Demons

5: Before the Fête

I

The day of the fête conceived by Yulia Mikhailovna as a subscription benefit for the governesses of our province had already been fixed and canceled several times. Constantly fluttering around her were Pyotr Stepanovich; the little clerk Lyamshin, serving as errand boy, who once upon a time used to visit Stepan Trofimovich but suddenly came into favor in the governor's house for his piano playing; Liputin, partly, whom Yulia Mikhailovna planned to make the editor of a future independent provincial newspaper; a few ladies and young girls; and finally even Karmazinov, who, though he did not flutter, nevertheless announced aloud and with a satisfied air that he was going to give everyone a pleasant surprise when the quadrille of literature began. A great many subscribers and donors turned up, all select town society; though the most non-select were also admitted, as long as they came with money. Yulia Mikhailovna observed that sometimes the mixing of ranks even ought to be allowed, "otherwise who will enlighten them?" An unofficial home committee was formed at which it was decided that the fête should be a democratic one. The extravagant subscription list tempted them to spend; they wanted to do something wonderful—which was why it kept being postponed. They still could not decide where to organize the evening ball: at the huge house of the marshal of nobility's wife, which she had offered for the day, or at Varvara Petrovna's in Skvoreshniki. Skvoreshniki would be a bit far, but many of the committee insisted that it would be "freer" there. Varvara Petrovna herself was only too anxious to have it take place there. It is hard to understand why this proud woman almost fawned on Yulia Mikhailovna. She probably liked it that the woman, in her turn, almost demeaned herself before Nikolai Vsevolodovich and paid court to him as to no one else. I will repeat once more: Pyotr Stepanovich, all the time and unceasingly, in whispers, continued to cultivate in the governor's house an idea he had set going even earlier, that Nikolai Vsevolodovich was a man who had the most mysterious connections in a most mysterious world, and that he must have come on some assignment.

Strange was the state of people's minds at that time. A certain frivolity emerged especially in the ladies' society, and one could not say little by little. Several extremely casual notions spread as if on the wind. Something light and happy-go-lucky came about, which I will not say was always pleasant. A certain disorderliness of mind became fashionable. Afterwards, when it was all over, the blame fell on Yulia Mikhailovna, her circle and influence; but it hardly all originated with Yulia Mikhailovna alone. On the contrary, a great many vied with one another in praising the new governor's wife for knowing how to bring society together, and for making things suddenly more cheerful. Several scandalous incidents even took place which were not Yulia Mikhailovna's fault at all; but at the time everyone merely laughed loudly and disported themselves, and there was no one to stop them. True, a considerable group of persons stood firmly aside, having their own special view of the course of events then; but even they did not grumble at the time; they even smiled.

I remember that at that time a rather wide circle had formed, somehow of itself, whose center may indeed have been in Yulia Mikhailovna's drawing room. In this intimate circle that crowded around her—among the young people, of course—all sorts of mischief was allowed and even accepted as a rule, some of it really quite free and easy. The circle included several even very charming ladies. The young people arranged picnics, parties, sometimes rode all around town, in a whole cavalcade, in carriages and on horseback. They sought adventures, even purposely invented some, concocting them themselves, solely for the sake of a merry joke. They treated our town as some sort of Foolsbury.^[112] They were called sneerers and jeerers, because there was little they scorned to do. It so happened, for example, that one local lieutenant's wife, still a very young little brunette, though wasted from her husband's ill-keeping, thoughtlessly sat down at a party to play a high-staked hand of whist, hoping to win enough to buy a mantilla, but instead of winning, she lost fifteen roubles. Fearing her husband, and having no money to pay, she decided, recalling her former boldness, to borrow some money on the quiet, right there at the party, from our mayor's son, a very nasty boy, dissipated beyond his years. He not only refused her but also went guffawing to tell her husband. The lieutenant, who indeed lived poorly on nothing but his salary, took his wife home and gave her what for to his heart's content, though she screamed, yelled, and begged forgiveness on her knees. This outrageous story evoked only laughter everywhere in town, and though the poor woman did not belong to the society that surrounded Yulia Mikhailovna, one of the ladies of the "cavalcade," a perky and eccentric character who somehow knew the lieutenant's wife, stopped by her place and quite simply carried her off to her own house. There she was seized upon at once by our pranksters, who petted her, showered her with presents, and kept her for some four days without returning her to her husband. She lived in the perky lady's house, spending whole days driving around town with her and the rest of that frolicsome society, taking part in their merrymaking and dances. Everyone egged her on to haul her husband into court, to start a scandal. She was given assurances that they would all support her and appear as witnesses. The husband was silent, not daring to fight. The poor woman finally grasped that she was up to her ears in trouble, and on the fourth day, at nightfall, half dead with fear, she fled from her protectors to her lieutenant. It is not known precisely what took place between the spouses, but the two shutters of the low wooden house in which the lieutenant rented his lodgings did not open for two weeks. Yulia Mikhailovna was a bit angry with the pranksters when she learned about it all, and was quite displeased with the perky lady's behavior, though the lady had introduced the lieutenant's wife to her on the first day of the abduction. However, it was soon forgotten.

Another time a petty clerk, to all appearances a respectable family man, gave away his daughter, a girl of seventeen and a beauty known to the whole town, to a young man who came to town from another district. Word suddenly went around that on their wedding night the young man dealt rather uncivilly with the beauty, in revenge for his injured honor. Lyamshin, who all but witnessed the affair, because he got drunk at the wedding and stayed in the house overnight, ran around at first light bringing everyone the merry news. Instantly a company of about ten men was formed, all of them on horseback, some on hired Cossack horses, like Pyotr Stepanovich, for example, or Liputin, who, despite his gray hairs, took part at the time in almost all the scandalous adventures of our flighty youth. When the young couple appeared outside in a droshky-and-pair to go around paying calls, as our custom invariably demands on the day after a wedding, mishaps notwithstanding—the whole cavalcade surrounded the droshky, laughing merrily, and accompanied them around town all morning. True, they did not go into the houses, but waited on horseback at the gates; they refrained from any particular insults to the bride and groom, yet they still caused a scandal. The whole town began talking. Of course, everyone laughed heartily. But here von Lembke got angry and again had a lively scene with Yulia Mikhailovna. She, too, got extremely angry, and momentarily intended to deny her house to the pranksters. But the very next day she forgave everyone, after admonitions from Pyotr Stepanovich and a few words from Karmazinov. The latter found the "joke" quite witty.

"These are local ways," he said. "Anyhow it's characteristic and ... bold; and, look, everyone's laughing, you alone are indignant."

But there were some pranks that were intolerable, with a certain tinge.

An itinerant book-hawker appeared in town selling Gospels, a respectable woman, though of tradesman's rank. She was talked about, because the metropolitan newspapers had just published some curious reports on her kind.^[113] Again that same rogue, Lyamshin, with the help of some seminarian who was loafing about waiting for a teaching post in the school, while pretending to buy books from her, quietly slipped into her bag a whole bundle of enticing, nasty photographs from abroad, specially donated for the occasion, as was found out later, by a quite venerable old man whose name I shall omit, who had an important decoration around his neck, and who loved, as he put it, "healthy laughter and a merry joke." When the poor woman began taking out her sacred books in the shopping arcade, the photographs spilled out with them. There was laughter, murmuring; the crowd closed in, there was swearing, it would have gone as far as blows if the police had not come in time. The book-hawker was put in the lockup, and only that evening, through the efforts of Mavriky Nikolaevich, who had learned with indignation the intimate details of this vile story, was she freed and sent out of town. This time Yulia Mikhailovna decidedly chased Lyamshin out, but that same evening our entire company brought him to her with the news that he had invented a special new trick on the piano, and talked her into hearing it at least. The trick indeed turned out to be amusing, with the funny title of "The Franco-Prussian War." It began with the fearsome sounds of the "Marseillaise":

Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!^[xc]

A bombastic challenge was heard, the intoxication of future victories. But suddenly, together with masterfully varied measures from the anthem, somewhere from the side, down below, in a corner, but very close by, came the vile little strains of "Mein lieber Augustin."^[114] The "Marseillaise" does not notice them, the "Marseillaise" is at the peak of her intoxication with her own grandeur; but "Augustin" is gaining strength, "Augustin" is turning insolent, and now the measures of "Augustin" somehow unexpectedly begin to fall in with the measures of the "Marseillaise." She begins to get angry, as it were; she finally notices "Augustin," she wants to shake him off, to chase him away like an importunate, worthless fly, but "Mein lieber Augustin" holds on tight; he is cheerful and confident; he is joyful and insolent; and the "Marseillaise" somehow suddenly becomes terribly stupid; she no longer conceals that she is annoyed and offended; these are cries of indignation, these are tears and oaths, with arms outstretched to providence:

Pas un pouce de notre terrain, pas une pierre de nos forteresses!^[xci]

But now she is forced to sing in time with "Mein lieber Augustin." Her strains somehow turn most stupidly into "Augustin," she is drooping, dying out. Only an occasional outburst, "qu'un sang impur . . ." is heard again, but it jumps over at once, in a most vexing way, to the vile little waltz. She is thoroughly humbled: it is Jules Favre weeping on Bismarck's bosom and giving away everything, everything^[115]... But then "Augustin" turns ferocious: one hears hoarse sounds, senses measureless quantities of beer being drunk, a frenzy of self-advertisement, demands for billions, slender cigars, champagne, and hostages; "Augustin" turns into a furious bellowing... The Franco-Prussian War is over. Our group applauds, Yulia Mikhailovna smiles and says: "Well, how can one chase him out?" Peace is made. The scoundrel did indeed have a bit of talent. Stepan Trofimovich once tried to convince me that the loftiest artistic talents can be the most terrible scoundrels, and that the one does not exclude the other. Rumor later had it that Lyamshin stole this little piece from a certain talented and modest young man, a visiting acquaintance of his, who remained unknown; but that is an aside. This blackguard, who for several years fluttered around Stepan Trofimovich, portraying on demand at his parties various little Jews, the confession of a deaf woman, or the birth of a child, now at Yulia Mikhailovna's produced killing caricatures, among them one of Stepan Trofimovich himself, entitled "A Liberal of the Forties." Everyone rocked with laughter, so that by the end it was decidedly impossible to chase him out; he had become too necessary a person. Besides, he fawned servilely on Pyotr Stepanovich, who, in his turn, had by that time acquired a strangely strong influence over Yulia Mikhailovna...

I would not have begun speaking in particular about this scoundrel, and he would not be worth dwelling upon, but at that time a certain outrageous incident occurred in which, it was asserted, he also took part, and this incident I can by no means omit from my chronicle.

One morning the news swept through town of an ugly and outrageous blasphemy. At the entrance to our vast marketplace stands the decrepit church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, which is a notable antiquity in our ancient town. Long ago a large icon of the Mother of God had been built into the wall behind a grating near the gates of the enclosure. And so, one night the icon was robbed, the glass of the frame was knocked out, the grating was broken, and a few stones and pearls were taken from the crown and setting, whether very valuable ones or not I do not know. But the main thing was that besides the theft a senseless, jeering blasphemy was committed: behind the broken glass of the icon a live mouse was said to have been found in the morning. It is known positively now, four months later, that the crime was committed by the convict Fedka, but for some reason Lyamshin's participation has also been added to it. At the time no one mentioned Lyamshin and he was not suspected at all, but now everyone insists that it was he who let in the mouse. I remember all our authorities being somewhat at a loss. People had been crowding around the scene of the crime since morning. There was a constant crowd standing there, though not a very big one, but still about a hundred people. Some came, others left. Those who came crossed themselves and kissed the icon; there were donations, a collection plate appeared, and a monk beside it, and it was three o'clock in the afternoon before the authorities realized that they could order people not to stand in a crowd, but to move on after praying, kissing, and donating. This unfortunate incident produced a very gloomy effect on von Lembke. As I am told Yulia Mikhailovna put it afterwards, from that sinister morning on she began to notice that strange despondency in her husband which never left him afterwards up to the very day of his departure from our town, two months ago, for reasons of ill health, and seems to be accompanying him now in Switzerland as well, where he continues to rest after his brief career in our province.

I remember stopping in the square then, at one o'clock in the afternoon; the crowd was silent, the faces significantly somber. A merchant, fat and sallow, drove up in a droshky, climbed out, bowed to the ground, planted a kiss, donated a rouble, clambered back, groaning, into the droshky, and drove off again. A carriage also drove up with two of our ladies, accompanied by two of our pranksters. The young men (one of whom was no longer so young) got out of the vehicle as well and forced their way through the crowd to the icon, rather negligently pushing people aside. Neither of them took his hat off, and one placed a pince-nez on his nose. There was murmuring among the people, dull but disagreeable. The fine fellow in the pince-nez took a brass kopeck from a purse chock-full of bills and threw it into the dish; laughing and talking loudly, they both went back to the carriage. At that moment Lizaveta Nikolaevna, accompanied by Mavriky Nikolaevich, suddenly rode up. She jumped from the horse, handed the bridle to her companion, who on her orders remained mounted, and went up to the icon precisely at the moment when the kopeck was thrown. A flush of indignation covered her cheeks; she took off her round hat, her gloves, fell on her knees before the icon, right on the dirty sidewalk, and reverently bowed three times to the ground. Then she took out her purse, but as there were only a few ten-kopeck pieces in it, she instantly removed her diamond earrings and put them on the plate. "May I? May I? To ornament the setting?" she asked the monk, all agitated.

"It is permissible," the monk replied, "every gift is good." The people were silent, showing neither reproach nor approval; Lizaveta Nikolaevna mounted her horse in her soiled dress and rode off.

II

Two days after the incident just described, I met her in a numerous company, setting out for somewhere in three carriages surrounded by men on horseback. She beckoned to me with her hand, stopped the carriage, and demanded insistently that I join their party. Space was found for me in the carriage, and she laughingly introduced me to her companions, magnificent ladies, and explained to me that they were all setting out on an extremely interesting expedition. She laughed loudly and seemed somehow happy beyond measure. In the most recent time she had become gay to the point of friskiness. The undertaking was indeed an eccentric one: they were all going across the river, to the house of the merchant Sevostyanov, in whose wing, for about ten years now, our blessed man and prophet Semyon Yakovlevich, famous not only among us but in the neighboring provinces and even in the capitals, had been living in retirement, in ease and comfort. Everyone visited him, especially those from out of town, trying to get a word from the holy fool, venerating him, and leaving donations. The donations, sometimes significant ones, unless Semyon Yakovlevich disposed of them at once, were piously conveyed to God's church, mainly to our Bogorodsky monastery; for this purpose a monk sent from the monastery was constantly on duty at Semyon Yakovlevich's. They were all looking forward to having great fun. No one in the group had yet been to see Semyon Yakovlevich. Lyamshin alone had visited him once before, and now insisted that he had ordered him driven out with a broom and with his own hand had sent two big boiled potatoes flying after him. Among the riders I noticed Pyotr Stepanovich, again on a hired Cossack horse, which he sat rather poorly, and Nikolai Vsevolodovich, also on horseback. On occasion the latter did not shun the general amusement, and at such times was always of decently cheerful mien, though he spoke as little and as seldom as ever. When the expedition, descending to the bridge, came opposite the town hotel, someone suddenly announced that in one of the rooms of the hotel they had just found a guest who had shot himself, and that they were awaiting the police. At once the idea was voiced of having a look at the suicide. The idea met with support: our ladies had never seen a suicide. I remember one of them saying aloud right then that "everything has become so boring that there's no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long as it's diverting." Only a few stood and waited by the porch; the rest went trooping down the dirty corridor, and among them, to my surprise, I noticed Lizaveta Nikolaevna. The room of the man who had shot himself was not locked, and, naturally, they did not dare to keep us from going in. He was a young boy, about nineteen, certainly not more, who must have been very pretty, with thick blond hair, a regular oval face, a pure, beautiful brow. He was already stiff, and his white face looked as if it were made of marble. On the table lay a note, in his handwriting, saying no one was to blame for his death, and that he was shooting himself because he had "caroused away" four hundred roubles. The phrase "caroused away" stood just so in the note: in its four lines there were three grammatical errors. A fat landowner, who seemed to be his neighbor and was staying in another room on business of his own, sighed over him especially. From what he said it turned out that the boy had been sent to town from their village by his family, his widowed mother, his sisters and aunts, to purchase, under the supervision of a female relation who lived in town, various things for the trousseau of his eldest sister, who was getting married, and to bring them home. Those four hundred roubles, saved up in the course of decades, had been entrusted to him with fearful sighs and endless admonishing exhortations, prayers, and crosses. The boy had hitherto been modest and trustworthy. Having come to town three days before, he did not go to his relation, he put up at the hotel and went straight to the club—hoping to find somewhere in a back room some traveling gambler, or at least a game of cards. But there was no card game that day, nor any gambler. Returning to his room at around midnight, he asked for champagne, Havana cigars, and ordered a dinner of six or seven courses. But the champagne made him drunk, the cigar made him throw up, so that when the food was brought he did not touch it, but went to bed almost unconscious. He woke up the next day fresh as an apple, went at once to a Gypsy camp in a village across the river, which he had heard about in the club the day before, and did not return to the hotel for two days. Finally, yesterday at five in the afternoon, he arrived drunk, went to bed at once, and slept until ten o'clock in the evening. On waking up, he asked for a cutlet, a bottle of Château d'Yquem,^[116] and grapes, some notepaper, ink, and the bill. No one noticed anything special about him; he was calm, quiet, and gentle. He must have shot himself at around midnight, though strangely, no one heard the shot, and his absence was noticed only today, at one in the afternoon, when, after knocking in vain, they broke down the door. The bottle of Château d'Yquem was half empty; about half a plate of grapes was also left. The shot had come from a small three-chambered revolver, straight into his heart. There was very little blood; the revolver had fallen from his hand onto the carpet. The youth himself was half reclined on a sofa in the corner. Death must have occurred instantly; no mortal agony showed on his face; his expression was calm, almost happy, he need only have lived. Our people all stared with greedy curiosity. Generally, in every misfortune of one's neighbor there is always something that gladdens the outsider's eye—and that even no matter who you are. Our ladies stared silently, their companions distinguished themselves by sharpness of wit and a supreme presence of mind. One of them observed that this was the best solution and that the boy even could not have come up with anything smarter; another concluded that he had lived well, if only for a moment. A third suddenly blurted out: "Why have we got so many people hanging or shooting themselves—as if we'd jumped off our roots, as if the floor had slipped from under everyone's feet?" The raisonneur was given unfriendly looks. Then Lyamshin, who drew honor from his role of buffoon, filched a little bunch of grapes from the plate; another, laughing, followed his example, and a third reached out for the Château d'Yquem as well. But he was stopped by the police chief, who arrived and even ordered them to "clear the room." Since everyone had already had their fill of looking, they went out at once without argument, though Lyamshin did try to badger the police chief about something. For the remaining half of the way, the general merriment, laughter, and brisk chatter became almost twice as lively.

We arrived at Semyon Yakovlevich's at exactly one o'clock in the afternoon.^[117] The gates of the rather large merchant's house stood wide open, giving access to the wing. We learned at once that Semyon Yakovlevich was having his dinner, but was still receiving people. Our whole crowd went in together. The room in which the blessed man received and dined was quite spacious, with three windows, and was divided into two equal parts by a waist-high wooden railing from wall to wall. Ordinary visitors remained outside the railing, but the lucky ones were admitted, on the blessed man's instructions, through the gate of the railing into his part, and there he seated them, if he so desired, on his old leather chairs and sofa; while he invariably installed himself in an ancient, shabby Voltaire armchair. He was a rather big, puffy, sallow-faced man of about fifty-five, blond and bald, with thin hair, a clean-shaven chin, a swollen right cheek, and a mouth somewhat twisted, as it were, with a big wart near his left nostril, narrow little eyes, and a calm, solid, sleepy expression on his face. He was dressed German-fashion in a black frock coat, but with no waistcoat or tie.^[118] A rather coarse, though white, shirt peeped out from under the frock coat; on his feet, which I believe were ailing, he wore slippers. I have heard that he was once an official and had some rank. He had just finished dining upon a light fish soup and begun his second course— jacket potatoes with salt. This was all he ever dined upon; he also drank lots of tea, of which he was a great fancier. Three servants, kept by the merchant, scurried about him; one of them wore a tailcoat, the second looked like a shop foreman, the third like a beadle. There was also a lad of about sixteen, quite a frisky one. Besides the servants there was present a venerable gray-haired monk, a bit too corpulent, holding a tin cup. On one of the tables an enormous samovar was boiling, and there stood a tray with as many as two dozen glasses. On another table, across the room, offerings had been placed: several loaves and packets of sugar, about two pounds of tea, a pair of embroidered slippers, a foulard, a length of broadcloth, a piece of linen, and so on. Almost all the money that was donated went into the monk's tin cup. The room was crowded, the visitors alone numbering about a dozen, of whom two sat beyond the railing with Semyon Yakovlevich—one a gray-haired little old man, a pilgrim from "simple folk," the other a small, dry monk from elsewhere who sat decorously and looked down. The rest of the visitors stood on this side of the railing, and they, too, were all mainly from simple folk, except for a fat merchant who came from a district town, a bearded fellow and dressed in Russian style, though he was known to be worth a hundred thousand; an elderly and woebegone noblewoman, and one landowner. They were all awaiting their happiness, not daring to begin speaking. Some four of them were on their knees, but it was the landowner who attracted the most attention, a fat man of about forty-five, who knelt right up against the railing where everyone could see him, and waited reverently for a benevolent glance or word from Semyon Yakovlevich. He had already been kneeling there for an hour or so, and the man had still paid him no notice.

Our ladies crowded up to the railing with gay and giggly whispers. The kneeling ones and all the other visitors were pushed aside or screened from view, except for the landowner, who stubbornly kept himself in full view and even grabbed the railing with his hands. Gay and greedily curious eyes turned towards Semyon Yakovlevich, as did lorgnettes, pince-nez, and even opera glasses; Lyamshin at least was observing through opera glasses. Semyon Yakovlevich calmly and lazily glanced around with his small eyes.

"Fairlooks! Fairlooks!" he deigned to utter, in a hoarse bass, with a slight exclamation.

Our people all laughed: "Fairlooks? What does it mean?" But Semyon Yakovlevich lapsed into silence and went on eating his potatoes. At last he wiped his mouth with a napkin and was served tea.

He usually did not take tea alone, but also had it served to his visitors, though by no means to all of them, usually pointing out himself those upon whom happiness would be bestowed. His instructions were always striking in their unexpectedness. He sometimes passed over rich men and dignitaries and ordered tea served to some peasant or some decrepit little lady; at other times he would pass over the beggarly folk and serve some one fat, wealthy merchant. The way the tea was served also varied: some got it with sugar in it, others with sugar on the side, still others with no sugar at all. This time happiness was bestowed upon the little monk in the form of a glass of tea with sugar in it, and on the old pilgrim, who was served tea without any sugar. But the fat monk with the tin cup from the monastery was for some reason not served at all, though up to then he had had his glass every day.

"Semyon Yakovlevich, say something to me, I've desired to make your acquaintance for so long," the magnificent lady from our carriage sang out, smiling and narrowing her eyes, the same lady who had observed earlier that there was no need to be punctilious about entertainment, as long as it was diverting. Semyon Yakovlevich did not even glance at her. The kneeling landowner sighed audibly and deeply, like a big bellows going up and down.

"With sugar in it!" Semyon Yakovlevich pointed suddenly to the hundred-thousand-rouble merchant; the man came forward and stood beside the landowner.

"More sugar for him!" Semyon Yakovlevich ordered, when the glass had already been poured. They added another helping. "More, more for him!" More was added a third time, and then finally a fourth. The merchant unobjectingly began to drink his syrup.

"Lord!" people whispered and crossed themselves. The landowner again sighed audibly and deeply.

"My father! Semyon Yakovlevich!" the voice of the woebegone lady, who had been pressed back against the wall by our people, suddenly rang out, a rueful voice, but so sharp one would scarcely have expected it. "For a whole hour, my dear, I have been waiting for your grace. Speak your word to me, an orphan, make your judgment."

"Ask her," Semyon Yakovlevich made a sign to the servant-beadle. He went up to the railing.

"Did you do what Semyon Yakovlevich told you last time?" he asked the widow in a soft and even voice.

"Really, father Semyon Yakovlevich, how could I, how could I do it with such people!" the widow wailed. "The cannibals, they're filing a petition against me in the district court, they're threatening to go to the Senate^[119]—against their own mother! ..."

"Give it to her!" Semyon Yakovlevich pointed to a sugarloaf. The lad sprang over, seized the loaf, and lugged it to the widow.

"Oh, father, great is your mercy. What am I to do with so much?" the poor widow began to wail.

"More, more!" Semyon Yakovlevich bestowed.

Another loaf was lugged over. "More, more," the blessed man ordered; a third and finally a fourth loaf was brought. The poor widow was surrounded on all sides with sugar. The monk from the monastery sighed: it all might have gone to the monastery that same day, as previous instances had shown.

"But what shall I do with so much?" the poor widow kept sighing obsequiously. "By myself I'll just get sick! ... Isn't it some prophecy, father?"

"That's it, a prophecy!" someone said in the crowd.

"Another pound, another!" Semyon Yakovlevich would not let up.

There was one whole sugarloaf left on the table, but Semyon Yakovlevich had indicated a pound, and so the widow was given a pound.

"Lord, lord!" people sighed and crossed themselves. "A visible prophecy."

"Sweeten your heart beforehand with kindness and mercy, and then come to complain against your own children, bone of your bone—that, one may suppose, is what this emblem signifies," the fat but tea-bypassed monk from the monastery said softly but smugly, in a fit of wounded vanity, taking the interpretation upon himself.

"But really, father," the poor widow suddenly snarled, "they dragged me into the fire on a rope when the Verkhishins' place burned down. They put a dead cat in my trunk—I mean, no matter what the atrocity, they're ready..."

"Out, out!" Semyon Yakovlevich suddenly waved his arms.

The beadle and the lad burst from behind the railing. The beadle took the widow under the arm, and she, having quieted down, trailed to the door, glancing at the awarded sugarloaves which the lad dragged after her.

"One back, take one back!" Semyon Yakovlevich ordered the shop foreman, who had stayed by him. He rushed after the departing group, and all three servants returned shortly bringing the once given and now retrieved sugarloaf; the widow, however, went off with three.

"Semyon Yakovlevich," someone's voice came from the back, just by the door, "I saw a bird in a dream, a jackdaw, he flew out of water and into fire. What is the meaning of this dream?"^[120]

"Frost," said Semyon Yakovlevich.

"Semyon Yakovlevich, why won't you answer me anything, I've been interested in you for so long," our lady tried to start again.

"Ask!" Semyon Yakovlevich, not listening to her, suddenly pointed to the kneeling landowner.

The monk from the monastery, who had been ordered to ask, gravely approached the landowner.

"What is your sin? And were you told to do anything?"

"Not to fight, not to be so quick-fisted," the landowner replied hoarsely.

"Have you done it?" asked the monk.

"I can't, my own strength overpowers me."

"Out, out! The broom, use the broom!" Semyon Yakovlevich was waving his arms. The landowner, without waiting to be punished, jumped up and rushed from the room.

"He left a gold piece behind," the monk declared, picking up a florin from the floor.

"To that one!" Semyon Yakovlevich jabbed his finger towards the hundred-thousand-rouble merchant. The hundred-thousand-rouble merchant did not dare refuse, and took it.

"Gold to gold," the monk from the monastery could not help himself.

"To that one, with sugar in it," Semyon Yakovlevich pointed to Mavriky Nikolaevich. The servant poured tea and offered it by mistake to the fop in the pince-nez.

"To the long one, the long one," Semyon Yakovlevich corrected.

Mavriky Nikolaevich took the glass, gave a military half-bow, and began to drink. I do not know why, but our people all rocked with laughter.

"Mavriky Nikolaevich," Liza suddenly addressed him, "that gentleman on his knees has left, go and kneel in his place."

Mavriky Nikolaevich looked at her in perplexity.

"I beg you, it will give me the greatest pleasure. Listen, Mavriky Nikolaevich," she suddenly began in an insistent, stubborn, ardent patter, "you absolutely must kneel, I absolutely want to see you kneeling. If you won't kneel, don't even come to call on me. I absolutely insist, absolutely! ..."

I do not know what she meant by it; but she demanded insistently, implacably, as if she were having a fit. Mavriky Nikolaevich, as we shall see further on, attributed these capricious impulses in her, especially frequent of late, to outbursts of blind hatred for him, not really from malice—on the contrary, she honored, loved, and respected him, and he knew it himself—but from some special, unconscious hatred which, at moments, she was utterly unable to control.

He silently handed his cup to some little old lady standing behind him, opened the gate in the railing, stepped uninvited into Semyon Yakovlevich's private side, and knelt in the middle of the room, in view of everyone. I think he was deeply shaken in his delicate and simple soul by Liza's coarse, jeering escapade in view of the whole company. Perhaps he thought she would be ashamed of herself on seeing his humiliation, which she had so insisted on. Of course, no one but he would venture to reform a woman in such a naïve and risky way. He knelt there with his look of imperturbable gravity, long, awkward, ridiculous. But our people were not laughing; the unexpectedness of the act produced a painful effect. Everyone looked at Liza.

"Unction, unction!" muttered Semyon Yakovlevich.

Liza suddenly went pale, cried out, gasped, and rushed behind the railing. There a quick, hysterical scene took place: with all her might she began lifting Mavriky Nikolaevich from his knees, pulling at his elbow with both hands.

"Get up, get up!" she kept crying out, as if beside herself. "Get up now, now! How dared you kneel?"

Mavriky Nikolaevich rose from his knees. She gripped his arms above the elbows and stared fixedly in his face. There was fear in her eyes.

"Fairlooks! Fairlooks!" Semyon Yakovlevich repeated again.

She finally pulled Mavriky Nikolaevich back outside the railing; a great stir went through our whole crowd. The lady from our carriage, probably wishing to dispel the impression, inquired of Semyon Yakovlevich a third time, in a ringing and shrill voice, and, as before, with a coy smile:

"Now, Semyon Yakovlevich, won't you 'utter' something for me as well? I was counting on you so."

"F—— you, f—— you!" Semyon Yakovlevich, turning to her, suddenly used an extremely unprintable little word. The phrase was spoken ferociously and with horrifying distinctness. Our ladies shrieked and rushed out headlong, the gentlemen burst into Homeric laughter. And that was the end of our visit to Semyon Yakovlevich.

And yet it was at this point, they say, that another extremely mysterious event took place, and, I confess, it was rather for the sake of it that I have referred to this visit in such detail.

They say that when everyone trooped out, Liza, supported by Mavriky Nikolaevich, suddenly, in the doorway, in the crowd, ran into Nikolai Vsevolodovich. It should be mentioned that since that Sunday morning and the swoon, though the two had met more than once, they had not approached each other or exchanged a single word. I saw them run into each other in the doorway: it seemed to me that they stopped for a moment and looked at each other somehow strangely. But it is possible that I did not see very well in the crowd. It was asserted, on the contrary, and quite seriously, that Liza, having looked at Nikolai Vsevolodovich, quickly raised her hand, right up to the level of his face, and would certainly have struck him if he had not managed to draw back. Perhaps she did not like the expression on his face or some smirk of his, especially then, after such an episode with Mavriky Nikolaevich. I confess I did not see anything, but on the other hand everyone asserted that they did see it, though certainly not everyone could have seen it in that turmoil, even if some did. Only I did not believe it at the time. I remember, however, that for the whole way back Nikolai Vsevolodovich looked somewhat pale.

III

Almost at the same time, and precisely on the very same day, there at last took place the meeting between Stepan Trofimovich and Varvara Petrovna, which she had long had in mind and had long since announced to her former friend, but for some reason kept putting off. It took place at Skvoreshniki. Varvara Petrovna arrived at her country house all abustle: it had finally been determined the day before that the forthcoming fête would be given at the house of the marshal's wife. But Varvara Petrovna, with her quick mind, saw at once that no one could prevent her, after the fête, from giving a separate fête of her own, this time at Skvoreshniki, and again inviting the whole town out. Then everyone could satisfy themselves as to whose house was better, and who knew better how to receive and how to give a ball with greater taste. Generally, it was hard to recognize her. She seemed transformed and changed from the former inaccessible "high lady" (Stepan Trofimovich's expression) into a most ordinary featherbrained society woman. However, it may only have seemed so.

Having arrived at the empty house, she made the round of the rooms accompanied by the faithful and ancient Alexei Yegorovich and Fomushka, a man who had seen the world and was an expert in interior decoration. Counsels and considerations began: what furniture to transfer from the town house; what objects, paintings; where to put them; how best to manage with the conservatory and the flowers; where to hang new draperies, where to set up the buffet, one buffet or two, and so on and so forth. And then, in the heat of the bustle, she suddenly decided to send the carriage for Stepan Trofimovich.

The latter had long since been informed, and was prepared, and was every day expecting precisely such a sudden invitation. As he got into the carriage, he crossed himself; his fate was to be decided. He found his friend in the great hall, on a small settee in a niche, by a small marble table, with a pencil and paper in her hands: Fomushka was measuring the height of the galleries and windows, and Varvara Petrovna herself was writing down the numbers and making marginal notes. Without interrupting her work, she nodded her head in Stepan Trofimovich's direction and, when he muttered some greeting, hastily gave him her hand and pointed, without looking, to the place beside her.

"I sat and waited for about five minutes, 'repressing my heart,’” he told me later. "The woman I saw was not the one I had known for twenty years. The fullest conviction that all was over gave me a strength that amazed even her. I swear she was surprised by my steadfastness in that final hour."

Varvara Petrovna suddenly put her pencil down on the table and quickly turned to Stepan Trofimovich.

"Stepan Trofimovich, we must talk business. I'm sure you have prepared all your magnificent words and various little phrases, but it would be better if we got straight to business, right?"

He flinched. She was in too much of a hurry to set her tone—what would come next?

"Wait, keep still, let me speak, then you can, though I really don't know what you'd be able to say in reply," she went on in a quick patter. "The twelve hundred of your pension I regard as my sacred duty as long as you live; or, why a sacred duty, simply an agreement, that will be much more real, right? If you like, we can put it in writing. In case of my death, special arrangements have been made. But, beyond that, you now get lodgings, servants, and your full keep from me. Translated into money, that makes fifteen hundred roubles, right? I will add another three hundred roubles for emergencies, that makes it a full three thousand. Will that suffice you for a year? Doesn't seem too little? In extreme emergencies I'll add to it, however. So, take the money, send me back my servants, and live on your own, wherever you like, in Petersburg, in Moscow, abroad, or here, only not with me. Understand?"

"Not long ago a different demand was conveyed to me by those same lips just as urgently and as quickly," Stepan Trofimovich said slowly and with sad distinctness. "I resigned myself and... danced the little Cossack^[121] to please you. Oui, la comparaison peut être permise. C'était un petit cosaque du Don, qui sautait sur sa propre tombe.^[xcii] Now..."

"Stop, Stepan Trofimovich. You are terribly verbose. You did not dance, but you came out to me in a new tie and shirt, wearing gloves, pomaded and perfumed. I assure you that you yourself would have liked very much to marry; it was written on your face, and, believe me, the expression was a most inelegant one. If I did not remark upon it then and there, it was solely out of delicacy. But you wished it, you wished to marry, despite the abominations you wrote privately about me and about your bride. Now it's not that at all. And what do you mean by a cosaque du Don on some grave of yours? I don't understand the comparison. On the contrary, don't die but live, live as much as you can, I shall be very glad."

"In the almshouse?"

"In the almshouse? One doesn't go to the almshouse with an income of three thousand. Ah, I remember," she grinned. "Indeed, Pyotr Stepanovich once got to joking about the almshouse. Bah, but that was indeed a special almshouse, which is worth considering. It's for the most respectable persons, there are colonels there, one general even wants to go there. If you got in there with all your money, you'd find peace, satisfaction, servants. You could occupy yourself with your studies and always get up a game of preference ..."

"Passons.”

"Passons?" Varvara Petrovna winced. "But, in that case, that's all; you've been informed; from now on we live entirely separately."

"And that's all? All that's left of twenty years? Our final farewell?"

"You're terribly fond of exclaiming, Stepan Trofimovich. It's not at all the fashion nowadays. They talk crudely but plainly. You and these twenty years of ours! Twenty years of reciprocal self-love, and nothing more. Your every letter to me was written not for me but for posterity. You're a stylist, not a friend, and friendship is merely a glorified word, essentially a mutual outpouring of slops..."

"God, all in other people's words! Learned by rote! So they've already put their uniform on you, too! You, too, are in joy, you, too, are in the sun; chère, chère, for what mess of pottage^[122] have you sold them your freedom!"

"I am not a parrot to repeat other people's words," Varvara Petrovna boiled up. "Rest assured that I've stored up enough words of my own. What did you do for me in these twenty years? You denied me even the books which I ordered for you and which, if it weren't for the binder, would have been left uncut. What did you give me to read when I asked you, in the first years, to be my guide? Capefigue, nothing but Capefigue.^[123] You were even jealous of my development, and took measures. And meanwhile everyone laughs at you. I confess I've always regarded you as merely a critic, you are a literary critic, and that is all. When I announced, on the way to Petersburg, thatI intended to publish a magazine and dedicate my whole life to it, you at once gave me an ironic look and suddenly became terribly haughty."

"It was not that, not that ... we were afraid of persecutions then..."

"It was just that, and you could by no means have been afraid of persecutions in Petersburg. Remember how afterwards, in February, when the news swept over,^[124] you suddenly came running to me all in a fright and started demanding that I at once give you a certificate, in the form of a letter, that the proposed magazine had no relation to you at all, that the young people had come to see me and not you, that you were only a tutor who lived in the house because you were still owed some salary, right? Do you remember that? You have distinguished yourself superbly throughout your life, Stepan Trofimovich."

"That was only a moment of faintheartedness, an intimate moment," he exclaimed ruefully. "But can it be, can it really be that we will break up because of such petty impressions? Can it be that nothing else has been preserved between us from all those long years?"

"You are terribly calculating; you keep wanting to make it so that I am still indebted to you. When you returned from abroad, you looked down your nose at me and wouldn't let me utter a word, and when I myself came and spoke with you later about my impressions of the Madonna, you wouldn't hear me out and began smiling haughtily into your tie, as if I really could not have the same feelings as you."

"It was not that, probably not that... J'ai oublié."^[xciii]

"No, it was just that, and there was nothing to boast of before me, because it's all nonsense and merely your invention. No one, no one nowadays admires the Madonna anymore or wastes time over it, except for inveterate old men. This has been proved."

"Proved, really?"

"She serves absolutely no purpose. This mug is useful, because water can be poured into it; this pencil is useful, because everything can be written with it, but here you have a woman's face that's worse than all faces in nature. Try painting an apple and put a real apple next to it—which would you take? I'll bet you wouldn't make any mistake.

This is what your theories boil down to, once the first ray of free analysis shines on them."^[125]

"So, so."

"You grin ironically. And what you said to me about charity, for example? And yet the pleasure of charity is an arrogant and immoral pleasure, a rich man's pleasure in his riches, his power, and in the comparison of his significance with the significance of a beggar. Charity corrupts both him who gives and him who takes, and, moreover, does not achieve its goal, because it only increases beggary. Sluggards who do not want to work crowd around those who give like gamblers around the gaming table, hoping to win. And yet the pitiful half-kopecks that are thrown to them are not even a hundredth part enough. How much have you given in your life? Eighty kopecks, if that, go on, use your memory. Try to remember when was the last time you gave anything—about two years ago, maybe all of four. You shout and it only hinders the cause. Charity should be forbidden by law, even in our present society. In the new order there will be no poor at all."

"Oh, what an outpouring of other people's words! So it's even gone as far as the new order? God help you, unhappy woman!"

"Yes, it has, Stepan Trofimovich; you carefully concealed from me all the new ideas that are now known to everyone, and you were doing it solely out of jealousy, so as to have more power over me. Now even this Yulia is a hundred miles ahead of me. But I, too, have now opened my eyes. I've defended you, Stepan Trofimovich, as far as I could; absolutely everyone accuses you."

"Enough!" he made as if to get up from his seat, "enough! And what else shall I wish you, if not indeed repentance?"

"Sit down for a minute, Stepan Trofimovich, there is still something I want to ask you. You have received an invitation to read at the literary matinée; that was arranged through me. Tell me, what precisely will you read?"

"Why, precisely about that queen of queens, that ideal of humanity, the Sistine Madonna, who in your opinion is not worth a glass or a pencil."

"Not from history, then?" Varvara Petrovna was ruefully surprised. "But they won't listen to you. You and your Madonna, really! Who wants it, if you just put everyone to sleep? I assure you, Stepan Trofimovich, I am speaking solely in your interest. How different if you'd take some brief but amusing little medieval court story from Spanish history, or, better, some anecdote, and pad it out with more anecdotes and witticisms of your own. They had magnificent courts there; there were such ladies, poisonings. Karmazinov says it would be strange if you couldn't at least find something amusing from Spanish history."

"Karmazinov, that written-out fool, hunts up a topic for me!"

"Karmazinov, that all but statesmanly mind! You have too bold a tongue, Stepan Trofimovich."

"Your Karmazinov is a written-out, spiteful old woman! Chère, chère, how long have you been so enslaved by them, oh, God!"

"I still cannot stand him for his self-importance, but I do justice to his intelligence. I repeat, I've defended you with all my strength, as far as I could. And why must you so necessarily show yourself as ridiculous and dull? On the contrary, come out on the stage with a venerable smile, as the representative of a past age, and tell three anecdotes, with all your wittiness, as only you sometimes know how to do. So you're an old man, so you belong to a bygone age, so you've fallen behind them, finally; but you can confess all that with a smile in your preface, and everyone will see that you are a dear, kind, witty relic ... In short, a man of the old stamp, and sufficiently advanced to be able to set the right value on all the scandalousness of certain notions he used to follow. Do give me that pleasure, I beg you."

"Chère, enough! Don't beg me, I cannot. I will read about the Madonna, but I will raise a storm that will either crush them all, or strike me alone."

"Most likely you alone, Stepan Trofimovich."

"Such is my lot. I will tell of that mean slave, that stinking and depraved lackey, who will be the first to clamber up a ladder with scissors in his hand and slash the divine face of the great ideal in the name of equality, envy, and... digestion. Let my curse thunder out, and then, then..."

"To the madhouse?"

"Perhaps. But in any case, whether I emerge defeated or victorious, that same evening I shall take my bag, my beggar's bag, leave all my belongings, all your presents, all pensions and promises of boons to come, and go off on foot to end my life as a merchant's tutor, or die of hunger somewhere in a ditch. I have spoken. Alea jacta est!"^[126]

He again rose slightly.

"I've been sure," Varvara Petrovna rose, flashing her eyes, "for years I've been sure that you lived precisely so that in the end you might disgrace me and my house with slander! What do you mean to say by this tutoring in a merchant's house or dying in a ditch? Spite, slander, and nothing more!"

"You have always despised me; but I will end as a knight faithful to his lady, for your opinion has always been dearest of all to me. From this minute I shall accept nothing, but revere disinterestedly."

"How stupid that is!"

"You have always not respected me. I may have had a myriad of weaknesses. Yes, I was grubbing off you—I speak the language of nihilism—but grubbing was never the highest principle of my actions. It happened just so, of itself, I don't know how ... I always thought that something else remained between us, higher than food, and— never, never have I been a scoundrel! And so, on our way, to set things right! A late way, for it is late autumn outside, mist lies over the fields, the chill hoarfrost of old age covers my future path, and wind howls about the imminent grave... But on our way, our new way:

Filled with love that's pure

And true to the sweet dream...^[127]

Oh, my dreams, farewell! Twenty years! Alea jacta est!"

His face was splashed with the tears that suddenly burst through; he took his hat.

"I don't understand Latin," said Varvara Petrovna, holding herself back with all her might.

Who knows, perhaps she also wanted to cry, but indignation and caprice once again got the upper hand.

"I know only one thing, that this is all pranks. You will never be able to carry out your threats, so filled with egoism. You will not go anywhere, not to any merchant, but will end up quite contentedly on my hands, getting a pension and holding Tuesday gatherings of your friends, who bear no resemblance to anything. Farewell, Stepan Trofimovich."

"Alea jacta est!" he bowed deeply to her and returned home half dead with agitation.