
I’m afraid of the fourth, you, and wouldn’t trust you in anything.…”
“What do you mean by that? Why it’s more to my interest than anyone’s,
seeing I was promised eternal gratitude! What I wanted was to point out in
this connection one extremely strange incident, rather to say, psychological
than simply strange. Yesterday evening, under the influence of my
conversation with Varvara Petrovna—you can fancy yourself what an
impression it made on me—I approached Alexey Nilitch with a discreet
question: ‘You knew Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch abroad,’ said I, ‘and used to
know him before in Petersburg too. What do you think of his mind and his
abilities?’ said I. He answered laconically, as his way is, that he was a man
of subtle intellect and sound judgment. ‘And have you never noticed in the
course of years,’ said I, ‘any turn of ideas or peculiar way of looking at
things, or any, so to say, insanity?’ In fact, I repeated Varvara Petrovna’s
own question. And would you believe it, Alexey Nilitch suddenly grew
thoughtful, and scowled, just as he’s doing now. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I have
sometimes thought there was something strange.’ Take note, too, that if
anything could have seemed strange even to Alexey Nilitch, it must really
have been something, mustn’t it?”
“Is that true?” said Stepan Trofimovitch, turning to Alexey Nilitch.

“I should prefer not to speak of it,” answered Alexey Nilitch, suddenly
raising his head, and looking at him with flashing eyes. “I wish to contest
your right to do this, Liputin. You’ve no right to drag me into this. I did not
give my whole opinion at all. Though I knew Nikolay Stavrogin in
Petersburg that was long ago, and though I’ve met him since I know him
very little. I beg you to leave me out and … All this is something like
scandal.”
Liputin threw up his hands with an air of oppressed innocence.
“A scandal-monger! Why not say a spy while you’re about it? It’s all very
well for you, Alexey Nilitch, to criticise when you stand aloof from
everything. But you wouldn’t believe it, Stepan Trofimovitch—take Captain
Lebyadkin, he is stupid enough, one may say … in fact, one’s ashamed to
say how stupid he is; there is a Russian comparison, to signify the degree of
it; and do you know he considers himself injured by Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, though he is full of admiration for his wit. ‘I’m amazed,’
said he, ‘at that man. He’s a subtle serpent.’ His own words. And I said to
him (still under the influence of my conversation, and after I had spoken to
Alexey Nilitch), ‘What do you think, captain, is your subtle serpent mad or
not?’ Would you believe it, it was just as if I’d given him a sudden lash
from behind. He simply leapt up from his seat. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘ … yes, only
that,’ he said, ‘cannot affect …’ ‘Affect what?’ He didn’t finish. Yes, and
then he fell to thinking so bitterly, thinking so much, that his drunkenness
dropped off him. We were sitting in Filipov’s restaurant. And it wasn’t till
half an hour later that he suddenly struck the table with his fist. ‘Yes,’ said
he, ‘maybe he’s mad, but that can’t affect it.…’ Again he didn’t say what it
couldn’t affect. Of course I’m only giving you an extract of the
conversation, but one can understand the sense of it. You may ask whom
you like, they all have the same idea in their heads, though it never entered
anyone’s head before. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘he’s mad; he’s very clever, but
perhaps he’s mad too.’”
Stepan Trofimovitch sat pondering, and thought intently.
“And how does Lebyadkin know?”
“Do you mind inquiring about that of Alexey Nilitch, who has just called
me a spy? I’m a spy, yet I don’t know, but Alexey Nilitch knows all the ins

and outs of it, and holds his tongue.”
“I know nothing about it, or hardly anything,” answered the engineer with
the same irritation. “You make Lebyadkin drunk to find out. You brought
me here to find out and to make me say. And so you must be a spy.”
“I haven’t made him drunk yet, and he’s not worth the money either, with
all his secrets. They are not worth that to me. I don’t know what they are to
you. On the contrary, he is scattering the money, though twelve days ago he
begged fifteen kopecks of me, and it’s he treats me to champagne, not I
him. But you’ve given me an idea, and if there should be occasion I will
make him drunk, just to get to the bottom of it and maybe I shall find out …
all your little secrets,” Liputin snapped back spitefully.
Stepan Trofimovitch looked in bewilderment at the two disputants. Both
were giving themselves away, and what’s more, were not standing on
ceremony. The thought crossed my mind that Liputin had brought this
Alexey Nilitch to us with the simple object of drawing him into a
conversation through a third person for purposes of his own—his favourite
manœuvre.
“Alexey Nilitch knows Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch quite well,” he went on,
irritably, “only he conceals it. And as to your question about Captain
Lebyadkin, he made his acquaintance before any of us did, six years ago in
Petersburg, in that obscure, if one may so express it, epoch in the life of
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, before he had dreamed of rejoicing our hearts by
coming here. Our prince, one must conclude, surrounded himself with
rather a queer selection of acquaintances. It was at that time, it seems, that
he made acquaintance with this gentleman here.”
“Take care, Liputin. I warn you, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch meant to be here
soon himself, and he knows how to defend himself.”
“Why warn me? I am the first to cry out that he is a man of the most subtle
and refined intelligence, and I quite reassured Varvara Petrovna yesterday
on that score. ‘It’s his character,’ I said to her, ‘that I can’t answer for.’
Lebyadkin said the same thing yesterday: ‘A lot of harm has come to me
from his character,’ he said. Stepan Trofimovitch, it’s all very well for you
to cry out about slander and spying, and at the very time observe that you

wring it all out of me, and with such immense curiosity too. Now, Varvara
Petrovna went straight to the point yesterday. ‘You have had a personal
interest in the business,’ she said, ‘that’s why I appeal to you.’ I should say
so! What need to look for motives when I’ve swallowed a personal insult
from his excellency before the whole society of the place. I should think I
have grounds to be interested, not merely for the sake of gossip. He shakes
hands with you one day, and next day, for no earthly reason, he returns your
hospitality by slapping you on the cheeks in the face of all decent society, if
the fancy takes him, out of sheer wantonness. And what’s more, the fair sex
is everything for them, these butterflies and mettlesome cocks! Grand
gentlemen with little wings like the ancient cupids, lady-killing Petchorins!
It’s all very well for you, Stepan Trofimovitch, a confirmed bachelor, to talk
like that, stick up for his excellency and call me a slanderer. But if you
married a pretty young wife—as you’re still such a fine fellow—then I dare
say you’d bolt your door against our prince, and throw up barricades in
your house! Why, if only that Mademoiselle Lebyadkin, who is thrashed
with a whip, were not mad and bandy-legged, by Jove, I should fancy she
was the victim of the passions of our general, and that it was from him that
Captain Lebyadkin had suffered ‘in his family dignity,’ as he expresses it
himself. Only perhaps that is inconsistent with his refined taste, though,
indeed, even that’s no hindrance to him. Every berry is worth picking if
only he’s in the mood for it. You talk of slander, but I’m not crying this
aloud though the whole town is ringing with it; I only listen and assent.
That’s not prohibited.”
“The town’s ringing with it? What’s the town ringing with?”
“That is, Captain Lebyadkin is shouting for all the town to hear, and isn’t
that just the same as the market-place ringing with it? How am I to blame? I
interest myself in it only among friends, for, after all, I consider myself
among friends here.” He looked at us with an innocent air. “Something’s
happened, only consider: they say his excellency has sent three hundred
roubles from Switzerland by a most honourable young lady, and, so to say,
modest orphan, whom I have the honour of knowing, to be handed over to
Captain Lebyadkin. And Lebyadkin, a little later, was told as an absolute
fact also by a very honourable and therefore trustworthy person, I won’t say
whom, that not three hundred but a thousand roubles had been sent!… And
so, Lebyadkin keeps crying out ‘the young lady has grabbed seven hundred

roubles belonging to me,’ and he’s almost ready to call in the police; he
threatens to, anyway, and he’s making an uproar all over the town.”
“This is vile, vile of you!” cried the engineer, leaping up suddenly from his
chair.
“But I say, you are yourself the honourable person who brought word to
Lebyadkin from Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch that a thousand roubles were
sent, not three hundred. Why, the captain told me so himself when he was
drunk.”
“It’s … it’s an unhappy misunderstanding. Some one’s made a mistake and
it’s led to … It’s nonsense, and it’s base of you.”
“But I’m ready to believe that it’s nonsense, and I’m distressed at the story,
for, take it as you will, a girl of an honourable reputation is implicated first
over the seven hundred roubles, and secondly in unmistakable intimacy
with Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. For how much does it mean to his
excellency to disgrace a girl of good character, or put to shame another
man’s wife, like that incident with me? If he comes across a generous-
hearted man he’ll force him to cover the sins of others under the shelter of
his honourable name. That’s just what I had to put up with, I’m speaking of
myself.…”
“Be careful, Liputin.” Stepan Trofimovitch got up from his easy chair and
turned pale.
“Don’t believe it, don’t believe it! Somebody has made a mistake and
Lebyadkin’s drunk …” exclaimed the engineer in indescribable excitement.
“It will all be explained, but I can’t.… And I think it’s low.… And that’s
enough, enough!”
He ran out of the room.
“What are you about? Why, I’m going with you!” cried Liputin, startled. He
jumped up and ran after Alexey Nilitch.
VII
Stepan Trofimovitch stood a moment reflecting, looked at me as though he
did not see me, took up his hat and stick and walked quietly out of the

room. I followed him again, as before. As we went out of the gate, noticing
that I was accompanying him, he said:
“Oh yes, you may serve as a witness … de l’accident. Vous
m’accompagnerez, n’est-ce pas?”
“Stepan Trofimovitch, surely you’re not going there again? Think what may
come of it!”
With a pitiful and distracted smile, a smile of shame and utter despair, and
at the same time of a sort of strange ecstasy, he whispered to me, standing
still for an instant:
“I can’t marry to cover ‘another man’s sins’!”
These words were just what I was expecting. At last that fatal sentence that
he had kept hidden from me was uttered aloud, after a whole week of
shuffling and pretence. I was positively enraged.
“And you, Stepan Verhovensky, with your luminous mind, your kind heart,
can harbour such a dirty, such a low idea … and could before Liputin
came!”
He looked at me, made no answer and walked on in the same direction. I
did not want to be left behind. I wanted to give Varvara Petrovna my
version. I could have forgiven him if he had simply with his womanish
faint-heartedness believed Liputin, but now it was clear that he had thought
of it all himself long before, and that Liputin had only confirmed his
suspicions and poured oil on the flames. He had not hesitated to suspect the
girl from the very first day, before he had any kind of grounds, even
Liputin’s words, to go upon. Varvara Petrovna’s despotic behaviour he had
explained to himself as due to her haste to cover up the aristocratic
misdoings of her precious “Nicolas” by marrying the girl to an honourable
man! I longed for him to be punished for it.
“Oh, Dieu, qui est si grand et si bon! Oh, who will comfort me!” he
exclaimed, halting suddenly again, after walking a hundred paces.
“Come straight home and I’ll make everything clear to you,” I cried,
turning him by force towards home.

“It’s he! Stepan Trofimovitch, it’s you? You?” A fresh, joyous young voice
rang out like music behind us.
We had seen nothing, but a lady on horseback suddenly made her
appearance beside us—Lizaveta Nikolaevna with her invariable companion.
She pulled up her horse.
“Come here, come here quickly!” she called to us, loudly and merrily. “It’s
twelve years since I’ve seen him, and I know him, while he.… Do you
really not know me?”
Stepan Trofimovitch clasped the hand held out to him and kissed it
reverently. He gazed at her as though he were praying and could not utter a
word.
“He knows me, and is glad! Mavriky Nikolaevitch, he’s delighted to see
me! Why is it you haven’t been to see us all this fortnight? Auntie tried to
persuade me you were ill and must not be disturbed; but I know Auntie tells
lies. I kept stamping and swearing at you, but I had made up my mind, quite
made up my mind, that you should come to me first, that was why I didn’t
send to you. Heavens, why he hasn’t changed a bit!” She scrutinised him,
bending down from the saddle. “He’s absurdly unchanged. Oh, yes, he has
wrinkles, a lot of wrinkles, round his eyes and on his cheeks some grey hair,
but his eyes are just the same. And have I changed? Have I changed? Why
don’t you say something?”
I remembered at that moment the story that she had been almost ill when
she was taken away to Petersburg at eleven years old, and that she had cried
during her illness and asked for Stepan Trofimovitch.
“You … I …” he faltered now in a voice breaking with joy. “I was just
crying out ‘who will comfort me?’ and I heard your voice. I look on it as a
miracle et je commence à croire.”
“En Dieu! En Dieu qui est là-haut et qui est si grand et si bon! You see, I
know all your lectures by heart. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, what faith he used
to preach to me then, en Dieu qui est si grand et si bon! And do you
remember your story of how Columbus discovered America, and they all
cried out, ‘Land! land!’? My nurse Alyona Frolovna says I was light-headed
at night afterwards, and kept crying out ‘land! land!’ in my sleep. And do

you remember how you told me the story of Prince Hamlet? And do you
remember how you described to me how the poor emigrants were
transported from Europe to America? And it was all untrue; I found out
afterwards how they were transited. But what beautiful fibs he used to tell
me then, Mavriky Nikolaevitch! They were better than the truth. Why do
you look at Mavriky Nikolaevitch like that? He is the best and finest man
on the face of the globe and you must like him just as you do me! Il fait tout
ce que je veux. But, dear Stepan Trofimovitch, you must be unhappy again,
since you cry out in the middle of the street asking who will comfort you.
Unhappy, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”
“Now I’m happy.…”
“Aunt is horrid to you?” she went on, without listening. “She’s just the
same as ever, cross, unjust, and always our precious aunt! And do you
remember how you threw yourself into my arms in the garden and I
comforted you and cried—don’t be afraid of Mavriky Nikolaevitch; he has
known all about you, everything, for ever so long; you can weep on his
shoulder as long as you like, and he’ll stand there as long as you like! …
Lift up your hat, take it off altogether for a minute, lift up your head, stand
on tiptoe, I want to kiss you on the forehead as I kissed you for the last time
when we parted. Do you see that young lady’s admiring us out of the
window? Come closer, closer! Heavens! How grey he is!”
And bending over in the saddle she kissed him on the forehead.
“Come, now to your home! I know where you live. I’ll be with you directly,
in a minute. I’ll make you the first visit, you stubborn man, and then I must
have you for a whole day at home. You can go and make ready for me.”
And she galloped off with her cavalier. We returned. Stepan Trofimovitch
sat down on the sofa and began to cry.
“Dieu, Dieu.” he exclaimed, “enfin une minute de bonheur!”
Not more than ten minutes afterwards she reappeared according to her
promise, escorted by her Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
“Vous et le bonheur, vous arrivez en même temps!” He got up to meet her.

“Here’s a nosegay for you; I rode just now to Madame Chevalier’s, she has
flowers all the winter for name-days. Here’s Mavriky Nikolaevitch, please
make friends. I wanted to bring you a cake instead of a nosegay, but
Mavriky Nikolaevitch declares that is not in the Russian spirit.”
Mavriky Nikolaevitch was an artillery captain, a tall and handsome man of
thirty-three, irreproachably correct in appearance, with an imposing and at
first sight almost stern countenance, in spite of his wonderful and delicate
kindness which no one could fail to perceive almost the first moment of
making his acquaintance. He was taciturn, however, seemed very self-
possessed and made no efforts to gain friends. Many of us said later that he
was by no means clever; but this was not altogether just.
I won’t attempt to describe the beauty of Lizaveta Nikolaevna. The whole
town was talking of it, though some of our ladies and young girls
indignantly differed on the subject. There were some among them who
already detested her, and principally for her pride. The Drozdovs had
scarcely begun to pay calls, which mortified them, though the real reason
for the delay was Praskovya Ivanovna’s invalid state. They detested her in
the second place because she was a relative of the governor’s wife, and
thirdly because she rode out every day on horseback. We had never had
young ladies who rode on horseback before; it was only natural that the
appearance of Lizaveta Nikolaevna on horseback and her neglect to pay
calls was bound to offend local society. Yet every one knew that riding was
prescribed her by the doctor’s orders, and they talked sarcastically of her
illness. She really was ill. What struck me at first sight in her was her
abnormal, nervous, incessant restlessness. Alas, the poor girl was very
unhappy, and everything was explained later. To-day, recalling the past, I
should not say she was such a beauty as she seemed to me then. Perhaps she
was really not pretty at all. Tall, slim, but strong and supple, she struck one
by the irregularities of the lines of her face. Her eyes were set somewhat
like a Kalmuck’s, slanting; she was pale and thin in the face with high
cheek-bones, but there was something in the face that conquered and
fascinated! There was something powerful in the ardent glance of her dark
eyes. She always made her appearance “like a conquering heroine, and to
spread her conquests.” She seemed proud and at times even arrogant. I
don’t know whether she succeeded in being kind, but I know that she
wanted to, and made terrible efforts to force herself to be a little kind. There

were, no doubt, many fine impulses and the very best elements in her
character, but everything in her seemed perpetually seeking its balance and
unable to find it; everything was in chaos, in agitation, in uneasiness.
Perhaps the demands she made upon herself were too severe, and she was
never able to find in herself the strength to satisfy them.
She sat on the sofa and looked round the room.
“Why do I always begin to feel sad at such moments; explain that mystery,
you learned person? I’ve been thinking all my life that I should be goodness
knows how pleased at seeing you and recalling everything, and here I
somehow don’t feel pleased at all, although I do love you.… Ach, heavens!
He has my portrait on the wall! Give it here. I remember it! I remember it!”
An exquisite miniature in water-colour of Liza at twelve years old had been
sent nine years before to Stepan Trofimovitch from Petersburg by the
Drozdovs. He had kept it hanging on his wall ever since.
“Was I such a pretty child? Can that really have been my face?”
She stood up, and with the portrait in her hand looked in the looking-glass.
“Make haste, take it!” she cried, giving back the portrait. “Don’t hang it up
now, afterwards. I don’t want to look at it.”
She sat down on the sofa again. “One life is over and another is begun, then
that one is over—a third begins, and so on, endlessly. All the ends are
snipped off as it were with scissors. See what stale things I’m telling you.
Yet how much truth there is in them!”
She looked at me, smiling; she had glanced at me several times already, but
in his excitement Stepan Trofimovitch forgot that he had promised to
introduce me.
“And why have you hung my portrait under those daggers? And why have
you got so many daggers and sabres?”
He had as a fact hanging on the wall, I don’t know why, two crossed
daggers and above them a genuine Circassian sabre. As she asked this
question she looked so directly at me that I wanted to answer, but hesitated

to speak. Stepan Trofimovitch grasped the position at last and introduced
me.
“I know, I know,” she said, “I’m delighted to meet you. Mother has heard a
great deal about you, too. Let me introduce you to Mavriky Nikolaevitch
too, he’s a splendid person. I had formed a funny notion of you already.
You’re Stepan Trofimovitch’s confidant, aren’t you?”
I turned rather red.
“Ach, forgive me, please. I used quite the wrong word: not funny at all, but
only …” She was confused and blushed. “Why be ashamed though at your
being a splendid person? Well, it’s time we were going, Mavriky
Nikolaevitch! Stepan Trofimovitch, you must be with us in half an hour.
Mercy, what a lot we shall talk! Now I’m your confidante, and about
everything, everything, you understand?”
Stepan Trofimovitch was alarmed at once.
“Oh, Mavriky Nikolaevitch knows everything, don’t mind him!”
“What does he know?”
“Why, what do you mean?” she cried in astonishment. “Bah, why it’s true
then that they’re hiding it! I wouldn’t believe it! And they’re hiding Dasha,
too. Aunt wouldn’t let me go in to see Dasha to-day. She says she’s got a
headache.”
“But … but how did you find out?”
“My goodness, like every one else. That needs no cunning!”
“But does every one else …?”
“Why, of course. Mother, it’s true, heard it first through Alyona Frolovna,
my nurse; your Nastasya ran round to tell her. You told Nastasya, didn’t
you? She says you told her yourself.”
“I … I did once speak,” Stepan Trofimovitch faltered, crimsoning all over,
“but … I only hinted … j’étais si nerveux et malade, et puis …”
She laughed.

“And your confidant didn’t happen to be at hand, and Nastasya turned up.
Well that was enough! And the whole town’s full of her cronies! Come, it
doesn’t matter, let them know; it’s all the better. Make haste and come to us,
we dine early.… Oh, I forgot,” she added, sitting down again; “listen, what
sort of person is Shatov?”
“Shatov? He’s the brother of Darya Pavlovna.”
“I know he’s her brother! What a person you are, really,” she interrupted
impatiently. “I want to know what he’s like; what sort of man he is.”
“C’est un pense-creux d’ici. C’est le meilleur et le plus irascible homme du
monde.”
“I’ve heard that he’s rather queer. But that wasn’t what I meant. I’ve heard
that he knows three languages, one of them English, and can do literary
work. In that case I’ve a lot of work for him. I want someone to help me
and the sooner the better. Would he take the work or not? He’s been
recommended to me.…”
“Oh, most certainly he will. Et vous ferez un bienfait.…”
“I’m not doing it as a bienfait. I need someone to help me.”
“I know Shatov pretty well,” I said, “and if you will trust me with a
message to him I’ll go to him this minute.”
“Tell him to come to me at twelve o’clock to-morrow morning. Capital!
Thank you. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, are you ready?”
They went away. I ran at once, of course, to Shatov.
“Mon ami!” said Stepan Trofimovitch, overtaking me on the steps. “Be
sure to be at my lodging at ten or eleven o’clock when I come back. Oh,
I’ve acted very wrongly in my conduct to you and to every one.”
VIII
I did not find Shatov at home. I ran round again, two hours later. He was
still out. At last, at eight o’clock I went to him again, meaning to leave a
note if I did not find him; again I failed to find him. His lodging was shut

up, and he lived alone without a servant of any sort. I did think of knocking
at Captain Lebyadkin’s down below to ask about Shatov; but it was all shut
up below, too, and there was no sound or light as though the place were
empty. I passed by Lebyadkin’s door with curiosity, remembering the
stories I had heard that day. Finally, I made up my mind to come very early
next morning. To tell the truth I did not put much confidence in the effect of
a note. Shatov might take no notice of it; he was so obstinate and shy.
Cursing my want of success, I was going out of the gate when all at once I
stumbled on Mr. Kirillov. He was going into the house and he recognised
me first. As he began questioning me of himself, I told him how things
were, and that I had a note.
“Let us go in,” said he, “I will do everything.”
I remembered that Liputin had told us he had taken the wooden lodge in the
yard that morning. In the lodge, which was too large for him, a deaf old
woman who waited upon him was living too. The owner of the house had
moved into a new house in another street, where he kept a restaurant, and
this old woman, a relation of his, I believe, was left behind to look after
everything in the old house. The rooms in the lodge were fairly clean,
though the wall-papers were dirty. In the one we went into the furniture was
of different sorts, picked up here and there, and all utterly worthless. There
were two card-tables, a chest of drawers made of elder, a big deal table that
must have come from some peasant hut or kitchen, chairs and a sofa with
trellis-work back and hard leather cushions. In one corner there was an old-
fashioned ikon, in front of which the old woman had lighted a lamp before
we came in, and on the walls hung two dingy oil-paintings, one, a portrait
of the Tsar Nikolas I, painted apparently between 1820 and 1830; the other
the portrait of some bishop. Mr. Kirillov lighted a candle and took out of his
trunk, which stood not yet unpacked in a corner, an envelope, sealing-wax,
and a glass seal.
“Seal your note and address the envelope.”
I would have objected that this was unnecessary, but he insisted. When I
had addressed the envelope I took my cap.
“I was thinking you’d have tea,” he said. “I have bought tea. Will you?”

I could not refuse. The old woman soon brought in the tea, that is, a very
large tea-pot of boiling water, a little tea-pot full of strong tea, two large
earthenware cups, coarsely decorated, a fancy loaf, and a whole deep saucer
of lump sugar.
“I love tea at night,” said he. “I walk much and drink it till daybreak.
Abroad tea at night is inconvenient.”
“You go to bed at daybreak?”
“Always; for a long while. I eat little; always tea. Liputin’s sly, but
impatient.”
I was surprised at his wanting to talk; I made up my mind to take advantage
of the opportunity. “There were unpleasant misunderstandings this
morning,” I observed.
He scowled.
“That’s foolishness; that’s great nonsense. All this is nonsense because
Lebyadkin is drunk. I did not tell Liputin, but only explained the nonsense,
because he got it all wrong. Liputin has a great deal of fantasy, he built up a
mountain out of nonsense. I trusted Liputin yesterday.”
“And me to-day?” I said, laughing.
“But you see, you knew all about it already this morning; Liputin is weak or
impatient, or malicious or … he’s envious.”
The last word struck me.
“You’ve mentioned so many adjectives, however, that it would be strange if
one didn’t describe him.”
“Or all at once.”
“Yes, and that’s what Liputin really is—he’s a chaos. He was lying this
morning when he said you were writing something, wasn’t he?
“Why should he?” he said, scowling again and staring at the floor.
I apologised, and began assuring him that I was not inquisitive. He flushed.

“He told the truth; I am writing. Only that’s no matter.”
We were silent for a minute. He suddenly smiled with the childlike smile I
had noticed that morning.
“He invented that about heads himself out of a book, and told me first
himself, and understands badly. But I only seek the causes why men dare
not kill themselves; that’s all. And it’s all no matter.”
“How do you mean they don’t dare? Are there so few suicides?”
“Very few.”
“Do you really think so?”
He made no answer, got up, and began walking to and fro lost in thought.
“What is it restrains people from suicide, do you think?” I asked.
He looked at me absent-mindedly, as though trying to remember what we
were talking about.
“I … I don’t know much yet.… Two prejudices restrain them, two things;
only two, one very little, the other very big.”
“What is the little thing?”
“Pain.”
“Pain? Can that be of importance at such a moment?”
“Of the greatest. There are two sorts: those who kill themselves either from
great sorrow or from spite, or being mad, or no matter what … they do it
suddenly. They think little about the pain, but kill themselves suddenly. But
some do it from reason—they think a great deal.”
“Why, are there people who do it from reason?”
“Very many. If it were not for superstition there would be more, very many,
all.”
“What, all?”

He did not answer.
“But aren’t there means of dying without pain?”
“Imagine”—he stopped before me—“imagine a stone as big as a great
house; it hangs and you are under it; if it falls on you, on your head, will it
hurt you?”
“A stone as big as a house? Of course it would be fearful.”
“I speak not of the fear. Will it hurt?”
“A stone as big as a mountain, weighing millions of tons? Of course it
wouldn’t hurt.”
“But really stand there and while it hangs you will fear very much that it
will hurt. The most learned man, the greatest doctor, all, all will be very
much frightened. Every one will know that it won’t hurt, and every one will
be afraid that it will hurt.”
“Well, and the second cause, the big one?”
“The other world!”
“You mean punishment?”
“That’s no matter. The other world; only the other world.”
“Are there no atheists, such as don’t believe in the other world at all?”
Again he did not answer.
“You judge from yourself, perhaps.”
“Every one cannot judge except from himself,” he said, reddening. “There
will be full freedom when it will be just the same to live or not to live.
That’s the goal for all.”
“The goal? But perhaps no one will care to live then?”
“No one,” he pronounced with decision.

“Man fears death because he loves life. That’s how I understand it,” I
observed, “and that’s determined by nature.”
“That’s abject; and that’s where the deception comes in.” His eyes flashed.
“Life is pain, life is terror, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and terror.
Now man loves life, because he loves pain and terror, and so they have
done according. Life is given now for pain and terror, and that’s the
deception. Now man is not yet what he will be. There will be a new man,
happy and proud. For whom it will be the same to live or not to live, he will
be the new man. He who will conquer pain and terror will himself be a god.
And this God will not be.”
“Then this God does exist according to you?”
“He does not exist, but He is. In the stone there is no pain, but in the fear of
the stone is the pain. God is the pain of the fear of death. He who will
conquer pain and terror will become himself a god. Then there will be a
new life, a new man; everything will be new … then they will divide
history into two parts: from the gorilla to the annihilation of God, and from
the annihilation of God to …”
“To the gorilla?”
“… To the transformation of the earth, and of man physically. Man will be
God, and will be transformed physically, and the world will be transformed
and things will be transformed and thoughts and all feelings. What do you
think: will man be changed physically then?”
“If it will be just the same living or not living, all will kill themselves, and
perhaps that’s what the change will be?”
“That’s no matter. They will kill deception. Every one who wants the
supreme freedom must dare to kill himself. He who dares to kill himself has
found out the secret of the deception. There is no freedom beyond; that is
all, and there is nothing beyond. He who dares kill himself is God. Now
every one can do so that there shall be no God and shall be nothing. But no
one has once done it yet.”
“There have been millions of suicides.”

“But always not for that; always with terror and not for that object. Not to
kill fear. He who kills himself only to kill fear will become a god at once.”
“He won’t have time, perhaps,” I observed.
“That’s no matter,” he answered softly, with calm pride, almost disdain.
“I’m sorry that you seem to be laughing,” he added half a minute later.
“It seems strange to me that you were so irritable this morning and are now
so calm, though you speak with warmth.”
“This morning? It was funny this morning,” he answered with a smile. “I
don’t like scolding, and I never laugh,” he added mournfully.
“Yes, you don’t spend your nights very cheerfully over your tea.”
I got up and took my cap.
“You think not?” he smiled with some surprise. “Why? No, I … I don’t
know.” He was suddenly confused. “I know not how it is with the others,
and I feel that I cannot do as others. Everybody thinks and then at once
thinks of something else. I can’t think of something else. I think all my life
of one thing. God has tormented me all my life,” he ended up suddenly with
astonishing expansiveness.
“And tell me, if I may ask, why is it you speak Russian not quite correctly?
Surely you haven’t forgotten it after five years abroad?”
“Don’t I speak correctly? I don’t know. No, it’s not because of abroad. I
have talked like that all my life … it’s no matter to me.”
“Another question, a more delicate one. I quite believe you that you’re
disinclined to meet people and talk very little. Why have you talked to me
now?”
“To you? This morning you sat so nicely and you … but it’s all no matter …
you are like my brother, very much, extremely,” he added, flushing. “He has
been dead seven years. He was older, very, very much.”
“I suppose he had a great influence on your way of thinking?”
“N-no. He said little; he said nothing. I’ll give your note.”

He saw me to the gate with a lantern, to lock it after me. “Of course he’s
mad,” I decided. In the gateway I met with another encounter.
IX
I had only just lifted my leg over the high barrier across the bottom of the
gateway, when suddenly a strong hand clutched at my chest.
“Who’s this?” roared a voice, “a friend or an enemy? Own up!”
“He’s one of us; one of us!” Liputin’s voice squealed near by. “It’s Mr. G
——v, a young man of classical education, in touch with the highest
society.”
“I love him if he’s in society, clas-si … that means he’s high-ly ed-u-cated.
The retired Captain Ignat Lebyadkin, at the service of the world and his
friends … if they’re true ones, if they’re true ones, the scoundrels.”
Captain Lebyadkin, a stout, fleshy man over six feet in height, with curly
hair and a red face, was so extremely drunk that he could scarcely stand up
before me, and articulated with difficulty. I had seen him before, however,
in the distance.
“And this one!” he roared again, noticing Kirillov, who was still standing
with the lantern; he raised his fist, but let it fall again at once.
“I forgive you for your learning! Ignat Lebyadkin—high-ly ed-u-cated.…

‘A bomb of love with stinging smart
Exploded in Ignaty’s heart.
In anguish dire I weep again
The arm that at Sevastopol
I lost in bitter pain!’

Not that I ever was at Sevastopol, or ever lost my arm, but you know what
rhyme is.” He pushed up to me with his ugly, tipsy face.
“He is in a hurry, he is going home!” Liputin tried to persuade him. “He’ll
tell Lizaveta Nikolaevna to-morrow.”
“Lizaveta!” he yelled again. “Stay, don’t go! A variation:

‘Among the Amazons a star,
Upon her steed she flashes by,
And smiles upon me from afar,
The child of aris-to-cra-cy!’
To a Starry Amazon.

You know that’s a hymn. It’s a hymn, if you’re not an ass! The duffers, they
don’t understand! Stay!”
He caught hold of my coat, though I pulled myself away with all my might.
“Tell her I’m a knight and the soul of honour, and as for that Dasha … I’d
pick her up and chuck her out.… She’s only a serf, she daren’t …”
At this point he fell down, for I pulled myself violently out of his hands and
ran into the street. Liputin clung on to me.
“Alexey Nilitch will pick him up. Do you know what I’ve just found out
from him?” he babbled in desperate haste. “Did you hear his verses? He’s
sealed those verses to the ‘Starry Amazon’ in an envelope and is going to
send them to-morrow to Lizaveta Nikolaevna, signed with his name in full.
What a fellow!”
“I bet you suggested it to him yourself.”
“You’ll lose your bet,” laughed Liputin. “He’s in love, in love like a cat, and
do you know it began with hatred. He hated Lizaveta Nikolaevna at first so
much, for riding on horseback that he almost swore aloud at her in the
street. Yes, he did abuse her! Only the day before yesterday he swore at her
when she rode by—luckily she didn’t hear. And, suddenly, to-day—poetry!
Do you know he means to risk a proposal? Seriously! Seriously!”
“I wonder at you, Liputin; whenever there’s anything nasty going on you’re
always on the spot taking a leading part in it,” I said angrily.
“You’re going rather far, Mr. G——v. Isn’t your poor little heart quaking,
perhaps, in terror of a rival?”
“Wha-at!” I cried, standing still.

“Well, now to punish you I won’t say anything more, and wouldn’t you like
to know though? Take this alone, that that lout is not a simple captain now
but a landowner of our province, and rather an important one, too, for
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sold him all his estate the other day, formerly of
two hundred serfs; and as God’s above, I’m not lying. I’ve only just heard
it, but it was from a most reliable source. And now you can ferret it out for
yourself; I’ll say nothing more; good-bye.”
X
Stepan Trofimovitch was awaiting me with hysterical impatience. It was an
hour since he had returned. I found him in a state resembling intoxication;
for the first five minutes at least I thought he was drunk. Alas, the visit to
the Drozdovs had been the finishing-stroke.
“Mon ami! I have completely lost the thread … Lise … I love and respect
that angel as before; just as before; but it seems to me they both asked me
simply to find out something from me, that is more simply to get something
out of me, and then to get rid of me.… That’s how it is.”
“You ought to be ashamed!” I couldn’t help exclaiming.
“My friend, now I am utterly alone. Enfin, c’est ridicule. Would you believe
it, the place is positively packed with mysteries there too. They simply flew
at me about those ears and noses, and some mysteries in Petersburg too.
You know they hadn’t heard till they came about the tricks Nicolas played
here four years ago. ‘You were here, you saw it, is it true that he is mad?’
Where they got the idea I can’t make out. Why is it that Praskovya is so
anxious Nicolas should be mad? The woman will have it so, she will. Ce
Maurice, or what’s his name, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, brave homme tout de
même … but can it be for his sake, and after she wrote herself from Paris to
cette pauvre amie?… Enfin, this Praskovya, as cette chère amie calls her, is
a type. She’s Gogol’s Madame Box, of immortal memory, only she’s a
spiteful Madame Box, a malignant Box, and in an immensely exaggerated
form.”
“That’s making her out a regular packing-case if it’s an exaggerated form.”
“Well, perhaps it’s the opposite; it’s all the same, only don’t interrupt me,
for I’m all in a whirl. They are all at loggerheads, except Lise, she keeps on

with her ‘Auntie, auntie!’ but Lise’s sly, and there’s something behind it too.
Secrets. She has quarrelled with the old lady. Cette pauvre auntie tyrannises
over every one it’s true, and then there’s the governor’s wife, and the
rudeness of local society, and Karmazinov’s ‘rudeness’; and then this idea
of madness, ce Lipoutine, ce que je ne comprends pas … and … and they
say she’s been putting vinegar on her head, and here are we with our
complaints and letters.… Oh, how I have tormented her and at such a time!
Je suis un ingrat! Only imagine, I come back and find a letter from her;
read it, read it! Oh, how ungrateful it was of me!”
He gave me a letter he had just received from Varvara Petrovna. She
seemed to have repented of her “stay at home.” The letter was amiable but
decided in tone, and brief. She invited Stepan Trofimovitch to come to her
the day after to-morrow, which was Sunday, at twelve o’clock, and advised
him to bring one of his friends with him. (My name was mentioned in
parenthesis). She promised on her side to invite Shatov, as the brother of
Darya Pavlovna. “You can obtain a final answer from her: will that be
enough for you? Is this the formality you were so anxious for?”
“Observe that irritable phrase about formality. Poor thing, poor thing, the
friend of my whole life! I confess the sudden determination of my whole
future almost crushed me.… I confess I still had hopes, but now tout est dit.
I know now that all is over. C’est terrible! Oh, that that Sunday would
never come and everything would go on in the old way. You would have
gone on coming and I’d have gone on here.…”
“You’ve been upset by all those nasty things Liputin said, those slanders.”
“My dear, you have touched on another sore spot with your friendly finger.
Such friendly fingers are generally merciless and sometimes unreasonable;
pardon, you may not believe it, but I’d almost forgotten all that, all that
nastiness, not that I forgot it, indeed, but in my foolishness I tried all the
while I was with Lise to be happy and persuaded myself I was happy. But
now … Oh, now I’m thinking of that generous, humane woman, so long-
suffering with my contemptible failings—not that she’s been altogether
long-suffering, but what have I been with my horrid, worthless character!
I’m a capricious child, with all the egoism of a child and none of the
innocence. For the last twenty years she’s been looking after me like a

nurse, cette pauvre auntie, as Lise so charmingly calls her.… And now, after
twenty years, the child clamours to be married, sending letter after letter,
while her head’s in a vinegar-compress and … now he’s got it—on Sunday
I shall be a married man, that’s no joke.… And why did I keep insisting
myself, what did I write those letters for? Oh, I forgot. Lise idolizes Darya
Pavlovna, she says so anyway; she says of her ‘c’est un ange, only rather a
reserved one.’ They both advised me, even Praskovya. … Praskovya didn’t
advise me though. Oh, what venom lies concealed in that ‘Box’! And Lise
didn’t exactly advise me: ‘What do you want to get married for,’ she said,
‘your intellectual pleasures ought to be enough for you.’ She laughed. I
forgive her for laughing, for there’s an ache in her own heart. You can’t get
on without a woman though, they said to me. The infirmities of age are
coming upon you, and she will tuck you up, or whatever it is.… Ma foi, I’ve
been thinking myself all this time I’ve been sitting with you that Providence
was sending her to me in the decline of my stormy years and that she would
tuck me up, or whatever they call it … enfin, she’ll be handy for the
housekeeping. See what a litter there is, look how everything’s lying about.
I said it must be cleared up this morning, and look at the book on the floor!
La pauvre amie was always angry at the untidiness here. … Ah, now I shall
no longer hear her voice! Vingt ans! And it seems they’ve had anonymous
letters. Only fancy, it’s said that Nicolas has sold Lebyadkin his property.
C’est un monstre; et enfin what is Lebyadkin? Lise listens, and listens, ooh,
how she listens! I forgave her laughing. I saw her face as she listened, and
ce Maurice … I shouldn’t care to be in his shoes now, brave homme tout de
même, but rather shy; but never mind him.…”
He paused. He was tired and upset, and sat with drooping head, staring at
the floor with his tired eyes. I took advantage of the interval to tell him of
my visit to Filipov’s house, and curtly and dryly expressed my opinion that
Lebyadkin’s sister (whom I had never seen) really might have been
somehow victimised by Nicolas at some time during that mysterious period
of his life, as Liputin had called it, and that it was very possible that
Lebyadkin received sums of money from Nicolas for some reason, but that
was all. As for the scandal about Darya Pavlovna, that was all nonsense, all
that brute Liputin’s misrepresentations, that this was anyway what Alexey
Nilitch warmly maintained, and we had no grounds for disbelieving him.
Stepan Trofimovitch listened to my assurances with an absent air, as though

they did not concern him. I mentioned by the way my conversation with
Kirillov, and added that he might be mad.
“He’s not mad, but one of those shallow-minded people,” he mumbled
listlessly. “Ces gens-là supposent la nature et la societé humaine autres que
Dieu ne les a faites et qu’elles ne sont réellement. People try to make up to
them, but Stepan Verhovensky does not, anyway. I saw them that time in
Petersburg avec cette chère amie (oh, how I used to wound her then), and I
wasn’t afraid of their abuse or even of their praise. I’m not afraid now
either. Mais parlons d’autre chose.… I believe I have done dreadful things.
Only fancy, I sent a letter yesterday to Darya Pavlovna and … how I curse
myself for it!”
“What did you write about?”
“Oh, my friend, believe me, it was all done in a noble spirit. I let her know
that I had written to Nicolas five days before, also in a noble spirit.”
“I understand now!” I cried with heat. “And what right had you to couple
their names like that?”
“But, mon cher, don’t crush me completely, don’t shout at me; as it is I’m
utterly squashed like … a black-beetle. And, after all, I thought it was all so
honourable. Suppose that something really happened … en Suisse … or was
beginning. I was bound to question their hearts beforehand that I … enfin,
that I might not constrain their hearts, and be a stumbling-block in their
paths. I acted simply from honourable feeling.”
“Oh, heavens! What a stupid thing you’ve done!” I cried involuntarily.
“Yes, yes,” he assented with positive eagerness. “You have never said
anything more just, c’était bête, mais que faire? Tout est dit. I shall marry
her just the same even if it be to cover ‘another’s sins.’ So there was no
object in writing, was there?”
“You’re at that idea again!”
“Oh, you won’t frighten me with your shouts now. You see a different
Stepan Verhovensky before you now. The man I was is buried. Enfin, tout
est dit. And why do you cry out? Simply because you’re not getting

married, and you won’t have to wear a certain decoration on your head.
Does that shock you again? My poor friend, you don’t know woman, while
I have done nothing but study her. ‘If you want to conquer the world,
conquer yourself’—the one good thing that another romantic like you, my
bride’s brother, Shatov, has succeeded in saying. I would gladly borrow
from him his phrase. Well, here I am ready to conquer myself, and I’m
getting married. And what am I conquering by way of the whole world? Oh,
my friend, marriage is the moral death of every proud soul, of all
independence. Married life will corrupt me, it will sap my energy, my
courage in the service of the cause. Children will come, probably not my
own either—certainly not my own: a wise man is not afraid to face the
truth. Liputin proposed this morning putting up barricades to keep out
Nicolas; Liputin’s a fool. A woman would deceive the all-seeing eye itself.
Le bon Dieu knew what He was in for when He was creating woman, but
I’m sure that she meddled in it herself and forced Him to create her such as
she is … and with such attributes: for who would have incurred so much
trouble for nothing? I know Nastasya may be angry with me for free-
thinking, but … enfin, tout est dit.”
He wouldn’t have been himself if he could have dispensed with the cheap
gibing free-thought which was in vogue in his day. Now, at any rate, he
comforted himself with a gibe, but not for long.
“Oh, if that day after to-morrow, that Sunday, might never come!” he
exclaimed suddenly, this time in utter despair. “Why could not this one
week be without a Sunday—si le miracle existe? What would it be to
Providence to blot out one Sunday from the calendar? If only to prove His
power to the atheists et que tout soit dit! Oh, how I loved her! Twenty years,
these twenty years, and she has never understood me!”
“But of whom are you talking? Even I don’t understand you!” I asked,
wondering.
“Vingt ans! And she has not once understood me; oh, it’s cruel! And can she
really believe that I am marrying from fear, from poverty? Oh, the shame of
it! Oh, Auntie, Auntie, I do it for you!… Oh, let her know, that Auntie, that
she is the one woman I have adored for twenty years! She must learn this, it

must be so, if not they will need force to drag me under ce qu’on appelle le
wedding-crown.”
It was the first time I had heard this confession, and so vigorously uttered. I
won’t conceal the fact that I was terribly tempted to laugh. I was wrong.
“He is the only one left me now, the only one, my one hope!” he cried
suddenly, clasping his hands as though struck by a new idea. “Only he, my
poor boy, can save me now, and, oh, why doesn’t he come! Oh, my son, oh,
my Petrusha.… And though I do not deserve the name of father, but rather
that of tiger, yet … Laissez-moi, mon ami, I’ll lie down a little, to collect
my ideas. I am so tired, so tired. And I think it’s time you were in bed.
Voyez vous, it’s twelve o’clock.…”

CHAPTER IV. THE CRIPPLE
I
SHATOV WAS NOT PERVERSE but acted on my note, and called at
midday on Lizaveta Nikolaevna. We went in almost together; I was also
going to make my first call. They were all, that is Liza, her mother, and
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, sitting in the big drawing-room, arguing. The mother
was asking Liza to play some waltz on the piano, and as soon as Liza began
to play the piece asked for, declared it was not the right one. Mavriky
Nikolaevitch in the simplicity of his heart took Liza’s part, maintaining that
it was the right waltz. The elder lady was so angry that she began to cry.
She was ill and walked with difficulty. Her legs were swollen, and for the
last few days she had been continually fractious, quarrelling with every one,
though she always stood rather in awe of Liza. They were pleased to see us.
Liza flushed with pleasure, and saying “merci” to me, on Shatov’s account
of course, went to meet him, looking at him with interest.
Shatov stopped awkwardly in the doorway. Thanking him for coming she
led him up to her mother.
“This is Mr. Shatov, of whom I have told you, and this is Mr. G——v, a
great friend of mine and of Stepan Trofimovitch’s. Mavriky Nikolaevitch
made his acquaintance yesterday, too.”
“And which is the professor?”
“There’s no professor at all, maman.”
“But there is. You said yourself that there’d be a professor. It’s this one,
probably.” She disdainfully indicated Shatov.
“I didn’t tell you that there’d be a professor. Mr. G——v is in the service,
and Mr. Shatov is a former student.”
“A student or professor, they all come from the university just the same.
You only want to argue. But the Swiss one had moustaches and a beard.”

“It’s the son of Stepan Trofimovitch that maman always calls the
professor,” said Liza, and she took Shatov away to the sofa at the other end
of the drawing-room.
“When her legs swell, she’s always like this, you understand she’s ill,” she
whispered to Shatov, still with the same marked curiosity, scrutinising him,
especially his shock of hair.
“Are you an officer?” the old lady inquired of me. Liza had mercilessly
abandoned me to her.
“N-no.—I’m in the service.…”
“Mr. G——v is a great friend of Stepan Trofimovitch’s,” Liza chimed in
immediately.
“Are you in Stepan Trofimovitch’s service? Yes, and he’s a professor, too,
isn’t he?”
“Ah, maman, you must dream at night of professors,” cried Liza with
annoyance.
“I see too many when I’m awake. But you always will contradict your
mother. Were you here four years ago when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was
in the neighbourhood?”
I answered that I was.
“And there was some Englishman with you?”
“No, there was not.”
Liza laughed.
“Well, you see there was no Englishman, so it must have been idle gossip.
And Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovitch both tell lies. And they all
tell lies.”
“Auntie and Stepan Trofimovitch yesterday thought there was a
resemblance between Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and Prince Harry in
Shakespeare’s Henry IV, and in answer to that maman says that there was
no Englishman here,” Liza explained to us.

“If Harry wasn’t here, there was no Englishman. It was no one else but
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at his tricks.”
“I assure you that maman’s doing it on purpose,” Liza thought necessary to
explain to Shatov. “She’s really heard of Shakespeare. I read her the first act
of Othello myself. But she’s in great pain now. Maman, listen, it’s striking
twelve, it’s time you took your medicine.”
“The doctor’s come,” a maid-servant announced at the door.
The old lady got up and began calling her dog: “Zemirka, Zemirka, you
come with me at least.”
Zemirka, a horrid little old dog, instead of obeying, crept under the sofa
where Liza was sitting.
“Don’t you want to? Then I don’t want you. Good-bye, my good sir, I don’t
know your name or your father’s,” she said, addressing me.
“Anton Lavrentyevitch …”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, with me it goes in at one ear and out of the other.
Don’t you come with me, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, it was Zemirka I called.
Thank God I can still walk without help and to-morrow I shall go for a
drive.”
She walked angrily out of the drawing-room.
“Anton Lavrentyevitch, will you talk meanwhile to Mavriky Nikolaevitch; I
assure you you’ll both be gainers by getting to know one another better,”
said Liza, and she gave a friendly smile to Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who
beamed all over as she looked at him. There was no help for it, I remained
to talk to Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
II
Lizaveta Nikolaevna’s business with Shatov turned out, to my surprise, to
be really only concerned with literature. I had imagined, I don’t know why,
that she had asked him to come with some other object. We, Mavriky
Nikolaevitch and I that is, seeing that they were talking aloud and not trying
to hide anything from us, began to listen, and at last they asked our advice.

It turned out that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was thinking of bringing out a book
which she thought would be of use, but being quite inexperienced she
needed someone to help her. The earnestness with which she began to
explain her plan to Shatov quite surprised me.
“She must be one of the new people,” I thought. “She has not been to
Switzerland for nothing.”
Shatov listened with attention, his eyes fixed on the ground, showing not
the slightest surprise that a giddy young lady in society should take up work
that seemed so out of keeping with her.
Her literary scheme was as follows. Numbers of papers and journals are
published in the capitals and the provinces of Russia, and every day a
number of events are reported in them. The year passes, the newspapers are
everywhere folded up and put away in cupboards, or are torn up and
become litter, or are used for making parcels or wrapping things. Numbers
of these facts make an impression and are remembered by the public, but in
the course of years they are forgotten. Many people would like to look them
up, but it is a labour for them to embark upon this sea of paper, often
knowing nothing of the day or place or even year in which the incident
occurred. Yet if all the facts for a whole year were brought together into one
book, on a definite plan, and with a definite object, under headings with
references, arranged according to months and days, such a compilation
might reflect the characteristics of Russian life for the whole year, even
though the facts published are only a small fraction of the events that take
place.
“Instead of a number of newspapers there would be a few fat books, that’s
all,” observed Shatov.
But Lizaveta Nikolaevna clung to her idea, in spite of the difficulty of
carrying it out and her inability to describe it. “It ought to be one book, and
not even a very thick one,” she maintained. But even if it were thick it
would be clear, for the great point would be the plan and the character of
the presentation of facts. Of course not all would be collected and reprinted.
The decrees and acts of government, local regulations, laws—all such facts,
however important, might be altogether omitted from the proposed
publication. They could leave out a great deal and confine themselves to a

selection of events more or less characteristic of the moral life of the
people, of the personal character of the Russian people at the present
moment. Of course everything might be put in: strange incidents, fires,
public subscriptions, anything good or bad, every speech or word, perhaps
even floodings of the rivers, perhaps even some government decrees, but
only such things to be selected as are characteristic of the period;
everything would be put in with a certain view, a special significance and
intention, with an idea which would illuminate the facts looked at in the
aggregate, as a whole. And finally the book ought to be interesting even for
light reading, apart from its value as a work of reference. It would be, so to
say, a presentation of the spiritual, moral, inner life of Russia for a whole
year.
“We want every one to buy it, we want it to be a book that will be found on
every table,” Liza declared. “I understand that all lies in the plan, and that’s
why I apply to you,” she concluded. She grew very warm over it, and
although her explanation was obscure and incomplete, Shatov began to
understand.
“So it would amount to something with a political tendency, a selection of
facts with a special tendency,” he muttered, still not raising his head.
“Not at all, we must not select with a particular bias, and we ought not to
have any political tendency in it. Nothing but impartiality—that will be the
only tendency.”
“But a tendency would be no harm,” said Shatov, with a slight movement,
“and one can hardly avoid it if there is any selection at all. The very
selection of facts will suggest how they are to be understood. Your idea is
not a bad one.”
“Then such a book is possible?” cried Liza delightedly.
“We must look into it and consider. It’s an immense undertaking. One can’t
work it out on the spur of the moment. We need experience. And when we
do publish the book I doubt whether we shall find out how to do it. Possibly
after many trials; but the thought is alluring. It’s a useful idea.”
He raised his eyes at last, and they were positively sparkling with pleasure,
he was so interested.

“Was it your own idea?” he asked Liza, in a friendly and, as it were, bashful
way.
“The idea’s no trouble, you know, it’s the plan is the trouble,” Liza smiled.
“I understand very little. I am not very clever, and I only pursue what is
clear to me, myself.…”
“Pursue?”
“Perhaps that’s not the right word?” Liza inquired quickly.
“The word is all right; I meant nothing.”
“I thought while I was abroad that even I might be of some use. I have
money of my own lying idle. Why shouldn’t I—even I—work for the
common cause? Besides, the idea somehow occurred to me all at once of
itself. I didn’t invent it at all, and was delighted with it. But I saw at once
that I couldn’t get on without someone to help, because I am not competent
to do anything of myself. My helper, of course, would be the co-editor of
the book. We would go halves. You would give the plan and the work. Mine
would be the original idea and the means for publishing it. Would the book
pay its expenses, do you think?”
“If we hit on a good plan the book will go.”
“I warn you that I am not doing it for profit; but I am very anxious that the
book should circulate and should be very proud of making a profit.”
“Well, but how do I come in?”
“Why, I invite you to be my fellow-worker, to go halves. You will think out
the plan.”
“How do you know that I am capable of thinking out the plan?”
“People have talked about you to me, and here I’ve heard … I know that
you are very clever and … are working for the cause … and think a great
deal. Pyotr Stepanovitch Verhovensky spoke about you in Switzerland,” she
added hurriedly. “He’s a very clever man, isn’t he?”

Shatov stole a fleeting, momentary glance at her, but dropped his eyes
again.
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch told me a great deal about you, too.”
Shatov suddenly turned red.
“But here are the newspapers.” Liza hurriedly picked up from a chair a
bundle of newspapers that lay tied up ready. “I’ve tried to mark the facts
here for selection, to sort them, and I have put the papers together … you
will see.”
Shatov took the bundle.
“Take them home and look at them. Where do you live?”
“In Bogoyavlensky Street, Filipov’s house.”
“I know. I think it’s there, too, I’ve been told, a captain lives, beside you,
Mr. Lebyadkin,” said Liza in the same hurried manner.
Shatov sat for a full minute with the bundle in his outstretched hand,
making no answer and staring at the floor.
“You’d better find someone else for these jobs. I shouldn’t suit you at all,”
he brought out at last, dropping his voice in an awfully strange way, almost
to a whisper.
Liza flushed crimson.
“What jobs are you speaking of? Mavriky Nikolaevitch,” she cried, “please
bring that letter here.”
I too followed Mavriky Nikolaevitch to the table.
“Look at this,” she turned suddenly to me, unfolding the letter in great
excitement. “Have you ever seen anything like it. Please read it aloud. I
want Mr. Shatov to hear it too.”
With no little astonishment I read aloud the following missive:

“To the Perfection, Miss Tushin.

“Gracious Lady
“Lizaveta Nikolaevna!

“Oh, she’s a sweet queen,
Lizaveta Tushin!
When on side-saddle she gallops by,
And in the breeze her fair tresses fly!
Or when with her mother in church she bows low
And on devout faces a red flush doth flow!
Then for the joys of lawful wedlock I aspire,
And follow her and her mother with tears of desire.

“Composed by an unlearned man in the midst of a discussion.

“Gracious Lady!

“I pity myself above all men that I did not lose my arm at Sevastopol,
not having been there at all, but served all the campaign delivering
paltry provisions, which I look on as a degradation. You are a goddess
of antiquity, and I am nothing, but have had a glimpse of infinity.
Look on it as a poem and no more, for, after all, poetry is nonsense and
justifies what would be considered impudence in prose. Can the sun be
angry with the infusoria if the latter composes verses to her from the
drop of water, where there is a multitude of them if you look through
the microscope? Even the club for promoting humanity to the larger
animals in tip-top society in Petersburg, which rightly feels compassion
for dogs and horses, despises the brief infusoria making no reference
to it whatever, because it is not big enough. I’m not big enough either.
The idea of marriage might seem droll, but soon I shall have property
worth two hundred souls through a misanthropist whom you ought to
despise. I can tell a lot and I can undertake to produce documents
that would mean Siberia. Don’t despise my proposal. A letter from an
infusoria is of course in verse.

“Captain Lebyadkin your most humble friend.
And he has time no end.”

“That was written by a man in a drunken condition, a worthless fellow,” I
cried indignantly. “I know him.”
“That letter I received yesterday,” Liza began to explain, flushing and
speaking hurriedly. “I saw myself, at once, that it came from some foolish
creature, and I haven’t yet shown it to maman, for fear of upsetting her
more. But if he is going to keep on like that, I don’t know how to act.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch wants to go out and forbid him to do it. As I have
looked upon you as a colleague,” she turned to Shatov, “and as you live
there, I wanted to question you so as to judge what more is to be expected
of him.”
“He’s a drunkard and a worthless fellow,” Shatov muttered with apparent
reluctance.
“Is he always so stupid?”
“No, he’s not stupid at all when he’s not drunk.”
“I used to know a general who wrote verses exactly like that,” I observed,
laughing.
“One can see from the letter that he is clever enough for his own purposes,”
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who had till then been silent, put in unexpectedly.
“He lives with some sister?” Liza queried.
“Yes, with his sister.”
“They say he tyrannises over her, is that true?”
Shatov looked at Liza again, scowled, and muttering, “What business is it
of mine?” moved towards the door.
“Ah, stay!” cried Liza, in a flutter. “Where are you going? We have so much
still to talk over.…”
“What is there to talk over? I’ll let you know to-morrow.”
“Why, the most important thing of all—the printing-press! Do believe me
that I am not in jest, that I really want to work in good earnest!” Liza
assured him in growing agitation. “If we decide to publish it, where is it to

be printed? You know it’s a most important question, for we shan’t go to
Moscow for it, and the printing-press here is out of the question for such a
publication. I made up my mind long ago to set up a printing-press of my
own, in your name perhaps—and I know maman will allow it so long as it
is in your name.…”
“How do you know that I could be a printer?” Shatov asked sullenly.
“Why, Pyotr Stepanovitch told me of you in Switzerland, and referred me to
you as one who knows the business and able to set up a printing-press. He
even meant to give me a note to you from himself, but I forgot it.”
Shatov’s face changed, as I recollect now. He stood for a few seconds
longer, then went out of the room.
Liza was angry.
“Does he always go out like that?” she asked, turning to me.
I was just shrugging my shoulders when Shatov suddenly came back, went
straight up to the table and put down the roll of papers he had taken.
“I’m not going to be your helper, I haven’t the time.…”
“Why? Why? I think you are angry!” Liza asked him in a grieved and
imploring voice.
The sound of her voice seemed to strike him; for some moments he looked
at her intently, as though trying to penetrate to her very soul.
“No matter,” he muttered, softly, “I don’t want to.…”
And he went away altogether.
Liza was completely overwhelmed, quite disproportionately in fact, so it
seemed to me.
“Wonderfully queer man,” Mavriky Nikolaevitch observed aloud.
III

He certainly was queer, but in all this there was a very great deal not clear
to me. There was something underlying it all. I simply did not believe in
this publication; then that stupid letter, in which there was an offer, only too
barefaced, to give information and produce “documents,” though they were
all silent about that, and talked of something quite different; finally that
printing-press and Shatov’s sudden exit, just because they spoke of a
printing-press. All this led me to imagine that something had happened
before I came in of which I knew nothing; and, consequently, that it was no
business of mine and that I was in the way. And, indeed, it was time to take
leave, I had stayed long enough for the first call. I went up to say good-bye
to Lizaveta Nikolaevna.
She seemed to have forgotten that I was in the room, and was still standing
in the same place by the table with her head bowed, plunged in thought,
gazing fixedly at one spot on the carpet.
“Ah, you, too, are going, good-bye,” she murmured in an ordinary friendly
tone. “Give my greetings to Stepan Trofimovitch, and persuade him to
come and see me as soon as he can. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, Anton
Lavrentyevitch is going. Excuse maman’s not being able to come out and
say good-bye to you.…”
I went out and had reached the bottom of the stairs when a footman
suddenly overtook me at the street door.
“My lady begs you to come back.…”
“The mistress, or Lizaveta Nikolaevna?”
“The young lady.”
I found Liza not in the big room where we had been sitting, but in the
reception-room next to it. The door between it and the drawing-room,
where Mavriky Nikolaevitch was left alone, was closed.
Liza smiled to me but was pale. She was standing in the middle of the room
in evident indecision, visibly struggling with herself; but she suddenly took
me by the hand, and led me quickly to the window.

“I want to see her at once,” she whispered, bending upon me a burning,
passionate, impatient glance, which would not admit a hint of opposition. “I
must see her with my own eyes, and I beg you to help me.”
She was in a perfect frenzy, and—in despair.
“Who is it you want to see, Lizaveta Nikolaevna?” I inquired in dismay.
“That Lebyadkin’s sister, that lame girl.… Is it true that she’s lame?”
I was astounded.
“I have never seen her, but I’ve heard that she’s lame. I heard it yesterday,”
I said with hurried readiness, and also in a whisper.
“I must see her, absolutely. Could you arrange it to-day?”
I felt dreadfully sorry for her.
“That’s utterly impossible, and, besides, I should not know at all how to set
about it,” I began persuading her. “I’ll go to Shatov.…”
“If you don’t arrange it by to-morrow I’ll go to her by myself, alone, for
Mavriky Nikolaevitch has refused. I rest all my hopes on you and I’ve no
one else; I spoke stupidly to Shatov.… I’m sure that you are perfectly
honest and perhaps ready to do anything for me, only arrange it.”
I felt a passionate desire to help her in every way.
“This is what I’ll do,” I said, after a moment’s thought. “I’ll go myself to-
day and will see her for sure, for sure. I will manage so as to see her. I give
you my word of honour. Only let me confide in Shatov.”
“Tell him that I do desire it, and that I can’t wait any longer, but that I
wasn’t deceiving him just now. He went away perhaps because he’s very
honest and he didn’t like my seeming to deceive him. I wasn’t deceiving
him, I really do want to edit books and found a printing-press.…”
“He is honest, very honest,” I assented warmly.
“If it’s not arranged by to-morrow, though, I shall go myself whatever
happens, and even if every one were to know.”

“I can’t be with you before three o’clock to-morrow,” I observed, after a
moment’s deliberation.
“At three o’clock then. Then it was true what I imagined yesterday at
Stepan Trofimovitch’s, that you—are rather devoted to me?” she said with a
smile, hurriedly pressing my hand to say good-bye, and hurrying back to
the forsaken Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
I went out weighed down by my promise, and unable to understand what
had happened. I had seen a woman in real despair, not hesitating to
compromise herself by confiding in a man she hardly knew. Her womanly
smile at a moment so terrible for her and her hint that she had noticed my
feelings the day before sent a pang to my heart; but I felt sorry for her, very
sorry—that was all! Her secrets became at once something sacred for me,
and if anyone had begun to reveal them to me now, I think I should have
covered my ears, and should have refused to hear anything more. I only had
a presentiment of something … yet I was utterly at a loss to see how I could
do anything. What’s more I did not even yet understand exactly what I had
to arrange; an interview, but what sort of an interview? And how could I
bring them together? My only hope was Shatov, though I could be sure that
he wouldn’t help me in any way. But all the same, I hurried to him.
IV
I did not find him at home till past seven o’clock that evening. To my
surprise he had visitors with him—Alexey Nilitch, and another gentleman I
hardly knew, one Shigalov, the brother of Virginsky’s wife.
This gentleman must, I think, have been staying about two months in the
town; I don’t know where he came from. I had only heard that he had
written some sort of article in a progressive Petersburg magazine. Virginsky
had introduced me casually to him in the street. I had never in my life seen
in a man’s face so much despondency, gloom, and moroseness. He looked
as though he were expecting the destruction of the world, and not at some
indefinite time in accordance with prophecies, which might never be
fulfilled, but quite definitely, as though it were to be the day after to-
morrow at twenty-five minutes past ten. We hardly said a word to one
another on that occasion, but had simply shaken hands like two
conspirators. I was most struck by his ears, which were of unnatural size,

long, broad, and thick, sticking out in a peculiar way. His gestures were
slow and awkward.
If Liputin had imagined that a phalanstery might be established in our
province, this gentleman certainly knew the day and the hour when it would
be founded. He made a sinister impression on me. I was the more surprised
at finding him here, as Shatov was not fond of visitors.
I could hear from the stairs that they were talking very loud, all three at
once, and I fancy they were disputing; but as soon as I went in, they all
ceased speaking. They were arguing, standing up, but now they all suddenly
sat down, so that I had to sit down too. There was a stupid silence that was
not broken for fully three minutes. Though Shigalov knew me, he affected
not to know me, probably not from hostile feelings, but for no particular
reason. Alexey Nilitch and I bowed to one another in silence, and for some
reason did not shake hands. Shigalov began at last looking at me sternly and
frowningly, with the most naïve assurance that I should immediately get up
and go away. At last Shatov got up from his chair and the others jumped up
at once. They went out without saying good-bye. Shigalov only said in the
doorway to Shatov, who was seeing him out:
“Remember that you are bound to give an explanation.”
“Hang your explanation, and who the devil am I bound to?” said Shatov. He
showed them out and fastened the door with the latch.
“Snipes!” he said, looking at me, with a sort of wry smile.
His face looked angry, and it seemed strange to me that he spoke first.
When I had been to see him before (which was not often) it had usually
happened that he sat scowling in a corner, answered ill-humouredly and
only completely thawed and began to talk with pleasure after a considerable
time. Even so, when he was saying good-bye he always scowled, and let
one out as though he were getting rid of a personal enemy.
“I had tea yesterday with that Alexey Nilitch,” I observed. “I think he’s mad
on atheism.”
“Russian atheism has never gone further than making a joke,” growled
Shatov, putting up a new candle in place of an end that had burnt out.

“No, this one doesn’t seem to me a joker, I think he doesn’t know how to
talk, let alone trying to make jokes.”
“Men made of paper! It all comes from flunkeyism of thought,” Shatov
observed calmly, sitting down on a chair in the corner, and pressing the
palms of both hands on his knees.
“There’s hatred in it, too,” he went on, after a minute’s pause. “They’d be
the first to be terribly unhappy if Russia could be suddenly reformed, even
to suit their own ideas, and became extraordinarily prosperous and happy.
They’d have no one to hate then, no one to curse, nothing to find fault with.
There is nothing in it but an immense animal hatred for Russia which has
eaten into their organism.… And it isn’t a case of tears unseen by the world
under cover of a smile! There has never been a falser word said in Russia
than about those unseen tears,” he cried, almost with fury.
“Goodness only knows what you’re saying,” I laughed.
“Oh, you’re a ‘moderate liberal,’” said Shatov, smiling too. “Do you know,”
he went on suddenly, “I may have been talking nonsense about the
‘flunkeyism of thought.’ You will say to me no doubt directly, ‘it’s you who
are the son of a flunkey, but I’m not a flunkey.’”
“I wasn’t dreaming of such a thing.… What are you saying!”
“You need not apologise. I’m not afraid of you. Once I was only the son of
a flunkey, but now I’ve become a flunkey myself, like you. Our Russian
liberal is a flunkey before everything, and is only looking for someone
whose boots he can clean.”
“What boots? What allegory is this?”
“Allegory, indeed! You are laughing, I see.… Stepan Trofimovitch said
truly that I lie under a stone, crushed but not killed, and do nothing but
wriggle. It was a good comparison of his.”
“Stepan Trofimovitch declares that you are mad over the Germans,” I
laughed. “We’ve borrowed something from them anyway.”
“We took twenty kopecks, but we gave up a hundred roubles of our own.”

We were silent a minute.
“He got that sore lying in America.”
“Who? What sore?”
“I mean Kirillov. I spent four months with him lying on the floor of a hut.”
“Why, have you been in America?” I asked, surprised. “You never told me
about it.”
“What is there to tell? The year before last we spent our last farthing, three
of us, going to America in an emigrant steamer, to test the life of the
American workman on ourselves, and to verify by personal experiment the
state of a man in the hardest social conditions. That was our object in going
there.”
“Good Lord!” I laughed. “You’d much better have gone somewhere in our
province at harvest-time if you wanted to ‘make a personal experiment’
instead of bolting to America.”
“We hired ourselves out as workmen to an exploiter; there were six of us
Russians working for him—students, even landowners coming from their
estates, some officers, too, and all with the same grand object. Well, so we
worked, sweated, wore ourselves out; Kirillov and I were exhausted at last;
fell ill—went away—we couldn’t stand it. Our employer cheated us when
he paid us off; instead of thirty dollars, as he had agreed, he paid me eight
and Kirillov fifteen; he beat us, too, more than once. So then we were left
without work, Kirillov and I, and we spent four months lying on the floor in
that little town. He thought of one thing and I thought of another.”
“You don’t mean to say your employer beat you? In America? How you
must have sworn at him!”
“Not a bit of it. On the contrary, Kirillov and I made up our minds from the
first that we Russians were like little children beside the Americans, and
that one must be born in America, or at least live for many years with
Americans to be on a level with them. And do you know, if we were asked a
dollar for a thing worth a farthing, we used to pay it with pleasure, in fact
with enthusiasm. We approved of everything: spiritualism, lynch-law,

revolvers, tramps. Once when we were travelling a fellow slipped his hand
into my pocket, took my brush, and began brushing his hair with it. Kirillov
and I only looked at one another, and made up our minds that that was the
right thing and that we liked it very much.…”
“The strange thing is that with us all this is not only in the brain but is
carried out in practice,” I observed.
“Men made of paper,” Shatov repeated.
“But to cross the ocean in an emigrant steamer, though, to go to an
unknown country, even to make a personal experiment and all that—by
Jove … there really is a large-hearted staunchness about it.… But how did
you get out of it?”
“I wrote to a man in Europe and he sent me a hundred roubles.”
As Shatov talked he looked doggedly at the ground as he always did, even
when he was excited. At this point he suddenly raised his head.
“Do you want to know the man’s name?”
“Who was it?”
“Nikolay Stavrogin.”
He got up suddenly, turned to his limewood writing-table and began
searching for something on it. There was a vague, though well-
authenticated rumour among us that Shatov’s wife had at one time had a
liaison with Nikolay Stavrogin, in Paris, and just about two years ago, that
is when Shatov was in America. It is true that this was long after his wife
had left him in Geneva.
“If so, what possesses him now to bring his name forward and to lay stress
on it?” I thought.
“I haven’t paid him back yet,” he said, turning suddenly to me again, and
looking at me intently he sat down in the same place as before in the corner,
and asked abruptly, in quite a different voice:
“You have come no doubt with some object. What do you want?”

I told him everything immediately, in its exact historical order, and added
that though I had time to think it over coolly after the first excitement was
over, I was more puzzled than ever. I saw that it meant something very
important to Lizaveta Nikolaevna. I was extremely anxious to help her, but
the trouble was that I didn’t know how to keep the promise I had made her,
and didn’t even quite understand now what I had promised her. Then I
assured him impressively once more that she had not meant to deceive him,
and had had no thought of doing so; that there had been some
misunderstanding, and that she had been very much hurt by the
extraordinary way in which he had gone off that morning.
He listened very attentively.
“Perhaps I was stupid this morning, as I usually am.… Well, if she didn’t
understand why I went away like that … so much the better for her.”
He got up, went to the door, opened it, and began listening on the stairs.
“Do you want to see that person yourself?”
“That’s just what I wanted, but how is it to be done?” I cried, delighted.
“Let’s simply go down while she’s alone. When he comes in he’ll beat her
horribly if he finds out we’ve been there. I often go in on the sly. I went for
him this morning when he began beating her again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I dragged him off her by the hair. He tried to beat me, but I frightened him,
and so it ended. I’m afraid he’ll come back drunk, and won’t forget it—
he’ll give her a bad beating because of it.”
We went downstairs at once.
The Lebyadkins’ door was shut but not locked, and we were able to go in.
Their lodging consisted of two nasty little rooms, with smoke-begrimed
walls on which the filthy wall-paper literally hung in tatters. It had been
used for some years as an eating-house, until Filipov, the tavern-keeper,
moved to another house. The other rooms below what had been the eating-
house were now shut up, and these two were all the Lebyadkins had. The
furniture consisted of plain benches and deal tables, except for an old arm-

chair that had lost its arms. In the second room there was the bedstead that
belonged to Mlle. Lebyadkin standing in the corner, covered with a chintz
quilt; the captain himself went to bed anywhere on the floor, often without
undressing. Everything was in disorder, wet and filthy; a huge soaking rag
lay in the middle of the floor in the first room, and a battered old shoe lay
beside it in the wet. It was evident that no one looked after anything here.
The stove was not heated, food was not cooked; they had not even a
samovar as Shatov told me. The captain had come to the town with his
sister utterly destitute, and had, as Liputin said, at first actually gone from
house to house begging. But having unexpectedly received some money, he
had taken to drinking at once, and had become so besotted that he was
incapable of looking after things.
Mlle. Lebyadkin, whom I was so anxious to see, was sitting quietly at a deal
kitchen table on a bench in the corner of the inner room, not making a
sound. When we opened the door she did not call out to us or even move
from her place. Shatov said that the door into the passage would not lock
and it had once stood wide open all night. By the dim light of a thin candle
in an iron candlestick, I made out a woman of about thirty, perhaps, sickly
and emaciated, wearing an old dress of dark cotton material, with her long
neck uncovered, her scanty dark hair twisted into a knot on the nape of her
neck, no larger than the fist of a two-year-old child. She looked at us rather
cheerfully. Besides the candlestick, she had on the table in front of her a
little peasant looking-glass, an old pack of cards, a tattered book of songs,
and a white roll of German bread from which one or two bites had been
taken. It was noticeable that Mlle. Lebyadkin used powder and rouge, and
painted her lips. She also blackened her eyebrows, which were fine, long,
and black enough without that. Three long wrinkles stood sharply
conspicuous across her high, narrow forehead in spite of the powder on it. I
already knew that she was lame, but on this occasion she did not attempt to
get up or walk. At some time, perhaps in early youth, that wasted face may
have been pretty; but her soft, gentle grey eyes were remarkable even now.
There was something dreamy and sincere in her gentle, almost joyful,
expression. This gentle serene joy, which was reflected also in her smile,
astonished me after all I had heard of the Cossack whip and her brother’s
violence. Strange to say, instead of the oppressive repulsion and almost
dread one usually feels in the presence of these creatures afflicted by God, I

felt it almost pleasant to look at her from the first moment, and my heart
was filled afterwards with pity in which there was no trace of aversion.
“This is how she sits literally for days together, utterly alone, without
moving; she tries her fortune with the cards, or looks in the looking-glass,”
said Shatov, pointing her out to me from the doorway. “He doesn’t feed her,
you know. The old woman in the lodge brings her something sometimes out
of charity; how can they leave her all alone like this with a candle!”
To my surprise Shatov spoke aloud, just as though she were not in the
room.
“Good day, Shatushka!” Mlle. Lebyadkin said genially.
“I’ve brought you a visitor, Marya Timofyevna,” said Shatov.
“The visitor is very welcome. I don’t know who it is you’ve brought, I don’t
seem to remember him.” She scrutinised me intently from behind the
candle, and turned again at once to Shatov (and she took no more notice of
me for the rest of the conversation, as though I had not been near her).
“Are you tired of walking up and down alone in your garret?” she laughed,
displaying two rows of magnificent teeth.
“I was tired of it, and I wanted to come and see you.”
Shatov moved a bench up to the table, sat down on it and made me sit
beside him.
“I’m always glad to have a talk, though you’re a funny person, Shatushka,
just like a monk. When did you comb your hair last? Let me do it for you.”
And she pulled a little comb out of her pocket. “I don’t believe you’ve
touched it since I combed it last.”
“Well, I haven’t got a comb,” said Shatov, laughing too.
“Really? Then I’ll give you mine; only remind me, not this one but
another.”
With a most serious expression she set to work to comb his hair. She even
parted it on one side; drew back a little, looked to see whether it was right

and put the comb back in her pocket.
“Do you know what, Shatushka?” She shook her head. “You may be a very
sensible man but you’re dull. It’s strange for me to look at all of you. I don’t
understand how it is people are dull. Sadness is not dullness. I’m happy.”
“And are you happy when your brother’s here?”
“You mean Lebyadkin? He’s my footman. And I don’t care whether he’s
here or not. I call to him: ‘Lebyadkin, bring the water!’ or ‘Lebyadkin, bring
my shoes!’ and he runs. Sometimes one does wrong and can’t help laughing
at him.”
“That’s just how it is,” said Shatov, addressing me aloud without ceremony.
“She treats him just like a footman. I’ve heard her myself calling to him,
‘Lebyadkin, give me some water!’ And she laughed as she said it. The only
difference is that he doesn’t fetch the water but beats her for it; but she isn’t
a bit afraid of him. She has some sort of nervous fits, almost every day, and
they are destroying her memory so that afterwards she forgets everything
that’s just happened, and is always in a muddle over time. You imagine she
remembers how you came in; perhaps she does remember, but no doubt she
has changed everything to please herself, and she takes us now for different
people from what we are, though she knows I’m ‘Shatushka.’ It doesn’t
matter my speaking aloud, she soon leaves off listening to people who talk
to her, and plunges into dreams. Yes, plunges. She’s an extraordinary person
for dreaming; she’ll sit for eight hours, for whole days together in the same
place. You see there’s a roll lying there, perhaps she’s only taken one bite at
it since the morning, and she’ll finish it to-morrow. Now she’s begun trying
her fortune on cards.…”
“I keep trying my fortune, Shatushka, but it doesn’t come out right,” Marya
Timofyevna put in suddenly, catching the last word, and without looking at
it she put out her left hand for the roll (she had heard something about the
roll too very likely). She got hold of the roll at last and after keeping it for
some time in her left hand, while her attention was distracted by the
conversation which sprang up again, she put it back again on the table
unconsciously without having taken a bite of it.

“It always comes out the same, a journey, a wicked man, somebody’s
treachery, a death-bed, a letter, unexpected news. I think it’s all nonsense.
Shatushka, what do you think? If people can tell lies why shouldn’t a card?”
She suddenly threw the cards together again. “I said the same thing to
Mother Praskovya, she’s a very venerable woman, she used to run to my
cell to tell her fortune on the cards, without letting the Mother Superior
know. Yes, and she wasn’t the only one who came to me. They sigh, and
shake their heads at me, they talk it over while I laugh. ‘Where are you
going to get a letter from, Mother Praskovya,’ I say, ‘when you haven’t had
one for twelve years?’ Her daughter had been taken away to Turkey by her
husband, and for twelve years there had been no sight nor sound of her.
Only I was sitting the next evening at tea with the Mother Superior (she was
a princess by birth), there was some lady there too, a visitor, a great
dreamer, and a little monk from Athos was sitting there too, a rather absurd
man to my thinking. What do you think, Shatushka, that monk from Athos
had brought Mother Praskovya a letter from her daughter in Turkey, that
morning—so much for the knave of diamonds—unexpected news! We were
drinking our tea, and the monk from Athos said to the Mother Superior,
‘Blessed Mother Superior, God has blessed your convent above all things in
that you preserve so great a treasure in its precincts,’ said he. ‘What treasure
is that?’ asked the Mother Superior. ‘The Mother Lizaveta, the Blessed.’
This Lizaveta the Blessed was enshrined in the nunnery wall, in a cage
seven feet long and five feet high, and she had been sitting there for
seventeen years in nothing but a hempen shift, summer and winter, and she
always kept pecking at the hempen cloth with a straw or a twig of some
sort, and she never said a word, and never combed her hair, or washed, for
seventeen years. In the winter they used to put a sheepskin in for her, and
every day a piece of bread and a jug of water. The pilgrims gaze at her, sigh
and exclaim, and make offerings of money. ‘A treasure you’ve pitched on,’
answered the Mother Superior—(she was angry, she disliked Lizaveta
dreadfully)—‘Lizaveta only sits there out of spite, out of pure obstinacy, it
is nothing but hypocrisy.’ I didn’t like this; I was thinking at the time of
shutting myself up too. ‘I think,’ said I, ‘that God and nature are just the
same thing.’ They all cried out with one voice at me, ‘Well, now!’ The
Mother Superior laughed, whispered something to the lady and called me
up, petted me, and the lady gave me a pink ribbon. Would you like me to
show it to you? And the monk began to admonish me. But he talked so

kindly, so humbly, and so wisely, I suppose. I sat and listened. ‘Do you
understand?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t understand a word, but leave
me quite alone.’ Ever since then they’ve left me in peace, Shatushka. And at
that time an old woman who was living in the convent doing penance for
prophesying the future, whispered to me as she was coming out of church,
‘What is the mother of God? What do you think?’ ‘The great mother,’ I
answer, ‘the hope of the human race.’ ‘Yes,’ she answered, ‘the mother of
God is the great mother—the damp earth, and therein lies great joy for men.
And every earthly woe and every earthly tear is a joy for us; and when you
water the earth with your tears a foot deep, you will rejoice at everything at
once, and your sorrow will be no more, such is the prophecy.’ That word
sank into my heart at the time. Since then when I bow down to the ground
at my prayers, I’ve taken to kissing the earth. I kiss it and weep. And let me
tell you, Shatushka, there’s no harm in those tears; and even if one has no
grief, one’s tears flow from joy. The tears flow of themselves, that’s the
truth. I used to go out to the shores of the lake; on one side was our convent
and on the other the pointed mountain, they called it the Peak. I used to go
up that mountain, facing the east, fall down to the ground, and weep and
weep, and I don’t know how long I wept, and I don’t remember or know
anything about it. I would get up, and turn back when the sun was setting, it
was so big, and splendid and glorious—do you like looking at the sun,
Shatushka? It’s beautiful but sad. I would turn to the east again, and the
shadow, the shadow of our mountain was flying like an arrow over our lake,
long, long and narrow, stretching a mile beyond, right up to the island on
the lake and cutting that rocky island right in two, and as it cut it in two, the
sun would set altogether and suddenly all would be darkness. And then I
used to be quite miserable, suddenly I used to remember, I’m afraid of the
dark, Shatushka. And what I wept for most was my baby.…”
“Why, had you one?” And Shatov, who had been listening attentively all the
time, nudged me with his elbow.
“Why, of course. A little rosy baby with tiny little nails, and my only grief is
I can’t remember whether it was a boy or a girl. Sometimes I remember it
was a boy, and sometimes it was a girl. And when he was born, I wrapped
him in cambric and lace, and put pink ribbons on him, strewed him with
flowers, got him ready, said prayers over him. I took him away un-
christened and carried him through the forest, and I was afraid of the forest,

and I was frightened, and what I weep for most is that I had a baby and I
never had a husband.”
“Perhaps you had one?” Shatov queried cautiously.
“You’re absurd, Shatushka, with your reflections. I had, perhaps I had, but
what’s the use of my having had one, if it’s just the same as though I hadn’t.
There’s an easy riddle for you. Guess it!” she laughed.
“Where did you take your baby?”
“I took it to the pond,” she said with a sigh.
Shatov nudged me again.
“And what if you never had a baby and all this is only a wild dream?”
“You ask me a hard question, Shatushka,” she answered dreamily, without a
trace of surprise at such a question. “I can’t tell you anything about that,
perhaps I hadn’t; I think that’s only your curiosity. I shan’t leave off crying
for him anyway, I couldn’t have dreamt it.” And big tears glittered in her
eyes. “Shatushka, Shatushka, is it true that your wife ran away from you?”
She suddenly put both hands on his shoulders, and looked at him pityingly.
“Don’t be angry, I feel sick myself. Do you know, Shatushka, I’ve had a
dream: he came to me again, he beckoned me, called me. ‘My little puss,’
he cried to me, ‘little puss, come to me!’ And I was more delighted at that
‘little puss’ than anything; he loves me, I thought.”
“Perhaps he will come in reality,” Shatov muttered in an undertone.
“No, Shatushka, that’s a dream.… He can’t come in reality. You know the
song:

‘A new fine house I do not crave,
This tiny cell’s enough for me;
There will I dwell my soul to save
And ever pray to God for thee.’

Ach, Shatushka, Shatushka, my dear, why do you never ask me about
anything?”

“Why, you won’t tell. That’s why I don’t ask.”
“I won’t tell, I won’t tell,” she answered quickly. “You may kill me, I won’t
tell. You may burn me, I won’t tell. And whatever I had to bear I’d never
tell, people won’t find out!”
“There, you see. Every one has something of their own,” Shatov said, still
more softly, his head drooping lower and lower.
“But if you were to ask perhaps I should tell, perhaps I should!” she
repeated ecstatically. “Why don’t you ask? Ask, ask me nicely, Shatushka,
perhaps I shall tell you. Entreat me, Shatushka, so that I shall consent of
myself. Shatushka, Shatushka!”
But Shatushka was silent. There was complete silence lasting a minute.
Tears slowly trickled down her painted cheeks. She sat forgetting her two
hands on Shatov’s shoulders, but no longer looking at him.
“Ach, what is it to do with me, and it’s a sin.” Shatov suddenly got up from
the bench.
“Get up!” He angrily pulled the bench from under me and put it back where
it stood before.
“He’ll be coming, so we must mind he doesn’t guess. It’s time we were
off.”
“Ach, you’re talking of my footman,” Marya Timofyevna laughed
suddenly. “You’re afraid of him. Well, good-bye, dear visitors, but listen for
one minute, I’ve something to tell you. That Nilitch came here with Filipov,
the landlord, a red beard, and my fellow had flown at me just then, so the
landlord caught hold of him and pulled him about the room while he
shouted ‘It’s not my fault, I’m suffering for another man’s sin!’ So would
you believe it, we all burst out laughing.…”
“Ach, Timofyevna, why it was I, not the red beard, it was I pulled him away
from you by his hair, this morning; the landlord came the day before
yesterday to make a row; you’ve mixed it up.”
“Stay, I really have mixed it up. Perhaps it was you. Why dispute about
trifles? What does it matter to him who it is gives him a beating?” She

laughed.
“Come along!” Shatov pulled me. “The gate’s creaking, he’ll find us and
beat her.”
And before we had time to run out on to the stairs we heard a drunken shout
and a shower of oaths at the gate.
Shatov let me into his room and locked the door.
“You’ll have to stay a minute if you don’t want a scene. He’s squealing like
a little pig, he must have stumbled over the gate again. He falls flat every
time.”
We didn’t get off without a scene, however.
VI
Shatov stood at the closed door of his room and listened; suddenly he
sprang back.
“He’s coming here, I knew he would,” he whispered furiously. “Now
there’ll be no getting rid of him till midnight.”
Several violent thumps of a fist on the door followed.
“Shatov, Shatov, open!” yelled the captain. “Shatov, friend!

‘I have come, to thee to tell thee
That the sun doth r-r-rise apace,
That the forest glows and tr-r-rembles
In … the fire of … his … embrace.
Tell thee I have waked, God damn thee,
Wakened under the birch-twigs.…’

(“As it might be under the birch-rods, ha ha!”)

‘Every little bird … is … thirsty,
Says I’m going to … have a drink,
But I don’t … know what to drink.…’

“Damn his stupid curiosity! Shatov, do you understand how good it is to be
alive!”
“Don’t answer!” Shatov whispered to me again.
“Open the door! Do you understand that there’s something higher than
brawling … in mankind; there are moments of an hon-hon-honourable
man.… Shatov, I’m good; I’ll forgive you.… Shatov, damn the manifestoes,
eh?”
Silence.
“Do you understand, you ass, that I’m in love, that I’ve bought a dress-coat,
look, the garb of love, fifteen roubles; a captain’s love calls for the niceties
of style.… Open the door!” he roared savagely all of a sudden, and he
began furiously banging with his fists again.
“Go to hell!” Shatov roared suddenly.
“S-s-slave! Bond-slave, and your sister’s a slave, a bondswoman … a th …
th … ief!”
“And you sold your sister.”
“That’s a lie! I put up with the libel though. I could with one word … do
you understand what she is?”
“What?” Shatov at once drew near the door inquisitively.
“But will you understand?”
“Yes, I shall understand, tell me what?”
“I’m not afraid to say! I’m never afraid to say anything in public!…”
“You not afraid? A likely story,” said Shatov, taunting him, and nodding to
me to listen.
“Me afraid?”
“Yes, I think you are.”
“Me afraid?”

“Well then, tell away if you’re not afraid of your master’s whip.… You’re a
coward, though you are a captain!”
“I … I … she’s … she’s …” faltered Lebyadkin in a voice shaking with
excitement.
“Well?” Shatov put his ear to the door.
A silence followed, lasting at least half a minute.
“Sc-ou-oundrel!” came from the other side of the door at last, and the
captain hurriedly beat a retreat downstairs, puffing like a samovar,
stumbling on every step.
“Yes, he’s a sly one, and won’t give himself away even when he’s drunk.”
Shatov moved away from the door.
“What’s it all about?” I asked.
Shatov waved aside the question, opened the door and began listening on
the stairs again. He listened a long while, and even stealthily descended a
few steps. At last he came back.
“There’s nothing to be heard; he isn’t beating her; he must have flopped
down at once to go to sleep. It’s time for you to go.”
“Listen, Shatov, what am I to gather from all this?”
“Oh, gather what you like!” he answered in a weary and disgusted voice,
and he sat down to his writing-table.
I went away. An improbable idea was growing stronger and stronger in my
mind. I thought of the next day with distress.…
VII
This “next day,” the very Sunday which was to decide Stepan
Trofimovitch’s fate irrevocably, was one of the most memorable days in my
chronicle. It was a day of surprises, a day that solved past riddles and
suggested new ones, a day of startling revelations, and still more hopeless
perplexity. In the morning, as the reader is already aware, I had by Varvara

Petrovna’s particular request to accompany my friend on his visit to her, and
at three o’clock in the afternoon I had to be with Lizaveta Nikolaevna in
order to tell her—I did not know what—and to assist her—I did not know
how. And meanwhile it all ended as no one could have expected. In a word,
it was a day of wonderful coincidences.
To begin with, when Stepan Trofimovitch and I arrived at Varvara
Petrovna’s at twelve o’clock punctually, the time she had fixed, we did not
find her at home; she had not yet come back from church. My poor friend
was so disposed, or, more accurately speaking, so indisposed that this
circumstance crushed him at once; he sank almost helpless into an arm-
chair in the drawing-room. I suggested a glass of water; but in spite of his
pallor and the trembling of his hands, he refused it with dignity. His get-up
for the occasion was, by the way, extremely recherché: a shirt of batiste and
embroidered, almost fit for a ball, a white tie, a new hat in his hand, new
straw-coloured gloves, and even a suspicion of scent. We had hardly sat
down when Shatov was shown in by the butler, obviously also by official
invitation. Stepan Trofimovitch was rising to shake hands with him, but
Shatov, after looking attentively at us both, turned away into a corner, and
sat down there without even nodding to us. Stepan Trofimovitch looked at
me in dismay again.
We sat like this for some minutes longer in complete silence. Stepan
Trofimovitch suddenly began whispering something to me very quickly, but
I could not catch it; and indeed, he was so agitated himself that he broke off
without finishing. The butler came in once more, ostensibly to set
something straight on the table, more probably to take a look at us.
Shatov suddenly addressed him with a loud question:
“Alexey Yegorytch, do you know whether Darya Pavlovna has gone with
her?”
“Varvara Petrovna was pleased to drive to the cathedral alone, and Darya
Pavlovna was pleased to remain in her room upstairs, being indisposed,”
Alexey Yegorytch announced formally and reprovingly.
My poor friend again stole a hurried and agitated glance at me, so that at
last I turned away from him. Suddenly a carriage rumbled at the entrance,

and some commotion at a distance in the house made us aware of the lady’s
return. We all leapt up from our easy chairs, but again a surprise awaited us;
we heard the noise of many footsteps, so our hostess must have returned not
alone, and this certainly was rather strange, since she had fixed that time
herself. Finally, we heard some one come in with strange rapidity as though
running, in a way that Varvara Petrovna could not have come in. And, all at
once she almost flew into the room, panting and extremely agitated. After
her a little later and much more quickly Lizaveta Nikolaevna came in, and
with her, hand in hand, Marya Timofyevna Lebyadkin! If I had seen this in
my dreams, even then I should not have believed it.
To explain their utterly unexpected appearance, I must go back an hour and
describe more in detail an extraordinary adventure which had befallen
Varvara Petrovna in church.
In the first place almost the whole town, that is, of course, all of the upper
stratum of society, were assembled in the cathedral. It was known that the
governor’s wife was to make her appearance there for the first time since
her arrival amongst us. I must mention that there were already rumours that
she was a free-thinker, and a follower of “the new principles.” All the ladies
were also aware that she would be dressed with magnificence and
extraordinary elegance. And so the costumes of our ladies were elaborate
and gorgeous for the occasion.
Only Varvara Petrovna was modestly dressed in black as she always was,
and had been for the last four years. She had taken her usual place in church
in the first row on the left, and a footman in livery had put down a velvet
cushion for her to kneel on; everything in fact, had been as usual. But it was
noticed, too, that all through the service she prayed with extreme fervour. It
was even asserted afterwards when people recalled it, that she had had tears
in her eyes. The service was over at last, and our chief priest, Father Pavel,
came out to deliver a solemn sermon. We liked his sermons and thought
very highly of them. We used even to try to persuade him to print them, but
he never could make up his mind to. On this occasion the sermon was a
particularly long one.
And behold, during the sermon a lady drove up to the church in an old
fashioned hired droshky, that is, one in which the lady could only sit

sideways, holding on to the driver’s sash, shaking at every jolt like a blade
of grass in the breeze. Such droshkys are still to be seen in our town.
Stopping at the corner of the cathedral—for there were a number of
carriages, and mounted police too, at the gates—the lady sprang out of the
droshky and handed the driver four kopecks in silver.
“Isn’t it enough, Vanya?” she cried, seeing his grimace. “It’s all I’ve got,”
she added plaintively.
“Well, there, bless you. I took you without fixing the price,” said the driver
with a hopeless gesture, and looking at her he added as though reflecting:
“And it would be a sin to take advantage of you too.”
Then, thrusting his leather purse into his bosom, he touched up his horse
and drove off, followed by the jeers of the drivers standing near. Jeers, and
wonder too, followed the lady as she made her way to the cathedral gates,
between the carriages and the footmen waiting for their masters to come
out. And indeed, there certainly was something extraordinary and surprising
to every one in such a person’s suddenly appearing in the street among
people. She was painfully thin and she limped, she was heavily powdered
and rouged; her long neck was quite bare, she had neither kerchief nor
pelisse; she had nothing on but an old dark dress in spite of the cold and
windy, though bright, September day. She was bareheaded, and her hair was
twisted up into a tiny knot, and on the right side of it was stuck an artificial
rose, such as are used to dedicate cherubs sold in Palm week. I had noticed
just such a one with a wreath of paper roses in a corner under the ikons
when I was at Marya Timofyevna’s the day before. To put a finishing-touch
to it, though the lady walked with modestly downcast eyes there was a sly
and merry smile on her face. If she had lingered a moment longer, she
would perhaps not have been allowed to enter the cathedral. But she
succeeded in slipping by, and entering the building, gradually pressed
forward.
Though it was half-way through the sermon, and the dense crowd that filled
the cathedral was listening to it with absorbed and silent attention, yet
several pairs of eyes glanced with curiosity and amazement at the new-
comer. She sank on to the floor, bowed her painted face down to it, lay there
a long time, unmistakably weeping; but raising her head again and getting

up from her knees, she soon recovered, and was diverted. Gaily and with
evident and intense enjoyment she let her eyes rove over the faces, and over
the walls of the cathedral. She looked with particular curiosity at some of
the ladies, even standing on tip-toe to look at them, and even laughed once
or twice, giggling strangely. But the sermon was over, and they brought out
the cross. The governor’s wife was the first to go up to the cross, but she
stopped short two steps from it, evidently wishing to make way for Varvara
Petrovna, who, on her side, moved towards it quite directly as though she
noticed no one in front of her. There was an obvious and, in its way, clever
malice implied in this extraordinary act of deference on the part of the
governor’s wife; every one felt this; Varvara Petrovna must have felt it too;
but she went on as before, apparently noticing no one, and with the same
unfaltering air of dignity kissed the cross, and at once turned to leave the
cathedral. A footman in livery cleared the way for her, though every one
stepped back spontaneously to let her pass. But just as she was going out, in
the porch the closely packed mass of people blocked the way for a moment.
Varvara Petrovna stood still, and suddenly a strange, extraordinary creature,
the woman with the paper rose on her head, squeezed through the people,
and fell on her knees before her. Varvara Petrovna, who was not easily
disconcerted, especially in public, looked at her sternly and with dignity.
I hasten to observe here, as briefly as possible, that though Varvara Petrovna
had become, it was said, excessively careful and even stingy, yet sometimes
she was not sparing of money, especially for benevolent objects. She was a
member of a charitable society in the capital. In the last famine year she had
sent five hundred roubles to the chief committee for the relief of the
sufferers, and people talked of it in the town. Moreover, just before the
appointment of the new governor, she had been on the very point of
founding a local committee of ladies to assist the poorest mothers in the
town and in the province. She was severely censured among us for
ambition; but Varvara Petrovna’s well-known strenuousness and, at the
same time, her persistence nearly triumphed over all obstacles. The society
was almost formed, and the original idea embraced a wider and wider scope
in the enthusiastic mind of the foundress. She was already dreaming of
founding a similar society in Moscow, and the gradual expansion of its
influence over all the provinces of Russia. And now, with the sudden
change of governor, everything was at a standstill; and the new governor’s

wife had, it was said, already uttered in society some biting, and, what was
worse, apt and sensible remarks about the impracticability of the
fundamental idea of such a committee, which was, with additions of course,
repeated to Varvara Petrovna. God alone knows the secrets of men’s hearts;
but I imagine that Varvara Petrovna stood still now at the very cathedral
gates positively with a certain pleasure, knowing that the governor’s wife
and, after her, all the congregation, would have to pass by immediately, and
“let her see for herself how little I care what she thinks, and what pointed
things she says about the vanity of my benevolence. So much for all of
you!”
“What is it my dear? What are you asking?” said Varvara Petrovna, looking
more attentively at the kneeling woman before her, who gazed at her with a
fearfully panic-stricken, shame-faced, but almost reverent expression, and
suddenly broke into the same strange giggle.
“What does she want? Who is she?”
Varvara Petrovna bent an imperious and inquiring gaze on all around her.
Every one was silent.
“You are unhappy? You are in need of help?”
“I am in need.… I have come …” faltered the “unhappy” creature, in a
voice broken with emotion. “I have come only to kiss your hand.…”
Again she giggled. With the childish look with which little children caress
someone, begging for a favour, she stretched forward to seize Varvara
Petrovna’s hand, but, as though panic-stricken, drew her hands back.
“Is that all you have come for?” said Varvara Petrovna, with a
compassionate smile; but at once she drew her mother-of-pearl purse out of
her pocket, took out a ten-rouble note and gave it to the unknown. The latter
took it. Varvara Petrovna was much interested and evidently did not look
upon her as an ordinary low-class beggar.
“I say, she gave her ten roubles!” someone said in the crowd.
“Let me kiss your hand,” faltered the unknown, holding tight in the fingers
of her left hand the corner of the ten-rouble note, which fluttered in the

draught. Varvara Petrovna frowned slightly, and with a serious, almost
severe, face held out her hand. The cripple kissed it with reverence. Her
grateful eyes shone with positive ecstasy. At that moment the governor’s
wife came up, and a whole crowd of ladies and high officials flocked after
her. The governor’s wife was forced to stand still for a moment in the crush;
many people stopped.
“You are trembling. Are you cold?” Varvara Petrovna observed suddenly,
and flinging off her pelisse which a footman caught in mid-air, she took
from her own shoulders a very expensive black shawl, and with her own
hands wrapped it round the bare neck of the still kneeling woman.
“But get up, get up from your knees I beg you!”
The woman got up.
“Where do you live? Is it possible no one knows where she lives?” Varvara
Petrovna glanced round impatiently again. But the crowd was different
now: she saw only the faces of acquaintances, people in society, surveying
the scene, some with severe astonishment, others with sly curiosity and at
the same time guileless eagerness for a sensation, while others positively
laughed.
“I believe her name’s Lebyadkin,” a good-natured person volunteered at last
in answer to Varvara Petrovna. It was our respectable and respected
merchant Andreev, a man in spectacles with a grey beard, wearing Russian
dress and holding a high round hat in his hands. “They live in the Filipovs’
house in Bogoyavlensky Street.”
“Lebyadkin? Filipovs’ house? I have heard something.… Thank you, Nikon
Semyonitch. But who is this Lebyadkin?”
“He calls himself a captain, a man, it must be said, not over careful in his
behaviour. And no doubt this is his sister. She must have escaped from
under control,” Nikon Semyonitch went on, dropping his voice, and
glancing significantly at Varvara Petrovna.
“I understand. Thank you, Nikon Semyonitch. Your name is Mlle.
Lebyadkin?”

“No, my name’s not Lebyadkin.”
“Then perhaps your brother’s name is Lebyadkin?”
“My brother’s name is Lebyadkin.”
“This is what I’ll do, I’ll take you with me now, my dear, and you shall be
driven from me to your family. Would you like to go with me?”
“Ach, I should!” cried Mlle. Lebyadkin, clasping her hands.
“Auntie, auntie, take me with you too!” the voice of Lizaveta Nikolaevna
cried suddenly.
I must observe that Lizaveta Nikolaevna had come to the cathedral with the
governor’s wife, while Praskovya Ivanovna had by the doctor’s orders gone
for a drive in her carriage, taking Mavriky Nikolaevitch to entertain her.
Liza suddenly left the governor’s wife and ran up to Varvara Petrovna.
“My dear, you know I’m always glad to have you, but what will your
mother say?” Varvara Petrovna began majestically, but she became
suddenly confused, noticing Liza’s extraordinary agitation.
“Auntie, auntie, I must come with you!” Liza implored, kissing Varvara
Petrovna.
“Mais qu’avez vous donc, Lise?” the governor’s wife asked with expressive
wonder.
“Ah, forgive me, darling, chère cousine, I’m going to auntie’s.”
Liza turned in passing to her unpleasantly surprised chère cousine, and
kissed her twice.
“And tell maman to follow me to auntie’s directly; maman meant, fully
meant to come and see you, she said so this morning herself, I forgot to tell
you,” Liza pattered on. “I beg your pardon, don’t be angry, Julie, chère …
cousine.… Auntie, I’m ready!”
“If you don’t take me with you, auntie, I’ll run after your carriage,
screaming,” she whispered rapidly and despairingly in Varvara Petrovna’s
ear; it was lucky that no one heard. Varvara Petrovna positively staggered

back, and bent her penetrating gaze on the mad girl. That gaze settled
everything. She made up her mind to take Liza with her.
“We must put an end to this!” broke from her lips. “Very well, I’ll take you
with pleasure, Liza,” she added aloud, “if Yulia Mihailovna is willing to let
you come, of course.” With a candid air and straightforward dignity she
addressed the governor’s wife directly.
“Oh, certainly, I don’t want to deprive her of such a pleasure especially as I
am myself …” Yulia Mihailovna lisped with amazing affability—“I myself
… know well what a fantastic, wilful little head it is!” Yulia Mihailovna
gave a charming smile.
“I thank you extremely,” said Varvara Petrovna, with a courteous and
dignified bow.
“And I am the more gratified,” Yulia Mihailovna went on, lisping almost
rapturously, flushing all over with agreeable excitement, “that, apart from
the pleasure of being with you Liza should be carried away by such an
excellent, I may say lofty, feeling … of compassion …” (she glanced at the
“unhappy creature”) “and … and at the very portal of the temple.…”
“Such a feeling does you honour,” Varvara Petrovna approved
magnificently. Yulia Mihailovna impulsively held out her hand and Varvara
Petrovna with perfect readiness touched it with her fingers. The general
effect was excellent, the faces of some of those present beamed with
pleasure, some bland and insinuating smiles were to be seen.
In short it was made manifest to every one in the town that it was not Yulia
Mihailovna who had up till now neglected Varvara Petrovna in not calling
upon her, but on the contrary that Varvara Petrovna had “kept Yulia
Mihailovna within bounds at a distance, while the latter would have
hastened to pay her a visit, going on foot perhaps if necessary, had she been
fully assured that Varvara Petrovna would not turn her away.” And Varvara
Petrovna’s prestige was enormously increased.
“Get in, my dear.” Varvara Petrovna motioned Mlle. Lebyadkin towards the
carriage which had driven up.

The “unhappy creature” hurried gleefully to the carriage door, and there the
footman lifted her in.
“What! You’re lame!” cried Varvara Petrovna, seeming quite alarmed, and
she turned pale. (Every one noticed it at the time, but did not understand it.)
The carriage rolled away. Varvara Petrovna’s house was very near the
cathedral. Liza told me afterwards that Miss Lebyadkin laughed hysterically
for the three minutes that the drive lasted, while Varvara Petrovna sat “as
though in a mesmeric sleep.” Liza’s own expression.

CHAPTER V. THE SUBTLE SERPENT
I
VARVARA PETROVNA rang the bell and threw herself into an easy chair
by the window.
“Sit here, my dear.” She motioned Marya Timofyevna to a seat in the
middle of the room, by a large round table. “Stepan Trofimovitch, what is
the meaning of this? See, see, look at this woman, what is the meaning of
it?”
“I … I …” faltered Stepan Trofimovitch.
But a footman came in.
“A cup of coffee at once, we must have it as quickly as possible! Keep the
horses!”
“Mais, chère et excellente amie, dans quelle inquiétude …” Stepan
Trofimovitch exclaimed in a dying voice.
“Ach! French! French! I can see at once that it’s the highest society,” cried
Marya Timofyevna, clapping her hands, ecstatically preparing herself to
listen to a conversation in French. Varvara Petrovna stared at her almost in
dismay.
We all sat in silence, waiting to see how it would end. Shatov did not lift up
his head, and Stepan Trofimovitch was overwhelmed with confusion as
though it were all his fault; the perspiration stood out on his temples. I
glanced at Liza (she was sitting in the corner almost beside Shatov). Her
eyes darted keenly from Varvara Petrovna to the cripple and back again; her
lips were drawn into a smile, but not a pleasant one. Varvara Petrovna saw
that smile. Meanwhile Marya Timofyevna was absolutely transported. With
evident enjoyment and without a trace of embarrassment she stared at
Varvara Petrovna’s beautiful drawing-room—the furniture, the carpets, the

pictures on the walls, the old-fashioned painted ceiling, the great bronze
crucifix in the corner, the china lamp, the albums, the objects on the table.
“And you’re here, too, Shatushka!” she cried suddenly. “Only fancy, I saw
you a long time ago, but I thought it couldn’t be you! How could you come
here!” And she laughed gaily.
“You know this woman?” said Varvara Petrovna, turning to him at once.
“I know her,” muttered Shatov. He seemed about to move from his chair,
but remained sitting.
“What do you know of her? Make haste, please!”
“Oh, well …” he stammered with an incongruous smile. “You see for
yourself.…”
“What do I see? Come now, say something!”
“She lives in the same house as I do … with her brother … an officer.”
“Well?”
Shatov stammered again.
“It’s not worth talking about …” he muttered, and relapsed into determined
silence. He positively flushed with determination.
“Of course one can expect nothing else from you,” said Varvara Petrovna
indignantly. It was clear to her now that they all knew something and, at the
same time, that they were all scared, that they were evading her questions,
and anxious to keep something from her.
The footman came in and brought her, on a little silver tray, the cup of
coffee she had so specially ordered, but at a sign from her moved with it at
once towards Marya Timofyevna.
“You were very cold just now, my dear; make haste and drink it and get
warm.”
“Merci.”

Marya Timofyevna took the cup and at once went off into a giggle at having
said merci to the footman. But meeting Varvara Petrovna’s reproving eyes,
she was overcome with shyness and put the cup on the table.
“Auntie, surely you’re not angry?” she faltered with a sort of flippant
playfulness.
“Wh-a-a-t?” Varvara Petrovna started, and drew herself up in her chair.
“I’m not your aunt. What are you thinking of?”
Marya Timofyevna, not expecting such an angry outburst, began trembling
all over in little convulsive shudders, as though she were in a fit, and sank
back in her chair.
“I … I … thought that was the proper way,” she faltered, gazing open-eyed
at Varvara Petrovna. “Liza called you that.”
“What Liza?”
“Why, this young lady here,” said Marya Timofyevna, pointing with her
finger.
“So she’s Liza already?”
“You called her that yourself just now,” said Marya Timofyevna growing a
little bolder. “And I dreamed of a beauty like that,” she added, laughing, as
it were accidentally.
Varvara Petrovna reflected, and grew calmer, she even smiled faintly at
Marya Timofyevna’s last words; the latter, catching her smile, got up from
her chair, and limping, went timidly towards her.
“Take it. I forgot to give it back. Don’t be angry with my rudeness.”
She took from her shoulders the black shawl that Varvara Petrovna had
wrapped round her.
“Put it on again at once, and you can keep it always. Go and sit down, drink
your coffee, and please don’t be afraid of me, my dear, don’t worry
yourself. I am beginning to understand you.”
“Chère amie …” Stepan Trofimovitch ventured again.

“Ach, Stepan Trofimovitch, it’s bewildering enough without you. You might
at least spare me.… Please ring that bell there, near you, to the maid’s
room.”
A silence followed. Her eyes strayed irritably and suspiciously over all our
faces. Agasha, her favourite maid, came in.
“Bring me my check shawl, the one I bought in Geneva. What’s Darya
Pavlovna doing?”
“She’s not very well, madam.”
“Go and ask her to come here. Say that I want her particularly, even if she’s
not well.”
At that instant there was again, as before, an unusual noise of steps and
voices in the next room, and suddenly Praskovya Ivanovna, panting and
“distracted,” appeared in the doorway. She was leaning on the arm of
Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
“Ach, heavens, I could scarcely drag myself here. Liza, you mad girl, how
you treat your mother!” she squeaked, concentrating in that squeak, as weak
and irritable people are wont to do, all her accumulated irritability. “Varvara
Petrovna, I’ve come for my daughter!”
Varvara Petrovna looked at her from under her brows, half rose to meet her,
and scarcely concealing her vexation brought out: “Good morning,
Praskovya Ivanovna, please be seated, I knew you would come!”
II
There could be nothing surprising to Praskovya Ivanovna in such a
reception. Varvara Petrovna had from childhood upwards treated her old
school friend tyrannically, and under a show of friendship almost
contemptuously. And this was an exceptional occasion too. During the last
few days there had almost been a complete rupture between the two
households, as I have mentioned incidentally already. The reason of this
rupture was still a mystery to Varvara Petrovna, which made it all the more
offensive; but the chief cause of offence was that Praskovya Ivanovna had
succeeded in taking up an extraordinarily supercilious attitude towards

Varvara Petrovna. Varvara Petrovna was wounded of course, and
meanwhile some strange rumours had reached her which also irritated her
extremely, especially by their vagueness. Varvara Petrovna was of a direct
and proudly frank character, somewhat slap-dash in her methods, indeed, if
the expression is permissible. There was nothing she detested so much as
secret and mysterious insinuations, she always preferred war in the open.
Anyway, the two ladies had not met for five days. The last visit had been
paid by Varvara Petrovna, who had come back from “that Drozdov woman”
offended and perplexed. I can say with certainty that Praskovya Ivanovna
had come on this occasion with the naïve conviction that Varvara Petrovna
would, for some reason, be sure to stand in awe of her. This was evident
from the very expression of her face. Evidently too, Varvara Petrovna was
always possessed by a demon of haughty pride whenever she had the least
ground for suspecting that she was for some reason supposed to be
humiliated. Like many weak people, who for a long time allow themselves
to be insulted without resenting it, Praskovya Ivanovna showed an
extraordinary violence in her attack at the first favourable opportunity. It is
true that she was not well, and always became more irritable in illness. I
must add finally, that our presence in the drawing-room could hardly be
much check to the two ladies who had been friends from childhood, if a
quarrel had broken out between them. We were looked upon as friends of
the family, and almost as their subjects. I made that reflection with some
alarm at the time. Stepan Trofimovitch, who had not sat down since the
entrance of Varvara Petrovna, sank helplessly into an arm-chair on hearing
Praskovya Ivanovna’s squeal, and tried to catch my eye with a look of
despair. Shatov turned sharply in his chair, and growled something to
himself. I believe he meant to get up and go away. Liza rose from her chair
but sank back again at once without even paying befitting attention to her
mother’s squeal—not from “waywardness,” but obviously because she was
entirely absorbed by some other overwhelming impression. She was
looking absent-mindedly into the air, no longer noticing even Marya
Timofyevna.
III
“Ach, here!” Praskovya Ivanovna indicated an easy chair near the table and
sank heavily into it with the assistance of Mavriky Nikolaevitch. “I

wouldn’t have sat down in your house, my lady, if it weren’t for my legs,”
she added in a breaking voice.
Varvara Petrovna raised her head a little, and with an expression of
suffering pressed the fingers of her right hand to her right temple, evidently
in acute pain (tic douloureux).
“Why so, Praskovya Ivanovna; why wouldn’t you sit down in my house? I
possessed your late husband’s sincere friendship all his life; and you and I
used to play with our dolls at school together as girls.”
Praskovya Ivanovna waved her hands.
“I knew that was coming! You always begin about the school when you
want to reproach me—that’s your way. But to my thinking that’s only fine
talk. I can’t stand the school you’re always talking about.”
“You’ve come in rather a bad temper, I’m afraid; how are your legs? Here
they’re bringing you some coffee, please have some, drink it and don’t be
cross.”
“Varvara Petrovna, you treat me as though I were a child. I won’t have any
coffee, so there!”
And she pettishly waved away the footman who was bringing her coffee.
(All the others refused coffee too except Mavriky Nikolaevitch and me.
Stepan Trofimovitch took it, but put it aside on the table. Though Marya
Timofyevna was very eager to have another cup and even put out her hand
to take it, on second thoughts she refused it ceremoniously, and was
obviously pleased with herself for doing so.)
Varvara Petrovna gave a wry smile.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Praskovya Ivanovna, my friend, you must have
taken some fancy into your head again, and that’s why you’ve come.
You’ve simply lived on fancies all your life. You flew into a fury at the
mere mention of our school; but do you remember how you came and
persuaded all the class that a hussar called Shablykin had proposed to you,
and how Mme. Lefebure proved on the spot you were lying. Yet you

weren’t lying, you were simply imagining it all to amuse yourself. Come,
tell me, what is it now? What are you fancying now; what is it vexes you?”
“And you fell in love with the priest who used to teach us scripture at
school—so much for you, since you’ve such a spiteful memory. Ha ha ha!”
She laughed viciously and went off into a fit of coughing.
“Ah, you’ve not forgotten the priest then …” said Varvara Petrovna,
looking at her vindictively.
Her face turned green. Praskovya Ivanovna suddenly assumed a dignified
air.
“I’m in no laughing mood now, madam. Why have you drawn my daughter
into your scandals in the face of the whole town? That’s what I’ve come
about.”
“My scandals?” Varvara Petrovna drew herself up menacingly.
“Maman, I entreat you too, to restrain yourself,” Lizaveta Nikolaevna
brought out suddenly.
“What’s that you say?” The maman was on the point of breaking into a
squeal again, but catching her daughter’s flashing eye, she subsided
suddenly.
“How could you talk about scandal, maman?” cried Liza, flushing red. “I
came of my own accord with Yulia Mihailovna’s permission, because I
wanted to learn this unhappy woman’s story and to be of use to her.”
“This unhappy woman’s story!” Praskovya Ivanovna drawled with a
spiteful laugh. “Is it your place to mix yourself up with such ‘stories.’ Ach,
enough of your tyrannising!” She turned furiously to Varvara Petrovna. “I
don’t know whether it’s true or not, they say you keep the whole town in
order, but it seems your turn has come at last.”
Varvara Petrovna sat straight as an arrow ready to fly from the bow. For ten
seconds she looked sternly and immovably at Praskovya Ivanovna.

“Well, Praskovya, you must thank God that all here present are our friends,”
she said at last with ominous composure. “You’ve said a great deal better
unsaid.”
“But I’m not so much afraid of what the world will say, my lady, as some
people. It’s you who, under a show of pride, are trembling at what people
will say. And as for all here being your friends, it’s better for you than if
strangers had been listening.”
“Have you grown wiser during this last week?”
“It’s not that I’ve grown wiser, but simply that the truth has come out this
week.”
“What truth has come out this week? Listen, Praskovya Ivanovna, don’t
irritate me. Explain to me this minute, I beg you as a favour, what truth has
come out and what do you mean by that?”
“Why there it is, sitting before you!” and Praskovya Ivanovna suddenly
pointed at Marya Timofyevna with that desperate determination which takes
no heed of consequences, if only it can make an impression at the moment.
Marya Timofyevna, who had watched her all the time with light-hearted
curiosity, laughed exultingly at the sight of the wrathful guest’s finger
pointed impetuously at her, and wriggled gleefully in her easy chair.
“God Almighty have mercy on us, they’ve all gone crazy!” exclaimed
Varvara Petrovna, and turning pale she sank back in her chair.
She turned so pale that it caused some commotion. Stepan Trofimovitch
was the first to rush up to her. I drew near also; even Liza got up from her
seat, though she did not come forward. But the most alarmed of all was
Praskovya Ivanovna herself. She uttered a scream, got up as far as she could
and almost wailed in a lachrymose voice:
“Varvara Petrovna, dear, forgive me for my wicked foolishness! Give her
some water, somebody.”
“Don’t whimper, please, Praskovya Ivanovna, and leave me alone,
gentlemen, please, I don’t want any water!” Varvara Petrovna pronounced
in a firm though low voice, with blanched lips.

“Varvara Petrovna, my dear,” Praskovya Ivanovna went on, a little
reassured, “though I am to blame for my reckless words, what’s upset me
more than anything are these anonymous letters that some low creatures
keep bombarding me with; they might write to you, since it concerns you,
but I’ve a daughter!”
Varvara Petrovna looked at her in silence, with wide-open eyes, listening
with wonder. At that moment a side-door in the corner opened noiselessly,
and Darya Pavlovna made her appearance. She stood still and looked round.
She was struck by our perturbation. Probably she did not at first distinguish
Marya Timofyevna, of whose presence she had not been informed. Stepan
Trofimovitch was the first to notice her; he made a rapid movement, turned
red, and for some reason proclaimed in a loud voice: “Darya Pavlovna!” so
that all eyes turned on the new-comer.
“Oh, is this your Darya Pavlovna!” cried Marya Timofyevna. “Well,
Shatushka, your sister’s not like you. How can my fellow call such a
charmer the serf-wench Dasha?”
Meanwhile Darya Pavlovna had gone up to Varvara Petrovna, but struck by
Marya Timofyevna’s exclamation she turned quickly and stopped just
before her chair, looking at the imbecile with a long fixed gaze.
“Sit down, Dasha,” Varvara Petrovna brought out with terrifying
composure. “Nearer, that’s right. You can see this woman, sitting down. Do
you know her?”
“I have never seen her,” Dasha answered quietly, and after a pause she
added at once:
“She must be the invalid sister of Captain Lebyadkin.”
“And it’s the first time I’ve set eyes on you, my love, though I’ve been
interested and wanted to know you a long time, for I see how well-bred you
are in every movement you make,” Marya Timofyevna cried
enthusiastically. “And though my footman swears at you, can such a well-
educated charming person as you really have stolen money from him? For
you are sweet, sweet, sweet, I tell you that from myself!” she concluded,
enthusiastically waving her hand.

“Can you make anything of it?” Varvara Petrovna asked with proud dignity.
“I understand it.…”
“Have you heard about the money?”
“No doubt it’s the money that I undertook at Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s
request to hand over to her brother, Captain Lebyadkin.”
A silence followed.
“Did Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch himself ask you to do so?”
“He was very anxious to send that money, three hundred roubles, to Mr.
Lebyadkin. And as he didn’t know his address, but only knew that he was to
be in our town, he charged me to give it to Mr. Lebyadkin if he came.”
“What is the money … lost? What was this woman speaking about just
now?”
“That I don’t know. I’ve heard before that Mr. Lebyadkin says I didn’t give
him all the money, but I don’t understand his words. There were three
hundred roubles and I sent him three hundred roubles.”
Darya Pavlovna had almost completely regained her composure. And it was
difficult, I may mention, as a rule, to astonish the girl or ruffle her calm for
long—whatever she might be feeling. She brought out all her answers now
without haste, replied immediately to every question with accuracy, quietly,
smoothly, and without a trace of the sudden emotion she had shown at first,
or the slightest embarrassment which might have suggested a consciousness
of guilt. Varvara Petrovna’s eyes were fastened upon her all the time she
was speaking. Varvara Petrovna thought for a minute:
“If,” she pronounced at last firmly, evidently addressing all present, though
she only looked at Dasha, “if Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch did not appeal even
to me but asked you to do this for him, he must have had his reasons for
doing so. I don’t consider I have any right to inquire into them, if they are
kept secret from me. But the very fact of your having taken part in the
matter reassures me on that score, be sure of that, Darya, in any case. But
you see, my dear, you may, through ignorance of the world, have quite
innocently done something imprudent; and you did so when you undertook

to have dealings with a low character. The rumours spread by this rascal
show what a mistake you made. But I will find out about him, and as it is
my task to protect you, I shall know how to defend you. But now all this
must be put a stop to.”
“The best thing to do,” said Marya Timofyevna, popping up from her chair,
“is to send him to the footmen’s room when he comes. Let him sit on the
benches there and play cards with them while we sit here and drink coffee.
We might send him a cup of coffee too, but I have a great contempt for
him.”
And she wagged her head expressively.
“We must put a stop to this,” Varvara Petrovna repeated, listening
attentively to Marya Timofyevna. “Ring, Stepan Trofimovitch, I beg you.”
Stepan Trofimovitch rang, and suddenly stepped forward, all excitement.
“If … if …” he faltered feverishly, flushing, breaking off and stuttering, “if
I too have heard the most revolting story, or rather slander, it was with utter
indignation … enfin c’est un homme perdu, et quelque chose comme un
forçat evadé.…”
He broke down and could not go on. Varvara Petrovna, screwing up her
eyes, looked him up and down.
The ceremonious butler Alexey Yegorytch came in.
“The carriage,” Varvara Petrovna ordered. “And you, Alexey Yegorytch, get
ready to escort Miss Lebyadkin home; she will give you the address
herself.”
“Mr. Lebyadkin has been waiting for her for some time downstairs, and has
been begging me to announce him.”
“That’s impossible, Varvara Petrovna!” and Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who had
sat all the time in unbroken silence, suddenly came forward in alarm. “If I
may speak, he is not a man who can be admitted into society. He … he …
he’s an impossible person, Varvara Petrovna!”

“Wait a moment,” said Varvara Petrovna to Alexey Yegorytch, and he
disappeared at once.
“C’est un homme malhonnête et je crois même que c’est un forçat evadé ou
quelque chose dans ce genre,” Stepan Trofimovitch muttered again, and
again he flushed red and broke off.
“Liza, it’s time we were going,” announced Praskovya Ivanovna
disdainfully, getting up from her seat. She seemed sorry that in her alarm
she had called herself a fool. While Darya Pavlovna was speaking, she
listened, pressing her lips superciliously. But what struck me most was the
expression of Lizaveta Nikolaevna from the moment Darya Pavlovna had
come in. There was a gleam of hatred and hardly disguised contempt in her
eyes.
“Wait one minute, Praskovya Ivanovna, I beg you.” Varvara Petrovna
detained her, still with the same exaggerated composure. “Kindly sit down.
I intend to speak out, and your legs are bad. That’s right, thank you. I lost
my temper just now and uttered some impatient words. Be so good as to
forgive me. I behaved foolishly and I’m the first to regret it, because I like
fairness in everything. Losing your temper too, of course, you spoke of
certain anonymous letters. Every anonymous communication is deserving
of contempt, just because it’s not signed. If you think differently I’m sorry
for you. In any case, if I were in your place, I would not pry into such dirty
corners, I would not soil my hands with it. But you have soiled yours.
However, since you have begun on the subject yourself, I must tell you that
six days ago I too received a clownish anonymous letter. In it some rascal
informs me that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch has gone out of his mind, and
that I have reason to fear some lame woman, who ‘is destined to play a
great part in my life.’ I remember the expression. Reflecting and being
aware that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch has very numerous enemies, I
promptly sent for a man living here, one of his secret enemies, and the most
vindictive and contemptible of them, and from my conversation with him I
gathered what was the despicable source of the anonymous letter. If you
too, my poor Praskovya Ivanovna, have been worried by similar letters on
my account, and as you say ‘bombarded’ with them, I am, of course, the
first to regret having been the innocent cause of it. That’s all I wanted to tell
you by way of explanation. I’m very sorry to see that you are so tired and so

upset. Besides, I have quite made up my mind to see that suspicious
personage of whom Mavriky Nikolaevitch said just now, a little
inappropriately, that it was impossible to receive him. Liza in particular
need have nothing to do with it. Come to me, Liza, my dear, let me kiss you
again.”
Liza crossed the room and stood in silence before Varvara Petrovna. The
latter kissed her, took her hands, and, holding her at arm’s-length, looked at
her with feeling, then made the sign of the cross over her and kissed her
again.
“Well, good-bye, Liza” (there was almost the sound of tears in Varvara
Petrovna’s voice), “believe that I shall never cease to love you whatever
fate has in store for you. God be with you. I have always blessed His Holy
Will.…”
She would have added something more, but restrained herself and broke
off. Liza was walking back to her place, still in the same silence, as it were
plunged in thought, but she suddenly stopped before her mother.
“I am not going yet, mother. I’ll stay a little longer at auntie’s,” she brought
out in a low voice, but there was a note of iron determination in those quiet
words.
“My goodness! What now?” wailed Praskovya Ivanovna, clasping her
hands helplessly. But Liza did not answer, and seemed indeed not to hear
her; she sat down in the same corner and fell to gazing into space again as
before.
There was a look of pride and triumph in Varvara Petrovna’s face.
“Mavriky Nikolaevitch, I have a great favour to ask of you. Be so kind as to
go and take a look at that person downstairs, and if there is any possibility
of admitting him, bring him up here.”
Mavriky Nikolaevitch bowed and went out. A moment later he brought in
Mr. Lebyadkin.
IV

I have said something of this gentleman’s outward appearance. He was a
tall, curly-haired, thick-set fellow about forty with a purplish, rather bloated
and flabby face, with cheeks that quivered at every movement of his head,
with little bloodshot eyes that were sometimes rather crafty, with
moustaches and side-whiskers, and with an incipient double chin, fleshy
and rather unpleasant-looking. But what was most striking about him was
the fact that he appeared now wearing a dress-coat and clean linen.
“There are people on whom clean linen is almost unseemly,” as Liputin had
once said when Stepan Trofimovitch reproached him in jest for being
untidy. The captain had perfectly new black gloves too, of which he held
the right one in his hand, while the left, tightly stretched and unbuttoned,
covered part of the huge fleshy fist in which he held a brand-new, glossy
round hat, probably worn for the first time that day. It appeared therefore
that “the garb of love,” of which he had shouted to Shatov the day before,
really did exist. All this, that is, the dress-coat and clean linen, had been
procured by Liputin’s advice with some mysterious object in view (as I
found out later). There was no doubt that his coming now (in a hired
carriage) was at the instigation and with the assistance of someone else; it
would never have dawned on him, nor could he by himself have succeeded
in dressing, getting ready and making up his mind in three-quarters of an
hour, even if the scene in the porch of the cathedral had reached his ears at
once. He was not drunk, but was in the dull, heavy, dazed condition of a
man suddenly awakened after many days of drinking. It seemed as though
he would be drunk again if one were to put one’s hands on his shoulders
and rock him to and fro once or twice. He was hurrying into the drawing-
room but stumbled over a rug near the doorway. Marya Timofyevna was
helpless with laughter. He looked savagely at her and suddenly took a few
rapid steps towards Varvara Petrovna.
“I have come, madam …” he blared out like a trumpet-blast.
“Be so good, sir, as to take a seat there, on that chair,” said Varvara
Petrovna, drawing herself up. “I shall hear you as well from there, and it
will be more convenient for me to look at you from here.”
The captain stopped short, looking blankly before him. He turned, however,
and sat down on the seat indicated close to the door. An extreme lack of

self-confidence and at the same time insolence, and a sort of incessant
irritability, were apparent in the expression of his face. He was horribly
scared, that was evident, but his self-conceit was wounded, and it might be
surmised that his mortified vanity might on occasion lead him to any
effrontery, in spite of his cowardice. He was evidently uneasy at every
movement of his clumsy person. We all know that when such gentlemen are
brought by some marvellous chance into society, they find their worst
ordeal in their own hands, and the impossibility of disposing them
becomingly, of which they are conscious at every moment. The captain sat
rigid in his chair, with his hat and gloves in his hands and his eyes fixed
with a senseless stare on the stern face of Varvara Petrovna. He would have
liked, perhaps, to have looked about more freely, but he could not bring
himself to do so yet. Marya Timofyevna, apparently thinking his
appearance very funny, laughed again, but he did not stir. Varvara Petrovna
ruthlessly kept him in this position for a long time, a whole minute, staring
at him without mercy.
“In the first place allow me to learn your name from yourself,” Varvara
Petrovna pronounced in measured and impressive tones.
“Captain Lebyadkin,” thundered the captain. “I have come, madam …” He
made a movement again.
“Allow me!” Varvara Petrovna checked him again. “Is this unfortunate
person who interests me so much really your sister?”
“My sister, madam, who has escaped from control, for she is in a certain
condition.…”
He suddenly faltered and turned crimson. “Don’t misunderstand me,
madam,” he said, terribly confused. “Her own brother’s not going to throw
mud at her … in a certain condition doesn’t mean in such a condition … in
the sense of an injured reputation … in the last stage …” he suddenly broke
off.
“Sir!” said Varvara Petrovna, raising her head.
“In this condition!” he concluded suddenly, tapping the middle of his
forehead with his finger.

A pause followed.
“And has she suffered in this way for long?” asked Varvara Petrovna, with a
slight drawl.
“Madam, I have come to thank you for the generosity you showed in the
porch, in a Russian, brotherly way.”
“Brotherly?”
“I mean, not brotherly, but simply in the sense that I am my sister’s brother;
and believe me, madam,” he went on more hurriedly, turning crimson again,
“I am not so uneducated as I may appear at first sight in your drawing-
room. My sister and I are nothing, madam, compared with the luxury we
observe here. Having enemies who slander us, besides. But on the question
of reputation Lebyadkin is proud, madam … and … and … and I’ve come
to repay with thanks.… Here is money, madam!”
At this point he pulled out a pocket-book, drew out of it a bundle of notes,
and began turning them over with trembling fingers in a perfect fury of
impatience. It was evident that he was in haste to explain something, and
indeed it was quite necessary to do so. But probably feeling himself that his
fluster with the money made him look even more foolish, he lost the last
traces of self-possession. The money refused to be counted. His fingers
fumbled helplessly, and to complete his shame a green note escaped from
the pocket-book, and fluttered in zigzags on to the carpet.
“Twenty roubles, madam.” He leapt up suddenly with the roll of notes in his
hand, his face perspiring with discomfort. Noticing the note which had
dropped on the floor, he was bending down to pick it up, but for some
reason overcome by shame, he dismissed it with a wave.
“For your servants, madam; for the footman who picks it up. Let them
remember my sister!”
“I cannot allow that,” Varvara Petrovna brought out hurriedly, even with
some alarm.
“In that case …”

He bent down, picked it up, flushing crimson, and suddenly going up to
Varvara Petrovna held out the notes he had counted.
“What’s this?” she cried, really alarmed at last, and positively shrinking
back in her chair.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, Stepan Trofimovitch, and I all stepped forward.
“Don’t be alarmed, don’t be alarmed; I’m not mad, by God, I’m not mad,”
the captain kept asseverating excitedly.
“Yes, sir, you’re out of your senses.”
“Madam, she’s not at all as you suppose. I am an insignificant link. Oh,
madam, wealthy are your mansions, but poor is the dwelling of Marya
Anonyma, my sister, whose maiden name was Lebyadkin, but whom we’ll
call Anonyma for the time, only for the time, madam, for God Himself will
not suffer it forever. Madam, you gave her ten roubles and she took it,
because it was from you, madam! Do you hear, madam? From no one else
in the world would this Marya Anonyma take it, or her grandfather, the
officer killed in the Caucasus before the very eyes of Yermolov, would turn
in his grave. But from you, madam, from you she will take anything. But
with one hand she takes it, and with the other she holds out to you twenty
roubles by way of subscription to one of the benevolent committees in
Petersburg and Moscow, of which you are a member … for you published
yourself, madam, in the Moscow News, that you are ready to receive
subscriptions in our town, and that any one may subscribe.…”
The captain suddenly broke off; he breathed hard as though after some
difficult achievement. All he said about the benevolent society had probably
been prepared beforehand, perhaps under Liputin’s supervision. He
perspired more than ever; drops literally trickled down his temples. Varvara
Petrovna looked searchingly at him.
“The subscription list,” she said severely, “is always downstairs in charge of
my porter. There you can enter your subscriptions if you wish to. And so I
beg you to put your notes away and not to wave them in the air. That’s right.
I beg you also to go back to your seat. That’s right. I am very sorry, sir, that
I made a mistake about your sister, and gave her something as though she
were poor when she is so rich. There’s only one thing I don’t understand,

why she can only take from me, and no one else. You so insisted upon that
that I should like a full explanation.”
“Madam, that is a secret that may be buried only in the grave!” answered
the captain.
“Why?” Varvara Petrovna asked, not quite so firmly.
“Madam, madam …”
He relapsed into gloomy silence, looking on the floor, laying his right hand
on his heart. Varvara Petrovna waited, not taking her eyes off him.
“Madam!” he roared suddenly. “Will you allow me to ask you one
question? Only one, but frankly, directly, like a Russian, from the heart?”
“Kindly do so.”
“Have you ever suffered madam, in your life?”
“You simply mean to say that you have been or are being ill-treated by
someone.”
“Madam, madam!” He jumped up again, probably unconscious of doing so,
and struck himself on the breast. “Here in this bosom so much has
accumulated, so much that God Himself will be amazed when it is revealed
at the Day of Judgment.”
“H’m! A strong expression!”
“Madam, I speak perhaps irritably.…”
“Don’t be uneasy. I know myself when to stop you.”
“May I ask you another question, madam?”
“Ask another question.”
“Can one die simply from the generosity of one’s feelings?”
“I don’t know, as I’ve never asked myself such a question.”

“You don’t know! You’ve never asked yourself such a question,” he said
with pathetic irony. “Well, if that’s it, if that’s it …
“Be still, despairing heart!”
And he struck himself furiously on the chest. He was by now walking about
the room again.
It is typical of such people to be utterly incapable of keeping their desires to
themselves; they have, on the contrary, an irresistible impulse to display
them in all their unseemliness as soon as they arise. When such a gentleman
gets into a circle in which he is not at home he usually begins timidly,—but
you have only to give him an inch and he will at once rush into
impertinence. The captain was already excited. He walked about waving his
arms and not listening to questions, talked about himself very, very quickly,
so that sometimes his tongue would not obey him, and without finishing
one phrase he passed to another. It is true he was probably not quite sober.
Moreover, Lizaveta Nikolaevna was sitting there too, and though he did not
once glance at her, her presence seemed to over-excite him terribly; that,
however, is only my supposition. There must have been some reason which
led Varvara Petrovna to resolve to listen to such a man in spite of her
repugnance. Praskovya Ivanovna was simply shaking with terror, though, I
believe she really did not quite understand what it was about. Stepan
Trofimovitch was trembling too, but that was, on the contrary, because he
was disposed to understand everything, and exaggerate it. Mavriky
Nikolaevitch stood in the attitude of one ready to defend all present; Liza
was pale, and she gazed fixedly with wide-open eyes at the wild captain.
Shatov sat in the same position as before, but, what was strangest of all,
Marya Timofyevna had not only ceased laughing, but had become terribly
sad. She leaned her right elbow on the table, and with a prolonged,
mournful gaze watched her brother declaiming. Darya Pavlovna alone
seemed to me calm.
“All that is nonsensical allegory,” said Varvara Petrovna, getting angry at
last. “You haven’t answered my question, why? I insist on an answer.”
“I haven’t answered, why? You insist on an answer, why?” repeated the
captain, winking. “That little word ‘why’ has run through all the universe
from the first day of creation, and all nature cries every minute to it’s

Creator, ‘why?’ And for seven thousand years it has had no answer, and
must Captain Lebyadkin alone answer? And is that justice, madam?”
“That’s all nonsense and not to the point!” cried Varvara Petrovna, getting
angry and losing patience. “That’s allegory; besides, you express yourself
too sensationally, sir, which I consider impertinence.”
“Madam,” the captain went on, not hearing, “I should have liked perhaps to
be called Ernest, yet I am forced to bear the vulgar name Ignat—why is that
do you suppose? I should have liked to be called Prince de Monbart, yet I
am only Lebyadkin, derived from a swan.* Why is that? I am a poet,
madam, a poet in soul, and might be getting a thousand roubles at a time
from a publisher, yet I am forced to live in a pig pail. Why? Why, madam?
To my mind Russia is a freak of nature and nothing else.”

* From lebyed, a swan.

“Can you really say nothing more definite?”
“I can read you the poem, ‘The Cockroach,’ madam.”
“Wha-a-t?”
“Madam, I’m not mad yet! I shall be mad, no doubt I shall be, but I’m not
so yet. Madam, a friend of mine—a most honourable man—has written a
Krylov’s fable, called ‘The Cockroach.’ May I read it?”
“You want to read some fable of Krylov’s?”
“No, it’s not a fable of Krylov’s I want to read. It’s my fable, my own
composition. Believe me, madam, without offence I’m not so uneducated
and depraved as not to understand that Russia can boast of a great fable-
writer, Krylov, to whom the Minister of Education has raised a monument
in the Summer Gardens for the diversion of the young. Here, madam, you
ask me why? The answer is at the end of this fable, in letters of fire.”
“Read your fable.”

“Lived a cockroach in the world
Such was his condition,

In a glass he chanced to fall
Full of fly-perdition.”

“Heavens! What does it mean?” cried Varvara Petrovna.
“That’s when flies get into a glass in the summer-time,” the captain
explained hurriedly with the irritable impatience of an author interrupted in
reading. “Then it is perdition to the flies, any fool can understand. Don’t
interrupt, don’t interrupt. You’ll see, you’ll see.…” He kept waving his
arms.

“But he squeezed against the flies,
They woke up and cursed him,
Raised to Jove their angry cries;
‘The glass is full to bursting!’
In the middle of the din
Came along Nikifor,
Fine old man, and looking in …

I haven’t quite finished it. But no matter, I’ll tell it in words,” the captain
rattled on. “Nikifor takes the glass, and in spite of their outcry empties away
the whole stew, flies, and beetles and all, into the pig pail, which ought to
have been done long ago. But observe, madam, observe, the cockroach
doesn’t complain. That’s the answer to your question, why?” he cried
triumphantly. “‘The cockroach does not complain.’ As for Nikifor he
typifies nature,” he added, speaking rapidly and walking complacently
about the room.
Varvara Petrovna was terribly angry.
“And allow me to ask you about that money said to have been received
from Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, and not to have been given to you, about
which you dared to accuse a person belonging to my household.”
“It’s a slander!” roared Lebyadkin, flinging up his right hand tragically.
“No, it’s not a slander.”
“Madam, there are circumstances that force one to endure family disgrace
rather than proclaim the truth aloud. Lebyadkin will not blab, madam!”

He seemed dazed; he was carried away; he felt his importance; he certainly
had some fancy in his mind. By now he wanted to insult some one, to do
something nasty to show his power.
“Ring, please, Stepan Trofimovitch,” Varvara Petrovna asked him.
“Lebyadkin’s cunning, madam,” he said, winking with his evil smile; “he’s
cunning, but he too has a weak spot, he too at times is in the portals of
passions, and these portals are the old military hussars’ bottle, celebrated by
Denis Davydov. So when he is in those portals, madam, he may happen to
send a letter in verse, a most magnificent letter—but which afterwards he
would have wished to take back, with the tears of all his life; for the feeling
of the beautiful is destroyed. But the bird has flown, you won’t catch it by
the tail. In those portals now, madam, Lebyadkin may have spoken about an
honourable young lady, in the honourable indignation of a soul revolted by
wrongs, and his slanderers have taken advantage of it. But Lebyadkin is
cunning, madam! And in vain a malignant wolf sits over him every minute,
filling his glass and waiting for the end. Lebyadkin won’t blab. And at the
bottom of the bottle he always finds instead Lebyadkin’s cunning. But
enough, oh, enough, madam! Your splendid halls might belong to the
noblest in the land, but the cockroach will not complain. Observe that,
observe that he does not complain, and recognise his noble spirit!”
At that instant a bell rang downstairs from the porter’s room, and almost at
the same moment Alexey Yegorytch appeared in response to Stepan
Trofimovitch’s ring, which he had somewhat delayed answering. The
correct old servant was unusually excited.
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch has graciously arrived this moment and is
coming here,” he pronounced, in reply to Varvara Petrovna’s questioning
glance. I particularly remember her at that moment; at first she turned pale,
but suddenly her eyes flashed. She drew herself up in her chair with an air
of extraordinary determination. Every one was astounded indeed. The
utterly unexpected arrival of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, who was not
expected for another month, was not only strange from its unexpectedness
but from its fateful coincidence with the present moment. Even the captain
remained standing like a post in the middle of the room with his mouth
wide open, staring at the door with a fearfully stupid expression.

And, behold, from the next room—a very large and long apartment—came
the sound of swiftly approaching footsteps, little, exceedingly rapid steps;
someone seemed to be running, and that someone suddenly flew into the
drawing-room, not Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but a young man who was a
complete stranger to all.
V
I will permit myself to halt here to sketch in a few hurried strokes this
person who had so suddenly arrived on the scene.
He was a young man of twenty-seven or thereabouts, a little above the
medium height, with rather long, lank, flaxen hair, and with faintly defined,
irregular moustache and beard. He was dressed neatly, and in the fashion,
though not like a dandy. At the first glance he looked round-shouldered and
awkward, but yet he was not round-shouldered, and his manner was easy.
He seemed a queer fish, and yet later on we all thought his manners good,
and his conversation always to the point.
No one would have said that he was ugly, and yet no one would have liked
his face. His head was elongated at the back, and looked flattened at the
sides, so that his face seemed pointed, his forehead was high and narrow,
but his features were small; his eyes were keen, his nose was small and
sharp, his lips were long and thin. The expression of his face suggested ill-
health, but this was misleading. He had a wrinkle on each cheek which gave
him the look of a man who had just recovered from a serious illness. Yet he
was perfectly well and strong, and had never been ill.
He walked and moved very hurriedly, yet never seemed in a hurry to be off.
It seemed as though nothing could disconcert him; in every circumstance
and in every sort of society he remained the same. He had a great deal of
conceit, but was utterly unaware of it himself.
He talked quickly, hurriedly, but at the same time with assurance, and was
never at a loss for a word. In spite of his hurried manner his ideas were in
perfect order, distinct and definite—and this was particularly striking. His
articulation was wonderfully clear. His words pattered out like smooth, big
grains, always well chosen, and at your service. At first this attracted one,
but afterwards it became repulsive, just because of this over-distinct

articulation, this string of ever-ready words. One somehow began to
imagine that he must have a tongue of special shape, somehow
exceptionally long and thin, extremely red with a very sharp everlastingly
active little tip.
Well, this was the young man who darted now into the drawing-room, and
really, I believe to this day, that he began to talk in the next room, and came
in speaking. He was standing before Varvara Petrovna in a trice.
“… Only fancy, Varvara Petrovna,” he pattered on, “I came in expecting to
find he’d been here for the last quarter of an hour; he arrived an hour and a
half ago; we met at Kirillov’s: he set off half an hour ago meaning to come
straight here, and told me to come here too, a quarter of an hour later.…”
“But who? Who told you to come here?” Varvara Petrovna inquired.
“Why, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch! Surely this isn’t the first you’ve heard of
it! But his luggage must have been here a long while, anyway. How is it you
weren’t told? Then I’m the first to bring the news. One might send out to
look for him; he’s sure to be here himself directly though. And I fancy, at
the moment that just fits in with some of his expectations, and is far as I can
judge, at least, some of his calculations.”
At this point he turned his eyes about the room and fixed them with special
attention on the captain.
“Ach, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, how glad I am to meet you at the very first
step, delighted to shake hands with you.” He flew up to Liza, who was
smiling gaily, to take her proffered hand, “and I observe that my honoured
friend Praskovya Ivanovna has not forgotten her ‘professor,’ and actually
isn’t cross with him, as she always used to be in Switzerland. But how are
your legs, here, Praskovya Ivanovna, and were the Swiss doctors right when
at the consultation they prescribed your native air? What? Fomentations?
That ought to do good. But how sorry I was, Varvara Petrovna” (he turned
rapidly to her) “that I didn’t arrive in time to meet you abroad, and offer my
respects to you in person; I had so much to tell you too. I did send word to
my old man here, but I fancy that he did as he always does …”
“Petrusha!” cried Stepan Trofimovitch, instantly roused from his
stupefaction. He clasped his hands and flew to his son. “Pierre, mon enfant!

Why, I didn’t know you!” He pressed him in his arms and the tears rolled
down his cheeks.
“Come, be quiet, be quiet, no flourishes, that’s enough, that’s enough,
please,” Petrusha muttered hurriedly, trying to extricate himself from his
embrace.
“I’ve always sinned against you, always!”
“Well, that’s enough. We can talk of that later. I knew you’d carry on.
Come, be a little more sober, please.”
“But it’s ten years since I’ve seen you.”
“The less reason for demonstrations.”
“Mon enfant!…”
“Come, I believe in your affection, I believe in it, take your arms away. You
see, you’re disturbing other people.… Ah, here’s Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch;
keep quiet, please.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was already in the room; he came in very quietly
and stood still for an instant in the doorway, quietly scrutinising the
company.
I was struck by the first sight of him just as I had been four years before,
when I saw him for the first time. I had not forgotten him in the least. But I
think there are some countenances which always seem to exhibit something
new which one has not noticed before, every time one meets them, though
one may have seen them a hundred times already. Apparently he was
exactly the same as he had been four years before. He was as elegant, as
dignified, he moved with the same air of consequence as before, indeed he
looked almost as young. His faint smile had just the same official
graciousness and complacency. His eyes had the same stern, thoughtful and,
as it were, preoccupied look. In fact, it seemed as though we had only
parted the day before. But one thing struck me. In old days, though he had
been considered handsome, his face was “like a mask,” as some of our
sharp-tongued ladies had expressed it. Now—now, I don’t know why he
impressed me at once as absolutely, incontestably beautiful, so that no one

could have said that his face was like a mask. Wasn’t it perhaps that he was
a little paler and seemed rather thinner than before? Or was there, perhaps,
the light of some new idea in his eyes?
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch!” cried Varvara Petrovna, drawing herself up but
not rising from her chair. “Stop a minute!” She checked his advance with a
peremptory gesture.
But to explain the awful question which immediately followed that gesture
and exclamation—a question which I should have imagined to be
impossible even in Varvara Petrovna, I must ask the reader to remember
what that lady’s temperament had always been, and the extraordinary
impulsiveness she showed at some critical moments. I beg him to consider
also, that in spite of the exceptional strength of her spirit and the very
considerable amount of common sense and practical, so to say business, tact
she possessed, there were moments in her life in which she abandoned
herself altogether, entirely and, if it’s permissible to say so, absolutely
without restraint. I beg him to take into consideration also that the present
moment might really be for her one of those in which all the essence of life,
of all the past and all the present, perhaps, too, all the future, is
concentrated, as it were, focused. I must briefly recall, too, the anonymous
letter of which she had spoken to Praskovya Ivanovna with so much
irritation, though I think she said nothing of the latter part of it. Yet it
perhaps contained the explanation of the possibility of the terrible question
with which she suddenly addressed her son.
“Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,” she repeated, rapping out her words in a
resolute voice in which there was a ring of menacing challenge, “I beg you
to tell me at once, without moving from that place; is it true that this
unhappy cripple—here she is, here, look at her—is it true that she is …
your lawful wife?”
I remember that moment only too well; he did not wink an eyelash but
looked intently at his mother. Not the faintest change in his face followed.
At last he smiled, a sort of indulgent smile, and without answering a word
went quietly up to his mother, took her hand, raised it respectfully to his lips
and kissed it. And so great was his invariable and irresistible ascendancy
over his mother that even now she could not bring herself to pull away her

hand. She only gazed at him, her whole figure one concentrated question,
seeming to betray that she could not bear the suspense another moment.
But he was still silent. When he had kissed her hand, he scanned the whole
room once more, and moving, as before, without haste went towards Marya
Timofyevna. It is very difficult to describe people’s countenances at certain
moments. I remember, for instance, that Marya Timofyevna, breathless with
fear, rose to her feet to meet him and clasped her hands before her, as
though beseeching him. And at the same time I remember the frantic
ecstasy which almost distorted her face—an ecstasy almost too great for
any human being to bear. Perhaps both were there, both the terror and the
ecstasy. But I remember moving quickly towards her (I was standing not far
off), for I fancied she was going to faint.
“You should not be here,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said to her in a
caressing and melodious voice; and there was the light of an extraordinary
tenderness in his eyes. He stood before her in the most respectful attitude,
and every gesture showed sincere respect for her. The poor girl faltered
impulsively in a half-whisper.
“But may I … kneel down … to you now?”
“No, you can’t do that.”
He smiled at her magnificently, so that she too laughed joyfully at once. In
the same melodious voice, coaxing her tenderly as though she were a child,
he went on gravely.
“Only think that you are a girl, and that though I’m your devoted friend I’m
an outsider, not your husband, nor your father, nor your betrothed. Give me
your arm and let us go; I will take you to the carriage, and if you will let me
I will see you all the way home.”
She listened, and bent her head as though meditating.
“Let’s go,” she said with a sigh, giving him her hand.
But at that point a slight mischance befell her. She must have turned
carelessly, resting on her lame leg, which was shorter than the other. She
fell sideways into the chair, and if the chair had not been there would have

fallen on to the floor. He instantly seized and supported her, and holding her
arm firmly in his, led her carefully and sympathetically to the door. She was
evidently mortified at having fallen; she was overwhelmed, blushed, and
was terribly abashed. Looking dumbly on the ground, limping painfully, she
hobbled after him, almost hanging on his arm. So they went out. Liza, I
saw, suddenly jumped up from her chair for some reason as they were going
out, and she followed them with intent eyes till they reached the door. Then
she sat down again in silence, but there was a nervous twitching in her face,
as though she had touched a viper.
While this scene was taking place between Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and
Marya Timofyevna every one was speechless with amazement; one could
have heard a fly; but as soon as they had gone out, every one began
suddenly talking.
VI
It was very little of it talk, however; it was mostly exclamation. I’ve
forgotten a little the order in which things happened, for a scene of
confusion followed. Stepan Trofimovitch uttered some exclamation in
French, clasping his hands, but Varvara Petrovna had no thought for him.
Even Mavriky Nikolaevitch muttered some rapid, jerky comment. But Pyotr
Stepanovitch was the most excited of all. He was trying desperately with
bold gesticulations to persuade Varvara Petrovna of something, but it was a
long time before I could make out what it was. He appealed to Praskovya
Ivanovna, and Lizaveta Nikolaevna too, even, in his excitement, addressed
a passing shout to his father—in fact he seemed all over the room at once.
Varvara Petrovna, flushing all over, sprang up from her seat and cried to
Praskovya Ivanovna:
“Did you hear what he said to her here just now, did you hear it?”
But the latter was incapable of replying. She could only mutter something
and wave her hand. The poor woman had troubles of her own to think
about. She kept turning her head towards Liza and was watching her with
unaccountable terror, but she didn’t even dare to think of getting up and
going away until her daughter should get up. In the meantime the captain
wanted to slip away. That I noticed. There was no doubt that he had been in
a great panic from the instant that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had made his

appearance; but Pyotr Stepanovitch took him by the arm and would not let
him go.
“It is necessary, quite necessary,” he pattered on to Varvara Petrovna, still
trying to persuade her. He stood facing her, as she was sitting down again in
her easy chair, and, I remember, was listening to him eagerly; he had
succeeded in securing her attention.
“It is necessary. You can see for yourself, Varvara Petrovna, that there is a
misunderstanding here, and much that is strange on the surface, and yet the
thing’s as clear as daylight, and as simple as my finger. I quite understand
that no one has authorised me to tell the story, and I dare say I look
ridiculous putting myself forward. But in the first place, Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch attaches no sort of significance to the matter himself, and,
besides, there are incidents of which it is difficult for a man to make up his
mind to give an explanation himself. And so it’s absolutely necessary that it
should be undertaken by a third person, for whom it’s easier to put some
delicate points into words. Believe me, Varvara Petrovna, that Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch is not at all to blame for not immediately answering your
question just now with a full explanation, it’s all a trivial affair. I’ve known
him since his Petersburg days. Besides, the whole story only does honour to
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, if one must make use of that vague word
‘honour.’”
“You mean to say that you were a witness of some incident which gave rise
… to this misunderstanding?” asked Varvara Petrovna.
“I witnessed it, and took part in it,” Pyotr Stepanovitch hastened to declare.
“If you’ll give me your word that this will not wound Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch’s delicacy in regard to his feeling for me, from whom he
ne-e-ver conceals anything … and if you are convinced also that your doing
this will be agreeable to him …”
“Certainly it will be agreeable, and for that reason I consider it a
particularly agreeable duty. I am convinced that he would beg me to do it
himself.”
The intrusive desire of this gentleman, who seemed to have dropped on us
from heaven to tell stories about other people’s affairs, was rather strange

and inconsistent with ordinary usage.
But he had caught Varvara Petrovna by touching on too painful a spot. I did
not know the man’s character at that time, and still less his designs.
“I am listening,” Varvara Petrovna announced with a reserved and cautious
manner. She was rather painfully aware of her condescension.
“It’s a short story; in fact if you like it’s not a story at all,” he rattled on,
“though a novelist might work it up into a novel in an idle hour. It’s rather
an interesting little incident, Praskovya Ivanovna, and I am sure that
Lizaveta Nikolaevna will be interested to hear it, because there are a great
many things in it that are odd if not wonderful. Five years ago, in
Petersburg, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch made the acquaintance of this
gentleman, this very Mr. Lebyadkin who’s standing here with his mouth
open, anxious, I think, to slip away at once. Excuse me, Varvara Petrovna. I
don’t advise you to make your escape though, you discharged clerk in the
former commissariat department; you see, I remember you very well.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and I know very well what you’ve been up to
here, and, don’t forget, you’ll have to answer for it. I ask your pardon once
more, Varvara Petrovna. In those days Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch used to
call this gentleman his Falstaff; that must be,” he explained suddenly,
“some old burlesque character, at whom every one laughs, and who is
willing to let every one laugh at him, if only they’ll pay him for it. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch was leading at that time in Petersburg a life, so to say, of
mockery. I can’t find another word to describe it, because he is not a man
who falls into disillusionment, and he disdained to be occupied with work at
that time. I’m only speaking of that period, Varvara Petrovna. Lebyadkin
had a sister, the woman who was sitting here just now. The brother and
sister hadn’t a corner* of their own, but were always quartering themselves
on different people. He used to hang about the arcades in the Gostiny Dvor,
always wearing his old uniform, and would stop the more respectable-
looking passers-by, and everything he got from them he’d spend in drink.
His sister lived like the birds of heaven. She’d help people in their
‘corners,’ and do jobs for them on occasion. It was a regular Bedlam. I’ll
pass over the description of this life in ‘corners,’ a life to which Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch had taken,”

* In the poorer quarters of Russian towns a single room is often
let out to several families, each of which occupies a “corner.”

“at that time, from eccentricity. I’m only talking of that period, Varvara
Petrovna; as for ‘eccentricity,’ that’s his own expression. He does not
conceal much from me. Mlle. Lebyadkin, who was thrown in the way of
meeting Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch very often, at one time, was fascinated
by his appearance. He was, so to say, a diamond set in the dirty background
of her life. I am a poor hand at describing feelings, so I’ll pass them over;
but some of that dirty lot took to jeering at her once, and it made her sad.
They always had laughed at her, but she did not seem to notice it before.
She wasn’t quite right in her head even then, but very different from what
she is now. There’s reason to believe that in her childhood she received
something like an education through the kindness of a benevolent lady.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had never taken the slightest notice of her. He
used to spend his time chiefly in playing preference with a greasy old pack
of cards for stakes of a quarter-farthing with clerks. But once, when she was
being ill-treated, he went up (without inquiring into the cause) and seized
one of the clerks by the collar and flung him out of a second-floor window.
It was not a case of chivalrous indignation at the sight of injured innocence;
the whole operation took place in the midst of roars of laughter, and the one
who laughed loudest was Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch himself. As it all ended
without harm, they were reconciled and began drinking punch. But the
injured innocent herself did not forget it. Of course it ended in her
becoming completely crazy. I repeat I’m a poor hand at describing feelings.
But a delusion was the chief feature in this case. And Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch aggravated that delusion as though he did it on purpose.
Instead of laughing at her he began all at once treating Mlle. Lebyadkin
with sudden respect. Kirillov, who was there (a very original man, Varvara
Petrovna, and very abrupt, you’ll see him perhaps one day, for he’s here
now), well, this Kirillov who, as a rule, is perfectly silent, suddenly got hot,
and said to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I remember, that he treated the girl as
though she were a marquise, and that that was doing for her altogether. I
must add that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had rather a respect for this
Kirillov. What do you suppose was the answer he gave him: ‘You imagine,
Mr. Kirillov, that I am laughing at her. Get rid of that idea, I really do
respect her, for she’s better than any of us.’ And, do you know, he said it in

such a serious tone. Meanwhile, he hadn’t really said a word to her for two
or three months, except ‘good morning’ and ‘good-bye.’ I remember, for I
was there, that she came at last to the point of looking on him almost as her
betrothed who dared not ‘elope with her,’ simply because he had many
enemies and family difficulties, or something of the sort. There was a great
deal of laughter about it. It ended in Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s making
provision for her when he had to come here, and I believe he arranged to
pay a considerable sum, three hundred roubles a year, if not more, as a
pension for her. In short it was all a caprice, a fancy of a man prematurely
weary on his side, perhaps—it may even have been, as Kirillov says, a new
experiment of a blasé man, with the object of finding out what you can
bring a crazy cripple to.” (You picked out on purpose, he said, the lowest
creature, a cripple, forever covered with disgrace and blows, knowing, too,
that this creature was dying of comic love for you, and set to work to
mystify her completely on purpose, simply to see what would come of it.)
“Though, how is a man so particularly to blame for the fancies of a crazy
woman, to whom he had hardly uttered two sentences the whole time. There
are things, Varvara Petrovna, of which it is not only impossible to speak
sensibly, but it’s even nonsensical to begin speaking of them at all. Well,
eccentricity then, let it stand at that. Anyway, there’s nothing worse to be
said than that; and yet now they’ve made this scandal out of it.… I am to
some extent aware, Varvara Petrovna, of what is happening here.”
The speaker suddenly broke off and was turning to Lebyadkin. But Varvara
Petrovna checked him. She was in a state of extreme exaltation.
“Have you finished?” she asked.
“Not yet; to complete my story I should have to ask this gentleman one or
two questions if you’ll allow me … you’ll see the point in a minute, Varvara
Petrovna.”
“Enough, afterwards, leave it for the moment I beg you. Oh, I was quite
right to let you speak!”
“And note this, Varvara Petrovna,” Pyotr Stepanovitch said hastily. “Could
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch have explained all this just now in answer to your
question, which was perhaps too peremptory?”

“Oh, yes, it was.”
“And wasn’t I right in saying that in some cases it’s much easier for a third
person to explain things than for the person interested?”
“Yes, yes … but in one thing you were mistaken, and, I see with regret, are
still mistaken.”
“Really, what’s that?”
“You see.… But won’t you sit down, Pyotr Stepanovitch?”
“Oh, as you please. I am tired indeed. Thank you.” He instantly moved up
an easy chair and turned it so that he had Varvara Petrovna on one side and
Praskovya Ivanovna at the table on the other, while he faced Lebyadkin,
from whom he did not take his eyes for one minute.
“You are mistaken in calling this eccentricity.…”
“Oh, if it’s only that.…”
“No, no, no, wait a little,” said Varvara Petrovna, who was obviously about
to say a good deal and to speak with enthusiasm. As soon as Pyotr
Stepanovitch noticed it, he was all attention.
“No, it was something higher than eccentricity, and I assure you, something
sacred even! A proud man who has suffered humiliation early in life and
reached the stage of ‘mockery’ as you so subtly called it—Prince Harry, in
fact, to use the capital nickname Stepan Trofimovitch gave him then, which
would have been perfectly correct if it were not that he is more like Hamlet,
to my thinking at least.”
“Et vous avez raison,” Stepan Trofimovitch pronounced, impressively and
with feeling.
“Thank you, Stepan Trofimovitch. I thank you particularly too for your
unvarying faith in Nicolas, in the loftiness of his soul and of his destiny.
That faith you have even strengthened in me when I was losing heart.”
“Chère, chère.” Stepan Trofimovitch was stepping forward, when he
checked himself, reflecting that it was dangerous to interrupt.

“And if Nicolas had always had at his side” (Varvara Petrovna almost
shouted) “a gentle Horatio, great in his humility—another excellent
expression of yours, Stepan Trofimovitch—he might long ago have been
saved from the sad and ‘sudden demon of irony,’ which has tormented him
all his life. (‘The demon of irony’ was a wonderful expression of yours
again, Stepan Trofimovitch.) But Nicolas has never had an Horatio or an
Ophelia. He had no one but his mother, and what can a mother do alone,
and in such circumstances? Do you know, Pyotr Stepanovitch, it’s perfectly
comprehensible to me now that a being like Nicolas could be found even in
such filthy haunts as you have described. I can so clearly picture now that
‘mockery’ of life. (A wonderfully subtle expression of yours!) That
insatiable thirst of contrast, that gloomy background against which he
stands out like a diamond, to use your comparison again, Pyotr
Stepanovitch. And then he meets there a creature ill-treated by every one,
crippled, half insane, and at the same time perhaps filled with noble
feelings.”
“H’m.… Yes, perhaps.”
“And after that you don’t understand that he’s not laughing at her like every
one. Oh, you people! You can’t understand his defending her from insult,
treating her with respect ‘like a marquise’ (this Kirillov must have an
exceptionally deep understanding of men, though he didn’t understand
Nicolas). It was just this contrast, if you like, that led to the trouble. If the
unhappy creature had been in different surroundings, perhaps she would
never have been brought to entertain such a frantic delusion. Only a woman
can understand it, Pyotr Stepanovitch, only a woman. How sorry I am that
you … not that you’re not a woman, but that you can’t be one just for the
moment so as to understand.”
“You mean in the sense that the worse things are the better it is. I
understand, I understand, Varvara Petrovna. It’s rather as it is in religion;
the harder life is for a man or the more crushed and poor the people are, the
more obstinately they dream of compensation in heaven; and if a hundred
thousand priests are at work at it too, inflaming their delusion, and
speculating on it, then … I understand you, Varvara Petrovna, I assure you.”

“That’s not quite it; but tell me, ought Nicolas to have laughed at her and
have treated her as the other clerks, in order to extinguish the delusion in
this unhappy organism.” (Why Varvara Petrovna used the word organism I
couldn’t understand.) “Can you really refuse to recognise the lofty
compassion, the noble tremor of the whole organism with which Nicolas
answered Kirillov: ‘I do not laugh at her.’ A noble, sacred answer!”
“Sublime,” muttered Stepan Trofimovitch.
“And observe, too, that he is by no means so rich as you suppose. The
money is mine and not his, and he would take next to nothing from me
then.”
“I understand, I understand all that, Varvara Petrovna,” said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, with a movement of some impatience.
“Oh, it’s my character! I recognise myself in Nicolas. I recognise that
youthfulness, that liability to violent, tempestuous impulses. And if we ever
come to be friends, Pyotr Stepanovitch, and, for my part, I sincerely hope
we may, especially as I am so deeply indebted to you, then, perhaps you’ll
understand.…”
“Oh, I assure you, I hope for it too,” Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered jerkily.
“You’ll understand then the impulse which leads one in the blindness of
generous feeling to take up a man who is unworthy of one in every respect,
a man who utterly fails to understand one, who is ready to torture one at
every opportunity and, in contradiction to everything, to exalt such a man
into a sort of ideal, into a dream. To concentrate in him all one’s hopes, to
bow down before him; to love him all one’s life, absolutely without
knowing why—perhaps just because he was unworthy of it.… Oh, how I’ve
suffered all my life, Pyotr Stepanovitch!”
Stepan Trofimovitch, with a look of suffering on his face, began trying to
catch my eye, but I turned away in time.
“… And only lately, only lately—oh, how unjust I’ve been to Nicolas! …
You would not believe how they have been worrying me on all sides, all,
all, enemies, and rascals, and friends, friends perhaps more than enemies.
When the first contemptible anonymous letter was sent to me, Pyotr

Stepanovitch, you’ll hardly believe it, but I had not strength enough to treat
all this wickedness with contempt.… I shall never, never forgive myself for
my weakness.”
“I had heard something of anonymous letters here already,” said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, growing suddenly more lively, “and I’ll find out the writers of
them, you may be sure.”
“But you can’t imagine the intrigues that have been got up here. They have
even been pestering our poor Praskovya Ivanovna, and what reason can
they have for worrying her? I was quite unfair to you to-day perhaps, my
dear Praskovya Ivanovna,” she added in a generous impulse of kindliness,
though not without a certain triumphant irony.
“Don’t say any more, my dear,” the other lady muttered reluctantly. “To my
thinking we’d better make an end of all this; too much has been said.”
And again she looked timidly towards Liza, but the latter was looking at
Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“And I intend now to adopt this poor unhappy creature, this insane woman
who has lost everything and kept only her heart,” Varvara Petrovna
exclaimed suddenly. “It’s a sacred duty I intend to carry out. I take her
under my protection from this day.”
“And that will be a very good thing in one way,” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried,
growing quite eager again. “Excuse me, I did not finish just now. It’s just
the care of her I want to speak of. Would you believe it, that as soon as
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had gone (I’m beginning from where I left off,
Varvara Petrovna), this gentleman here, this Mr. Lebyadkin, instantly
imagined he had the right to dispose of the whole pension that was provided
for his sister. And he did dispose of it. I don’t know exactly how it had been
arranged by Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at that time. But a year later, when he
learned from abroad what had happened, he was obliged to make other
arrangements. Again, I don’t know the details; he’ll tell you them himself. I
only know that the interesting young person was placed somewhere in a
remote nunnery, in very comfortable surroundings, but under friendly
superintendence—you understand? But what do you think Mr. Lebyadkin
made up his mind to do? He exerted himself to the utmost, to begin with, to

find where his source of income, that is his sister, was hidden. Only lately
he attained his object, took her from the nunnery, asserting some claim to
her, and brought her straight here. Here he doesn’t feed her properly, beats
her, and bullies her. As soon as by some means he gets a considerable sum
from Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, he does nothing but get drunk, and instead
of gratitude ends by impudently defying Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, making
senseless demands, threatening him with proceedings if the pension is not
paid straight into his hands. So he takes what is a voluntary gift from
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch as a tax—can you imagine it? Mr. Lebyadkin, is
that all true that I have said just now?”
The captain, who had till that moment stood in silence looking down, took
two rapid steps forward and turned crimson.
“Pyotr Stepanovitch, you’ve treated me cruelly,” he brought out abruptly.
“Why cruelly? How? But allow us to discuss the question of cruelty or
gentleness later on. Now answer my first question; is it true all that I have
said or not? If you consider it’s false you are at liberty to give your own
version at once.”
“I … you know yourself, Pyotr Stepanovitch,” the captain muttered, but he
could not go on and relapsed into silence. It must be observed that Pyotr
Stepanovitch was sitting in an easy chair with one leg crossed over the
other, while the captain stood before him in the most respectful attitude.
Lebyadkin’s hesitation seemed to annoy Pyotr Stepanovitch; a spasm of
anger distorted his face.
“Then you have a statement you want to make?” he said, looking subtly at
the captain. “Kindly speak. We’re waiting for you.”
“You know yourself Pyotr Stepanovitch, that I can’t say anything.”
“No, I don’t know it. It’s the first time I’ve heard it. Why can’t you speak?”
The captain was silent, with his eyes on the ground.
“Allow me to go, Pyotr Stepanovitch,” he brought out resolutely.
“No, not till you answer my question: is it all true that I’ve said?”

“It is true,” Lebyadkin brought out in a hollow voice, looking at his
tormentor. Drops of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
“Is it all true?”
“It’s all true.”
“Have you nothing to add or to observe? If you think that we’ve been
unjust, say so; protest, state your grievance aloud.”
“No, I think nothing.”
“Did you threaten Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch lately?”
“It was … it was more drink than anything, Pyotr Stepanovitch.” He
suddenly raised his head. “If family honour and undeserved disgrace cry out
among men then—then is a man to blame?” he roared suddenly, forgetting
himself as before.
“Are you sober now, Mr. Lebyadkin?”
Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him penetratingly.
“I am … sober.”
“What do you mean by family honour and undeserved disgrace?”
“I didn’t mean anybody, anybody at all. I meant myself,” the captain said,
collapsing again.
“You seem to be very much offended by what I’ve said about you and your
conduct? You are very irritable, Mr. Lebyadkin. But let me tell you I’ve
hardly begun yet what I’ve got to say about your conduct, in its real sense.
I’ll begin to discuss your conduct in its real sense. I shall begin, that may
very well happen, but so far I’ve not begun, in a real sense.”
Lebyadkin started and stared wildly at Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“Pyotr Stepanovitch, I am just beginning to wake up.”
“H’m! And it’s I who have waked you up?”

“Yes, it’s you who have waked me, Pyotr Stepanovitch; and I’ve been
asleep for the last four years with a storm-cloud hanging over me. May I
withdraw at last, Pyotr Stepanovitch?”
“Now you may, unless Varvara Petrovna thinks it necessary …”
But the latter dismissed him with a wave of her hand.
The captain bowed, took two steps towards the door, stopped suddenly, laid
his hand on his heart, tried to say something, did not say it, and was moving
quickly away. But in the doorway he came face to face with Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch; the latter stood aside. The captain shrank into himself, as
it were, before him, and stood as though frozen to the spot, his eyes fixed
upon him like a rabbit before a boa-constrictor. After a little pause Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch waved him aside with a slight motion of his hand, and
walked into the drawing-room.
VII
He was cheerful and serene. Perhaps something very pleasant had happened
to him, of which we knew nothing as yet; but he seemed particularly
contented.
“Do you forgive me, Nicolas?” Varvara Petrovna hastened to say, and got
up suddenly to meet him.
But Nicolas positively laughed.
“Just as I thought,” he said, good-humouredly and jestingly. “I see you
know all about it already. When I had gone from here I reflected in the
carriage that I ought at least to have told you the story instead of going off
like that. But when I remembered that Pyotr Stepanovitch was still here, I
thought no more of it.”
As he spoke he took a cursory look round.
“Pyotr Stepanovitch told us an old Petersburg episode in the life of a queer
fellow,” Varvara Petrovna rejoined enthusiastically—“a mad and capricious
fellow, though always lofty in his feelings, always chivalrous and noble.…”

“Chivalrous? You don’t mean to say it’s come to that,” laughed Nicolas.
“However, I’m very grateful to Pyotr Stepanovitch for being in such a hurry
this time.” He exchanged a rapid glance with the latter. “You must know,
maman, that Pyotr Stepanovitch is the universal peacemaker; that’s his part
in life, his weakness, his hobby, and I particularly recommend him to you
from that point of view. I can guess what a yarn he’s been spinning. He’s a
great hand at spinning them; he has a perfect record-office in his head. He’s
such a realist, you know, that he can’t tell a lie, and prefers truthfulness to
effect … except, of course, in special cases when effect is more important
than truth.” (As he said this he was still looking about him.) “So, you see
clearly, maman, that it’s not for you to ask my forgiveness, and if there’s
any craziness about this affair it’s my fault, and it proves that, when all’s
said and done, I really am mad.… I must keep up my character here.…”
Then he tenderly embraced his mother.
“In any case the subject has been fully discussed and is done with,” he
added, and there was a rather dry and resolute note in his voice. Varvara
Petrovna understood that note, but her exaltation was not damped, quite the
contrary.
“I didn’t expect you for another month, Nicolas!”
“I will explain everything to you, maman, of course, but now …”
And he went towards Praskovya Ivanovna.
But she scarcely turned her head towards him, though she had been
completely overwhelmed by his first appearance. Now she had fresh
anxieties to think of; at the moment the captain had stumbled upon Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch as he was going out, Liza had suddenly begun laughing—
at first quietly and intermittently, but her laughter grew more and more
violent, louder and more conspicuous. She flushed crimson, in striking
contrast with her gloomy expression just before.
While Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was talking to Varvara Petrovna, she had
twice beckoned to Mavriky Nikolaevitch as though she wanted to whisper
something to him; but as soon as the young man bent down to her, she
instantly burst into laughter; so that it seemed as though it was at poor
Mavriky Nikolaevitch that she was laughing. She evidently tried to control

herself, however, and put her handkerchief to her lips. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch turned to greet her with a most innocent and open-hearted
air.
“Please excuse me,” she responded, speaking quickly. “You … you’ve seen
Mavriky Nikolaevitch of course.… My goodness, how inexcusably tall you
are, Mavriky Nikolaevitch!”
And laughter again, Mavriky Nikolaevitch was tall, but by no means
inexcusably so.
“Have … you been here long?” she muttered, restraining herself again,
genuinely embarrassed though her eyes were shining.
“More than two hours,” answered Nicolas, looking at her intently. I may
remark that he was exceptionally reserved and courteous, but that apart
from his courtesy his expression was utterly indifferent, even listless.
“And where are you going to stay?”
“Here.”
Varvara Petrovna, too, was watching Liza, but she was suddenly struck by
an idea.
“Where have you been all this time, Nicolas, more than two hours?” she
said, going up to him. “The train comes in at ten o’clock.”
“I first took Pyotr Stepanovitch to Kirillov’s. I came across Pyotr
Stepanovitch at Matveyev (three stations away), and we travelled together.”
“I had been waiting at Matveyev since sunrise,” put in Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“The last carriages of our train ran off the rails in the night, and we nearly
had our legs broken.”
“Your legs broken!” cried Liza. “Maman, maman, you and I meant to go to
Matveyev last week, we should have broken our legs too!”
“Heaven have mercy on us!” cried Praskovya Ivanovna, crossing herself.
“Maman, maman, dear maman, you mustn’t be frightened if I break both
my legs. It may so easily happen to me; you say yourself that I ride so

recklessly every day. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, will you go about with me
when I’m lame?” She began giggling again. “If it does happen I won’t let
anyone take me about but you, you can reckon on that.… Well, suppose I
break only one leg. Come, be polite, say you’ll think it a pleasure.”
“A pleasure to be crippled?” said Mavriky Nikolaevitch, frowning gravely.
“But then you’ll lead me about, only you and no one else.”
“Even then it’ll be you leading me about, Lizaveta Nikolaevna,” murmured
Mavriky Nikolaevitch, even more gravely.
“Why, he’s trying to make a joke!” cried Liza, almost in dismay. “Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, don’t you ever dare take to that! But what an egoist you are! I
am certain that, to your credit, you’re slandering yourself. It will be quite
the contrary; from morning till night you’ll assure me that I have become
more charming for having lost my leg. There’s one insurmountable
difficulty—you’re so fearfully tall, and when I’ve lost my leg I shall be so
very tiny. How will you be able to take me on your arm; we shall look a
strange couple!”
And she laughed hysterically. Her jests and insinuations were feeble, but
she was not capable of considering the effect she was producing.
“Hysterics!” Pyotr Stepanovitch whispered to me. “A glass of water, make
haste!”
He was right. A minute later every one was fussing about, water was
brought. Liza embraced her mother, kissed her warmly, wept on her
shoulder, then drawing back and looking her in the face she fell to laughing
again. The mother too began whimpering. Varvara Petrovna made haste to
carry them both off to her own rooms, going out by the same door by which
Darya Pavlovna had come to us. But they were not away long, not more
than four minutes.
I am trying to remember now every detail of these last moments of that
memorable morning. I remember that when we were left without the ladies
(except Darya Pavlovna, who had not moved from her seat), Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch made the round, greeting us all except Shatov, who still
sat in his corner, his head more bowed than ever. Stepan Trofimovitch was

beginning something very witty to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but the latter
turned away hurriedly to Darya Pavlovna. But before he reached her, Pyotr
Stepanovitch caught him and drew him away, almost violently, towards the
window, where he whispered something quickly to him, apparently
something very important to judge by the expression of his face and the
gestures that accompanied the whisper. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch listened
inattentively and listlessly with his official smile, and at last even
impatiently, and seemed all the time on the point of breaking away. He
moved away from the window just as the ladies came back. Varvara
Petrovna made Liza sit down in the same seat as before, declaring that she
must wait and rest another ten minutes; and that the fresh air would perhaps
be too much for her nerves at once. She was looking after Liza with great
devotion, and sat down beside her. Pyotr Stepanovitch, now disengaged,
skipped up to them at once, and broke into a rapid and lively flow of
conversation. At that point Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at last went up to
Darya Pavlovna with his leisurely step. Dasha began stirring uneasily at his
approach, and jumped up quickly in evident embarrassment, flushing all
over her face.
“I believe one may congratulate you … or is it too soon?” he brought out
with a peculiar line in his face.
Dasha made him some answer, but it was difficult to catch it.
“Forgive my indiscretion,” he added, raising his voice, “but you know I was
expressly informed. Did you know about it?”
“Yes, I know that you were expressly informed.”
“But I hope I have not done any harm by my congratulations,” he laughed.
“And if Stepan Trofimovitch …”
“What, what’s the congratulation about?” Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly
skipped up to them. “What are you being congratulated about, Darya
Pavlovna? Bah! Surely that’s not it? Your blush proves I’ve guessed right.
And indeed, what else does one congratulate our charming and virtuous
young ladies on? And what congratulations make them blush most readily?
Well, accept mine too, then, if I’ve guessed right! And pay up. Do you
remember when we were in Switzerland you bet you’d never be married.…

Oh, yes, apropos of Switzerland—what am I thinking about? Only fancy,
that’s half what I came about, and I was almost forgetting it. Tell me,” he
turned quickly to Stepan Trofimovitch, “when are you going to
Switzerland?”
“I … to Switzerland?” Stepan Trofimovitch replied, wondering and
confused.
“What? Aren’t you going? Why you’re getting married, too, you wrote?”
“Pierre!” cried Stepan Trofimovitch.
“Well, why Pierre?… You see, if that’ll please you, I’ve flown here to
announce that I’m not at all against it, since you were set on having my
opinion as quickly as possible; and if, indeed,” he pattered on, “you want to
‘be saved,’ as you wrote, beseeching my help in the same letter, I am at
your service again. Is it true that he is going to be married, Varvara
Petrovna?” He turned quickly to her. “I hope I’m not being indiscreet; he
writes himself that the whole town knows it and every one’s congratulating
him, so that, to avoid it he only goes out at night. I’ve got his letters in my
pocket. But would you believe it, Varvara Petrovna, I can’t make head or
tail of it? Just tell me one thing, Stepan Trofimovitch, are you to be
congratulated or are you to be ‘saved’? You wouldn’t believe it; in one line
he’s despairing and in the next he’s most joyful. To begin with he begs my
forgiveness; well, of course, that’s their way … though it must be said;
fancy, the man’s only seen me twice in his life and then by accident. And
suddenly now, when he’s going to be married for the third time, he imagines
that this is a breach of some sort of parental duty to me, and entreats me a
thousand miles away not to be angry and to allow him to. Please don’t be
hurt, Stepan Trofimovitch. It’s characteristic of your generation, I take a
broad view of it, and don’t blame you. And let’s admit it does you honour
and all the rest. But the point is again that I don’t see the point of it. There’s
something about some sort of ‘sins in Switzerland.’ ‘I’m getting married,’
he says, ‘for my sins or on account of the ‘sins’ of another,’ or whatever it is
—‘sins’ anyway. ‘The girl,’ says he, ‘is a pearl and a diamond,’ and, well, of
course, he’s ‘unworthy of her’; it’s their way of talking; but on account of
some sins or circumstances ‘he is obliged to lead her to the altar, and go to
Switzerland, and therefore abandon everything and fly to save me.’ Do you

understand anything of all that? However … however, I notice from the
expression of your faces”—(he turned about with the letter in his hand
looking with an innocent smile into the faces of the company)—“that, as
usual, I seem to have put my foot in it through my stupid way of being
open, or, as Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch says, ‘being in a hurry.’ I thought, of
course, that we were all friends here, that is, your friends, Stepan
Trofimovitch, your friends. I am really a stranger, and I see … and I see that
you all know something, and that just that something I don’t know.” He still
went on looking about him.
“So Stepan Trofimovitch wrote to you that he was getting married for the
‘sins of another committed in Switzerland,’ and that you were to fly here ‘to
save him,’ in those very words?” said Varvara Petrovna, addressing him
suddenly. Her face was yellow and distorted, and her lips were twitching.
“Well, you see, if there’s anything I’ve not understood,” said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, as though in alarm, talking more quickly than ever, “it’s his
fault, of course, for writing like that. Here’s the letter. You know, Varvara
Petrovna, his letters are endless and incessant, and, you know, for the last
two or three months there has been letter upon letter, till, I must own, at last
I sometimes didn’t read them through. Forgive me, Stepan Trofimovitch,
for my foolish confession, but you must admit, please, that, though you
addressed them to me, you wrote them more for posterity, so that you really
can’t mind.… Come, come, don’t be offended; we’re friends, anyway. But
this letter, Varvara Petrovna, this letter, I did read through. These ‘sins’—
these ‘sins of another’—are probably some little sins of our own, and I
don’t mind betting very innocent ones, though they have suddenly made us
take a fancy to work up a terrible story, with a glamour of the heroic about
it; and it’s just for the sake of that glamour we’ve got it up. You see there’s
something a little lame about our accounts—it must be confessed, in the
end. We’ve a great weakness for cards, you know.… But this is
unnecessary, quite unnecessary, I’m sorry, I chatter too much. But upon my
word, Varvara Petrovna, he gave me a fright, and I really was half prepared
to save him. He really made me feel ashamed. Did he expect me to hold a
knife to his throat, or what? Am I such a merciless creditor? He writes
something here of a dowry.… But are you really going to get married,
Stepan Trofimovitch? That would be just like you, to say a lot for the sake

of talking. Ach, Varvara Petrovna, I’m sure you must be blaming me now,
and just for my way of talking too.…”
“On the contrary, on the contrary, I see that you are driven out of all
patience, and, no doubt you have had good reason,” Varvara Petrovna
answered spitefully. She had listened with spiteful enjoyment to all the
“candid outbursts” of Pyotr Stepanovitch, who was obviously playing a part
(what part I did not know then, but it was unmistakable, and over-acted
indeed).
“On the contrary,” she went on, “I’m only too grateful to you for speaking;
but for you I might not have known of it. My eyes are opened for the first
time for twenty years. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, you said just now that you
had been expressly informed; surely Stepan Trofimovitch hasn’t written to
you in the same style?”
“I did get a very harmless and … and … very generous letter from him.…”
“You hesitate, you pick out your words. That’s enough! Stepan
Trofimovitch, I request a great favour from you.” She suddenly turned to
him with flashing eyes. “Kindly leave us at once, and never set foot in my
house again.”
I must beg the reader to remember her recent “exaltation,” which had not
yet passed. It’s true that Stepan Trofimovitch was terribly to blame! But
what was a complete surprise to me then was the wonderful dignity of his
bearing under his son’s “accusation,” which he had never thought of
interrupting, and before Varvara Petrovna’s “denunciation.” How did he
come by such spirit? I only found out one thing, that he had certainly been
deeply wounded at his first meeting with Petrusha, by the way he had
embraced him. It was a deep and genuine grief; at least in his eyes and to
his heart. He had another grief at the same time, that is the poignant
consciousness of having acted contemptibly. He admitted this to me
afterwards with perfect openness. And you know real genuine sorrow will
sometimes make even a phenomenally frivolous, unstable man solid and
stoical; for a short time at any rate; what’s more, even fools are by genuine
sorrow turned into wise men, also only for a short time of course; it is
characteristic of sorrow. And if so, what might not happen with a man like

Stepan Trofimovitch? It worked a complete transformation—though also
only for a time, of course.
He bowed with dignity to Varvara Petrovna without uttering a word (there
was nothing else left for him to do, indeed). He was on the point of going
out without a word, but could not refrain from approaching Darya
Pavlovna. She seemed to foresee that he would do so, for she began
speaking of her own accord herself, in utter dismay, as though in haste to
anticipate him.
“Please, Stepan Trofimovitch, for God’s sake, don’t say anything,” she
began, speaking with haste and excitement, with a look of pain in her face,
hurriedly stretching out her hands to him. “Be sure that I still respect you as
much … and think just as highly of you, and … think well of me too,
Stepan Trofimovitch, that will mean a great deal to me, a great deal.…”
Stepan Trofimovitch made her a very, very low bow.
“It’s for you to decide, Darya Pavlovna; you know that you are perfectly
free in the whole matter! You have been, and you are now, and you always
will be,” Varvara Petrovna concluded impressively.
“Bah! Now I understand it all!” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, slapping himself
on the forehead. “But … but what a position I am put in by all this! Darya
Pavlovna, please forgive me!… What do you call your treatment of me,
eh?” he said, addressing his father.
“Pierre, you might speak to me differently, mightn’t you, my boy,” Stepan
Trofimovitch observed quite quietly.
“Don’t cry out, please,” said Pierre, with a wave of his hand. “Believe me,
it’s all your sick old nerves, and crying out will do no good at all. You’d
better tell me instead, why didn’t you warn me since you might have
supposed I should speak out at the first chance?”
Stepan Trofimovitch looked searchingly at him.
“Pierre, you who know so much of what goes on here, can you really have
known nothing of this business and have heard nothing about it?”

“What? What a set! So it’s not enough to be a child in your old age, you
must be a spiteful child too! Varvara Petrovna, did you hear what he said?”
There was a general outcry; but then suddenly an incident took place which
no one could have anticipated.
VIII
First of all I must mention that, for the last two or three minutes Lizaveta
Nikolaevna had seemed to be possessed by a new impulse; she was
whispering something hurriedly to her mother, and to Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, who bent down to listen. Her face was agitated, but at the
same time it had a look of resolution. At last she got up from her seat in
evident haste to go away, and hurried her mother whom Mavriky
Nikolaevitch began helping up from her low chair. But it seemed they were
not destined to get away without seeing everything to the end.
Shatov, who had been forgotten by every one in his corner (not far from
Lizaveta Nikolaevna), and who did not seem to know himself why he went
on sitting there, got up from his chair, and walked, without haste, with
resolute steps right across the room to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, looking
him straight in the face. The latter noticed him approaching at some
distance, and faintly smiled, but when Shatov was close to him he left off
smiling.
When Shatov stood still facing him with his eyes fixed on him, and without
uttering a word, every one suddenly noticed it and there was a general hush;
Pyotr Stepanovitch was the last to cease speaking. Liza and her mother
were standing in the middle of the room. So passed five seconds; the look
of haughty astonishment was followed by one of anger on Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch’s face; he scowled.…
And suddenly Shatov swung his long, heavy arm, and with all his might
struck him a blow in the face. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch staggered violently.
Shatov struck the blow in a peculiar way, not at all after the conventional
fashion (if one may use such an expression). It was not a slap with the palm
of his hand, but a blow with the whole fist, and it was a big, heavy, bony fist
covered with red hairs and freckles. If the blow had struck the nose, it

would have broken it. But it hit him on the cheek, and struck the left corner
of the lip and the upper teeth, from which blood streamed at once.
I believe there was a sudden scream, perhaps Varvara Petrovna screamed—
that I don’t remember, because there was a dead hush again; the whole
scene did not last more than ten seconds, however.
Yet a very great deal happened in those seconds.
I must remind the reader again that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s was one of
those natures that know nothing of fear. At a duel he could face the pistol of
his opponent with indifference, and could take aim and kill with brutal
coolness. If anyone had slapped him in the face, I should have expected him
not to challenge his assailant to a duel, but to murder him on the spot. He
was just one of those characters, and would have killed the man, knowing
very well what he was doing, and without losing his self-control. I fancy,
indeed, that he never was liable to those fits of blind rage which deprive a
man of all power of reflection. Even when overcome with intense anger, as
he sometimes was, he was always able to retain complete self-control, and
therefore to realise that he would certainly be sent to penal servitude for
murdering a man not in a duel; nevertheless, he’d have killed any one who
insulted him, and without the faintest hesitation.
I have been studying Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch of late, and through special
circumstances I know a great many facts about him now, at the time I write.
I should compare him, perhaps, with some gentlemen of the past of whom
legendary traditions are still perceived among us. We are told, for instance,
about the Decabrist L—n, that he was always seeking for danger, that he
revelled in the sensation, and that it had become a craving of his nature; that
in his youth he had rushed into duels for nothing; that in Siberia he used to
go to kill bears with nothing but a knife; that in the Siberian forests he liked
to meet with runaway convicts, who are, I may observe in passing, more
formidable than bears. There is no doubt that these legendary gentlemen
were capable of a feeling of fear, and even to an extreme degree, perhaps, or
they would have been a great deal quieter, and a sense of danger would
never have become a physical craving with them. But the conquest of fear
was what fascinated them. The continual ecstasy of vanquishing and the
consciousness that no one could vanquish them was what attracted them.

The same L—n struggled with hunger for some time before he was sent into
exile, and toiled to earn his daily bread simply because he did not care to
comply with the requests of his rich father, which he considered unjust. So
his conception of struggle was many-sided, and he did not prize stoicism
and strength of character only in duels and bear-fights.
But many years have passed since those times, and the nervous, exhausted,
complex character of the men of to-day is incompatible with the craving for
those direct and unmixed sensations which were so sought after by some
restlessly active gentlemen of the good old days. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
would, perhaps, have looked down on L—n, and have called him a boastful
cock-a-hoop coward; it’s true he wouldn’t have expressed himself aloud.
Stavrogin would have shot his opponent in a duel, and would have faced a
bear if necessary, and would have defended himself from a brigand in the
forest as successfully and as fearlessly as L—n, but it would be without the
slightest thrill of enjoyment, languidly, listlessly, even with ennui and
entirely from unpleasant necessity. In anger, of course, there has been a
progress compared with L—n, even compared with Lermontov. There was
perhaps more malignant anger in Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch than in both put
together, but it was a calm, cold, if one may so say, reasonable anger, and
therefore the most revolting and most terrible possible. I repeat again, I
considered him then, and I still consider him (now that everything is over),
a man who, if he received a slap in the face, or any equivalent insult, would
be certain to kill his assailant at once, on the spot, without challenging him.
Yet, in the present case, what happened was something different and
amazing.
He had scarcely regained his balance after being almost knocked over in
this humiliating way, and the horrible, as it were, sodden, thud of the blow
in the face had scarcely died away in the room when he seized Shatov by
the shoulders with both hands, but at once, almost at the same instant,
pulled both hands away and clasped them behind his back. He did not
speak, but looked at Shatov, and turned as white as his shirt. But, strange to
say, the light in his eyes seemed to die out. Ten seconds later his eyes
looked cold, and I’m sure I’m not lying—calm. Only he was terribly pale.
Of course I don’t know what was passing within the man, I saw only his
exterior. It seems to me that if a man should snatch up a bar of red-hot iron

and hold it tight in his hand to test his fortitude, and after struggling for ten
seconds with insufferable pain end by overcoming it, such a man would, I
fancy, go through something like what Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was
enduring during those ten seconds.
Shatov was the first to drop his eyes, and evidently because he was unable
to go on facing him; then he turned slowly and walked out of the room, but
with a very different step. He withdrew quietly, with peculiar awkwardness,
with his shoulders hunched, his head hanging as though he were inwardly
pondering something. I believe he was whispering something. He made his
way to the door carefully, without stumbling against anything or knocking
anything over; he opened the door a very little way, and squeezed through
almost sideways. As he went out his shock of hair standing on end at the
back of his head was particularly noticeable.
Then first of all one fearful scream was heard. I saw Lizaveta Nikolaevna
seize her mother by the shoulder and Mavriky Nikolaevitch by the arm and
make two or three violent efforts to draw them out of the room. But she
suddenly uttered a shriek, and fell full length on the floor, fainting. I can
hear the thud of her head on the carpet to this day.

PART II

CHAPTER I. NIGHT
I
EIGHT DAYS HAD PASSED. Now that it is all over and I am writing a
record of it, we know all about it; but at the time we knew nothing, and it
was natural that many things should seem strange to us: Stepan
Trofimovitch and I, anyway, shut ourselves up for the first part of the time,
and looked on with dismay from a distance. I did, indeed, go about here and
there, and, as before, brought him various items of news, without which he
could not exist.
I need hardly say that there were rumours of the most varied kind going
about the town in regard to the blow that Stavrogin had received, Lizaveta
Nikolaevna’s fainting fit, and all that happened on that Sunday. But what
we wondered was, through whom the story had got about so quickly and so
accurately. Not one of the persons present had any need to give away the
secret of what had happened, or interest to serve by doing so.
The servants had not been present. Lebyadkin was the only one who might
have chattered, not so much from spite, for he had gone out in great alarm
(and fear of an enemy destroys spite against him), but simply from
incontinence of speech. But Lebyadkin and his sister had disappeared next
day, and nothing could be heard of them. There was no trace of them at
Filipov’s house, they had moved, no one knew where, and seemed to have
vanished. Shatov, of whom I wanted to inquire about Marya Timofyevna,
would not open his door, and I believe sat locked up in his room for the
whole of those eight days, even discontinuing his work in the town. He
would not see me. I went to see him on Tuesday and knocked at his door. I
got no answer, but being convinced by unmistakable evidence that he was at
home, I knocked a second time. Then, jumping up, apparently from his bed,
he strode to the door and shouted at the top of his voice:
“Shatov is not at home!”
With that I went away.

Stepan Trofimovitch and I, not without dismay at the boldness of the
supposition, though we tried to encourage one another, reached at last a
conclusion: we made up our mind that the only person who could be
responsible for spreading these rumours was Pyotr Stepanovitch, though he
himself not long after assured his father that he had found the story on
every one’s lips, especially at the club, and that the governor and his wife
were familiar with every detail of it. What is even more remarkable is that
the next day, Monday evening, I met Liputin, and he knew every word that
had been passed, so that he must have heard it first-hand. Many of the
ladies (and some of the leading ones) were very inquisitive about the
“mysterious cripple,” as they called Marya Timofyevna. There were some,
indeed, who were anxious to see her and make her acquaintance, so the
intervention of the persons who had been in such haste to conceal the
Lebyadkins was timely. But Lizaveta Nikolaevna’s fainting certainly took
the foremost place in the story, and “all society” was interested, if only
because it directly concerned Yulia Mihailovna, as the kinswoman and
patroness of the young lady. And what was there they didn’t say! What
increased the gossip was the mysterious position of affairs; both houses
were obstinately closed; Lizaveta Nikolaevna, so they said, was in bed with
brain fever. The same thing was asserted of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with
the revolting addition of a tooth knocked out and a swollen face. It was
even whispered in corners that there would soon be murder among us, that
Stavrogin was not the man to put up with such an insult, and that he would
kill Shatov, but with the secrecy of a Corsican vendetta. People liked this
idea, but the majority of our young people listened with contempt, and with
an air of the most nonchalant indifference, which was, of course, assumed.
The old hostility to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch in the town was in general
strikingly manifest. Even sober-minded people were eager to throw blame
on him though they could not have said for what. It was whispered that he
had ruined Lizaveta Nikolaevna’s reputation, and that there had been an
intrigue between them in Switzerland. Cautious people, of course,
restrained themselves, but all listened with relish. There were other things
said, though not in public, but in private, on rare occasions and almost in
secret, extremely strange things, to which I only refer to warn my readers of
them with a view to the later events of my story. Some people, with knitted
brows, said, God knows on what foundation, that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
had some special business in our province, that he had, through Count K.,

been brought into touch with exalted circles in Petersburg, that he was even,
perhaps, in government service, and might almost be said to have been
furnished with some sort of commission from someone. When very sober-
minded and sensible people smiled at this rumour, observing very
reasonably that a man always mixed up with scandals, and who was
beginning his career among us with a swollen face did not look like a
government official, they were told in a whisper that he was employed not
in the official, but, so to say, the confidential service, and that in such cases
it was essential to be as little like an official as possible. This remark
produced a sensation; we knew that the Zemstvo of our province was the
object of marked attention in the capital. I repeat, these were only flitting
rumours that disappeared for a time when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch first
came among us. But I may observe that many of the rumours were partly
due to a few brief but malicious words, vaguely and disconnectedly
dropped at the club by a gentleman who had lately returned from
Petersburg. This was a retired captain in the guards, Artemy Pavlovitch
Gaganov. He was a very large landowner in our province and district, a man
used to the society of Petersburg, and a son of the late Pavel Pavlovitch
Gaganov, the venerable old man with whom Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had,
over four years before, had the extraordinarily coarse and sudden encounter
which I have described already in the beginning of my story.
It immediately became known to every one that Yulia Mihailovna had made
a special call on Varvara Petrovna, and had been informed at the entrance:
“Her honour was too unwell to see visitors.” It was known, too, that Yulia
Mihailovna sent a message two days later to inquire after Varvara
Petrovna’s health. At last she began “defending” Varvara Petrovna
everywhere, of course only in the loftiest sense, that is, in the vaguest
possible way. She listened coldly and sternly to the hurried remarks made at
first about the scene on Sunday, so that during the later days they were not
renewed in her presence. So that the belief gained ground everywhere that
Yulia Mihailovna knew not only the whole of the mysterious story but all its
secret significance to the smallest detail, and not as an outsider, but as one
taking part in it. I may observe, by the way, that she was already gradually
beginning to gain that exalted influence among us for which she was so
eager and which she was certainly struggling to win, and was already
beginning to see herself “surrounded by a circle.” A section of society

recognised her practical sense and tact … but of that later. Her patronage
partly explained Pyotr Stepanovitch’s rapid success in our society—a
success with which Stepan Trofimovitch was particularly impressed at the
time.
We possibly exaggerated it. To begin with, Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed to
make acquaintance almost instantly with the whole town within the first
four days of his arrival. He only arrived on Sunday; and on Tuesday I saw
him in a carriage with Artemy Pavlovitch Gaganov, a man who was proud,
irritable, and supercilious, in spite of his good breeding, and who was not
easy to get on with. At the governor’s, too, Pyotr Stepanovitch met with a
warm welcome, so much so that he was at once on an intimate footing, like
a young friend, treated, so to say, affectionately. He dined with Yulia
Mihailovna almost every day. He had made her acquaintance in
Switzerland, but there was certainly something curious about the rapidity of
his success in the governor’s house. In any case he was reputed, whether
truly or not, to have been at one time a revolutionist abroad, he had had
something to do with some publications and some congresses abroad,
“which one can prove from the newspapers,” to quote the malicious remark
of Alyosha Telyatnikov, who had also been once a young friend
affectionately treated in the house of the late governor, but was now, alas, a
clerk on the retired list. But the fact was unmistakable: the former
revolutionist, far from being hindered from returning to his beloved
Fatherland, seemed almost to have been encouraged to do so, so perhaps
there was nothing in it. Liputin whispered to me once that there were
rumours that Pyotr Stepanovitch had once professed himself penitent, and
on his return had been pardoned on mentioning certain names and so,
perhaps, had succeeded in expiating his offence, by promising to be of use
to the government in the future. I repeated these malignant phrases to
Stepan Trofimovitch, and although the latter was in such a state that he was
hardly capable of reflection, he pondered profoundly. It turned out later that
Pyotr Stepanovitch had come to us with a very influential letter of
recommendation, that he had, at any rate, brought one to the governor’s
wife from a very important old lady in Petersburg, whose husband was one
of the most distinguished old dignitaries in the capital. This old lady, who
was Yulia Mihailovna’s godmother, mentioned in her letter that Count K.
knew Pyotr Stepanovitch very well through Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,

made much of him, and thought him “a very excellent young man in spite
of his former errors.” Yulia Mihailovna set the greatest value on her
relations with the “higher spheres,” which were few and maintained with
difficulty, and was, no doubt, pleased to get the old lady’s letter, but still
there was something peculiar about it. She even forced her husband upon a
familiar footing with Pyotr Stepanovitch, so much so that Mr. von Lembke
complained of it … but of that, too, later. I may mention, too, that the great
author was also favourably disposed to Pyotr Stepanovitch, and at once
invited him to go and see him. Such alacrity on the part of a man so puffed
up with conceit stung Stepan Trofimovitch more painfully than anything;
but I put a different interpretation on it. In inviting a nihilist to see him, Mr.
Karmazinov, no doubt, had in view his relations with the progressives of the
younger generation in both capitals. The great author trembled nervously
before the revolutionary youth of Russia, and imagining, in his ignorance,
that the future lay in their hands, fawned upon them in a despicable way,
chiefly because they paid no attention to him whatever.
II
Pyotr Stepanovitch ran round to see his father twice, but unfortunately I was
absent on both occasions. He visited him for the first time only on
Wednesday, that is, not till the fourth day after their first meeting, and then
only on business. Their difficulties over the property were settled, by the
way, without fuss or publicity. Varvara Petrovna took it all on herself, and
paid all that was owing, taking over the land, of course, and only informed
Stepan Trofimovitch that it was all settled and her butler, Alexey Yegorytch,
was, by her authorisation, bringing him something to sign. This Stepan
Trofimovitch did, in silence, with extreme dignity. Apropos of his dignity, I
may mention that I hardly recognised my old friend during those days. He
behaved as he had never done before; became amazingly taciturn and had
not even written one letter to Varvara Petrovna since Sunday, which seemed
to me almost a miracle. What’s more, he had become quite calm. He had
fastened upon a final and decisive idea which gave him tranquillity. That
was evident. He had hit upon this idea, and sat still, expecting something.
At first, however, he was ill, especially on Monday. He had an attack of his
summer cholera. He could not remain all that time without news either; but
as soon as I departed from the statement of facts, and began discussing the
case in itself, and formulated any theory, he at once gesticulated to me to

stop. But both his interviews with his son had a distressing effect on him,
though they did not shake his determination. After each interview he spent
the whole day lying on the sofa with a handkerchief soaked in vinegar on
his head. But he continued to remain calm in the deepest sense.
Sometimes, however, he did not hinder my speaking. Sometimes, too, it
seemed to me that the mysterious determination he had taken seemed to be
failing him and he appeared to be struggling with a new, seductive stream
of ideas. That was only at moments, but I made a note of it. I suspected that
he was longing to assert himself again, to come forth from his seclusion, to
show fight, to struggle to the last.
“Cher, I could crush them!” broke from him on Thursday evening after his
second interview with Pyotr Stepanovitch, when he lay stretched on the
sofa with his head wrapped in a towel.
Till that moment he had not uttered one word all day.
“Fils, fils, cher,” and so on, “I agree all those expressions are nonsense,
kitchen talk, and so be it. I see it for myself. I never gave him food or drink,
I sent him a tiny baby from Berlin to X province by post, and all that, I
admit it.… ‘You gave me neither food nor drink, and sent me by post,’ he
says, ‘and what’s more you’ve robbed me here.’”
“‘But you unhappy boy,’ I cried to him, ‘my heart has been aching for you
all my life; though I did send you by post.’ Il rit.”
“But I admit it. I admit it, granted it was by post,” he concluded, almost in
delirium.
“Passons,” he began again, five minutes later. “I don’t understand
Turgenev. That Bazarov of his is a fictitious figure, it does not exist
anywhere. The fellows themselves were the first to disown him as unlike
anyone. That Bazarov is a sort of indistinct mixture of Nozdryov and
Byron, c’est le mot. Look at them attentively: they caper about and squeal
with joy like puppies in the sun. They are happy, they are victorious! What
is there of Byron in them!… and with that, such ordinariness! What a low-
bred, irritable vanity! What an abject craving to faire du bruit autour de son
nom, without noticing that son nom.… Oh, it’s a caricature! ‘Surely,’ I cried
to him, ‘you don’t want to offer yourself just as you are as a substitute for

Christ?’ Il rit. Il rit beaucoup. Il rit trop. He has a strange smile. His mother
had not a smile like that. Il rit toujours.”
Silence followed again.
“They are cunning; they were acting in collusion on Sunday,” he blurted out
suddenly.…
“Oh, not a doubt of it,” I cried, pricking up my ears. “It was a got-up thing
and it was too transparent, and so badly acted.”
“I don’t mean that. Do you know that it was all too transparent on purpose,
that those … who had to, might understand it. Do you understand that?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Tant mieux; passons. I am very irritable to-day.”
“But why have you been arguing with him, Stepan Trofimovitch?” I asked
him reproachfully.
“Je voulais convertir—you’ll laugh of course—cette pauvre auntie, elle
entendra de belles choses! Oh, my dear boy, would you believe it. I felt like
a patriot. I always recognised that I was a Russian, however … a genuine
Russian must be like you and me. Il y a là dedans quelque chose d’aveugle
et de louche.”
“Not a doubt of it,” I assented.
“My dear, the real truth always sounds improbable, do you know that? To
make truth sound probable you must always mix in some falsehood with it.
Men have always done so. Perhaps there’s something in it that passes our
understanding. What do you think: is there something we don’t understand
in that triumphant squeal? I should like to think there was. I should like to
think so.”
I did not speak. He, too, was silent for a long time. “They say that French
cleverness …” he babbled suddenly, as though in a fever … “that’s false, it
always has been. Why libel French cleverness? It’s simply Russian
indolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting
parasitism in the rank of nations. Ils sont tout simplement des paresseux,

and not French cleverness. Oh, the Russians ought to be extirpated for the
good of humanity, like noxious parasites! We’ve been striving for
something utterly, utterly different. I can make nothing of it. I have given up
understanding. ‘Do you understand,’ I cried to him, ‘that if you have the
guillotine in the foreground of your programme and are so enthusiastic
about it too, it’s simply because nothing’s easier than cutting off heads, and
nothing’s harder than to have an idea. Vous êtes des paresseux! Votre
drapeau est un guenille, une impuissance. It’s those carts, or, what was
it?… the rumble of the carts carrying bread to humanity being more
important than the Sistine Madonna, or, what’s the saying?… une bêtise
dans ce genre. Don’t you understand, don’t you understand,’ I said to him,
‘that unhappiness is just as necessary to man as happiness.’ Il rit. ‘All you
do is to make a bon mot,’ he said, ‘with your limbs snug on a velvet sofa.’
… (He used a coarser expression.) And this habit of addressing a father so
familiarly is very nice when father and son are on good terms, but what do
you think of it when they are abusing one another?”
We were silent again for a minute.
“Cher,” he concluded at last, getting up quickly, “do you know this is
bound to end in something?”
“Of course,” said I.
“Vous ne comprenez pas. Passons. But … usually in our world things come
to nothing, but this will end in something; it’s bound to, it’s bound to!”
He got up, and walked across the room in violent emotion, and coming back
to the sofa sank on to it exhausted.
On Friday morning, Pyotr Stepanovitch went off somewhere in the
neighbourhood, and remained away till Monday. I heard of his departure
from Liputin, and in the course of conversation I learned that the
Lebyadkins, brother and sister, had moved to the riverside quarter. “I moved
them,” he added, and, dropping the Lebyadkins, he suddenly announced to
me that Lizaveta Nikolaevna was going to marry Mavriky Nikolaevitch,
that, although it had not been announced, the engagement was a settled
thing. Next day I met Lizaveta Nikolaevna out riding with Mavriky
Nikolaevitch; she was out for the first time after her illness. She beamed at

me from the distance, laughed, and nodded in a very friendly way. I told all
this to Stepan Trofimovitch; he paid no attention, except to the news about
the Lebyadkins.
And now, having described our enigmatic position throughout those eight
days during which we knew nothing, I will pass on to the description of the
succeeding incidents of my chronicle, writing, so to say, with full
knowledge, and describing things as they became known afterwards, and
are clearly seen to-day. I will begin with the eighth day after that Sunday,
that is, the Monday evening—for in reality a “new scandal” began with that
evening.
III
It was seven o’clock in the evening. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was sitting
alone in his study—the room he had been fond of in old days. It was lofty,
carpeted with rugs, and contained somewhat heavy old-fashioned furniture.
He was sitting on the sofa in the corner, dressed as though to go out, though
he did not seem to be intending to do so. On the table before him stood a
lamp with a shade. The sides and corners of the big room were left in
shadow. His eyes looked dreamy and concentrated, not altogether tranquil;
his face looked tired and had grown a little thinner. He really was ill with a
swollen face; but the story of a tooth having been knocked out was an
exaggeration. One had been loosened, but it had grown into its place again:
he had had a cut on the inner side of the upper lip, but that, too, had healed.
The swelling on his face had lasted all the week simply because the invalid
would not have a doctor, and instead of having the swelling lanced had
waited for it to go down. He would not hear of a doctor, and would scarcely
allow even his mother to come near him, and then only for a moment, once
a day, and only at dusk, after it was dark and before lights had been brought
in. He did not receive Pyotr Stepanovitch either, though the latter ran round
to Varvara Petrovna’s two or three times a day so long as he remained in the
town. And now, at last, returning on the Monday morning after his three
days’ absence, Pyotr Stepanovitch made a circuit of the town, and, after
dining at Yulia Mihailovna’s, came at last in the evening to Varvara
Petrovna, who was impatiently expecting him. The interdict had been
removed, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was “at home.” Varvara Petrovna
herself led the visitor to the door of the study; she had long looked forward

to their meeting, and Pyotr Stepanovitch had promised to run to her and
repeat what passed. She knocked timidly at Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s
door, and getting no answer ventured to open the door a couple of inches.
“Nicolas, may I bring Pyotr Stepanovitch in to see you?” she asked, in a
soft and restrained voice, trying to make out her son’s face behind the lamp.
“You can—you can, of course you can,” Pyotr Stepanovitch himself cried
out, loudly and gaily. He opened the door with his hand and went in.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had not heard the knock at the door, and only
caught his mother’s timid question, and had not had time to answer it.
Before him, at that moment, there lay a letter he had just read over, which
he was pondering deeply. He started, hearing Pyotr Stepanovitch’s sudden
outburst, and hurriedly put the letter under a paper-weight, but did not quite
succeed; a corner of the letter and almost the whole envelope showed.
“I called out on purpose that you might be prepared,” Pyotr Stepanovitch
said hurriedly, with surprising naïveté, running up to the table, and instantly
staring at the corner of the letter, which peeped out from beneath the paper-
weight.
“And no doubt you had time to see how I hid the letter I had just received,
under the paper-weight,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch calmly, without
moving from his place.
“A letter? Bless you and your letters, what are they to do with me?” cried
the visitor. “But … what does matter …” he whispered again, turning to the
door, which was by now closed, and nodding his head in that direction.
“She never listens,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch observed coldly.
“What if she did overhear?” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, raising his voice
cheerfully, and settling down in an arm-chair. “I’ve nothing against that,
only I’ve come here now to speak to you alone. Well, at last I’ve succeeded
in getting at you. First of all, how are you? I see you’re getting on
splendidly. To-morrow you’ll show yourself again—eh?”
“Perhaps.”

“Set their minds at rest. Set mine at rest at last.” He gesticulated violently
with a jocose and amiable air. “If only you knew what nonsense I’ve had to
talk to them. You know, though.” He laughed.
“I don’t know everything. I only heard from my mother that you’ve been …
very active.”
“Oh, well, I’ve said nothing definite,” Pyotr Stepanovitch flared up at once,
as though defending himself from an awful attack. “I simply trotted out
Shatov’s wife; you know, that is, the rumours of your liaison in Paris, which
accounted, of course, for what happened on Sunday. You’re not angry?”
“I’m sure you’ve done your best.”
“Oh, that’s just what I was afraid of. Though what does that mean, ‘done
your best’? That’s a reproach, isn’t it? You always go straight for things,
though.… What I was most afraid of, as I came here, was that you wouldn’t
go straight for the point.”
“I don’t want to go straight for anything,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
with some irritation. But he laughed at once.
“I didn’t mean that, I didn’t mean that, don’t make a mistake,” cried Pyotr
Stepanovitch, waving his hands, rattling his words out like peas, and at once
relieved at his companion’s irritability. “I’m not going to worry you with
our business, especially in your present position. I’ve only come about
Sunday’s affair, and only to arrange the most necessary steps, because, you
see, it’s impossible. I’ve come with the frankest explanations which I stand
in more need of than you—so much for your vanity, but at the same time
it’s true. I’ve come to be open with you from this time forward.”
“Then you have not been open with me before?”
“You know that yourself. I’ve been cunning with you many times … you
smile; I’m very glad of that smile as a prelude to our explanation. I
provoked that smile on purpose by using the word ‘cunning,’ so that you
might get cross directly at my daring to think I could be cunning, so that I
might have a chance of explaining myself at once. You see, you see how
open I have become now! Well, do you care to listen?”

In the expression of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch’s face, which was
contemptuously composed, and even ironical, in spite of his visitor’s
obvious desire to irritate him by the insolence of his premeditated and
intentionally coarse naïvetés, there was, at last, a look of rather uneasy
curiosity.
“Listen,” said Pyotr Stepanovitch, wriggling more than ever, “when I set off
to come here, I mean here in the large sense, to this town, ten days ago, I
made up my mind, of course, to assume a character. It would have been best
to have done without anything, to have kept one’s own character, wouldn’t
it? There is no better dodge than one’s own character, because no one
believes in it. I meant, I must own, to assume the part of a fool, because it is
easier to be a fool than to act one’s own character; but as a fool is after all
something extreme, and anything extreme excites curiosity, I ended by
sticking to my own character. And what is my own character? The golden
mean: neither wise nor foolish, rather stupid, and dropped from the moon,
as sensible people say here, isn’t that it?”
“Perhaps it is,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with a faint smile.
“Ah, you agree—I’m very glad; I knew beforehand that it was your own
opinion.… You needn’t trouble, I am not annoyed, and I didn’t describe
myself in that way to get a flattering contradiction from you—no, you’re
not stupid, you’re clever.… Ah! you’re smiling again!… I’ve blundered
once more. You would not have said ‘you’re clever,’ granted; I’ll let it pass
anyway. Passons, as papa says, and, in parenthesis, don’t be vexed with my
verbosity. By the way, I always say a lot, that is, use a great many words
and talk very fast, and I never speak well. And why do I use so many words,
and why do I never speak well? Because I don’t know how to speak. People
who can speak well, speak briefly. So that I am stupid, am I not? But as this
gift of stupidity is natural to me, why shouldn’t I make skilful use of it? And
I do make use of it. It’s true that as I came here, I did think, at first, of being
silent. But you know silence is a great talent, and therefore incongruous for
me, and secondly silence would be risky, anyway. So I made up my mind
finally that it would be best to talk, but to talk stupidly—that is, to talk and
talk and talk—to be in a tremendous hurry to explain things, and in the end
to get muddled in my own explanations, so that my listener would walk
away without hearing the end, with a shrug, or, better still, with a curse. You

succeed straight off in persuading them of your simplicity, in boring them
and in being incomprehensible—three advantages all at once! Do you
suppose anybody will suspect you of mysterious designs after that? Why,
every one of them would take it as a personal affront if anyone were to say I
had secret designs. And I sometimes amuse them too, and that’s priceless.
Why, they’re ready to forgive me everything now, just because the clever
fellow who used to publish manifestoes out there turns out to be stupider
than themselves—that’s so, isn’t it? From your smile I see you approve.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was not smiling at all, however.
On the contrary, he was listening with a frown and some impatience.
“Eh? What? I believe you said ‘no matter.’”
Pyotr Stepanovitch rattled on. (Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had said nothing
at all.) “Of course, of course. I assure you I’m not here to compromise you
by my company, by claiming you as my comrade. But do you know you’re
horribly captious to-day; I ran in to you with a light and open heart, and you
seem to be laying up every word I say against me. I assure you I’m not
going to begin about anything shocking to-day, I give you my word, and I
agree beforehand to all your conditions.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was obstinately silent.
“Eh? What? Did you say something? I see, I see that I’ve made a blunder
again, it seems; you’ve not suggested conditions and you’re not going to; I
believe you, I believe you; well, you can set your mind at rest; I know, of
course, that it’s not worth while for me to suggest them, is it? I’ll answer for
you beforehand, and—just from stupidity, of course; stupidity again.…
You’re laughing? Eh? What?”
“Nothing,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch laughed at last. “I just remembered
that I really did call you stupid, but you weren’t there then, so they must
have repeated it.… I would ask you to make haste and come to the point.”
“Why, but I am at the point! I am talking about Sunday,” babbled Pyotr
Stepanovitch. “Why, what was I on Sunday? What would you call it? Just
fussy, mediocre stupidity, and in the stupidest way I took possession of the
conversation by force. But they forgave me everything, first because I

dropped from the moon, that seems to be settled here, now, by every one;
and, secondly, because I told them a pretty little story, and got you all out of
a scrape, didn’t they, didn’t they?”
“That is, you told your story so as to leave them in doubt and suggest some
compact and collusion between us, when there was no collusion and I’d not
asked you to do anything.”
“Just so, just so!” Pyotr Stepanovitch caught him up, apparently delighted.
“That’s just what I did do, for I wanted you to see that I implied it; I exerted
myself chiefly for your sake, for I caught you and wanted to compromise
you, above all I wanted to find out how far you’re afraid.”
“It would be interesting to know why you are so open now?”
“Don’t be angry, don’t be angry, don’t glare at me.… You’re not, though.
You wonder why I am so open? Why, just because it’s all changed now; of
course, it’s over, buried under the sand. I’ve suddenly changed my ideas
about you. The old way is closed; now I shall never compromise you in the
old way, it will be in a new way now.”
“You’ve changed your tactics?”
“There are no tactics. Now it’s for you to decide in everything, that is, if
you want to, say yes, and if you want to, say no. There you have my new
tactics. And I won’t say a word about our cause till you bid me yourself.
You laugh? Laugh away. I’m laughing myself. But I’m in earnest now, in
earnest, in earnest, though a man who is in such a hurry is stupid, isn’t he?
Never mind, I may be stupid, but I’m in earnest, in earnest.”
He really was speaking in earnest in quite a different tone, and with a
peculiar excitement, so that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him with
curiosity.
“You say you’ve changed your ideas about me?” he asked.
“I changed my ideas about you at the moment when you drew your hands
back after Shatov’s attack, and, that’s enough, that’s enough, no questions,
please, I’ll say nothing more now.”

He jumped up, waving his hands as though waving off questions. But as
there were no questions, and he had no reason to go away, he sank into an
arm-chair again, somewhat reassured.
“By the way, in parenthesis,” he rattled on at once, “some people here are
babbling that you’ll kill him, and taking bets about it, so that Lembke
positively thought of setting the police on, but Yulia Mihailovna forbade
it.… But enough about that, quite enough, I only spoke of it to let you
know. By the way, I moved the Lebyadkins the same day, you know; did
you get my note with their address?”
“I received it at the time.”
“I didn’t do that by way of ‘stupidity.’ I did it genuinely, to serve you. If it
was stupid, anyway, it was done in good faith.”
“Oh, all right, perhaps it was necessary.…” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
dreamily, “only don’t write any more letters to me, I beg you.”
“Impossible to avoid it. It was only one.”
“So Liputin knows?”
“Impossible to help it: but Liputin, you know yourself, dare not … By the
way, you ought to meet our fellows, that is, the fellows not our fellows, or
you’ll be finding fault again. Don’t disturb yourself, not just now, but
sometime. Just now it’s raining. I’ll let them know, they’ll meet together,
and we’ll go in the evening. They’re waiting, with their mouths open like
young crows in a nest, to see what present we’ve brought them. They’re a
hot-headed lot. They’ve brought out leaflets, they’re on the point of
quarrelling. Virginsky is a universal humanity man, Liputin is a Fourierist
with a marked inclination for police work; a man, I assure you, who is
precious from one point of view, though he requires strict supervision in all
others; and, last of all, that fellow with the long ears, he’ll read an account
of his own system. And do you know, they’re offended at my treating them
casually, and throwing cold water over them, but we certainly must meet.”
“You’ve made me out some sort of chief?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
dropped as carelessly as possible.

Pyotr Stepanovitch looked quickly at him.
“By the way,” he interposed, in haste to change the subject, as though he
had not heard. “I’ve been here two or three times, you know, to see her
excellency, Varvara Petrovna, and I have been obliged to say a great deal
too.”
“So I imagine.”
“No, don’t imagine, I’ve simply told her that you won’t kill him, well, and
other sweet things. And only fancy; the very next day she knew I’d moved
Marya Timofyevna beyond the river. Was it you told her?”
“I never dreamed of it!”
“I knew it wasn’t you. Who else could it be? It’s interesting.”
“Liputin, of course.”
“N-no, not Liputin,” muttered Pyotr Stepanovitch, frowning; “I’ll find out
who. It’s more like Shatov.… That’s nonsense though. Let’s leave that!
Though it’s awfully important.… By the way, I kept expecting that your
mother would suddenly burst out with the great question.… Ach! yes, she
was horribly glum at first, but suddenly, when I came to-day, she was
beaming all over, what does that mean?”
“It’s because I promised her to-day that within five days I’ll be engaged to
Lizaveta Nikolaevna,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said with surprising
openness.
“Oh!… Yes, of course,” faltered Pyotr Stepanovitch, seeming disconcerted.
“There are rumours of her engagement, you know. It’s true, too. But you’re
right, she’d run from under the wedding crown, you’ve only to call to her.
You’re not angry at my saying so?”
“No, I’m not angry.”
“I notice it’s awfully hard to make you angry to-day, and I begin to be
afraid of you. I’m awfully curious to know how you’ll appear to-morrow. I
expect you’ve got a lot of things ready. You’re not angry at my saying so?”

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch made no answer at all, which completed Pyotr
Stepanovitch’s irritation.
“By the way, did you say that in earnest to your mother, about Lizaveta
Nikolaevna?” he asked.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked coldly at him.
“Oh, I understand, it was only to soothe her, of course.”
“And if it were in earnest?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch asked firmly.
“Oh, God bless you then, as they say in such cases. It won’t hinder the
cause (you see, I don’t say ‘our,’ you don’t like the word ‘our’) and I …
well, I … am at your service, as you know.”
“You think so?”
“I think nothing—nothing,” Pyotr Stepanovitch hurriedly declared,
laughing, “because I know you consider what you’re about beforehand for
yourself, and everything with you has been thought out. I only mean that I
am seriously at your service, always and everywhere, and in every sort of
circumstance, every sort really, do you understand that?”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch yawned.
“I’ve bored you,” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried, jumping up suddenly, and
snatching his perfectly new round hat as though he were going away. He
remained and went on talking, however, though he stood up, sometimes
pacing about the room and tapping himself on the knee with his hat at
exciting parts of the conversation.
“I meant to amuse you with stories of the Lembkes, too,” he cried gaily.
“Afterwards, perhaps, not now. But how is Yulia Mihailovna?”
“What conventional manners all of you have! Her health is no more to you
than the health of the grey cat, yet you ask after it. I approve of that. She’s
quite well, and her respect for you amounts to a superstition, her immense
anticipations of you amount to a superstition. She does not say a word about
what happened on Sunday, and is convinced that you will overcome

everything yourself by merely making your appearance. Upon my word!
She fancies you can do anything. You’re an enigmatic and romantic figure
now, more than ever you were—extremely advantageous position. It is
incredible how eager every one is to see you. They were pretty hot when I
went away, but now it is more so than ever. Thanks again for your letter.
They are all afraid of Count K. Do you know they look upon you as a spy? I
keep that up, you’re not angry?”
“It does not matter.”
“It does not matter; it’s essential in the long run. They have their ways of
doing things here. I encourage it, of course; Yulia Mihailovna, in the first
place, Gaganov too.… You laugh? But you know I have my policy; I babble
away and suddenly I say something clever just as they are on the look-out
for it. They crowd round me and I humbug away again. They’ve all given
me up in despair by now: ‘he’s got brains but he’s dropped from the moon.’
Lembke invites me to enter the service so that I may be reformed. You
know I treat him mockingly, that is, I compromise him and he simply stares.
Yulia Mihailovna encourages it. Oh, by the way, Gaganov is in an awful
rage with you. He said the nastiest things about you yesterday at Duhovo. I
told him the whole truth on the spot, that is, of course, not the whole truth. I
spent the whole day at Duhovo. It’s a splendid estate, a fine house.”
“Then is he at Duhovo now?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch broke in suddenly,
making a sudden start forward and almost leaping up from his seat.
“No, he drove me here this morning, we returned together,” said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, appearing not to notice Stavrogin’s momentary excitement.
“What’s this? I dropped a book.” He bent down to pick up the “keepsake”
he had knocked down. “‘The Women of Balzac,’ with illustrations.” He
opened it suddenly. “I haven’t read it. Lembke writes novels too.”
“Yes?” queried Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, as though beginning to be
interested.
“In Russian, on the sly, of course, Yulia Mihailovna knows and allows it.
He’s henpecked, but with good manners; it’s their system. Such strict form
—such self-restraint! Something of the sort would be the thing for us.”
“You approve of government methods?”

“I should rather think so! It’s the one thing that’s natural and practicable in
Russia.… I won’t … I won’t,” he cried out suddenly, “I’m not referring to
that—not a word on delicate subjects. Good-bye, though, you look rather
green.”
“I’m feverish.”
“I can well believe it; you should go to bed. By the way, there are Skoptsi
here in the neighbourhood—they’re curious people … of that later, though.
Ah, here’s another anecdote. There’s an infantry regiment here in the
district. I was drinking last Friday evening with the officers. We’ve three
friends among them, vous comprenez? They were discussing atheism and I
need hardly say they made short work of God. They were squealing with
delight. By the way, Shatov declares that if there’s to be a rising in Russia
we must begin with atheism. Maybe it’s true. One grizzled old stager of a
captain sat mum, not saying a word. All at once he stands up in the middle
of the room and says aloud, as though speaking to himself: ‘If there’s no
God, how can I be a captain then?’ He took up his cap and went out,
flinging up his hands.”
“He expressed a rather sensible idea,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
yawning for the third time.
“Yes? I didn’t understand it; I meant to ask you about it. Well what else
have I to tell you? The Shpigulin factory’s interesting; as you know, there
are five hundred workmen in it, it’s a hotbed of cholera, it’s not been
cleaned for fifteen years and the factory hands are swindled. The owners are
millionaires. I assure you that some among the hands have an idea of the
Internationale. What, you smile? You’ll see—only give me ever so little
time! I’ve asked you to fix the time already and now I ask you again and
then.… But I beg your pardon, I won’t, I won’t speak of that, don’t frown.
There!” He turned back suddenly. “I quite forgot the chief thing. I was told
just now that our box had come from Petersburg.”
“You mean …” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him, not understanding.
“Your box, your things, coats, trousers, and linen have come. Is it true?”
“Yes … they said something about it this morning.”

“Ach, then can’t I open it at once!…”
“Ask Alexey.”
“Well, to-morrow, then, will to-morrow do? You see my new jacket, dress-
coat and three pairs of trousers are with your things, from Sharmer’s, by
your recommendation, do you remember?”
“I hear you’re going in for being a gentleman here,” said Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch with a smile. “Is it true you’re going to take lessons at the
riding school?”
Pyotr Stepanovitch smiled a wry smile. “I say,” he said suddenly, with
excessive haste in a voice that quivered and faltered, “I say, Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, let’s drop personalities once for all. Of course, you can
despise me as much as you like if it amuses you—but we’d better dispense
with personalities for a time, hadn’t we?”
“All right,” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch assented.
Pyotr Stepanovitch grinned, tapped his knee with his hat, shifted from one
leg to the other, and recovered his former expression.
“Some people here positively look upon me as your rival with Lizaveta
Nikolaevna, so I must think of my appearance, mustn’t I,” he laughed.
“Who was it told you that though? H’m. It’s just eight o’clock; well I must
be off. I promised to look in on Varvara Petrovna, but I shall make my
escape. And you go to bed and you’ll be stronger to-morrow. It’s raining
and dark, but I’ve a cab, it’s not over safe in the streets here at night.… Ach,
by the way, there’s a run-away convict from Siberia, Fedka, wandering
about the town and the neighbourhood. Only fancy, he used to be a serf of
mine, and my papa sent him for a soldier fifteen years ago and took the
money for him. He’s a very remarkable person.”
“You have been talking to him?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch scanned him.
“I have. He lets me know where he is. He’s ready for anything, anything,
for money of course, but he has convictions, too, of a sort, of course. Oh
yes, by the way, again, if you meant anything of that plan, you remember,
about Lizaveta Nikolaevna, I tell you once again, I too am a fellow ready

for anything of any kind you like, and absolutely at your service.… Hullo!
are you reaching for your stick. Oh no … only fancy … I thought you were
looking for your stick.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was looking for nothing and said nothing.
But he had risen to his feet very suddenly with a strange look in his face.
“If you want any help about Mr. Gaganov either,” Pyotr Stepanovitch
blurted out suddenly, this time looking straight at the paper-weight, “of
course I can arrange it all, and I’m certain you won’t be able to manage
without me.”
He went out suddenly without waiting for an answer, but thrust his head in
at the door once more. “I mention that,” he gabbled hurriedly, “because
Shatov had no right either, you know, to risk his life last Sunday when he
attacked you, had he? I should be glad if you would make a note of that.”
He disappeared again without waiting for an answer.
IV
Perhaps he imagined, as he made his exit, that as soon as he was left alone,
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch would begin beating on the wall with his fists,
and no doubt he would have been glad to see this, if that had been possible.
But, if so, he was greatly mistaken. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was still
calm. He remained standing for two minutes in the same position by the
table, apparently plunged in thought, but soon a cold and listless smile came
on to his lips. He slowly sat down again in the same place in the corner of
the sofa, and shut his eyes as though from weariness. The corner of the
letter was still peeping from under the paperweight, but he didn’t even
move to cover it.
He soon sank into complete forgetfulness.
When Pyotr Stepanovitch went out without coming to see her, as he had
promised, Varvara Petrovna, who had been worn out by anxiety during
these days, could not control herself, and ventured to visit her son herself,
though it was not her regular time. She was still haunted by the idea that he
would tell her something conclusive. She knocked at the door gently as
before, and again receiving no answer, she opened the door. Seeing that

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was sitting strangely motionless, she cautiously
advanced to the sofa with a throbbing heart. She seemed struck by the fact
that he could fall asleep so quickly and that he could sleep sitting like that,
so erect and motionless, so that his breathing even was scarcely perceptible.
His face was pale and forbidding, but it looked, as it were, numb and rigid.
His brows were somewhat contracted and frowning. He positively had the
look of a lifeless wax figure. She stood over him for about three minutes,
almost holding her breath, and suddenly she was seized with terror. She
withdrew on tiptoe, stopped at the door, hurriedly made the sign of the cross
over him, and retreated unobserved, with a new oppression and a new
anguish at her heart.
He slept a long while, more than an hour, and still in the same rigid pose:
not a muscle of his face twitched, there was not the faintest movement in
his whole body, and his brows were still contracted in the same forbidding
frown. If Varvara Petrovna had remained another three minutes she could
not have endured the stifling sensation that this motionless lethargy roused
in her, and would have waked him. But he suddenly opened his eyes, and
sat for ten minutes as immovable as before, staring persistently and
curiously, as though at some object in the corner which had struck him,
although there was nothing new or striking in the room.
Suddenly there rang out the low deep note of the clock on the wall.
With some uneasiness he turned to look at it, but almost at the same
moment the other door opened, and the butler, Alexey Yegorytch came in.
He had in one hand a greatcoat, a scarf, and a hat, and in the other a silver
tray with a note on it.
“Half-past nine,” he announced softly, and laying the other things on a
chair, he held out the tray with the note—a scrap of paper unsealed and
scribbled in pencil. Glancing through it, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch took a
pencil from the table, added a few words, and put the note back on the tray.
“Take it back as soon as I have gone out, and now dress me,” he said,
getting up from the sofa.
Noticing that he had on a light velvet jacket, he thought a minute, and told
the man to bring him a cloth coat, which he wore on more ceremonious

occasions. At last, when he was dressed and had put on his hat, he locked
the door by which his mother had come into the room, took the letter from
under the paperweight, and without saying a word went out into the
corridor, followed by Alexey Yegorytch. From the corridor they went down
the narrow stone steps of the back stairs to a passage which opened straight
into the garden. In the corner stood a lantern and a big umbrella.
“Owing to the excessive rain the mud in the streets is beyond anything,”
Alexey Yegorytch announced, making a final effort to deter his master from
the expedition. But opening his umbrella the latter went without a word into
the damp and sodden garden, which was dark as a cellar. The wind was
roaring and tossing the bare tree-tops. The little sandy paths were wet and
slippery. Alexey Yegorytch walked along as he was, bareheaded, in his
swallow-tail coat, lighting up the path for about three steps before them
with the lantern.
“Won’t it be noticed?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch asked suddenly.
“Not from the windows. Besides I have seen to all that already,” the old
servant answered in quiet and measured tones.
“Has my mother retired?”
“Her excellency locked herself in at nine o’clock as she has done the last
few days, and there is no possibility of her knowing anything. At what hour
am I to expect your honour?”
“At one or half-past, not later than two.”
“Yes, sir.”
Crossing the garden by the winding paths that they both knew by heart, they
reached the stone wall, and there in the farthest corner found a little door,
which led out into a narrow and deserted lane, and was always kept locked.
It appeared that Alexey Yegorytch had the key in his hand.
“Won’t the door creak?” Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch inquired again.
But Alexey Yegorytch informed him that it had been oiled yesterday “as
well as to-day.” He was by now wet through. Unlocking the door he gave
the key to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.

“If it should be your pleasure to be taking a distant walk, I would warn your
honour that I am not confident of the folk here, especially in the back lanes,
and especially beyond the river,” he could not resist warning him again. He
was an old servant, who had been like a nurse to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
and at one time used to dandle him in his arms; he was a grave and severe
man who was fond of listening to religious discourse and reading books of
devotion.
“Don’t be uneasy, Alexey Yegorytch.”
“May God’s blessing rest on you, sir, but only in your righteous
undertakings.”
“What?” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, stopping short in the lane.
Alexey Yegorytch resolutely repeated his words. He had never before
ventured to express himself in such language in his master’s presence.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and
crossed the lane, sinking five or six inches into the mud at every step. He
came out at last into a long deserted street. He knew the town like the five
fingers of his hand, but Bogoyavlensky Street was a long way off. It was
past ten when he stopped at last before the locked gates of the dark old
house that belonged to Filipov. The ground floor had stood empty since the
Lebyadkins had left it, and the windows were boarded up, but there was a
light burning in Shatov’s room on the second floor. As there was no bell he
began banging on the gate with his hand. A window was opened and Shatov
peeped out into the street. It was terribly dark, and difficult to make out
anything. Shatov was peering out for some time, about a minute.
“Is that you?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes,” replied the uninvited guest.
Shatov slammed the window, went downstairs and opened the gate. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch stepped over the high sill, and without a word passed by
him straight into Kirillov’s lodge.
V

There everything was unlocked and all the doors stood open. The passage
and the first two rooms were dark, but there was a light shining in the last,
in which Kirillov lived and drank tea, and laughter and strange cries came
from it. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went towards the light, but stood still in
the doorway without going in. There was tea on the table. In the middle of
the room stood the old woman who was a relation of the landlord. She was
bareheaded and was dressed in a petticoat and a hare-skin jacket, and her
stockingless feet were thrust into slippers. In her arms she had an eighteen-
months-old baby, with nothing on but its little shirt; with bare legs, flushed
cheeks, and ruffled white hair. It had only just been taken out of the cradle.
It seemed to have just been crying; there were still tears in its eyes. But at
that instant it was stretching out its little arms, clapping its hands, and
laughing with a sob as little children do. Kirillov was bouncing a big red
india-rubber ball on the floor before it. The ball bounced up to the ceiling,
and back to the floor, the baby shrieked “Baw! baw!” Kirillov caught the
“baw”, and gave it to it. The baby threw it itself with its awkward little
hands, and Kirillov ran to pick it up again.
At last the “baw” rolled under the cupboard. “Baw! baw!” cried the child.
Kirillov lay down on the floor, trying to reach the ball with his hand under
the cupboard. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went into the room. The baby
caught sight of him, nestled against the old woman, and went off into a
prolonged infantile wail. The woman immediately carried it out of the
room.
“Stavrogin?” said Kirillov, beginning to get up from the floor with the ball
in his hand, and showing no surprise at the unexpected visit. “Will you have
tea?”
He rose to his feet.
“I should be very glad of it, if it’s hot,” said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch; “I’m
wet through.”
“It’s hot, nearly boiling in fact,” Kirillov declared delighted. “Sit down.
You’re muddy, but that’s nothing; I’ll mop up the floor later.”
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sat down and emptied the cup he handed him
almost at a gulp.