The possessed : a novel in three parts

THE LIBRARY

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

PROVO, UTAH

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:

fHE POSSESSED

A NOVEL IN THREE PARTS

BY

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
CONSTANCE GARNETT

NEW YORK

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

)

I

Printed in England

\

THE LIBRARY

RRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
PROVO, UTAH

: Strike me dead, the track has vanished, n

Well, what now ? We've lost the way, J f^^M \&^

Demons have bewitched our horses, ^P° Q

Led us in the wilds astray.

A'

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 the
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 i whom the devils were

t

departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right
mind ; and they were afraid."

Luke, ch. viii. 32-37.

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

I. INTRODUCTORY 1

II. Prince Harry. Matchmaking 33

III. The Sins of Others 72

IV. The Cripple 114
V. The Subtle Serpent 146

I PART II

I. Night 193

II. Night (continued) 239

III. The Duel 263

IV. All in Expectation 275
V. On the Eve of the Fete 297

VI. Pyotr Stepanovitch is Busy 321

VII. A Meeting ' 363

VIII. Ivan the Tsarevitch ' 387

IX. A Raid at Stepan Trofimovitch's 398

X. Filibusters A Fatal Morning 407

PART III

I. The Fete — First Part " 430

II. The End of the Fete 458

III. A Romance Ended 486

IV. The Last Resolution 507
V. A Wanderer 530

VI. A Busy Night 561

VII. Stepan Trofimovitch's Last Wandering 593

VIII. Conclusion 626

vii

PART I

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

Some details of the biography of that highly respected

GENTLEMAN STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH VeRHOVENSKY.

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

iier 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 role 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 " per-
secuted" 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,
one 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

1 A

2 THE POSSESSED

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 constella-
tion 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 com-
bined 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 accus-
tomed to believe, and had never even been under police super-
vision at all. Such is the force of imagination ! All his life
tie 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
1jo 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
oase, 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

INTRODUCTORY 3

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 numer-
ous 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 extra-
ordinary 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 some one (probably one of his reactionary enemies) a letter
had been seized giving an account of certain circumstances,
in consequence of which some one 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 con-
stantly 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

4 THE POSSESSED

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 inde-
scribable beauty rides in on a black steed, and an immense multi-
tude 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 harm-
lessness 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

INTRODUCTORY 5

a whole month, but I am convinced that in the secret recesses
of his heart he was enormously nattered. He almost took the
copy of the collection to bed with him, and kept it hidden under
his mattress in the da}^time ; 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 con-
victions 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 loft}',
and he proceeded with peculiar haste to assure himself that
his career was ruined for ever " 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 intel-
lectual 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

6 THE POSSESSED

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 friend-
ship 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, for ever.

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,
0 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

INTRODUCTORY 7

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 some one
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 Maecenas,
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.

Ill

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 im-
possible. 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 tete-a-
tete with Varvara Petrovna.

8 THE POSSESSED

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 be-
sought 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

INTRODUCTORY 9

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 in-
credible 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

10 THE POSSESSED

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 some-
thing 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 child-
hood 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 pre-
meditated, 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

INTRODUCTORY 11

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 Lieutenants 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, a»
it were, clung to the heart bf 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 involun-
tarily 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 gentle-
manly the man the more noticeable it is. Goodness only knows

12 THE POSSESSED

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 hesi-
tation 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

INTRODUCTORY 13

every day, all his life, to be expecting the continuation, and, so to
say, the denouement 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 \o 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 summer-
time, 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 continu-
ally 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 under-
taking 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

14 THE POSSESSED

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
oven 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
ondure 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 compo-
sition 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

INTRODUCTORY 15

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 Tro-
fimovitch 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 some
one 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.

16 THE POSSESSED

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 them-
selves 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 manoeuvres 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 plat-
form 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

INTRODUCTORY 17

swear, and I'm ready to bet," he declared (but only to me, and
in secret), " that not one of that audience knew anything what-
ever 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 undis-
guised 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 some one'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 heredi-
tary 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 un-
doubtedly 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

B

18 THE POSSESSED

an extremely stubborn and irritable, though very estimable, man
(in his own way, of course), who ate a great deal, and was dread-
fully 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," acknow-
ledged 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 traite 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

INTRODUCTORY 19

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
wTas 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 neces-
sary for them to part for a time, she felt that. Stepan Trofimovitch
was delighted to go.

20 THE POSSESSED

" There I shall revive ! " he exclaimed. " There, at last, 1
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, pent 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 shop-
keeper, a very eccentric fellow, a self-taught archaeologist 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
instalments 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
w^ould 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

INTRODUCTORY 21

delightful Dunclasov family. What a charming creature
Nadyozhda 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 tra-
ditional 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 I "

22 THE POSSESSED

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 Trofimo-
vitch 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

INTRODUCTORY 23

fortune. He was an uncomfortable sort of man, and had not
risen in the service. He was not much respected in the town,
and was not received in the best circles. Moreover, he was an
open 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 him-
self 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 considera-
tion 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 un-
restrained in his language.

24 THE POSSESSED

" 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 for ever. 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 in-
tently 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 shame-
fully 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,

INTRODUCTORY 25

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 seminaristes. 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.

26 THE POSSESSED

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 con-
descension. 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 ! '

INTRODUCTORY 27

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 ful-
filling the lofty duty of disseminating ideas. And finally he
had to have some one 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 Caesarism 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

28 THE POSSESSED

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 Trofimo-
vitch 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

INTRODUCTORY 29

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 Vlmyeratrice,."

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 begin-
ning 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

30 THE POSSESSED

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

INTRODUCTORY 31

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 Chris-
tianity 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 under-
stand 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 concen-
trated 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

32 THE POSSESSED

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 for ever. But the latter always succeeded in
stopping him in time.

" Hadn't we better make it up, Shatov, after all these en-
dearments," he would say, benignly holding out his hand to him
from his arm-chair.

Shatov, clumsy and bashful, disliked sentimentality. Exter-
nally 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

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 under-
take 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 out-
rageous 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
wins, though their tears were not always due to domestic
lifficulties. Stepan Trofimovitch succeeded in reaching the
ieepest chords in his pupil's heart, and had aroused in him a
irst vague sensation of that eternal, sacred yearning which some

33 c

34 THE POSSESSED

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 atten-
tive as ever, but there was a shade of reserve in it. He un-
mistakably 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 emanci-
pation 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 ac-
quaintances 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
ravage 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,

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 35

This time Varvara Petrovna did not cry out, "Nonsense, non-
sense ! " 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 Shake-
speare 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 adver-
saries 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 trans-
ferred 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 pro-
motion 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 govern-
ment 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 appa-
rently 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

36 THE POSSESSED

dirty ragamuffin, sodden with drink and debauchery. He was,
x)n 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 consider-
able 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 37

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 Ossipo-
vitch, 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 im-
pulses (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.

38 THE POSSESSED

II

5 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 Pavlo-
vitch, 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 ex-
claiming 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 Pj^otr 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 —

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 39

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

40 THE POSSESSED

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 con-
fessed 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 Vsyevolo-
dovitch 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 41

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 refresh-
ments 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,
sejzeduJi£r_j^undthe 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 excite-
ment. 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 yester-
day'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 ? "

42 THE POSSESSED

" 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,

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 43

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 ^ipJgJ£gj^ra^n^£Jj^rj- 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

44 THE POSSESSED

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 com-
pletely 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 every-
body 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.

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 45

" 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.

" Ba, ba ! What do I see ? " cried Nicolas, noticing a volume
of Considerant 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 posi-
tive 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 1 hang it all ! There's no such language ! " laughed
Nikolay.

46 THE POSSESSED

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 lamenta-
tions 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.

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 47

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 house-
hold 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 protegee, 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
bsund to come to her at the death of her mother,, who had no

48 THE POSSESSED

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 con-
fided 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 Switzer-
land 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 49

hacTmet 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 con-
temptuous 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 Busses ! 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 tres 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
1 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 montre 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 . . ."

1 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,

D

50 THE POSSESSED

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."

" V raiment ? "

" 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 door-

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 51

steps 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 Pras-
kovya is on my side again, but what an intrigue ! "

" In which you came off victor, however. Oh, you're a
Bismarck ! "

" Without being a Bismarck I'm equal to seeing through
falseness and stupidity wherever I meet it. The Lembke's
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 I "

" 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

S2 THE POSSESSED

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 chere ..."

" Listen, Stepan Trofimovitch, of course I'm ignorant com-
pared with you on all learned subjects, but as I was travelling
here I thought a great deal about you. I've come to one conclu-
sion."

" 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 53

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 toujour s plus de moines que de raison, and as I thoroughly
agree with that ..."

" What, what did you say ? "

" I said, on trouve toujour s 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, chere . . . 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."

" Chere, chere 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.

54 THE POSSESSED

" 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 ? " Var-
vara 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 bete ! 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,

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 55

heaved deep sighs, and almost fell to whimpering at last. He
was always full of forebodings, was afraid of something un-
expected 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 tete-a-tete 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 genie et de pr ogres
en Russie etaient, sont, et seront toujours des gamblers el 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 parti-
cular 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 flatterirg 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 ?

56 THE POSSESSED

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 irrita-
bility. 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 for ever
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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 57

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. Accord-
ing 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 Trofimovi ten'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 A 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

58 THE POSSESSED

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, Pras-
kovya 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,

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 59

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, mono-
tonous, 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 Avith 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 anj^one
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."

60 |THE POSSESSED

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 under-
stand 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 61

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,
^ut 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." K

Then, may I ask, Varvara Petrovna, has Stepan Trofimo-
vitch 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

62 THE POSSESSED

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 m}^ 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 bene-
factress. 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
protegee. 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 charac-
teristic 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
Prench. 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.

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 63

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 Drozdoys). 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 Trofimo-
vitch 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 mis-
givings. 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 :

64 THE POSSESSED

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.

1 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 65

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 advan-
tages, 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

E

66 THE POSSESSED

in marriage. You are taking a wife," Varvara Petrovna hissed
malignantly.

' Oui, fai pris un mot pour un autre. Mais c'est egal." He
gazed at her with a hopeless air.

" I see that c'est egal" 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 Ver-
hovensky. 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

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 67

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
fight 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

68 THE POSSESSED

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 tite ! 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.
'Bute' est un pauvre sire, tout de meme. . . . 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 an-
nounced that he would arrive shortly, so there could be no charge
against him. What was more, some one 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 social-
istic, the more extreme they are, the keener they are over
property . . . why is it ? Can that, too, come from senti-
mentalism ? " I don't know whether there is any truth in this
observation of Stepan Trofimovitch's. I only know that Petrusha

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING 69

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 resem-
blance 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,

70 THE POSSESSED

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
dumbf ounder ed .

'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 . . . Liputin say ? ' Perhaps nothing
will come of it ' — what a thing to say ! That beats everything.

PRINCE HARRY. MATCHMAKING

71

Je suis un

That's really . . . what is one to say to that ? . .
forgot, un Badinguet, un man pushed to the wall. . . ."

And at the same time a sort of capricious complacency,
something frivolous and plaj^ful, 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

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 un-
opened, 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

72

THE SINS OF OTHERS 73

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 un-
relieved 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 dread-
fully 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

74 THE POSSESSED

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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 75

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.

76 THE POSSESSED

II

One morning, on the seventh or eighth day after Stepan Trofimo-
vitch 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 with-
out 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, Moliere, 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 funda-
mental 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 77

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 naive 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 : " Con-
centrate 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 inte-
resting ? ' 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

78 THE POSSESSED

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 Cathe-
dral ; 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 79

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 for ever, 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.

Ill

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."

80 THE POSSESSED

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 liberie ! 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, rtest-ce pas,
comme ami et temoin. 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 81

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 for ever, 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 Trofimo-
vitch 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.

F

82 THE POSSESSED

"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 sense-
less 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 83

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 see 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
D°y> y°u 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

84 THE POSSESSED

whatever, not a sign of anything higher, of anything funda-
mental, no embryo of a future ideal . . . c'etait 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.

11 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 un-
happy 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 85

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 un-
successful 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 Troflmovitch 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. . . ,"

86 THE POSSESSED

" 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 soiry you're not well, and I came."
" I wish you every success among us," answered Stepan Tro-
fimovitch, 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 Trofimo-
vitch was so frightened of Liputin, and why he had cried out
" I am lost " when he heard him coming.

THE SINS OF OTHERS 87

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 Trofimo-
vitch 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 Troflmovitch'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 drunkenchatter though,

88 THE POSSESSED

he doesn't speak of it himself when he's sober. He's an irritable
man, and, so to speak, aesthetic 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 some one, 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 f or ? "
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 Trofimo-
vitch. 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 89

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 Tro-
fimovitch 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 some-
thing 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

90 THE POSSESSED

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.
1 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch 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 im-
pulses. 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 91

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 Tro-
nmovitch, M that I don't believe you."

" Yes, observe, observe," cried Liputin, as though he had
not heard Stepan Tronmovitch, " 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 un-
expected ? "

" I don't know ... of news of any sort ... I haven't seen
her for some days, but . . . but I must say . . ." lisped Stepan
Tronmovitch, 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 I ' 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 Var-
vara 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 ? "

92 THE POSSESSED

" Is that true ? " said Stepan Trofimovitch, turning to Alexey
Nilitch.

1 1 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 conver-
sation, 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, think-
ing 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."

THE SINS OF OTHERS 93

" 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 dis-
putants. 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 manoeuvre.

" 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch, 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, ^ch, Stepan Trofimovitch, it's all very well
for you to cry out ab^ut 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

94 THE POSSESSED

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."

±±ihj suns ux ur±iniJti» yo

" 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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch. 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 . . . deV accident. Vous
m'accompagnerez, n'est-ce pas ? "

" Stepan Trofimovitch, surely you're not going there again ?
Think what may come of it ! "

96 THE POSSESSED

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 em-aged.

" 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 marry-
ing 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 97

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 etje commence d croire"

" En Dieu ! En Dieu qui est la-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 after-
wards, 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 trans-
ported. 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 ! II 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.
:c She's just the same as ever, cross, unjust, and alwaj^s 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

a

98 THE POSSESSED

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 fore-
head 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 miuntes afterwards she reappeared
according to her promise, escorted by her Mavriky Nikolaevitch.

" Vous et le bonheur, vous arrivez en meme 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 appear-
ance, 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 acquaint-
ance. 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 Prasko vya
Ivanovna's invalid state. They destested 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 99

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 Kal-
muck's, slanting ; she was pale and thin in the face with high
cheek-bones, but there was something in the face that con-
quered 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 mid 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
fife 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 Trofimo vitch 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.'"

100 THE POSSESSED

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 Trofimo-
vitch'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 Trofimo-
vitch, 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."

THE SINS OF OTHERS 101

" I ... I did once speak," Stepan Trofimovitch faltered,
crimsoning all over, ' but ... I only hinted . . . fetais 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 some one to help me and the sooner the
better. Would he take the work or not ? He's been recom-
mended to me. ..."

;' Oh, most certainly he will. Et vous ferez un bienfait. . . ."

" I'm not doing it as a bienfait. I need some one 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 with-
out a servant of any sort. I did think of knocking at Captain

102 THE POSSESSED

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
t}o 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 appa-
rently 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.

THE SINS OF OTHERS 103

" 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 non-
sense 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 non-
sense. 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.

104 THE POSSESSED

" 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 them-
selves 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 1 '
' 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 SINS OF OTHERS 105

1 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 under-
stand 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 un-
happy. 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 him-
self 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 him-
self 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,

106 THE POSSESSED

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."

M 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.

THE SINS OF OTHERS 107

" 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 :

1 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

108 THE POSSESSED

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 horse-
back 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 1
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."

Stepan Trofimovitch was awaiting me with hysterical impa-
tience. It was an hour since he had returned. I found him in a
state resembling intoxication ; for the first five minutes at least

THE SINS OF OTHERS 109

I thought he was drunk. Alas, the visit to the Drozdovs had
been the finishing- stroke.

" M on 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 meme . . .
but can it be for his sake, and after she wrote herself from Paris
to cette pauvre amie ? . . . Enfin, this Praskovya, as cette chere 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
bead, 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

110 THE POSSESSED

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. G'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 leters for ?
Oh, I forgot. Lise idolises 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

THE SINS OF OTHERS 111

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 meme, 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 v/as 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-la supposent la nature et la
societe humaine autres que Dieu ne les a faites et qu'elles ne sont
reellement. People try to make up to them, but Stepan Ver-
hovensky does not, anyway. I saw them that time in Petersburg
avec cette chere 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 yester-
day to Darya Pavlovna and . . . how I curse myself for
it!"

" What did you write about ? "

:c Oh, my friend, believe me, it was all done in a noble spirit.

112 THE POSSESSED

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'etait bete, 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 inde-
pendence. 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."

THE SINS OF OTHERS ICI

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

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 Trofimo-

vitch'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

114

THE CRIPPLE 115

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 contra-
dict 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 ..."

116 THE POSSESSED

" 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 any-
thing 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 in-
experienced she needed some one to help her. The earnestness
with which she began to explain her plan to Shatov quite sur-
prised 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

THE CRIPPLE 117

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 Mkolaevna 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 presenta-
tion 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 govern-
ment decrees, but only such things to be selected as are charac-
teristic 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

118 THE POSSESSED

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 under-
taking. 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 some-
how 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 some one 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

THE CRIPPLE 119

... 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, Eilipov'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 some one 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

120 THE POSSESSED

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 docu-
ments 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 worth-
less 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. Mavrikj^ 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."

THE CRIPPLE 121

" 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 nutter. " 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. . . ."

122 , THE POSSESSED

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.

Ill

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 Trofimo-
vitch, 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

THE CRIPPLE 123

herself 5 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

124 THE POSSESSED

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 b}^ 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 many 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.

THE CRIPPLE 125

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 naive 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 aft 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."

:c 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.

126 THE POSSESSED

:' 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 every-
thing, and is only looking for some one 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

THE CRIPPLE 127

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 land-
owners 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.

128 THE POSSESSED

" 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

THE CRIPPLE lb

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.

V

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 Mile. 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 in-
capable of looking after things.

Mile. 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

130 THE POSSESSED

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
IMlle. 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 con-
spicuous 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
«oft, 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
tier 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,
t; ithout 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
scharity ; 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 ! " Mile. Lebyadkin said genially.

"I've brought you a visitor, Mary a 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).

THE CRIPPLE 131

" 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

132 THE POSSESSED

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 en-
shrined 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

THE CRIPPLE 133

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,
1 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

134 THE POSSESSED

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."

THE CRIPPLE 135

" 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 :

1 A new fine house I do not crave,
This tiny cell 9s 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/1"
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.

136 THE POSSESSED

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.

THE CRIPPLE 137

" 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 bonds-
woman . . . 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.

138 THE POSSESSED

' 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
recherche : 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

THE CRIPPLE 139

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.

140 THE POSSESSED

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 foot-
man 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 sur-
prising 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

THE CRIPPLE 141

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 par-
ticular 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 extra-
ordinary 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, extra-
ordinary 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

142 THE POSSESSED

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 im-
practicability 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 " un-
happy" 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 some one, begging for a favour, she stretched
forward to seize Varvara Petrovna's hand, but, as though
panic-stricken, drew her hands back.

THE CRIPPLE 143

" 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.

" 1 say, she gave her ten roubles ! " some one 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

144 THE POSSESSED

went on, dropping his voice, and glancing significantly at Varvara
Petrovna.

" I understand. Thank you, Nikon Semyonitch. Your name
is Mile. 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 Mile. 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, 1 must come with you ! " Liza implored,
kissing Varvara Petrovna.

" Mais qu'avez vous done, Lise ? " the governor's wife asked
with expressive wonder.

" Ah, forgive me, darling, chere cousine, I'm going to auntie's."

Liza turned in passing to her unpleasantly surprised chere
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, chere . . . 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

THE CRIPPLE 145

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 in-
sinuating 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 Mile.
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
irive lasted, while Varvara Petrovna sat " as though in a
nesmeric sleep." Liza's own expression.

K

CHAPTER V
THE SUBTLE SERPENT

Varvara Petrovna rang the bell and threw herself into an easy
chair by the window.

" Sit here, my dear." She motioned Mary a 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, chere et excellente amie, dans quelle inquietude ..."
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 over-
whelmed 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 enjoy-
ment 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 laughedl
gaily.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 147

" 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 Mary a 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 ? "

148 THE POSSESSED

" 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 Timof-
yevna 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 'under-
stand you."

' Ghere 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 par-
ticularly, 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 ! "

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 149

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 ex-
traordinarily 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 naive 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 extra-
ordinary violence in her attack at the first favourable oppor-
tunity. 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

150 THE POSSESSED

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.

Ill

" 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 ex-
pression 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,

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 151

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.

:c 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

152 THE POSSESSED

the bow. For ten seconds she looked sternly and immovably
at Praskovya Ivanovna.

' Well, Praskovya, you must thank God that all here present
pre 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 foolish-
ness ! 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 153

words, what's upset me more than anything are these anony-
mous 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 appear-
ance. 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 in-
formed. Stepan Trofimovitch was the first to notice her ; he
made a rapid movement, turned red, and for some reason pro-
claimed 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.

u 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."

154 THE POSSESSED

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 com-
posure. 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 exj)ressively.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 155

" 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 unforcat evade. ..."
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 malhonnete et je crois meme que c'est un
forcat evade 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 dis-
guised contempt in her eyes.

" Wait one minute, Praskovya Ivanovna, I beg you." Varvara
Petrovna detained her, still with the same exaggerated com-
posure. " 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,

156 THE POSSESSED

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 l is destined to play
a great part in my life.' I remember the expression. Re-
flecting 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 con-
temptible 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 ' bom-
barded ' 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.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 157

" 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
sidewhiskers, 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 hanel,
while the left, tightly stretched and unbuttoned, covered part
of the huge fleshy fist in which he held a bran-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 some one 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

158 THE POSSESSED

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. Mary a
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. Mary a
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 your-
self," Varvara Petrovna pronounced in measured and impressive
tones.

" Captain Lebyadkin," thundered the captain. " I have
come, madam ..." He made a movement again.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 159

" 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 con-
fused. " 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

160 THE POSSESSED

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 for ever.
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 grand-
father, 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 benevo-
lent 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 down-
stairs in charge of my porter. There you can enter your sub-
scriptions if you wish to. And so I beg you to put your notes

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 161

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 some one."

" Madam, madam ! " He jumped up again, probably un-
conscious of doing so, and struck himself on the breast. " Here
in this bosom so much has accumulated, so much that God Him-
self 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 . . .

1 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

162 THE POSSESSED

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. More-
over, 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 1 '

" 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 163

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."

" 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 under-
stand 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 . . .

* "Prom lebved. a swan.

164 THE POSSESSED

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 import- I
ance ; he certainly had some fancy in his mind. By now he
wanted to insult some one, to do something nasty to show his
power.

r* 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, Lebyadkiri
may have spoken about an honourable young lady, in thJ
honourable indignation of a soul revolted by wrongs, and hil
slanderers have taken advantage of it. But Lebyadkin is
cunning, madam ! And in vain a malignant wolf sits over hinl
every minute, filling his glass and waiting for the end. Lebyadkiri
won't blab. And at the bottom of the bottle he always find!
instead Lebyadkin's cunning. But enough, oh, enough, madam

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 165

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.

11 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 extra-
ordinary 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 ; some one seemed to be running,
and that some one suddenly flew into the drawing-room, not
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but a young man who was a complete
stranger to all.

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 I
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

166 THE POSSESSED

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
as far as I can judge, at least, some of his calculations."

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 167

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 counten-
ances which always seem to exhibit something new which one
lias not noticed before, every time one meets them, though one
may have seen them a hundred times already. Apparently he

168 THE POSSESSED

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, incon-
testably 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, draw-
ing 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 ? '

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 169

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 carelesslv. resting on her lame leg, which was shorter

J-JLXXJ J- \SkJkJAUkJKJ±X±S

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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 171

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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch, 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 con-
vinced 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.

172 THE POSSESSED

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 "

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 173

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. Mile.
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 Mile. 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 per-
fectly silent, suddenly got hot, and said to Nikolay Vsyevolodo-
vitch, 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 :
1 You imagine, Mr. Kirillov, that I am laughing at her. Get rid
of that idea, I really do respect her, forjsh^sbe^^
us.' And, do you know, he said lTmsucna serious tone.
Meanwhile, he hadn't really said a word to her for two or three

174 THE POSSESSED

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
blase 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, for ever 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 ? "

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 175

" 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 Stepano-
vitch ? "

" 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 particu-
larly 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."

:' Chere, chere" 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
beinsr like Nicolas could be found even in such filthv haunts as

176 THE POSSESSED

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.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 177

" 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 Stepano-
vitch ! "

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 Stepano-
vitch, 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

M

178 THE POSSESSED

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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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 under-
stand ? 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 179

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
3an'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
tt his tormentor. Drops of perspiration stood out on his fore-
lead.

" Is it all true ? "

" It's all true."

" Have you nothing to add or to observe ? If you think
hat we've been unjust, say so ; protest, state your grievance
loud."

" No, I think nothing."

" Did you threaten Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch lately ? '

" It was ... it was more drink than anything, Pyotr
tepanovitch." He suddenly raised his head. " If family
onour and undeserved disgrace cry out among men then — then

a man to blame ? " he roared suddenly, forgetting himself as
efore.

" Are you sober now, Mr. Lebyadkin ? "

Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at him penetratingly.

" I am . . . sober."

" What do you mean by family honour and undeserved
sgrace ? "

f I didn't mean anybody, anybody at all. I meant myself,"
e captain said, collapsing again.

' You seem to be very much offended by what I've said about
>u and your conduct ? You are very irritable, Mr. Lebyadkin.

180 THE POSSESSED

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 Stepano-
vitch % "

" Now you may, unless Varvara Petrovna thinks itj
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- j
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 jestinglyl
" I see you know all about it already. When I had gone fronl
here I reflected in the carriage that I ought at least to have tol m
you the story instead of going off like that. But when I rel
membered that Pyotr Stepanovitch was still here, I though!
no more of it."

As he spoke he took a cursory look round.

" Pyotr Stepanovitch told us an old Petersburg episode in the!

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 181

life of a queer fellow," Varvara Petrovna rejoined enthusiasti-
cally— " 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
fStepanovitch 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 re-
commend 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
bhem ; 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
bo effect . . . except, of course, in special cases when effect
s more important than truth." (As he said this he was still
ooking about him.) " So, you see clearly, maman, that it's not
:or you to ask my forgiveness, and if there's any craziness about
phis affair it's my fault, and it proves that, when all's said and
lone, I really am mad. ... I must keep up my character
lere. . . ."
Then he tenderly embraced his mother.

" In any case the subject has been fully discussed and is done
vith," he added, and there was a rather dry and resolute note
n 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
low . . ."
And he went towards Praskovya Ivanovna.
But she scarcely turned her head towards him, though she
|iad been completely overwhelmed by his first appearance.
Jow she had fresh anxieties to think of ; at the moment the
aptain had stumbled upon Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch as he was
ping out, Liza had suddenly begun laughing — at first quietly
[nd intermittently, but her laughter grew more and more violent,
Duder and more conspicuous. She flushed crimson, in striking
ontrast with her gloomy expression just before.

While Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was talking to Varvara
*etrovna, she had twice beckoned to Mavriky Nikolaevitch as
hough she wanted to whisper something to him ; but as soon
s the young man bent down to her, she instantly burst into
lughter ; so that it seemed as though it was at poor Mavriky

182 THE POSSESSED

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 Nikolae-
vitch ! "

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.

1 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 musn'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 Nikolae-
vitch, 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 183

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

184 THE POSSESSED

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 Stepano-
vitch, 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 congratula-
tions," he laughed. " And if Stepan Trofimovitch ..."

" What, what's the congratulation about ? " Pyotr Stepano-
vitch 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 forget-
ting 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.

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 185

" 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, be-
seeching 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.'
1 I'm getting married,' he says, for my sins or on account of the
1 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.

186 THE POSSESSED

" 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 187

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

188 THE POSSESSED

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 con-
cluded 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

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 189

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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch 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

190 THE POSSESSED

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 ; neverthe-
less, 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 fear-

THE SUBTLE SERPENT 191

lessly as L — n, but it would be without the slightest thrill of enjoy-
ment, 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 malign a,nt a,ngp,r in 1S[ikp]a,y Vsyp.vnjnfln-
vitch 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 tern hi p* possible. I repeat again, I considered him
tEen, 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 pj,m jmcMby over-
coming 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 any-
thing or knocking anything over ; he opened the door a very
little way, and squezed through almost sideways. As he went
out his shock of hair standing on end at the back of his head was
particularly noticeable.

192 THE POSSESSED

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

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
lad received, Lizaveta Nikolaevna's fainting fit, and all
that happened on that Sunday. But what we wondered was,
phrough whom the story had got about so quickly and so
iccurately. Not one of the persons present had any need to
jive away the secret of what had happened, or interest to serve
>y doing so.

The servants had not been present. Lebyadkinwas the only
>ne who might have chattered, not so much from spite, for
le had gone out in great alarm (and fear of an enemy destroys
pite against him), but simply from incontinence of speech .
>ut Lebyadkin and his sister had disappeared next day, and

Iothing could be heard of them. There was no trace of them
t Filipov's house, they had moved, no one knew where, and
?emed to have vanished. Shatov, of whom I wanted to
lquire about Marya Timofyevna, would not open his door,
ad I believe sat locked up in his room for the whole of those
ght days, even discontinuing his work in the town. He would
Dt see me. I went to see him on Tuesday and knocked at his
Dor. I got no answer, but being convinced by unmistakable evi-
mce that he was at home, I knocked a second time. Then,

193 N

194 THE POSSESSED

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 Niko-
laevna's fainting certainly took the foremost place in the story,
and " all society " was interested, if only because it directly con-
cerned 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 Stav-
rogin 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 repu-
tation, 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.

NIGHT 195

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, wth 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 some
orie. 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 Mihail-
ovna knew not only the whole of the mysterious story but all

196 THE POSSESSED

its secret significance to the smallest detail, and not as an out-
sider, 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 recog-
nised 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 Stepano-
vitch 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, affec-
tionately. 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 con-
gresses 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 Trofimo-
vitch, 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,

NIGHT 197

brought one to the governor's wife from a very important old
lady in Petersburg, whose husband was one of the most dis-
tinguished 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,
artd 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 igno-
rance, 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 Yegory tch, 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

198 THE POSSESSED

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 hand-
kerchief soaked in vinegar on his head. But he continued to
remain calm in the deepest sense.

Sometimes, however, he did not hinder my speaking* Some-
times, 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.

" Fits, 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.'
II ritr

" 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

NIGHT 199

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 ? ' II fit. II fit beaucoup. II rit
trop. He has a strange smile. His mother had not a smile like
that. II rit toujour s."

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 trans-
parent 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 Trofimo-
vitch ? " 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. II y a la 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
I 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 sud-
denly, as though in a fever ..." that's false, it always has
been. Why libel French cleverness 1 It's simply Russian in-
dolence, our degrading impotence to produce ideas, our revolting

200 THE POSSESSED

parasitism in the rank of nations. lis 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.
1 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 etes 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 betise 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.' II 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 Trofimo-

NIGHT 201

vitch ; 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.

Ill

It was seven o'clock in the evening. Nikolay Vsyevolodo vitch
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 Vsyevolodo vitch was " at home."
Varvara Petrovna herself led the visitor to the door of the study ;

202 THE POSSESSED

she had long looked forward to their meeting, and Pyotr Stepano-
vitch 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 naivete, 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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."

NIGHT 203

" 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 naivetes, 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

204 THE POSSESSED

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.

NIGHT 205

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 1 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,

206 THE POSSESSED

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 every-
thing, 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 ques-
tions. 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

NIGHT 207

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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch 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 Mary a 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 non-
sense 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 Vsyevolodo-
vitch 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 ? "

208 THE POSSESSED

" 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 com-
pleted 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
Avord ' 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 conversa-
tion.

" I meant to amuse you with stories of the Lembkes, too,"
he cried gaily.

" Afterwards, perhaps, not now. But how is Yulia Mihail
ovna ?

" 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 over-
come everything yourself by merely making your appearance.

NIGHT 209

Upon my word ! She fancies you can do anything. You're an
enigmatic and romantic figure now, more than ever you were —
an 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
shockingly, 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
illows 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

o

210 THE POSSESSED

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 Vsyevolo-
dovitch, 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 interest-
ing ; 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 ! . . ."

"AskAlexey."

" 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 ? 1

NIGHT 211

" 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 person-
alities once for all. Of course, you can despise me as much as
you like if it amuses you — but we'd better dispense with person-
alities 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 appear-
ance, 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

212 THE POSSESSED

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 dis-
appeared 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 paper-
weight, but he didn't even move to cover it.
He soon sank into complete forget fulness.
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 j
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, numbj
v-and rigid. His brows were somewhat contracted and frowning. ,
I He positively had the look of a lifeless wax figure. She stood,!
\ over him for about three minutes, almost holding her breath, and]
\sriddenly she was seized with terror. She withdrew on tiptoe,i

NIGHT 213

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 per-
sistently 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 paper-
weight, 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 um-
brella the latter went without a word into the damp and sodden
garden, which was dark as a cellar. The wind was roaring and

214 THE POSSESSED

tossing the bare tree- tops. The little sandy paths were wet
and slippery. Alexey Yegoryvitch 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 an(
severe man who was fond of listening to religious discours(
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 ii
the lane.

Alexey Yegorytch resolutely repeated his words. He ha<
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

NIGHT 215

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
i jack 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.

216 THE POSSESSED

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 Vsyevolo-
dovitch 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 Vsyevo-
lodovitch ; "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.

" Some more ? " asked Kirillov.

"No, thank you."

Kirillov, who had not sat down till then, seated himself facing
him, and inquired :

" Why have you come ? "

" On business. Here, read this letter from Gaganov ; do you
remember, I talked to you about him in Petersburg."

Kirillov took the letter, read it, laid it on the table and looked
at him expectantly.

:' As you know, I met this Gaganov for the first time in my life
a month ago, in Petersburg," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch began
to explain. ' We came across each other two or three times
in company with other people. Without making my acquaint-
ance and without addressing me, he managed to be very insolent
to me. I told you so at the time ; but now for something you
don't know. As he was leaving Petersburg before I did, he sent
me a letter, not like this one, yet impertinent in the highest degree,
and what was queer about it was that it contained no sort of
explanation of why it was written. I answered him at once, also
by letter, and said, quite frankly, that he was probably angry with
me on account of the incident with his father four years ago in the
club here, and that I for my part was prepared to make him every
possible apology, seeing that my action was unintentional and was
the result of illness. I begged him to consider and accept my

NIGHT 217

apologies. He went away without answering, and now here I find
him in a regular fury. Several things he has said about me in public
have been repeated to me, absolutely abusive, and making as-
tounding charges against me. Finally, to-day, I get this letter,
a letter such as no one has ever had before, I should think, con-
taining such expressions as ' the punch you got in your ugly face.'
I came in the hope that you would not refuse to be my second."

" You said no one has ever had such a letter," observed
Kirillov, " they may be sent in a rage. Such letters have been
written more than once. Pushkin wrote to Hekern. All right,
I'M come. Tell me how."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch explained that he wanted it to be
to-morrow, and that he must begin by renewing his offers of
apology, and even with the promise of another letter of apology,
but on condition that Gaganov, on his side, should promise to send
no more letters. The letter he had received he would regard as
unwritten.

" Too much concession ; he won't agree," said Kirillov.

" I've come first of all to find out whether you would consent
to be the bearer of such terms."

" I'll take them. It's your affair. But he won't agree."

" I know he won't agree."

" He wants to fight. Say how you'll fight."

" The point is that I want the thing settled to-morrow. By
nine o'clock in the morning you must be at his house. He'll
listen, and won't agree, but will put you in communication with
his second — let us say about eleven. You will arrange things
with him, and let us all be on the spot by one or two o'clock.
Please tr}^ to arrange that. The weapons, of course, will be
pistols. And I particularly beg you to arrange to fix the barriers
at ten paces apart ; then you put each of us ten paces from the
barrier, and at a given signal we approach. Each must go right
up to his barrier, but you may fire before, on the way. I believe
that's all."

' Ten paces between the barriers is very near," observed
Kirillov.

' Well, twelve then, but not more. You understand that he
wants to fight in earnest. Do you know how to load a pistol ? "

" I do. I've got pistols. I'll give my word that you've never
fired them. His second will give his word about his. There'll
be two pairs of pistols, and we'll toss up, his or ours ? "

" Excellent."

218 THE POSSESSED

" Would you like to look at the pistols ? "

" Very well."

Kirillov squatted on his heels before the trunk in the corner,
Which he had never yet unpacked, though things had been pulled
out of it as required. He pulled out from the bottom a palm-
wood box lined with red velvet, and from it took out a pair of
smart and very expensive pistols.

"I've got everything, powder, bullets, cartridges. I've
a revolver besides, wait."

He stooped down to the trunk again and took out a six-
chambered American revolver.

" You've got weapons enough, and very good ones."

" Very, extremely."

Kirillov, who was poor, almost destitute, though he never
noticed his poverty, was evidently proud of showing his
precious weapons, which he had certainly obtained with great
sacrifice.

' You still have the same intentions ? " Stavrogin asked after
a moment's silence, and with a certain wariness.

'Yes," answered Kirillov shortly, guessing at once from his
voice what he was asking about, and he began taking the weapons
from the table.

1 When ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch inquired still more
cautiously, after a pause.

In the meantime Kirillov had put both the boxes back in his
trunk, and sat down in his place again.

' That doesn't depend on me, as you know — when they tell
me," he muttered, as though disliking the question ; but at the
same time with evident readiness to answer any other question.
He kept his black, lustreless eyes fixed continually on Stavrogin
with a calm but warm and kindly expression in them.

" I understand shooting oneself, of course," Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch began suddenly, frowning a little, after a dreamy
silence that lasted three minutes. " I sometimes have thought
of it myself, and then there always came a new idea : if one did
something wicked, or, worse still, something shameful, that is,
disgraceful, only very shameful and . . . ridiculous, such as
people would remember for a thousand years and hold in scorn
for a thousand years, and suddenly the thought comes : ' one
blow in the temple and there would be nothing more.' One
wouldn't care then for men and that they would hold one in scorn
for a thousand years, would one ? "

NIGHT 219

" You call that a new idea ? " said Kirillov, after a moment's
thought.

" I . . . didn't call it so, but when I thought it I felt it as
a new idea."

" You ' felt the idea ' ? " observed Kirillov. " That's good.
There are lots of ideas that are always there and yet suddenly
become new. That's true. I see a great deal now as though it
were for the first time."

" Suppose you had lived in the moon," Stavrogin interrupted,
not listening, but pursuing his own thought, " and suppose there
you had done all these nasty and ridiculous things. . . . You
know from here for certain that they will laugh at you and hold
you in scorn for a thousand years as long as the moon lasts. But
now you are here, and looking at the moon from here. You don't
care here for anything you've done there, and that the people there
will hold you in scorn for a thousand years, do you ? "

" I don't know," answered Kirillov. " I've not been in the
moon," he added, without any irony, simply to state the fact.

" Whose baby was that just now ? "

"The old woman's mother-in-law was here — no, daughter-in-
law, it's all the same. Three days. She's lying ill with the baby,
it cries a lot at night, it's the stomach. The mother sleeps, but
the old woman picks it up ; I play ball with it. The ball's
from Hamburg. I bought it in Hamburg to throw it and catch
it, it strengthens the spine. It's a girl."

" Are you fond of children ? "

" I am," answered Kirillov, though rather indifferently.

" Then you're fond of life ? "

" Yes, I'm fond of life ! What of it ? "

:' Though you've made up your mind to shoot yourself."

' What of it ? Why connect it ? Life's one thing and that's
another. Life exists, but death doesn't at all."

' You've begun to believe in a future eternal life ? '

" No, not in a future eternal life, but in eternal life here.
There are moments, you reach moments, and time suddenly
stands still, and it will become eternal."

" You hope to reach such a moment ? "

" Yes."

' That'll scarcely be possible in our time," Nikolay Vsyevolo-
dovitch responded slowly and, as it were, dreamily ; the two spoke
without the slightest irony. " In the Apocalypse the angel
swears that there will be no more time."

220 THE POSSESSED

" I know. That's very true ; distinct and exact. When all
mankind attains happiness then there will be no more time, for
there'll be no need of it, a very true thought."

" Where will they put it ? "

" Nowhere. Time's not an object but an idea. It will be
extinguished in the mind."

" The old commonplaces of philosophy, the same from the
beginning of time," Stavrogin muttered with a kind of disdainful
compassion.

" Always the same, always the same, from the beginning of
time and never any other," Kirillov said with sparkling eyes, as
though there were almost a triumph in that idea.

" You seem to be very happy, Kirillov."

" Yes, very happy," he answered, as though making the most
ordinary reply.

" But you were distressed so lately, angry with Liputin."

" H'm . . . I'm not scolding now. I didn't know then that I
was happy. Have you seen a leaf, a leaf from a tree ? "

" Yes."

" I saw a yellow one lately, a little green. It was decayed at
the edges. It was blown by the wind. When I was ten years old
I used to shut my eyes in the winter on purpose and fancy a
green leaf, bright, with veins on it, and the sun shining. I used to
open my eyes and not believe them, because it was very nice,
and I used to shut them again."

" What's that ? An allegory ? "

" N-no . . . why ? I'm not speaking of an allegory, but of
a leaf, only a leaf. The leaf is good. Everything's good."

" Everything ? "

" Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's
happy. It's only that. That's all, that's all ! If anyone finds out
he'll become happy at once, that minute. That mother-in-law will
die ; but the baby will remain. It's all good. I discovered it all
of a sudden."

" And if anyone dies of hunger, and if anyone insults and
outrages the little girl, is that good ? "

" Yes ! And if anyone blows his brains out for the baby, that's
good too. And if anyone doesn't, that's good too. It's all good,
all. It's good for all those who know that it's all good. If they
knew that it was good for them, it would be good for them, but
as long as they don't know it's good for them, it will be bad for
them. That's the whole idea, the whole of it,"

NIGHT 221

" When did you find out you were so happy ? "

" Last week, on Tuesday, no, Wednesday, for it was Wednesday
by that time, in the night."

" By what reasoning ? "

" I don't remember ; I was walking about the room ; never
mind. I stopped my clock. It was thirty- seven minutes past
two."

" As an emblem of the fact that there will be no more time ? "

Kirillov was silent.

" They're bad because they don't know they're good. When
they find out, they won't outrage a little girl. They'll find out
that they're good and they'll all become good, every one of
them."

" Here you've found it out, so have you become good
then I "

" I am good."

" That I agree with, though," Stavrogin muttered, frowning.

" He who teaches that all are good will end the world."

" He who taught it was crucified."

" He will come, and his name will be the man-god."

" The god-man ? "

" The man-god. That's the difference."

" Surely it wasn't you lighted the lamp under the ikon ? '

" Yes, it was I lighted it."

" Did you do it believing ? "

" The old woman likes to have the lamp and she hadn't
time to do it to-day," muttered Kirillov.

" You don't say prayers yourself ? "

" I psa3L to everything. You see the spider crawling on the

Wall, I lnnlr fl.t if, n,r>rl $&& if f0r nyflyrji'nrY "

His eyes glowed again. He kept looking straight at Stavrogin
with firm and unflinching expression. Stavrogin frowned and
watched him disdainfully, but there was no mockery in his
eyes.

" I'll bet that when I come next time you'll be believing in
God too," he said, getting up and taking his hat.

" Why ? " said Kirillov, getting up too.

" If you were to find out that you believe in God, then you'd
believe in Him ; but since you don't know that you believe in
Him, then you don't believe in Him," laughed Nikolay Vsyevolo-
dovitch.

" That's not right," Kirillov pondered, " you've distorted the

222 THE POSSESSED

idea. It's a flippant joke. Remember what you have meant
in my life, Stavrogin."

" GoOd-bye, Kirillov."

" Come at night ; when will you ? "
' Why, haven't you forgotten about to-morrow ? "

" Ach, I'd forgotten. Don't be uneasy. I won't oversleep.
At nine o'clock. I know how to wake up when I want to.
I go to bed saying ' seven o'clock,' and I wake up at seven o'clock,
' ten o'clock,' and I wake up at ten o'clock."

1 You have remarkable powers," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
looking at his pale face.

" I'll come and open the gate."

" Don't trouble, Shatov will open it for me."

" Ah, Shatov. Very well, good-bye."

VI

The door of the empty house in which Shatov was lodging was
not closed ; but, making his way into the passage, Stavrogin
found himself in utter darkness, and began feeling with his hand
for the stairs to the upper story. Suddenly a door opened
upstairs and a light appeared. Shatov did not come out himself,
but simply opened his door. When Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
was standing in the doorway of the room, he saw Shatov standing
at the table in the corner, waiting expectantly.

" Will you receive me on business ? " he queried from the
doorway.

" Come in and sit down," answered Shatov. " Shut the door ;
stay, I'll shut it."

He locked the door, returned to the table, and sat down, facing
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. He had grown thinner during that
week, and now he seemed in a fever.

" You've been worrying me to death," he said, looking down,
in a soft half- whisper. " Why didn't you come ? '

" You were so sure I should come then ? "

" Yes, stay, I have been delirious . . . perhaps I'm delirious
now. . . . Stay a moment."

He got up and seized something that was lying on the upper
most of his three bookshelves. It was a revolver.

" One night, in delirium, I fancied that you were coming to kill

NIGHT 223

me, and early next morning I spent my last farthing on buying
a revolver from that good-for-nothing fellow Lyamshin ; I did
not mean to let you do it. Then I came to myself again . . .
I've neither powder nor shot ; it has been lying there on the shelf
till now ; wait a minute. ..."

He got up and was opening the casement.

" Don't throw it away, why should you ? " Nikolay Vsyevolo-
dovitch checked him. '' It's worth something. Besides, to-
morrow people will begin saying that there are revolvers lying
about under Shatov's window. Put it back, that's right ; sit
down. Tell me, why do you seem to be penitent for having
thought I should come to kill you ? I have not come now to be
reconciled, but to talk of something necessary. Enlighten me
to begin with. You didn't give me that blow because of my
connection with your wife ? "

" You know I didn't, yourself," said Shatov, looking down
again.

" And not because you believed the stupid gossip about Darya
Pavlovna ? "

" No, no; of course not ! It's nonsense ! My sister told me
from the very first ..." Shatov said, harshly and impatiently,
and even with a slight stamp of his foot.

:' Then I guessed right and you too guessed right," Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch went on in a tranquil voice. " You are right.
Mary a Timofyevna Lebyadkin is my lawful wife, married to me
four and a half years ago in Petersburg. I suppose the blow was
on her account ? "

Shatov, utterly astounded, listened in silence.

" I guessed, but did not believe it," he muttered at last,
looking strangely at Stavrogin.

" And you struck me ? "

Shatov flushed and muttered almost incoherently :

" Because of your fall . . . your lie. I didn't go up to you
to punish you ... I didn't know when I went up to you that
I should strike you ... I did it because you meant so much to
me in my life . . . I . . ."

" I understand, I understand, spare your words. I am sorry
you are feverish. I've come about a most urgent matter."

"I have been expecting you too long." Shatov seemed to be
•quivering all over, and he got up from his seat. " Say what you
have to say . . . I'll speak too . . . later."
jiP* He sat down.

224 THE POSSESSED

" What I have come about is nothing of that kind," began
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, scrutinising him with curiosity.
" Owing to certain circumstances I was forced this very day to
choose such an hour to come and tell you that they may murder

you."

Shatov looked wildly at him.

" I know that I may be in some danger," he said in measured
tones, " but how can you have come to know of it ? "

" Because I belong to them as you do, and am a member of
their society, just as you are."

" You . . . you are a member of the society ? "

" I see from your eyes that you were prepared for anything
from me rather than that," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with
a faint smile. " But, excuse me, you knew then that there
would be an attempt on your life ? "

" Nothing of the sort. And I don't think so now, in spite of
your words, though . . . though there's no being sure of anything
with these fools ! " he cried suddenly in a fury, striking the
table with his fist. " I'm not afraid of them ! I've broken with
them. That fellow's run here four times to tell me it was
possible . . . but " — he looked at Stavrogin — " what do you
know about it, exactly ? "

" Don't be uneasy ; I am not deceiving you," Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch went on, rather coldly, with the air of a man who is
only fulfilling a duty. " You question me as to what I know.
I know that you entered that society abroad, two years ago,
at the time of the old organisation, just before you went to
America, and I believe, just after our last conversation, about
which you wrote so much to me in your letter from America.
By the way, I must apologise for not having answered you by
letter, but confined myself to ... "

" To sending the money ; wait a bit," Shatov interrupted,
hurriedly pulling out a drawer in the table and taking from
under some papers a rainbow- coloured note. " Here, take it,
the hundred roubles you sent me ; but for you I should have
perished out there. I should have been a long time paying it back
if it had not been for your mother. She made me a present of
that note nine months ago, because I was so badly off after nr
illness. But, go on, please. ..."

He was breathless.

" In America you changed your views, and when you carat
back you wanted to resign. They gave you no answer, but

NIGHT 225

charged you to take over a printing press here in Russia from
some one, and to keep it till you handed it over to some one who
would come from them for it. I don't know the details exactly,
but I fancy that's the position in outline. You undertook it in
the hope, or on the condition, that it would be the last task they
would require of you, and that then they would release you
altogether. Whether that is so or not, I learnt it, not from them,
but quite by chance. But now for what I fancy you don't know ;
these gentry have no intention of parting with you."

" That's absurd ! " cried Shatov. "I've told them honestly
that I've cut myself off from them in everything. That is my
right, the right to freedom of conscience and of thought. ... I
won't put up with it ! There's no power which could ..."

" I say, don't shout," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch said earnestly,
checking him. " That Verhovensky is such a fellow that he may
be listening to us now in your passage, perhaps, with his own ears
or some one else's. Even that drunkard, Lebyadkin, was prob-
ably bound to keep an eye on you, and you on him, too, I dare
say ? You'd better tell me, has Verhovensky accepted your
arguments now, or not ? "

" He has. He has said that it can be done and that I have the
right. ..."

' Well then, he's deceiving you. I know that even Kirillov,
who scarcely belongs to them at all, has given them information
about you. And they have lots of agents, even people who don't
know that they're serving the society. They've always kept
a watch on you. One of the things Pyotr Verhovensky came
here for was to settle your business once for all, and he is
fully authorised to do so, that is at the first good opportunity,
to get rid of you, as a man who knows too much and might give
them away. I repeat that this is certain, and allow me to add
that they are, for some reason, convinced that you are a spy,
and that if you haven't informed against them yet, you will. Is
that true ? "

Shatov made a wry face at hearing such a question asked in
such a matter-of fact tone.

" If I were a spy, whom could I inform ? " he said angrily,
not giving a direct answer. " No, leave me alone, let me go to
the devil ! " he cried suddenly, catching again at his original idea,
which agitated him violently. Apparently it affected him more
[deeply than the news of his own danger. ' You, you, Stavrogin,
Ihow could you mix yourself up with such shameful, stupid,

P

226 THE POSSESSED

second-hand absurdity ? You a member of the society ? What
an exploit for Stavrogin ! " he cried suddenly, in despair.

He clasped his hands, as though nothing could be a bitterer
and more inconsolable grief to him than such a discovery.

" Excuse me," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, extremely sur-
prised, " but you seem to look upon me as a sort of sun, and on
yourself as an insect in comparison. I noticed that even from
your letter in America."

" You . . . you know. . . . Oh, let us drop me altogether,"
Shatov broke off suddenly, " and if you can explain anything
about yourself explain it. . . . Answer my question ! " he
repeated feverishly.

" With pleasure. You ask how I could get into such a den ?
After what I have told you, I'm bound to be frank with you to
some extent on the subject. You see, strictly speaking, I don't
belong to the society at all, and I never have belonged to it, and
I've much more right than you to leave them, because I never
joined them. In fact, from the very beginning I told them that
I was not one of them, and that if I've happened to help them it
has simply been by accident as a man of leisure. I took some
part in reorganising the society, on the new plan, but that was all.
But now they've changed their views, and have made up their
minds that it would be dangerous to let me go, and I believe I'm
sentenced to death too."

" Oh, they do nothing but sentence to death, and all by
means of sealed documents, signed by three men and a half. And
you think they've any power ! "

"You're partly right there and partly not," Stavrogin
answered with the same indifference, almost listlessness. i
" There's no doubt that there's a great deal that's fanciful about
it, as there always is in such cases : a handful magnifies its sizd
and significance. To my thinking, if you will have it, the only one
is Pyotr Verhovensky, and it's simply good-nature on his part to
consider himself only an agent of the society. But the funda-j
mental idea is no stupider than others of the sort. They are^
connected with the Internationale. They have succeeded in
establishing agents in Russia, they have even hit on a rather
original method, though it's only theoretical, of course. As for,
their intentions here, the movements of our Russian organisation
are something so obscure and almost always unexpected that
really they might try anything among us. Note that Verhovensky
is an obstinate man."

NIGHT 227

" He's a bug, an ignoramus, a buffoon, who understands
nothing in Russia ! " cried Shatov spitefully.

" You know him very little. It's quite true that none of them
understand much about Russia, but not much less than you and
I do. Besides, Verhovensky is an enthusiast."

" Verhovensky an enthusiast ? "

" Oh, yes. There is a point when he ceases to be a buffoon
and becomes a madman. I beg you to remember your own
expression : ' Do you know how powerful a single man may be ? '
Please don't laugh about it, he's quite capable of pulling a
trigger. They are convinced that I am a spy too. As they don't
know how to do things themselves, they're awfully fond of
accusing people of being spies."

" But you're not afraid, are you ? "

" N-no. I'm not very much afraid. . . . But your case is
quite different. I warned you that you might anyway keep
it in mind. To my thinking there's no reason to be offended
in being threatened with danger by fools ; their brains don't
affect the question. They've raised their hand against better
men than you or me. It's a quarter past eleven, though." He
looked at his watch and got up from his chair. •" I wanted to ask
you one quite irrelevant question."

" For God's sake ! " cried Shatov, rising impulsively from his
seat.

" I beg your pardon ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him
inquiringly.

" Ask it, ask your question for God's sake," Shatov repeated in
indescribable excitement, " but on condition that I ask you a
question too. I beseech you to allow me ... I can't . . . ask
your question ! "

Stavrogin waited a moment and then began.

" I've heard that you have some influence on Marya Timo-
fyevna, and that she was fond of seeing you and hearing you talk.
Is that so ? "

'Yes . . . she used to listen . . ." said Shatov, confused.

" Within a day or two I intend to make a public announcement
of our marriage here in the town."

" Is that possible ? " Shatov whispered, almost with horror.

" I don't quite understand you. There's no sort of difficulty

about it, witnesses to the marriage are here. Everything took

jjplace in Petersburg, perfectly legally and smoothly, and if it has

Inot been made known till now, it is simply because the witnesses,

228 THE POSSESSED

Kirillov Pyotr Verhovensky, and Lebyadkin (whom I now have

So pkivJe of claiming as a brother-m-law) promised to hold

^iSmeanthat . . . You speak so calmly . . ^utgoon!

smiled at Shatov's importunate haste. „

" And what's that talk she keeps up about her baby .
interposed disconnectedly, with feverish haste.

««&tS5 ^S- "r h^blbTand cou!d,t
2Effinr«BKi away, but suddenly ;

^why you did all this, and why you are resolved on such

^niYoTaues°tTon'ls clever and malignant, but I mean to surprise
vouloo I fancy I do know why I got married then, and why I
^solved on slob a pumshment now -^^g-*. talk
«<&£!££ ^tSlatrve £ waiting two years
for you."

::?:: waned t00 ** ■« r. ^h^j^zoi ^

incessantly. You are the only man who could move .

wrote to you about it from America.

« I remember your long Wer^ I

" Too long to be read I No ■ douW , s me ^jl

y°" Certamlgy,' half an hour if you like, but not more, if that wili

suit you." „ t j wrathfully, " thad

" And on condition, too, bhatov pui x ,J

one ought to entreat ? yourself above aj

NIGHT 229

Vsyevolodovitch with a faint smile. "I see with regret, too,
that you're feverish."

" I beg you to treat me with respect, I insist on it ! " shouted
Shatov, " not my personality — I don't care a hang for that, but
something else, just for this once. While I am talking ... we
are two beings, and have come together in infinity . . . for the
last time in the world. Drop your tone, and speak like a human
being ! Speak, if only for once in your life with the voice of a
man. I say it not for my sake but for yours. Do you understand
that you ought to forgive me that blow in the face if only because
I gave you the opportunity of realising your immense power. . . .
Again you smile your disdainful, worldly smile ! Oh, when will
you understand me ! Have done with being a snob ! Under-
stand that I insist on that. I insist on it, else I won't speak, I'm
not going to for anything ! "

His excitement was approaching frenzy. Nikolay Vsyevolo-
dovitch frowned and seemed to become more on his guard.

" Since I have remained another half -hour with you when time
is so precious," he pronounced earnestly and impressively,
" you may rest assured that I mean to listen to you at least
with interest . . . and I am convinced that I shall hear from
you much that is new."

He sat down on a chair.

" Sit down ! " cried Shatov, and he sat down himself.

' Please remember," Stavrogin interposed once more, " that
I was about to ask a real favour of you concerning Marya Timo-
fyevna, of great importance for her, anyway. . . ."

' What ? " Shatov frowned suddenly with the air of a man
who has just been interrupted at the most important moment,
and who gazes at you unable to grasp the question.

" And you did not let me finish," Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
went on with a smile.

k Oh, nonsense, afterwards ! " Shatov waved his hand dis-
dainfully, grasping, at last, what he wanted, and passed at once
to his principal theme.

VII

"Do you know," he began, with flashing eyes, almost
nenacingly, bending right forward in his chair, raising the fore-
linger of his right hand above him (obviously unaware that he

230 THE POSSESSED

was doing so), " do you know who are the only ' god-bearing '
people on earth, destined to regenerate and save the world in
the name of a new God, and to whom are given the keys of life
ami of the new world . . . Do you know which is that people and
what is its name ? "

" FrOm your manner I am forced to conclude, and I think
I may as well do so at once, that it is the Russian people."

" And you can laugh, oh, what a race ! " Shatov burst out.

" Calm yourself, I beg of you ; on the contrary, I was expecting
something of the sort from you."

" You expected something of the sort ? And don't you
know those words yourself ? "

" I know them very well. I see only too well what you're
driving at. All your phrases, even the expression ' god-bearing
people ' is only a sequel to our talk two years ago, abroad, not
long before you went to America. ... At least, as far as I can
recall it now."

" It's your phrase altogether, not mine. Your own, not simply
the sequel of our conversation. ' Our ' conversation it was not
at all. It was a teacher uttering weighty words, and a pupil
who was raised from the dead. I was that pupil and you were
the teacher."

" But, if you remember, it was just after my words you joined
their society, and only afterwards went away to America."

" Yes, and I wrote to you from America about that. I wrote
to you about everything. Yes, I could not at once tear my
bleeding heart from what I had grown into from childhood, on
which had been lavished all the raptures of my hopes and all the
tears of my hatred. ... It is difficult to change gods. I did
not believe you then, because I did not want to believe, I
plunged for the last time into that sewer. . . . But the seed
remained and grew up. Seriously, tell me seriously, didn't jou
read all my letter from America, perhaps you didn't read it
at all ?"

" I read three pages of it. The two first and the last. And
I glanced through the middle as well. But I was always
meaning ..."

" Ah, never mind, drop it ! Damn it ! " cried Shatov, waving
his hand. " If you've renounced those words about the people
now, how could you have uttered them then ? . . . That's what
crushes me now."

" I wasn't joking with you then ; in persuading you I was-

NIGHT 231

perhaps more concerned with myself than with you," Stavrogin
pronounced enigmatically.

"You weren't joking! In America I was lying for three
months on straw beside a hapless creature, and I learnt from him
that at the very time when you were sowing the seed of God and
the Fatherland in my heart, at that very time, perhaps during
those very days, you were infecting the heart of that hapless
creature, that maniac Kirillov, with poison . . . you confirmed
false malignant ideas in him, and brought him to the verge of
insanity. . . . Go, look at him now, he is your creation . . .
you've seen him though."

" In the first place, I must observe that Kirillov himself
told me that he is happy and that he's good. Your supposition
that all this was going on at the same time is almost correct. But
what of it ? I repeat, I was not deceiving either of you."

" Are you an atheist ? An atheist now ? "

" Yes."

" And then ? "

" Just as I was then."

" I wasn't asking you to treat me with respect when I began
the conversation. With your intellect you might have under-
stood that," Shatov muttered indignantly.

" I didn't get up at your first word, I didn't close the conversa-
tion, I didn't go away from you, but have been sitting here ever
since submissively answering your questions and . . . cries, so
it seems I have not been lacking in respect to you yet."

Shatov interrupted, waving his hand.

" Do you remember your expression that ' an atheist can't be
a Russian,' that ' an atheist at once ceases to be a Russian ' ?
Do you remember saying that ? "

:' Did I ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch questioned him back.

' You ask ? You've forgotten ? And yet that was one of

the truest statements of the leading peculiarity of the Russian

oul, which you divined. You can't have forgotten it ! I will

remind you of something else : you said then that ' a man who

was not orthodox could not be Russian.' "

" I imagine that's a Slavophil idea."

' The Slavophils of to-day disown it. Nowadays, people
have grown cleverer. But you went further : you believed that
Roman Catholicism was not Christianity ; you asserted that
Rome proclaimed Christ subject to the third temptation of the
levil. Announcing to all the world that Christ without an

232 THE POSSESSED

earthly kingdom cannot hold his ground upon earth, Catholicism
by so doing proclaimed Antichrist and ruined the whole
Western world. You pointed out that if France is in agonies now
it's simply the fault of Catholicism, for she has rejected the iniqui-
tous God of Rome and has not found a new one. That's what
you could say then ! I remember our conversations."

"If I believed, no doubt I should repeat it even now. I
wasn't lying when I spoke as though I had faith," Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch pronounced very earnestly. " But I must tell
you, this repetition of my ideas in the past makes a very die-
agreeable impression on me. Can't you leave off ? '

" If you believe it ? " repeated Shatov, paying not the slightest
attention to this request. " But didn't you tell me that if it
were mathematically proved to you that the truth excludes Christ,
you'd prefer to stick to Christ rather than to the truth ? Did you
say that ? Did you ? "

; But allow me too at last to ask a question," said Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, raising his voice. " What is the object of this
irritable and . . . malicious cross-examination ? "

'' This examination will be over for all eternity, and you will
never hear it mentioned again."

" You keep insisting that we are outside the limits of time and
space."

" Hold your tongue ! " Shatov cried suddenly. " I am stupid
and awkward, but let my name perish in ignominy ! Let me re-
peat your leading idea. . . . Oh, only a dozen lines, only the con-
clusion."

" Repeat it, if it's only the conclusion. . . ."

Stavrogin made a movement to look at his watch, but restrained
himself and did not look.

Shatov bent forward in his chair again and again held up his
finger for a moment.

" Not a single nation," he went on, as though reading it line by
line, still gazing menacingly at Stavrogin, " not a single nation
has ever been founded on principles of science or reason. There
has never been an example of it, except for a brief moment,
through folly. Socialism is from its very nature bound to be
atheism, seeing that it has from the very first proclaimed that it is
an atheistic organisation of society, and that it intends to establish
itself exclusively on the elements of science and reason. Science
and reason have, from the beginning of time, played a secondary
and subordinate part in the life of nations ; so it will be till the

NIGHT 233

end of time. Nations are built up and moved by another force
which sways and dominates them, the origin of which is unknown
and inexplicable : that force is the force of an insatiable desire
to go on to the end, though at the same time it denies that end.
It is the force of the persistent assertion of one's own existence,
and a denial of death. It's the spirit of life, as the Scriptures
call it, ' the river of living water,' the drying up of which is
threatened in the Apocalypse. It's the aesthetic principle, as the
philosophers call it, the ethical principle with which they identify
it, ' the seeking for God,' as I call it more simply. The object
of every national movement, in every people and at every period
of its existence is only the seeking for its god, who must be its
own god, and the faith in Him as the only true one. God is the
synthetic personality of the whole people, taken from its beginning
to its end. It has never happened that all, or even many, peoples
have had one common god, but each has always had its own.
It's a sign of the decay of nations when they begin to have gods
in common. When gods begin to be common to several nations
the gods are dying and the faith in them, together with the
nations themselves. The stronger a people the more individual
their God. There never has been a nation without a religion,
that is, without an idea of good and evil. Every people has its
own conception of good and evil, and its own good and evil.
When the same conceptions of good and evil become prevalent
in several nations, then these nations are dying, and then the
very distinction between good and evil is beginning to disappear.
Reason has never had the power to define good and evil, or even
to distinguish between good and evil, even approximately ; on
the contrary, it has always mixed them up in a disgraceful and
pitiful way ; science has even given the solution by the fist.
This is particularly characteristic of the half-truths of science,
the most terrible scourge of humanity, unknown till this century,
and worse than plague, famine, or war. A half-truth is a despot
such as has never been in the world before. A despot that has its
priests and its slaves, a despot to whom all do homage with love
and superstition hitherto inconceivable, before which science
itself trembles and cringes in a shameful way. These are your
own words, Stavrogin, all except that about the half-truth ; that's
my own because I am myself a case of half-knowledge, and that's
why I hate it particularly. I haven't altered anything of your
ideas or even of your words, not a syllable."

" I don't agree that you've not altered anything," Stavrogin

234 THE POSSESSED

observed cautiously. " You accepted them with ardour, and in
your ardour have transformed them unconsciously. The very
fact that you reduce God to a simple attribute of nationality ..."
He suddenly began watching Shatov with intense and peculiar
attention, not so much his words as himself.

" I reduce God to the attribute of nationality ? " cried Shatov.
' On the contrary, I raise the people to God. And has it ever
been otherwise ? The people is the body of God. Every people
is only a people so long as it has its own god and excludes all
other gods on earth irreconcilably ; so long as it believes that by
its god it will conquer and drive out of the world all other gods.
Such, from the beginning of time, has been the belief of all great
nations, all, anyway, who have been specially remarkable, all who
have been leaders of humanity. There is no going against facts.
The Jews lived only to await the coming of the true God and
left the world the true God. The Greeks deified nature and
bequeathed the world their religion, that is, philosophy and art.
Rome deified the people in the State, and bequeathed the idea
of the State to the nations. France throughout her long history
was only the incarnation and development of the Roman god,
and if they have at last flung their Roman god into the abyss
and plunged into atheism, which, for the time being, they call
socialism, it is solely because socialism is, anyway, healthier
than Roman Catholicism. If a great people does not believe
that the truth is only to be found in itself alone (in itself alone
and in it exclusively) ; if it does not believe that it alone is fit
and destined to raise up and save all the rest by its truth, it
would at once sink into being ethnographical material, and not a
great people. A really great people can never accept a secondary
part in the history of Humanity, nor even one of the first, but
will have the first part. A nation which loses this belief ceases to
be a nation. But there is only one truth, and therefore only a
single one out of the nations can have the true God, even
though other nations may have great gods of their own. Only
one nation is ' god-bearing,' that's the Russian people, and . .
and . . . and can you think me such a fool, Stavrogin," he yelled
frantically all at once, " that I can't distinguish whether my
words at this moment are the rotten old commonplaces that have
been ground out in all the Slavophil mills in Moscow, or a
perfectly new saying, the last word, the sole word of renewal and
resurrection, and . . . and what do I care for your laughter at
this minute ! What do I care that you utterly, utterly fail to

NIGHT 235

understand me, not a word, not a sound ! Oh, how I despise
your haughty laughter and your look at this minute ! "

He jumped up from his seat; there was positively foam on his lips.

" On the contrary Shatov, on the contrary," Stavrogin began
with extraordinary earnestness and self-control, still keeping his
seat, " on the contrary, your fervent words have revived many
extremely powerful recollections in me. In your words I recog-
nise my own mood two years ago, and now I will not tell you, as
I did just now, that you have exaggerated my ideas. I believe,
indeed, that they were even more exceptional, even more inde-
pendent, and I assure you for the third time that I should be
very glad to confirm all that you've said just now, every syllable
of it, but . . ."

" But you want a hare ? "

" Wh-a-t ? "

" Your own nasty expression," Shatov laughed spitefully,
sitting down again. " To cook your hare you must first catch it,
to believe in God you must first have a god. You used to say
that in Petersburg, I'm told, like Nozdryov, who tried to catch
a hare by his hind legs."

" No, what he did was to boast he'd caught him. By the way,
allow me to trouble you with a, question though, for indeed I think I
have the right to one now. Tell me, have you caught your hare ? "

" Don't dare to ask me in such -words ! Ask differently, quite
differently." Shatov suddenly began trembling all over.

" Certainly I'll ask differently." Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
looked coldly at him. " I only wanted to know, do you believe
in God, yourself ? "

"I believe in Russia. ... I believe in her orthodoxy. ... I
believe in the body of Christ. ... I believe that the new advent
will take place in Russia. . . . I believe . . ." Shatov muttered
frantically.

" And in God ? In God ? "

" I ... I will believe in God."

Not one muscle moved in Stavrogin' s face. Shatov looked
passionately and defiantly at him, as though he would have
scorched him with his eyes.

" I haven't told you that I don't believe," he cried at last. " I
will only have you know that I am a luckless, tedious book, and
nothing more so far, so far. . . . But confound me ! We're

Iiiscussing you not me. . . . I'm a man of no talent, and can only
*ive my blood, nothing more, like every man without talent;

r

236 THE POSSESSED

never mind my blood either ! I'm talking about you. I've been
waiting here two years for you. . . . Here I've been dancing
about in my nakedness before you for the last half -hour. You,
only you can raise that flag ! . . ."

He broke off, and sat as though in despair, with his elbows on
the table and his head in his hands.

" I merely mention it as something queer," Stavrogin inter-
rupted suddenly. " Every one for some inexplicable reason
keeps foisting a flag upon me. Pyotr Verhovensky, too, is
convinced that I might ' raise his flag,' that's how his words were
repeated to me, anyway. He has taken it into his head that
I'm capable of playing the part of Stenka Razin for them,
1 from my extraordinary aptitude for crime,' his saying too."

" What ? " cried Shatov, " ' from your extraordinary aptitude
for crime ' ? "

" Just so."

" H'm ! And is it true ? " he asked, with an angry smile. " Is
it true that when you were in Petersburg you belonged to a secret
society for practising beastly sensuality ? Is it true that you
could give lessons to the Marquis de Sade ? Is it true that you
decoyed and corrupted children ? Speak, don't dare to lie,"
he cried, beside himself. " Nikolay Stavrogin cannot lie to
Shatov, who struck him in the face. Tell me everything, and if
it's true I'll kill you, here, on the spot ! "

" I did talk like that, but it was not I who outraged children,"
Stavrogin brought out, after a silence that lasted too long. He
turned pale and his eyes gleamed.

:' But you talked like that," Shatov went on imperiously,
keeping his flashing eyes fastened upon him. "Is it true that
you declared that you saw no distinction in beauty between
some brutal obscene action and any great exploit, even the
sacrifice of life for the good of humanity ? Is it true that you have
found identical beauty, equal enjoyment, in both extremes ? '

"It's impossible to answer like this. ... I won't answer,'
muttered Stavrogin, who might well have got up and gone away,
but who did not get up and go away.

"-I don't know either why evil is hateful and good is beautiful,
but I know why the sense of that distinction is effaced and lost in
people like the Stavrogins," Shatov persisted, trembling all
over. " Do you know why you made that base and shameful
marriage ? Simply because the shame and senselessness of it
reached the pitch of genius ! Oh, you are not one of those who

^ NIGHT 237

linger on the brink. You fly head foremost. You married
from a passion for martyrdom, from a craving for remorse,
(through moral sensuality. It was a laceration of the nerves.
. . . Defiance of common sense was too tempting. Stavrogin
and a wretched, half-witted, crippled beggar ! When you bit
the governor's ear did you feel sensual pleasure ? Did you ?
You idle, loafing, little snob. Did you V

" You're a psychologist," said Stavrogin, turning paler and
paler, " though you're partly mistaken as to the reasons of my
marriage. But who can have given you all this information ? "
he asked, smiling, with an effort. ' Was it Kirillov ? But he
had nothing to do with it."

" You turn pale."

" But what is it you want ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
asked, raising his voice at last. "I've been sitting under your
lash for the last half -hour, and you might at least let me go civilly.
Unless you really have some reasonable object in treating me
like this."

" Reasonable object ? "

" Of course, you're in duty bound, anyway, to let me know your
object. I've been expecting you to do so all the time, but
you've shown me nothing so far but frenzied spite. I beg you
to open the gate for me."

He got up from the chair. Shatov rushed frantically after him.

:' Kiss the earth, water it with your tears, pray for forgiveness,"
he cried, clutching him by the shoulder.

:' I didn't kill you . . . that morning, though ... I drew
back my hands ..." Stavrogin brought out almost with
anguish, keeping his eyes on the ground.

" Speak out ! Speak out ! You came to warn me of danger.
You have let me speak. You mean to-morrow to announce your
marriage publicly. . . . Do you suppose I don't see from your
face that some new menacing idea is dominating you ? . . .
Stavrogin, why am I condemned to believe in you through all
eternity ? Could I speak like this to anyone else ? I have
modesty, but I am not ashamed of my nakedness because it's
Stavrogin I am speaking to. I was not afraid of caricaturing a
grand idea by handling it because Stavrogin was listening to
me. . . . Shan't I kiss your footprints when you've gone ? I
can't tear you out of my heart, Nikolay Stavrogin ! "

"I'm sorry I can't feel affection for you, Shatov," Stavrogin
replied coldly.

238 , THE POSSESSED

" I know you can't, and I know you are not lying. Listen.
I can set it all right. I can ' catch your hare ' for you."
Stavrogin did not speak.

" You're an atheist because you're a snob, a snob of the snobs.
You've lost the distinction between good and evil because you've
lost touch with your own poeple. A new generation is coming,
straight from the heart of the people, and you will know nothing
of it, neither you nor the Verhovenskys, father or son ; nor I,
for I'm a snob too — I, the son of your serf and lackey, Pashka.
. . . Listen. Attain to God by work ; it all lies in that ; or
disappear like rotten mildew. Attain to Him by work."

"God by work ? What sort of work ? "

" Peasants' work. Go, give up all your wealth. . . . Ah !
you laugh, you're afraid of some trick ? "

But Stavrogin was not laughing.

" You suppose that one may attain to God by work, and by
peasants' work," he repeated, reflecting as though he had really
come across something new and serious which was worth consider-
ing. " By the way," he passed suddenly to a new idea, " you re-
minded me just now. Do you know that I'm not rich at all, that I've
nothing to give up ? I'm scarcely in a position even to provide for
Marya Timofyevna's future. . . . Another thing : I came to ask you
if it would be possible for you to remain near Marya Timof yevna
in the future, as you are the only person who has some influence
over her poor brain. I say this so as to be prepared for anything."

" All right, all right. You're speaking of Marya Timof yevna,"
said Shatov, waving one hand, while he held a candle in the other.
" All right. Afterwards, of course. . . . Listen. Go to Tihon."

" To whom ? "

" To Tihon, who used to be a bishop. He lives retired now, onj
account of illness, here in the town, in the Bogorodsky monastery."

" What do you mean ? "

" Nothing. People go and see him. You go. What is it to
you ? What is it to you ? "

" It's the first time I've heard of him, and . . . I've never
seen anything of that sort of people. Thank j^ou, I'll go."

" This way."

Shatov lighted him down the stairs. " Go along." He flung
open the gate into the street.

" I shan't come to you any more, Shatov," said Stavrogin
quietly as he stepped through the gateway.

The darkness and the rain continued as before.

CHAPTER II
NIGHT (continued)

He walked the length of Bogoyavlensky Street. At last the
road began to go downhill ; his feet slipped in the mud and
suddenly there lay open before him a wide, misty, as it were
empty expanse — the river. The houses were replaced by hovels ;
the street was lost in a multitude of irregular little alleys.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was a long while making his way
between the fences, keeping close to the river bank, but finding
his way confidently, and scarcely giving it a thought indeed.
He was absorbed in something quite different, and looked round
with surprise when suddenly, waking up from a profound reverie,
he found himself almost in the middle of one long, wet, floating
bridge.

There was not a soul to be seen, so that it seemed strange to
him when suddenly, almost at his elbow, he heard a deferentially
familiar, but rather pleasant, voice, with a suave intonation,
such as is affected by our over-refined tradespeople or befrizzled
young shop assistants.

' Will you kindly allow me, sir, to share your umbrella ? "

There actually was a figure that crept under his umbrella,
or tried to appear to do so. The tramp was walking beside him,
almost " feeling his elbow," as the soldiers say. Slackening his
pace, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch bent down to look more closely,
as far as he could, in the darkness. It was a short man, and
seemed like an artisan who had been drinking ; he was shabbily
and scantily dressed ; a cloth cap, soaked by the rain and with
the brim half torn off, perched on his shaggy, curly head. He
looked a thin, vigorous, swarthy man with dark hair ; his eyes
were large and must have been black, with a hard glitter and a
yellow tinge in them, like a gipsy's ; that could be divined even
in the darkness. He was about forty, and was not drunk.

'( Do you know me ? " asked Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.

:' Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. You were pointed
out to me at the station, when the train stopped last Sunday,
though I had heard enough of you beforehand."

239

240 THE POSSESSED

" From Pyotr Stepanovitch ? Are you . . . Fedka the
convict ? "

" I was christened Fyodor Fyodorovitch. My mother is
living to this day in these parts ; she's an old woman, and
grows more and more bent every day. She prays to God for me,
day and night, so that she doesn't waste her old age lying on the
stove."

" You escaped from prison ? "

" I've had a change of luck. I gave up books and bells and
church-going because I'd a life sentence, so that I had a very long
time to finish my term."

" What are you doing here ? "

" Well, I do what I can. My uncle, too, died last week in
prison here. He was there for false coin, so I threw two dozen
stones at the dogs by way of memorial. That's all I've been
doing so far. Moreover Pyotr Stepanovitch gives me hopes of a
passport, and a merchant's one, too, to go all over Russia, so I'm
waiting on his kindness. ' Because,' says he, ' my papa lost you at
cards at the English club, and I,' says he, ' find that inhumanity
unjust.' You might have the kindness to give me three roubles,
sir, for a glass to warm myself."

" So you've been spying on me. I don't like that. By whose
orders ? "

"As to orders, it's nothing of the sort ; it's simply that I
knew of your benevolence, which is known to all the world. All we
get, as you know, is an armful of hay, or a prod with a fork.
Last Friday I filled myself as full of pie as Martin did of soap ;
since then I didn't eat one day, and the day after I fasted, and
on the third I'd nothing again. I've had my fill of water from
the river. I'm breeding fish in my belly. ... So won't yourj
honour give me something ? I've a sweetheart expecting me,
not far from here, but I daren't show myself to her without
money."

" What did Pyotr Stepanovitch promise you from me ? "

" He didn't exactly promise anything, but only said that I
might be of use to your honour if my luck turns out good, but*
how exactly he didn't explain ; for Pyotr Stepanovitch wants?
to see if I have the patience of a Cossack, and feels no sort of
confidence in me."

" Why ? "

" Pyotr Stepanovitch is an astronomer, and has learnt all God'*
planets, but even he may be criticised. I stand before you, sir,

NIGHT 241

as before God, because I have heard so much about you. Pyotr
Stepanovitch is one thing, but you, sir, maybe, are something
else. When he's said of a man he's a scoundrel, he knows
nothing more about him except that he's a scoundrel. Or if
he's said he's a fool, then that man has no calling with him except
that of fool. But I may be a fool Tuesday and Wednesday,
and on Thursday wiser than he. Here now he knows about me
that I'm awfully sick to get a passport, for there's no getting on
in Russia without papers — so he thinks that he's snared my soul.
I tell you, sir, life's a very easy business for Pyotr Stepanovitch,
for he fancies a man to be this and that, and goes on as though
he really was. And, what's more, he's beastly stingy. It's
his notion that, apart from him, I daren't trouble you, but I
stand before you, sir, as before God. This is the fourth night
I've been waiting for your honour on this bridge, to show that
I can find my own way on the quiet, without him. I'd better
bow to a boot, thinks I, than to a peasant's shoe."

" And who told you that I was going to cross the bridge at
night?"

'Well, that, I'll own, came out by chance, most through
Captain Lebyadkin's foolishness, because he can't keep anything
to himself. ... So that three roubles from your honour would
pay me for the weary time I've had these three days and nights.
And the clothes I've had soaked, I feel that too much to speak
of it."

" I'm going to the left ; you'll go to the right. Here's the
end of the bridge. Listen, Fyodor ; I like people to understand
what I say, once for all. I won't give you a farthing. Don't
meet me in future on the bridge or anywhere. I've no need
Df you, and never shall have, and if you don't obey, I'll tie you
ind take you to the police. March ! "

' Eh-heh ! Fling me something for my company, anyhow.
~'ve cheered you on your way."

' Be off ! "

' But do you know the way here ? There are all sorts of
urnings. ... I could guide you ; for this town is for all the
porld as though the devil carried it in his basket and dropped it
i bits here and there."

"I'll tie you up ! " said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, turning
pon him menacingly.

' Perhaps you'll change your mind, sir ; it's easy to ill-treat
le helpless."

242 THE POSSESSED

" Well, I see you can rely on yourself ! "
" I rely upon you, sir, and not very much on myself. ..."
" I've no need of you at all. I've told you so already."
" But I have need, that's how it is ! I shall wait for you on
the way back. There's nothing for it."

" I give you my word of honour if I meet you I'll tie you up."
" Well, I'll get a belt ready for you to tie me with. A lucky
journey to you, sir. You kept the helpless snug under your
umbrella. For that alone I'll be grateful to you to my dying day."
He fell behind. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch walked on to his
destination, feeling disturbed. This man who had dropped from
the sky was absolutely convinced that he was indispensable to
him, Stavrogin, and was in insolent haste to tell him so. He was
being treated unceremoniously all round. But it was possible,
too, that the tramp had not been altogether lying, and had
tried to force his services upon him on his own initiative, without
Pyotr Stepanovitch's knowledge, and that would be more
curious still.

II

The house which Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch had reached
stood alone in a deserted lane between fences, beyond which
market gardens stretched, at the very end of the town. It was
a very solitary little wooden house, which was only just built
and not yet weather-boarded. In one of the little windows
the shutters were not yet closed, and there was a candle standing
On the window-ledge, evidently as a signal to the late guest
who was expected that night. Thirty paces away Stavrogin
made out on the doorstep the figure of a tall man, evidently
the master of the house, who had come out to stare impatiently
up the road. He heard his voice, too, impatient and, as it were,
timid.

" Is that you ? You ? "

" Yes," responded Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but not till he
had mounted the steps and was folding up his umbrella.

" At last, sir." Captain Lebyadkin, for it was he, ran fussily
to and fro. " Let me take your umbrella, please. It's very
wet ; I'll open it on the floor here, in the corner. Please walk
in. Please walk in."

The door was open from the passage into a room that was
lighted by two candles.

NIGHT 243

" If it had not been for your promise that you would certainly
come, I should have given up expecting you."

" A quarter to one," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, looking
at his watch, as he went into the room.

" And in this rain ; and such an interesting distance. I've
no clock . . . and there are nothing but market-gardens round
me ... so that you fall behind the times. Not that I murmur
exactly ; for I dare not, I dare not, but only because I've been
devoured with impatience all the week ... to have things
settled at last."

" How so ? "

:' To hear my fate, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. Please sit
down."

He bowed, pointing to a seat by the table, before the sofa.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked round. The room was tiny
and low-pitched. The furniture consisted only of the most
essential articles, plain wooden chairs and a sofa, also newly
made without covering or cushions. There were two tables
of limewood ; one by the sofa, and the other in the corner was
covered with a table-cloth, laid with things over which a clean
table-napkin had been thrown. And, indeed, the whole room
was obviously kept extremely clean.

Captain Lebyadkin had not been drunk for eight days. His
face looked bloated and yellow. His eyes looked uneasy,
inquisitive, and obviously bewildered. It was only too evident
that he did not know what tone he could adopt, and what line
it would be most advantageous for him to take.

" Here," he indicated his surroundings, " I live like Zossima.
Sobriety, solitude, and poverty — the vow of the knights of old."

' You imagine that the knights of old took such vows ? "

' Perhaps I'm mistaken. Alas ! I have no culture. I've
ruined all. Believe me, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, here first
[ have recovered from shameful propensities — not a glass nor a
Irop ! I have a home, and for six days past I have experienced
% conscience at ease. Even the walls smell of resin and remind
ne of nature. And what have I been ; what was I.

1 At night without a bed I wander
And my tongue put out by day . . .'

o use the words of a poet of genius. But you're wet through.
. . Wouldn't you like some tea ? "
" Don't trouble."

244 THE POSSESSED

" The samovar has been boiling since eight o'clock, but it
went out at last like everything in this world. The sun, too, they
say, will go out in its turn. But if you like I'll get up the samovar.
Agafya is not asleep."

" Tell me, Marya Timofyevna ..."

" She's here, here," Lebyadkin replied at once, in a whisper.
" Would you like to have a look at her ? ' He pointed to the
closed door to the next room.

" She's not asleep ? "

" Oh, no, no. How could she be ? On the contrary, she's
been expecting you all the evening, and as soon as she heard
you were coming she began making her toilet."

He was just twisting his mouth into a jocose smile, but he
instantly checked himself.

" How is she, on the whole ? " asked Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
frowning.

" On the whole ? You know that yourself, sir." He shrugged
his shoulders commiseratingly. " But just now . . . just now
she's telling her fortune with cards. . . ."

" Very good. Later on. First of all I must finish with

you."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch settled himself in a chair.

The captain did not venture to sit down on the sofa, but at
once moved up another chair for himself, and bent forward
to listen, in a tremor of expectation.

" What have you got there under the table-cloth ? " asked
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, suddenly noticing it.

" That ? " said Lebyadkin, turning towards it also. :' That's
from your generosity, by way of house-warming, so to say ;
considering also the length of the walk, and your natural fatigue,"
he sniggered ingratiatingly. Then he got up on tiptoe, and
respectfully and carefully lifted the table-cloth from the table ir
the corner. Under it was seen a slight meal : ham, veal
sardines, cheese, a little green decanter, and a long bottle o:
Bordeaux. Everything had been laid neatly, expertly, anc
almost daintily.

"Was that'your effort ? "

" Yes, sir. Ever since yesterday I've done my best, and al
to do you honour. . . . Marya Timofyevna doesn't trouble
herself, as you know, on that score. And what's more its a)
from your liberality, your own providing, as you're the maste
of the house and not I, and I'm only, so to say, your agent. All

NIGHT 245

the same, all the same, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, all the same,
in spirit, I'm independent ! Don't take away from me this last
possession ! " he finished up pathetically.

" H'm ! You might sit down again."

" Gra-a-teful, grateful, and independent." He sat down.
" Ah, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, so much has been fermenting
in this heart that I have not known how to wait for your coming.
Now you will decide my fate, and . . . that unhappy creature's,
and then . . . shall I pour out all I feel to you as I used to in
old days, four years ago ? You deigned to listen to me then,
you read my verses. . . . They might call me your Falstaff
from Shakespeare in those days, but you meant so much in my
life ! I have great terrors now, and its only to you I look for
counsel and light. Pyotr Stepanovitch is treating me abomin-
ably ! "

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch listened with interest, and looked at
him attentively. It was evident that though Captain Lebyadkin
had left off drinking he was far from being in a harmonious
state of mind. Drunkards of many years' standing, like
Lebyadkin, often show traces of incoherence, of mental cloudiness,
of something, as it were, damaged, and crazy, though they
may deceive, cheat, and swindle, almost as well as anybody if
occasion arises.

" I see that you haven't changed a bit in these four years
and more, captain," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, somewhat
more amiably. " It seems, in fact, as though the second half
of a man's life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he
has accumulated during the first half."

~ " Grand words ! You solve the riddle of life ! " said the
captain, half cunningly, half in genuine and unfeigned admiration,
for he was a great lover of words. " Of all your sayings, Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, I remember one thing above all ; you were in
Petersburg when you said it : ' One must really be a great man
to be able to make a stand even against common sense.' That
was it."

" Yes, and a fool as well."

" A fool as well, maybe. But you've been scattering clever
sayings all your life, while they . . . Imagine Liputin, imagine
Pyotr Stepanovitch saying anything like that ! Oh, how
cruelly Pyotr Stepanovitch has treated me ! "

;' But how about yourself, captain ? What can you say of
1 your behaviour ? "

246 THE POSSESSED

" Drunkenness, and the multitude of my enemies. But now
that's all over, all over, and I have a new skin, like a snake.
Do you know, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I am making my will ;
in fact, I've made it already ? "

" That's interesting. What are you leaving, and to whom ? '

" To my fatherland, to humanity, and to the students.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, I read in the paper the biography
of an American. He left all his vast fortune to factories and
to the exact sciences, and his skeleton to the students of the
academy there, and his skin to be made into a drum, so that the
American national hymn might be beaten upon it day and night.
Alas ! we are pigmies in mind compared with the soaring thought
of the States of North America. Russia is the play of nature
but not of mind. If I were to try leaving my skin for a drum,
for instance, to the Akmolinsky infantry regiment, in which I
had the honour of beginning my service, on condition of beating
the Russian national hymn upon it every day, in face of the
regiment, they'd take it for liberalism and prohibit my skin . . .
and so I confine myself to the students. I want to leave my
skeleton to the academy, but on the condition though, on the
condition that a label should be stuck on the forehead for ever
and ever, with the words : ' A repentant free-thinker.' There
now ! "

The captain spoke excitedly, and genuinely believed, of course,
that there was something fine in the American will, but he was
cunning too, and very anxious to entertain Nikolay Vsyevolodo-
vitch, with whom he had played the part of a buffoon for a long
time in the past. But the latter did not even smile, on the
contrary, he asked, as it were, suspiciously :

" So you intend to publish your will in your lifetime and get
rewarded for it ? "

" And what if I do, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ? What if I
do ? " said Lebyadkin, watching him carefully. "What sort of
luck have I had ? I've given up writing poetry, and at one time
even you were amused by my verses, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.
Do you remember our reading them over a bottle ? But it's
all over with my pen. I've written only one poem, like Gogol's
' The Last Story.' Do you remember he proclaimed to Russia
that it broke spontaneously from his bosom ? It's the same with
me ; I've sung my last and it's over."

" What sort of poem ? "

" ' In case she were to break her leg.' "

NIGHT 247

" Wha-a-t ? "

That was all the captain was waiting for. He had an un-
bounded admiration for his own poems, but, through a certain
cunning duplicity, he was pleased, too, that Nikolay Vsyevolodo-
vitch always made merry over his poems, and sometimes laughed
at them immoderately. In this way he killed two birds with
one stone, satisfying at once his poetical aspirations and his
desire to be of service ; but now he had a third special and very
ticklish object in view. Bringing his verses on the scene, the
captain thought to exculpate himself on one point about which,
for some reason, he always felt himself most apprehensive, and
most guilty.

" ' In case of her breaking her leg.' That is, of her riding
on horseback. It's a fantasy, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, a wild
fancy, but the fancy of a poet. One day I was struck by meeting
a lady on horseback, and asked myself the vital question, ' What
would happen then ? ' That is, in case of accident. All her
followers turn away, all her suitors are gone. A pretty kettle
of fish. Only the poet remains faithful, with his heart shattered
in his breast, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. Even a louse may be in
love, and is not forbidden by law. And yet the lady was offended
by the letter and the verses. I'm told that even you were angry.
Were you ? I wouldn't believe in anything so grievous. Whom
could I harm simply by imagination ? Besides, I swear on my
honour, Liputin kept saying, ' Send it, send it,' every man,
however humble, has a right to send a letter I And so I
sent it."

" You offered yourself as a suitor, I understand."

" Enemies, enemies, enemies ! "

'' Repeat the verses," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sternly.

" Ravings, ravings, more than anything."

However, he drew himself up, stretched out his hand, and
began :

' With broken limbs my beauteous queen

Is twice as charming as before,
And, deep in love as I have been,
To-day I love her even more."

' Come, that's enough," said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, with
a wave of his hand.

" I dream of Petersburg," cried Lebyadkin, passing quickly
to another subject, as though there had been no mention of verses.

248 THE POSSESSED

" I dream of regeneration. . . . Benefactor ! May I reckon
that you won't refuse the means for the journey ? I've been
waiting for you all the week as my sunshine."

" I'll do nothing of the sort. I've scarcely any money left.
And why should I give you money ? "

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch seemed suddenly angry. Dryly and
briefly he recapitulated all the captain's misdeeds ; his drunken-
ness, his lying, his squandering of the money meant for Marya
Timofyevna, his having taken her from the nunnery, his insolent
letters threatening to publish the secret, the way he had behaved
about Darya Pavlovna, and so on, and so on. The captain
heaved, gesticulated, began to reply, but every time Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch stopped him peremptorily.

" And listen," he observed at last, " you keep writing about
' family disgrace.' What disgrace is it to you that your sister
is the lawful wife of a Stavrogin ? "

" But marriage in secret, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch — a fatal
secret. I receive money from you, and I'm suddenly asked the
question, ' What's that money for ? ' My hands are tied ;
I cannot answer to the detriment of my sister, to the detriment
of the family honour."

The captain raised his voice. He liked that subject and
reckoned boldly upon it. Alas ! he did not realise what a blow
was in store for him.

Calmly and exactly, as though he were speaking of the most
everyday arrangement, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch informed
him that in a few days, perhaps even to-morrow or the day
after, he intended to make his marriage known everywhere, " to
the police as well as to local society." And so the question of
family honour would be settled once for all, and with it the
question of subsidy. The captain's eyes were ready to drop
out of his head ; he positively could not take it in. It had to be
explained to him.

" But she is . . . crazy."

" I shall make suitable arrangements."

" But . . . how about your mother ? "

" Well, she must do as she likes."

" But will you take your wife to your house ? "

„ Perhaps so. But that is absolutely nothing to do with you
and no concern of yours."

" No concern of mine ! " cried the captain. " What about
me then ? "

NIGHT 249

" Well, certainly you won't come into my house."

" But, you know, I'm a relation."

" One does one's best to escape from such relations. Why
should I go on giving you money then ? Judge for yourself."

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, this is
impossible. You will think better of it, perhaps ? You don't
want to lay hands upon. . . . What will people think ? What
will the world say ? "

" Much I care for your world. I married your sister when the
fancy took me, after a drunken dinner, for a bet, and now I'll
make it public . . . since that amuses me now."

He said this with a peculiar irritability, so that Lebyadkin
began with horror to believe him.

" But me, me ? What about me ? I'm what matters
most ! . . . Perhaps you're joking, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ? "

" No, I'm not joking."

" As you will, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but I don't believe
you. . . . Then I'll take proceedings."

" You're fearfully stupid, captain."

" Maybe, but this is all that's left me," said the captain,
losing his head completely. " In old days we used to get free
quarters, anyway, for the work she did in the ' corners.' But
what will happen now if you throw me over altogether ? '

' But you want to go to Petersburg to try a new career. By the
way, is it true what I hear, that you mean to go and give infor-
mation, in the hope of obtaining a pardon, by betraying all the
others ? "

The captain stood gaping with wide-open eyes, and made no
answer.

' Listen, captain," Stavrogin began suddenly, with great
earnestness, bending down to the table. Until then he had been
talking, as it were, ambiguously, so that Lebyadkin, who had wide
experience in playing the part of buffoon, was up to the last
moment a trifle uncertain whether his patron were really angry
or simply putting it on ; whether he really had the wild intention
of making his marriage public, or whether he were only playing.
Now Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch' s stern expression was so con-
vincing that a shiver ran down the captain's back.

:' Listen, and tell the truth, Lebyadkin. Have you betrayed
anything yet, or not ? Have you succeeded in doing anything
really ? Have you sent a letter to somebody in your foolish-
ness ? "

250 THE POSSESSED

" No, I haven't . . . and I haven't thought of doing it," said
the captain, looking fixedly at him.

" That's a lie, that you haven't thought of doing it. That's
what you're asking to go to Petersburg for. If you haven't
written, have you blabbed to anybody here ? Speak the
truth. I've heard something."

'When I was drunk, to Liputin. Liputin's a traitor. I
opened my heart to him," whispered the poor captain.

" That's all very well, but there's no need to be an ass. If you
had an idea you should have kept it to yourself. Sensible
people hold their tongues nowadays ; they don't go chattering."

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ! " said the captain, quaking.
" You've had nothing to do with it yourself ; it's not you
I've . . ."

" Yes. You wouldn't have ventured to kill the goose that
laid your golden eggs."

" Judge for yourself, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, judge for
yourself," and, in despair, with tears, the captain began hurriedly
relating the story of his life for the last four years. It was the
most stupid story of a fool, drawn into matters that did not
concern him, and in his drunkenness and debauchery unable,
till the last minute, to grasp their importance. He said that
before he left Petersburg ' he had been drawn in, at first simply
through friendship, like a regular student, although he wasn't a
student,' and knowing nothing about it, ' without being guilty
of anything,' he had scattered various papers on staircases, left
them by dozens at doors, on bell-handles, had thrust them in as
though they were newspapers, taken them to the theatre, put
them in people's hats, and slipped them into pockets. After-
wards he had taken money from them, ' for what means had I ? '
He had distributed all sorts of rubbish through the districts of
two provinces. " Oh, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ! " he exclaimed,
" what revolted me most was that this was utterly opposed to
civic, and still more to patriotic laws. They suddenly printed
that men were to go out with pitchforks, and to remember
that those who went out poor in the morning might go home
rich at night. Only think of it ! It made me shudder, and yet
I distributed it. Or suddenly five or six lines addressed to the
whole of Russia, apropos of nothing, ' Make haste and lock up
the churches, abolish God, do away with marriage, destroy the
right of inheritance, take up your knives,' that's all, and God
knows what it means. tell you, I almost got caught with this

NIGHT 251

five- line leaflet. The officers in the regiment gave me a thrashing,
but, bless them for it, let me go. And last year I was almost
caught when I passed off French counterfeit notes for fifty roubles
on Korovayev, but, thank God, Korovayev fell into the pond
when he was drunk, and was drowned in the nick of time, and
they didn't succeed in tracking me. Here, at Virginsky's, I
proclaimed the freedom of the communistic wife. In June I was
distributing manifestoes again in X district. They say they will
make me do it again. . . . Pyotr Stepanovitch suddenly gave me
to understand that I must obey ; he's been threatening me a long
time. How he treated me that Sunday ! Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
I am a slave, I am a worm, but not a God, which is where I
differ from Derzhavin.* But I've no income, no income ! ''

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch heard it all with curiosity.

" A great deal of that I had heard nothing of," he said. ' Of
course, anything may have happened to you. . . . Listen," he
slid, after a minute's thought. " If you like, you can tell them,
you know whom, that Liputin was lying, and that you were only
pretending to give information to frighten me, supposing that I,
too, was compromised, and that you might get more money out
of me that way. . . . Do you understand ? "

" Dear Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, is it possible that there's
such a danger hanging over me ? I've been longing for you to
come, to ask you."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch laughed.

;' They certainly wouldn't let you go to Petersburg, even if
I were to give you money for the journey. . . . But it's time for
me to see Marya Timofyevna." And he got up from his chair.

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, but how about Marya Timo-
fyevna ? "

" Why, as I told you."

" Can it be true ? "

" You still don't believe it ? "

' Will you really cast me off like an old worn-out shoe ? '

" I'll see, "laughed Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. "Come, let me go."

' Wouldn't you like me to stand on the steps . . . for fear I
might by chance overhear something . . . for the rooms are
small ? "

" That's as well. Stand on the steps. Take my umbrella."

' Your umbrella. . . . Am I worth it 1 " said the captain over-
sweetly.

* The reference is to a poem of Derzhavin's.

252 THE POSSESSED

" Anyone is worthy of an umbrella."

" At one stroke you define the minimum of human rights. . . ."

But he was by now muttering mechanically. He was too much
crushed by what he had learned, and was completely thrown
out of his reckoning. And yet almost as soon as he had gone
out on to the steps and had put up the umbrella, there his
shallow and cunning brain caught again the ever-present,
comforting idea that he was being cheated and deceived, and if
so they were afraid of him, and there was no need for him to be
afraid.

" If they're lying and deceiving me, what's at the bottom of
it ? " was the thought that gnawed at his mind. The public
announcement of the marriage seemed to him absurd. " It's
true that with such a wonder-worker anything may come to
pass ; he lives to .do harm. But what if he's afraid himself, since
the insult of Sunday, and afraid as he's never been before ?
And so he's in a hurry to declare that he'll announce it himself,
from fear that I should announce it. Eh, don't blunder, Lebyad-
kin ! And why does he come on the sly, at night, if he means
to make it public himself ? And if he's afraid, it means that he's
afraid now, at this moment, for these few days. . . . Eh, don't
make a mistake, Lebyadkin !

" He scares me with Pyotr Stepanovitch. Oy, I'm frightened,
I'm frightened ! Yes, this is what's so frightening ! And what
induced me to blab to Liputin. Goodness knows what these
devils are up to. I never can make head or tail of it. Now they
are all astir again as they were five years ago. To whom could
I give information, indeed ? ' Haven't I written to anyone in my
foolishness ? ' H'm ! So then I might write as though through
foolishness ? Isn't he giving me a hint ? ' You're going to
Petersburg on purpose.' The sly rogue. I've scarcely dreamed
of it, and he guesses my dreams. As though he were putting
me up to going himself. It's one or the other of two games he's
up to. Either he's afraid because he's been up to some pranks
himself . . . or he's not afraid for himself, but is simply egging
me on to give them all away ! Ach , it's terrible, Lebyadkin !
Ach, you must not make a blunder ! "

He was so absorbed in thought that he forgot to listen. It
was not easy to hear either. The door was a solid one, and they
were talking in a very low voice. Nothing reached the captain
but indistinct sounds. He positively spat in disgust, and went
out again, lost in thought, to whistle on the steps.

NIGHT 253

III

Marya Timofyevna's room was twice as large as the one
occupied by the captain, and furnished in the same rough
style ; but the table in front of the sofa was covered with a
gay-coloured table-cloth, and on it a lamp was burning. There
was a handsome carpet on the floor. The bed was screened off
by a green curtain, which ran the length of the room, and besides
the sofa there stood by the table a large, soft easy chair, in
which Marya Timofyevna never sat, however. In the corner
there was an ikon as there had been in her old room, and a little
lamp was burning before it, and on the table were all her indis-
pensable properties. The pack of cards, the little looking-glass,
the song-book, even a milk loaf. Besides these there were
two books with coloured pictures — one, extracts from a popular
book of travels, published for juvenile reading, the other a
collection of very light, edifying tales, for the most part about
the days of chivalry, intended for Christmas presents or school
reading. She had, too, an album of photographs of various
sorts.

Marya Timofyevna was, of course, expecting the visitor, as the
captain had announced. But when Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
went in, she was asleep, half reclining on the sofa, propped on
a woolwork cushion. Her visitor closed the door after him noise-
lessly, and, standing still, scrutinised the sleeping figure.

The captain had been romancing when he told Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch she had been dressing herself up. She was wearing
the same dark dress as on Sunday at Varvara Petrovna's. Her
hair was done up in the same little close knot at the back of her
head ; her long thin neck was exposed in the same way. The
black shawl Varvara Petrovna had given her lay carefully folded
on the sofa. She was coarsely rouged and powdered as before.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch did not stand there more than a minute.
She suddenly waked up, as though she were conscious of his eyes
fixed upon her ; she opened her eyes, and quickly drew herself
up. But something strange must have happened to her visitor :
he remained standing at the same place by the door. With a
fixed and searching glance he looked mutely and persistently
into her face. Perhaps that look was too grim, perhaps there
was an expression of aversion in it, even a malignant enjoyment
of her fright — if it were not a fancy left by her dreams ; but

254 THE POSSESSED

suddenly, after almost a moment of expectation, the poor woman's
face wore a look of absolute terror ; it twitched convulsively ;
she lifted her trembling hands and suddenly burst into tears,
exactly like a frightened child ; in another moment she would
have screamed. But Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch pulled himself
together ; his face changed in one instant, and he went up to the
table with the most cordial and amiable smile.

" I'm sorry, Marya Timofyevna, I frightened you coming in
suddenly when you were asleep," he said, holding out his hand
to her.

The sound of his caressing words produced their effect. Her
fear vanished, although she still looked at him with dismay,
evidently trying to understand something. She held out her
hands timorously also. At last a shy smile rose to her lips.

" How do you do, prince ? " she whispered, looking at him
strangely.

" You must have had a bad dream," he went on, with a still
more friendly and cordial smile.

" But how do you know that I was dreaming about that ? "
And again she began trembling, and started back, putting up
her hand as though to protect herself, on the point of crying again.
" Calm yourself. That's enough. What are you afraid of ?
Surely you know me ? " said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, trying
to soothe her ; but it was long before he could succeed. She
gazed at him dumbly with the same look of agonising perplexity,
with a painful idea in her poor brain, and she still seemed to be
trying to reach some conclusion. At one moment she dropped
her eyes, then suddenly scrutinised him in a rapid comprehensive
glance. At last, though not reassured, she seemed to come to a
conclusion.

" Sit down beside me, please, that I may look at you thoroughly
later on," she brought out with more firmness, evidently with a
new object. But don't be uneasy, I won't look at you now.
I'll look down. Don't you look at me either till I ask you to.
Sit down," she added, with positive impatience.

A new sensation was obviously growing stronger and stronger
in her.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sat down and waited. Rather a
long silence followed.

" H'm ! It all seems so strange to me," she suddenly muttered
almost disdainfully. " Of course I was depressed by bad dreams,
but why have I dreamt of you looking like that ? "

NIGHT 255

" Come, let's have done with dreams," he said impatiently,
turning to her in spite of her prohibition, and perhaps the same
expression gleamed for a moment in his eyes again. He saw that
she several times wanted, very much in fact, to look at him
again, but that she obstinately controlled herself and kept her
eyes cast down.

" Listen, prince," she raised her voice suddenly, " listen
prince. ..."

" Why do you turn away ? Why don't you look at
me ? What's the object of this farce ? ' he cried, losing
patience.

But she seemed not to hear him.

:' Listen, prince," she repeated for the third time in a resolute
voice, with a disagreeable, fussy expression. " When you told
me in the carriage that our marriage was going to be made
public, I was alarmed at there being an end to the mystery.
Now I don't know. I've been thinking it all over, and I see
clearly that I'm not fit for it at all. I know how to dress, and I
could receive guests, perhaps. There's nothing much in asking
people to have a cup of tea, especially when there are footmen.
But what will people say though ? I saw a great deal that
Sunday morning in that house. That pretty young lady looked
at me all the time, especially after you came in. It was you
came in, wasn't it ? Her mother's simply an absurd worldly
old woman. My Lebyadkin distinguished himself too. I kept
looking at the ceiling to keep from laughing ; the ceiling there is
finely painted. His mother ought to be an abbess. I'm afraid
of her, though she did give me a black shawl. Of course, they
must all have come to strange conclusions about me. I wasn't
vexed, but I sat there, thinking what relation am I to them ?
Of course, from a countess one doesn't expect any but spiritual
qualities ; for the domestic ones she's got plenty of footmen ;
and also a little worldly coquetry, so as to be able to entertain
foreign travellers. But yet that Sunday they did look upon me
as hopeless . Only Dasha' s an angel . I'm awfully afraid they may
wound him by some careless allusion to me."

:' Don't be afraid, and don't be uneasy," said Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch, making a wry face.

:' However, that doesn't matter to me, if he is a little ashamed
of me, for there will always be more pity than shame, though it
differs with people, of course. He knows, to be sure, that I ought
rather to pity them than they me."

256 THE POSSESSED

" You seem to be very much offended with them, Marya
Timofyevna ? "

" I ? Oh, no," she smiled with simple-hearted mirth. " Not
at all. I looked at you all, then. You were all angry, you were
all quarrelling. They meet together, and they don't know how
to laugh from their hearts. So much wealth and so little gaiety.
It all disgusts me. Though I feel for no one now except
myself."

"I've heard that you've had a hard ife with your brother
without me ? "

" Who told you that ? It's nonsense. It's much worse
now. Now my dreams are not good, and my dreams are bad,
because you've come. What have you come for, I'd like to
know. Tell me please ? "

" Wouldn't you like to go back into the nunnery ? '

" I knew they'd suggest the nunnery again. Your nunnery is
a fine marvel for me ! And why should I go to it ? What
should I go for now ? I'm all alone in the world now. It's too
late for me to begin a third life."

" You seem very angry about something. Surely you're
not afraid that I've left off loving you ? "

"I'm not troubling about you at all. I'm afraid that I may
leave off loving somebody."

She laughed contemptuously.

" I must have done him some great wrong," she added suddenly,
as it were to herself, " only I don't know what I've done wrong ;
that's always what troubles me. Always, always, for the last
five years. I've been afraid day and night that I've done him
some wrong. I've prayed and prayed and always thought of
the great wrong I'd done him. And now it turns out it was
true."

" What's turned out ? "

" I'm only afraid whether there's something on his side,"
she went on, not answering his question, not hearing it in fact.
" And then, again, he couldn't get on with such horrid people.
The countess would have liked to eat me, though she did make
me sit in the carriage beside her. They're all in the plot. Surely
he's not betrayed me ? " (Her chin and lips were twitching.)
"Tell me, have you read about Grishka Otrepyev, how he was
cursed in seven cathedrals ? "

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch did not speak.

" But I'll turn round now and look at you." She seemed to

NIGHT 257

decide suddenly. " You turn to me, too, and look at me, but more
attentively. I want to make sure for the last time."

"I've been looking at you for a long time."

" H'm ! " said Marya Timofyevna, looking at him intently.
" You've grown much fatter."

She wanted to say something more, but suddenly, for the third
time, the same terror instantly distorted her face, and again she
drew back, putting her hand up before her.

" What's the matter with you ? " cried Nikolay Vsyevolodo-
vitch, almost enraged.

But her panic lasted only one instant, her face worked with a
sort of strange smile, suspicious and unpleasant.

" I beg you, prince, get up and come in," she brought out
suddenly, in a firm, emphatic voice.

" Come in ? Where am I to come in ? "

" I've been fancying for five years how he would come in. Get
up and go out of the door into the other room. I'll sit as though
I weren't expecting anything, and I'll take up a book, and
suddenly you'll come in after five years' travelling. I want to
see what it will be like."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch ground his teeth, and muttered
something to himself.

" Enough," he said, striking the table with his open hand.
" I beg you to listen to me, Marya Timofyevna. Do me the
favour to concentrate all your attention if you can. You're not
altogether mad, you know ! " he broke out impatiently. " To-
morrow I shall make our marriage public. You never will live
in a palace, get that out of your head. Do you want to live
with me for the rest of your life, only very far away from here ?
In the mountains in Switzerland, there's a place there. . . .
Don't be afraid. I'll never abandon you or put you in a mad-
house. I shall have money enough to live without asking
anyone's help. You shall have a servant, you shall do no work
at all. Everything you want that's possible shall be got for
you. You shall pray, go where you like, and do what you like. I
won't touch you. I won't go away from the place myself at all.
If you like, I won't speak to you all my life, or if you like, you
can tell me your stories every evening as you used to do in
Petersburg in the corners. I'll read aloud to you if you like.
But it must be all your life in the same place, and that place is
a gloomy one. Will you ? Are you ready ? You won't regret
it, torment me with tears and curses, will you ? "

R

258 THE POSSESSED

She listened with extreme curiosity, and for a long time she
was silent, thinking.

" It all seems incredible to me," she said at last, ironically
and disdainfully. " I might live for forty years in those
mountains," she laughed.

" What of it ? Let's live forty years then ..." said Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, scowling.

" H'm ! I won't come for anything."

" Not even with me?"

" And what are you that I should go with you ? I'm to sit
on a mountain beside him for forty years on end — a pretty story !
And upon my word, how long-suffering people have become nowa-
days ! No, it cannot be that a falcon has become an owl.
My prince is not like that ! " she said, raising her head proudly
and triumphantly.

Light seemed to dawn upon him.

" What makes you call me a prince, and . . . for whom do
you take me ? " he asked quickly.

" Why, aren't you the prince ? "

" I never have been one."

" So yourself, yourself, you tell me straight to my face that
you're not the prince ? "

" I tell you I never have been."

" Good Lord ! " she cried, clasping her hands. " I was ready
to expect anything from his enemies, but such insolence, never !
Is he alive ? " she shrieked in a frenzy, turning upon Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch. " Have you killed him ? Confess ! "

" Whom do you take me forj? " he cried, jumping up from
his chair with a distorted face ; but it was not easy now to
frighten her. She was triumphant.

" Who can tell who you are and where you've sprung from ?
Only my heart, my heart had misgivings all these five years, of all
the intrigues. And I've been sitting here wondering what
blind owl was making up to me ? No, my dear, you're a poor
actor, worse than Lebyadkin even. Give my humble greetings
to the countess and tell her to send some one better than you.
Has she hired you, tell me ? Have they given you a place in
her kitchen out of charity ? I see through your deception.
I understand you all, every one of you."

He seized her firmly above the elbow ; she laughed in his
face.

" You're like him, very like, perhaps you're a relation — you're

NIGHT 259

a sly lot ! Only mine is a bright falcon and a prince, and
you're an owl, and a shopman ! Mine will bow down to God if
it pleases him, and won't if it doesn't. And Shatushka (he's my
dear, my darling !) slapped you on the cheeks, my Lebyadkin
told me. And what were you afraid of then, when you came in ?
Who had frightened you then ? When I saw your mean face
after I'd fallen down and you picked me up — it was like a worm
crawling into my heart. It's not he, I thought, not he ! My
falcon would never have been ashamed of me before a fashionable
young lady. Oh heavens ! That alone kept me happy for those
five years that my falcon was living somewhere beyond the
mountains, soaring, gazing at the sun. . . . Tell me, you
impostor, have you got much by it ? Did you need a big bribe to
consent ? I wouldn't have given you a farthing. Ha ha ha !
Haha! . . ."

" Ugh, idiot ! " snarled Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, still holding
her tight by the arm.

" Go away, impostor ! " she shouted peremptorily. " I'm
the wife of my prince ; I'm not afraid of your knife ! "

"Knife!"

" Yes, knife, you've a knife in your pocket. You thought
I was asleep but I saw it. When you came in just now you took
out your knife ! "

" What are you saying, unhappy creature ? What dreams you
have ! " he exclaimed, pushing her away from him with all his
might, so that her head and shoulders fell painfully against the
sofa. He was rushing away ; but she at once flew to overtake
him, limping and hopping, and though Lebyadkin, panic-stricken,
held her back with all his might, she succeeded in shouting after
him into the darkness, shrieking and laughing :

** A curse on you, Grishka Otrepyev ! "

IV

" A knife, a knife," he repeated with uncontrollable anger,
striding along through the mud and puddles, without picking
his way. It is true that at moments he had a terrible desire to
laugh aloud frantically ; but for some reason he controlled himself
and restrained his laughter. He recovered himself only on the
bridge, on the spot where Fedka had met him that evening. He
found the man lying in wait for him again. Seeing Nikolay

260 THE POSSESSED

Vsyevolodovitch he took off his cap, grinned gaily, and began
babbling briskly and merrily about something. At first Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch walked on without stopping, and for some time
did not even listen to the tramp who was pestering him again.
He was suddenly struck by the thought that he had entirely
forgotten him, and had forgotten him at the very moment
when he himself was repeating, " A knife, a knife." He seized
the tramp by the collar and gave vent to his pent-up rage by
flinging him violently against the bridge. For one instant the
man thought of fighting, but almost at once realising that
compared with his adversary, who had fallen upon him unawares,
he was no better than a wisp of straw, he subsided and was silent,
without offering any resistance. Crouching on the ground with his
elbows crooked behind his back, the wily tramp calmly waited for
what would happen next, apparently quite incredulous of danger.

He was right in his reckoning. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
had already with his left hand taken off his thick scarf to tie his
prisoner's arms, but suddenly, for some reason, he abandoned
him, and shoved him away. The man instantly sprang on to
his feet, turned round, and a short, broad boot-knife suddenly
gleamed in his hand.

" Away with that knife ; put it away, at once ! " Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch commanded with an impatient gesture, and the
knife vanished as instantaneously as it had appeared.

Without speaking again or turning round, Nikolay Vsyevolo-
dovitch went on his way. But the persistent vagabond did not
leave him even now, though now, it is true, he did not chatter,
and even respectfully kept his distance, a full step behind.

They crossed the bridge like this and came out on to the river
bank, turning this time to the left, again into a long deserted
back street, which led to the centre of the town by a shorter
way than going through Bogoyavlensky Street.

"Is it true, as they say, that you robbed a church in the
district the other day ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch asked
suddenly.

" I went in to say my prayers in the first place," the tramp
answered, sedately and respectfully as though nothing had
happened ; more than sedately, in fact, almost with dignity.
There was no trace of his former " friendly " familiarity. All
that was to be seen was a serious, business-like man, who had
indeed been gratuitously insulted, but who was capable of over-
looking an insult.

NIGHT 261

" But when the Lord led me there," he went on, " ech, I
thought what a heavenly abundance ! It was all owing to my
helpless state, as in our way of life there's no doing without
assistance. And, now, God be my witness, sir, it was my own
loss. The Lord punished me for my sins, and what with the
censer and the deacon's halter, I only got twelve roubles alto-
gether. The chin setting of St. Nikolay of pure silver went for
next to nothing. They said it was plated."

" You killed the watchman ? "

" That is, I cleared the place out together with that watchman,
but afterwards, next morning, by the river, we fell to quarrelling
which should carry the sack. I sinned, I did lighten his load for
him."

" Well, you can rob and murder again."

" That's the very advice Pyotr Stepanovitch gives me, in the
very same words, for he's uncommonly mean and hard-hearted
about helping a fellow-creature. And what's more, he hasn't a
ha'porth of belief in the Heavenly Creator, who made us out of
earthly clay ; but he says it's all the work of nature even to the
last beast. He doesn't understand either that with our way of
life it's impossible for us to get along without friendly assistance.
If you begin to talk to him he looks like a sheep at the water ;
it makes one wonder. Would you believe, at Captain Lebyad-
kin's, out yonder, whom your honour's just been visiting, when
he was living at Filipov's, before you came, the door stood open
all night long. He'd be drunk and sleeping like the dead, and
his money dropping out of his pockets all over the floor. I've
chanced to see it with my own eyes, for in our way of life it's
impossible to live without assistance. ..."

:' How do you mean with your own eyes ? Did you go in at
night then ? "

" Maybe I did go in, but no one knows of it."

" Why didn't you kill him ? "

:' Reckoning it out, I steadied myself. For once having
learned for sure that I can always get one hundred and fifty
roubles, why should I go so far when I can get fifteen hundred
roubles if I only bide my time. For Captain Lebyadkin (I've
heard him with my own ears) had great hopes of you when he
was drunk ; and there isn't a tavern here — not the lowest
pot-house — where he hasn't talked about it when he was in that
state. So that hearing it from many lips, I began, too, to rest
all my hopes on your excellency. I speak to you, sir, as to my

262 THE POSSESSED

father, or my own brother ; for Pyotr Stepanovitch will never
learn that from me, and not a soul in the world. So won't
your excellency spare me three roubles in your kindness ? You
might set my mind at rest, so that I might know the real truth ;
for we can't get on without assistance."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch laughed aloud, and taking out his
purse, in which he had as much as fifty roubles, in small notes,
threw him one note out of the bundle, then a second, a third, a
fourth. Fedka flew to catch them in the air. The notes dropped
into the mud, and he snatched them up crying, " Ech ! ech ! "
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch finished by flinging the whole bundle
at him, and, still laughing, went on down the street, this time alone.
The tramp remained crawling on his knees in the mud, looking
for the notes which were blown about by the wind and soaking
in the puddles, and for an hour after his spasmodic cries of
" Ech ! ech ! " were still to be heard in the darkness.

CHAPTER III
THE DUEL

The next day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, the duel took place
as arranged. Things were hastened forward by Gaganov's
obstinate desire to fight at all costs. He did not understand his
adversary's conduct, and was in a fury. For a whole month he
had been insulting him with impunity, and had so far been
unable to make him lose patience. What he wanted was a
challenge on the part of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, as he had
not himself any direct pretext for challenging him. His secret
motive for it, that is, his almost morbid hatred of Stavrogin
for the insult to his family four years before, he was for some
reason ashamed to confess. And indeed he regarded this himself
as an impossible pretext for a challenge, especially in view of
the humble apology offered by Mkolay Stavrogin twice already.
He privately made up his mind that Stavrogin was a shameless
coward ; and could not understand how he could have accepted
Shatov's blow. So he made up his mind at last to send him
the extraordinarily rude letter that had finally roused Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch himself to propose a meeting. Having dis-
patched this letter the day before, he awaited a challenge with
feverish impatience, and while morbidly reckoning the chances
at one moment with hope and at the next with despair, he got
ready for any emergency by securing a second, to wit, Mavriky
Nikolaevitch Drozdov, who was a friend of his, an old schoolfellow,
a man for whom he had a great respect. So when Kirillov came
next morning at nine o'clock with his message he found things in
readiness. All the apologies and unheard-of condescension of
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch were at once, at the first word, rejected
with extraordinary exasperation. Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who
had only been made acquainted with the position of affairs the
evening before, opened his mouth with surprise at such incredible
concessions, and would have urged a reconciliation, but seeing
that Gaganov, guessing his intention, was almost trembling
in his chair, refrained, and said nothing. If it had not been
for the promise given to his old schoolfellow he would have

263

264 THE POSSESSED

retired immediately ; he only remained in the hope of being
some help on the scene of action. Kirillov repeated the challenge.
All the conditions of the encounter made by Stavrogin were
accepted on the spot, without the faintest objection. Only
one addition was made, and that a ferocious one. If the
first shots had no decisive effect, they were to fire again, and if
the second encounter were inconclusive, it was to be followed
by a third. Kirillov frowned, objected to the third encounter,
but gaining nothing by his efforts agreed on the condition,
however, that three should be the limit, and that " a fourth
encounter was out of the question." This was conceded.
Accordingly at two o'clock in the afternoon the meeting took
place at Brykov, that is, in a little copse in the outskirts of
the town, lying between Skvoreshniki and the Shpigulin factory.

The rain of the previous night was over, but it was damp, grey,
and windy. Low, ragged, dingy clouds moved rapidly across
the cold sky. The tree- tops roared with a deep droning sound,
and creaked on their roots ; it was a melancholy morning.

Mavriky Nikolaevitch and Gaganov arrived on the spot in a
smart char-a-banc with a pair of horses driven by the latter. They
were accompanied by a groom. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and
Kirillov arrived almost at the same instant. They were not
driving, they were on horseback, and were also followed by a
mounted servant. Kirillov, who had never mounted a horse
before, sat up boldly, erect in the saddle, grasping in his right
hand the heavy box of pistols which he would not entrust to
the servant. In his inexperience he was continually with his
left hand tugging at the reins, which made the horse toss his
head and show an inclination to rear. This, however, seemed to
cause his rider no uneasiness. Gaganov, who was morbidly
suspicious and always ready to be deeply offended, considered
their coming on horseback as a fresh insult to himself, inasmuch
as it showed that his opponents were too confident of success, since
they had not even thought it necessary to have a carriage in
case of being wounded and disabled. He got out of his char-a-
banc, yellow with anger, and felt that his hands were trembling,
as he told Mavriky Nikolaevitch. He made no response at all to
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch' s bow, and turned away. The seconds
cast lots. The lot fell on Kirillov' s pistols. They measured
out the barrier and placed the combatants. The servants
with the carriage and horses were moved back three hundred
paces. The weapons were loaded and handed to the combatants.

THE DUEL 265

I'm sorry that I have to tell my story more quickly and have
no time for descriptions. But I can't refrain from some com-
ments. Mavriky Nikolaevitch was melancholy and preoccupied.
Kirillov, on the other hand, was perfectly calm and unconcerned,
very exact over the details of the duties he had undertaken, but
without the slightest fussiness or even curiosity as to the issue
of the fateful contest that was so near at hand. Nikolay Vsye-
volodovitch was paler than usual. He was rather lightly
dressed in an overcoat and a white beaver hat. He seemed
very tired, he frowned from time to time, and seemed to feel it
superfluous to conceal his ill-humour. But Gaganov was at
this moment more worthy of mention than anyone, so that it
is quite impossible not to say a few words about him in par-
ticular.

II

I have hitherto not had occasion to describe his appearance.
He was a tall man of thirty- three, and well fed, as the common
folk express it, almost fat, with lank flaxen hair, and with features
which might be called handsome. He had retired from the service
with the rank of colonel, and if he had served till he reached the
rank of general he would have been even more impressive in
that position, and would very likely have become an excellent
fighting general.

I must add, as characteristic of the man, that the chief cause
of his leaving the army was the thought of the family disgrace
which had haunted him so painfully since the insult paid to his
father by Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch four years before at the
club. He conscientiously considered it dishonourable to remain
in the service, and was inwardly persuaded that he was con-
taminating the regiment and his companions, although they
knew nothing of the incident. It's true that he had once before
been disposed to leave the army long before the insult to his
father, and on quite other grounds, but he had hesitated. Strange
as it is to write, the original design, or rather desire, to leave the
army was due to the proclamation of the 19th of February of
the emancipation of the serfs. Gaganov, who was one of the
richest landowners in the province, and who had not lost very
much by the emancipation, and was, moreover, quite capable of
understanding the humanity of the reform and its economic
advantages, suddenly felt himself personally insulted by the

266 THE POSSESSED

proclamation. It was something unconscious, a feeling ; but
was all the stronger for being unrecognised. He could not
bring himself, however, to take any decisive step till his father's
death. But he began to be well known for his " gentlemanly "
ideas to many persons of high position in Petersburg, with whom
he strenuously kept up connections. He was secretive and self-
contained. Another characteristic : he belonged to that strange
section of the nobility, still surviving in Russia, who set an extreme
value on their pure and ancient lineage, and take it too seriously.
At the same time he could not endure Russian history, and,
indeed, looked upon Russian customs in general as more or less
piggish. Even in his childhood, in the special military school for
the sons of particularly wealthy and distinguished families
in which he had the privilege of being educated, from first to
last certain poetic notions were deeply rooted in his mind. He
loved castles, chivalry ; all the theatrical part of it. He was ready
to cry with shame that in the days of the Moscow Tsars the sove-
reign had the right to inflict corporal punishment on the Russian
boyars, and blushed at the contrast. This stiff and extremely
severe man, who had a remarkable knowledge of military science
and performed his duties admirably, was at heart a dreamer.
It was said that he could speak at meetings and had the gift
of language, but at no time during the thirty-three years of his
life had he spoken. Even in the distinguished circles in Peters-
burg, in which he had moved of late, he behaved with extra-
ordinary haughtiness. His meeting in Petersburg with Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch, who had just returned from abroad, almost
sent him out of his mind. At the present moment, standing
at the barrier, he was terribly uneasy. He kept imagining
that the duel would somehow not come off ; the least delay
threw him into a tremor. There was an expression of anguish
in his face when Kirillov, instead of giving the signal for them to
fire, began suddenly speaking, only for form, indeed, as he
himself explained aloud.

" Simply as a formality, now that you have the pistols in your
hands, and I must give the signal, I ask you for the last time,
will you not be reconciled ? It's the duty of a second."

As though to spite him, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who had till
then kept silence, although he had been reproaching himself
all day for his compliance and acquiescence, suddenly caught
up Kirillov' s thought and began to speak :

" I entirely agree with Mr. Kirillov's words. . . . This idea

THE DUEL 267

;hat reconciliation is impossible at the barrier is a prejudice,
mly suitable for Frenchmen. Besides, with your leave, I don't
mderstand what the offence is. I've been wanting to say so for
i long time . . . because every apology is offered, isn't it ? '

He flushed all over. He had rarely spoken so much, and with
mch excitement.

" I repeat again my offer to make every possible apology,"
SFikolay Vsyevolodovitch interposed hurriedly.

" This is impossible," shouted Gaganov furiously, addressing
VCavriky Nikolaevitch, and stamping with rage. " Explain to
)his man," he pointed with his pistol at Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,
' if you're my second and not my enemy, Mavriky Nikolaevitch,
ihat such overtures only aggravate the insult. He feels it
mpossible to be insulted by me ! . . . He feels it no disgrace
)0 walk away from me at the barrier ! What does he take me
or, after that, do you think ? . . . And you, you, my second,
oo ! You're simply irritating me that I may miss."

He stamped again. There were flecks of foam on his lips.

" Negotiations are over. I beg you to listen to the signal ! "
£irillov shouted at the top of his voice. ' One ! Two !
[?hree ! "

At the word " Three " the combatants took aim at one another.
Gaganov at once raised his pistol, and at the fifth or sixth
itep he fired. For a second he stood still, and, making sure
<hat he had missed, advanced to the barrier. Nikolay Vsyevolo-
lovitch advanced too, raising his pistol, but somehow holding
t very high, and fired, almost without taking aim. Then he
;ook out his handkerchief and bound it round the little finger
)f his right hand. Only then they saw that Gaganov had not
nissed him completely, but the bullet had only grazed the fleshy
Dart of his finger without touching the bone ; it was only a slight
scratch. Kirillov at once announced that the duel would go on,
mless the combatants were satisfied.

" I declare," said Gaganov hoarsely (his throat felt parched),
igain addressing Mavriky Nikolaevitch, " that this man," again
le pointed in Stavrogin's direction, " fired in the air on purpose

. . intentionally. . . . This is an insult again. . . . He
i^ants to make the duel impossible ! "

" I have the right to fire as I like so long as I keep the rules,"
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch asserted resolutely.

" No, he hasn't ! Explain it to him ! Explain it ! " cried
jlaganov.

268 THE POSSESSED

'" I'm in complete agreement with Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch,"
proclaimed Kirillov.

1 Why does he spare me?" Gaganov raged, not hearing him
"I despise his mercy. ... I spit on it. ... I . . ."

' I give you my word that I did not intend to insult you,'
cried Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch impatiently. " I shot high
because I don't want to kill anyone else, either you or anyone
else. It's nothing to do with you personally. It's true that I
don't consider myself insulted, and I'm sorry that angers you
But I don't allow any one to interfere with my rights."

" If he's so afraid of bloodshed, ask him why he challenged
me," yelled Gaganov, still addressing Mavriky Nikolaevitch.

" How could he help challenging you ? " said Kirillov, inter
vening. ' You wouldn't listen to anything. How was one to
get rid of you ? "

" I'll only mention one thing," observed Mavriky Nikolaen
vitch, pondering the matter with painful effort. " If a combatant!
declares beforehand that he will fire in the air the duel certainly
cannot go on . . . for obvious and . . . delicate reasons."

" I haven't declared that I'll fire in the air every time," cried)
Stavrogin, losing all patience. " You don't know what's in my
mind or how I intend to fire again. . . . I'm not restricting]
the duel at all."

" In that case the encounter can go on," said Mavriky Nikolae-i
vitch to Gaganov.

" Gentlemen, take your places," Kirillov commanded.
Again they advanced, again Gaganov missed and Stavroginl
fired into the air. There might have been a dispute as to his
firing into the air. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch might havo
flatly declared that he'd fired properly, if he had not admitted
that he had missed intentionally. He did not aim straight atf
the sky or at the trees, but seemed to aim at his adversary]
though as he pointed the pistol the bullet flew a yard above his
hat. The second time the shot was even lower, even less like
an intentional miss. Nothing would have convinced Gaganov
now.

" Again ! " he muttered, grinding his teeth. " No matter
I've been challenged and I'll make use of my rights. I'll fire a
third time . . . whatever happens."

" You have full right to do so," Kirillov rapped out. Mavrik^
Nikolaevitch said nothing. The opponents were placed a
third time, the signal was given. This time Gaganov went right

THE DUEL 269

ip to the barrier, and began from there taking aim, at a distance
)f twelve paces. His hand was trembling too much to take
jood aim. Stavrogin stood with his pistol lowered and awaited
lis shot without moving.

" Too long ; you've been aiming too long ! " Kirillov shouted
mpetuously. " Fire ! Fire ! "

But the shot rang out, and this time Stavrogin' s white beaver
lat flew off. The aim had been fairly correct. The crown
>f the hat was pierced very low down ; a quarter of an inch
ower and all would have been over. Kirillov picked up the
lat and handed it to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.

" Fire ; don't detain your adversary ! " cried Mavriky
tfikolaevitch in extreme agitation, seeing that Stavrogin seemed
o have forgotten to fire, and was examining the hat with Kirillov.
Stavrogin started, looked at Gaganov, turned round and this
ime, without the slightest regard for punctilio, fired to one side,
nto the copse. The duel was over. Gaganov stood as though
>verwhelmed. Mavriky Nikolaevitch went up and began saying
omething to him, but he did not seem to understand. Kirillov
ook off his hat as he went away, and nodded to Mavriky Nikolae-
dtch. But Stavrogin forgot his former politeness. When he
lad shot into the copse he did not even turn towards the barrier.
le handed his pistol to Kirillov and hastened towards the horses.
lis face looked angry ; he did not speak. Kirillov, too, was
ilent. They got on their horses and set off at a gallop.

Ill

' Why don't you speak ? " he called impatiently to Kirillov,
phen they were not far from home.

' What do you want ? " replied the latter, almost slipping off
ds horse, which was rearing.

Stavrogin restrained himself.

" I didn't mean to insult that . . . fool, and I've insulted
lim again," he said quietly.

' Yes, you've insulted him again," Kirillov jerked out, "and
)esides, he's not a fool."

"I've done all I can, anyway."

" No."

" What ought I to have done ? "

r Not have challenged him."

270 THE POSSESSED

" Accept another blow in the face ? "

" Yes, accept another."

" I can't understand anything now," said Stavrogin wrath-
fully. " Why does every one expect of me something not
expected from anyone else ? Why am I to put up with what
no one else puts up with, and undertake burdens no one else can
bear ? "

" I thought you were seeking a burden yourself."

" I seek a burden ? "

" Yes."

" You've . . . seen that ! "

" Yes."

" Is it so noticeable ? "

" Yes."

There was silence for a moment. Stavrogin had a very
preoccupied face. He was almost impressed.

" I didn't aim because I didn't want to kill anyone. There
was nothing more in it, I assure you," he said hurriedly, and with
agitation, as though justifying himself.

" You ought not to have offended him."

" What ought I to have done then ? "

" You ought to have killed him."

" Are you sorry I didn't kill him ? "

"I'm not sorry for anything. I thought you really meant
to kill him. You don't know what you're seeking."

" I seek a burden," laughed Stavrogin.

" If you didn't want blood yourself, why did you give him a
chance to kill you ? "

" If I hadn't challenged him, he'd have killed me simply,
without a duel."

" That's not your affair. Perhaps he wouldn't have killed
you."

" Only have beaten me ? "

" That's not your business. Bear your burden. Or else
there's no merit."

" Hang your merit. I don't seek anyone's approbation."

" I thought you were seeking it," Kirillov commented with
terrible unconcern.

They rode into the courtyard of the house.
- " Do you care to come in ? " said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch.

" No ; I'm going home. Good-bye."

He got off the horse and took his box of pistols under his arm. ,

THE DUEL 271

" Anyway, you're not angry with me ? " said Stavrogin,
holding out his hand to him.

" Not in the least," said Kirillov, turning round to shake hands
with him. " If my burden's light it's because it's from nature ;
perhaps your burden's heavier because that's your nature.
There's no need to be much ashamed ; only a little."

" I know I'm a worthless character, and I don't pretend to be
a strong one."

" You'd better not ; you're not a strong person. Come and
have tea."

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch went into the house, greatly
perturbed.

IV

He learned at once from Alexey Yegorytch that Varvara
Petrovna had been very glad to hear that Nikolay Vsyevolodo-
vitch had gone out for a ride — the first time he had left the
house after eight days' illness. She had ordered the carriage,
and had driven out alone for a breath of fresh air " according to
the habit of the past, as she had forgotten for the last eight days
what it meant to breathe fresh air."

" Alone, or with Darya Pavlovna ? " Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
interrupted the old man with a rapid question, and he scowled
when he heard that Darya Pavlovna " had declined to go abroad
on account of indisposition and was in her rooms."

;' Listen, old man," he said, as though suddenly making up
his mind. " Keep watch over her all to-day, and if you notice
her coming to me, stop her at once, and tell her that I can't see
her for a few days at least . . . that I ask her not to come
myself. . . . I'll let her know myself, when the time comes.
Do you hear ? "

"I'll tell her, sir," said Alexey Yegorytch, with distress in his
voice, dropping his eyes.

" Not till you see clearly she's meaning to come and see me of
herself, though."

' Don't be afraid, sir, there shall be no mistake. Your
interviews have all passed through me, hitherto. You've always
turned to me for help."

:< I know. Not till she comes of herself, anyway. Bring me
some tea, if you can, at once."

The old man had hardly gone out, when almost at the same

272 THE POSSESSED

instant the door reopened, and Darya Pavlovna appeared in the
doorway. Her eyes were tranquil, though her face was pale.
' Where have you come from ? " exclaimed Stavrogin.

" I was standing there, and waiting for him to go out, to come
in to you. I heard the order you gave him, and when he came
out just now I hid round the corner, on the right, and he didn't
notice me."

" I've long meant to break off with you, Dasha . . . for a
while . . . for the present. I couldn't see you last night, in
spite of your note. I meant to write to you myself, but I don't
know how to write," he added with vexation, almost as though
with disgust.

" I thought myself that we must break it off. Varvara
Petrovna is too suspicious of our relations."

" Well, let her be."

" She mustn't be worried. So now we part till the end
comes."

" You still insist on expecting the end ? "

" Yes, I'm sure of it."

" But nothing in the world ever has an end."

" This will have an end. Then call me. I'll come. Now,
good-bye."

" And what sort of end will it be ? " smiled Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch.

" You're not wounded, and . . . have not shed blood ? " she
asked, not answering his question.

" It was stupid. I didn't kill anyone. Don't be uneasy.
However, you'll hear all about it to-day from every one. I'm
not quite well."

"I'm going. The announcement of the marriage won't be
to-day ? " she added irresolutely.

" It won't be to-day, and it won't be to-morrow. I can't say
about the day after to-morrow. Perhaps we shall all be dead,
and so much the better. Leave me alone, leave me alone, do."

" You won't ruin that other . . . mad girl ? "

" I won't ruin either of the mad creatures. It seems to be
the sane I'm ruining. I'm so vile and loathsome, Dasha, that
I might really send for you, ' at the latter end,' as you say. And
in spite of your sanity you'll come. Why will you be your
own ruin ? "

" I know that at the end I shall be the only one left you, and
. . . I'm waiting for that."

THE DUEL 273

" And what if I don't send for you after all, but run away
from you ? "

" That can't be. You will send for me."

" There's a great deal of contempt for me in that."

" You know that there's not only contempt."

" Then there is contempt, anyway ? "

" I used the wrong word. God is my witness, it's my greatest
wish that you may never have need of me."

" One phrase is as good as another. I should also have wished
not to have ruined you."

" You can never, anyhow, be my ruin ; and you know that
yourself, better than anyone," Darya Pavlovna said, rapidly
and resolutely. " If I don't come to you I shall be a sister of
mercy, a nurse, shall wait upon the sick, or go selling the gospel.
I've made up my mind to that. I cannot be anyone's wife.
I can't live in a house like this, either. That's not what I want.
. . . You know all that."

" No, I never could tell what you want. It seems to me
that you're interested in me, as some veteran nurses get specially
interested in some particular invalid in comparison with the
others, or still more, like some pious old women who frequent
funerals and find one corpse more attractive than another.
Why do you look at me so strangely ? "

" Are you very ill 1 " she asked sympathetically, looking at
him in a peculiar way. " Good heavens ! And this man wants
to do without me ! "

" Listen, Dasha, now I'm always seeing phantoms. One
devil offered me yesterday, on the bridge, to murder Lebyadkin
and Marya Timofyevna, to settle the marriage difficulty, and
to cover up all traces. He asked me to give him three roubles
on account, but gave me to understand that the whole operation
wouldn't cost less than fifteen hundred. Wasn't he a calculating
devil ! A regular shopkeeper. Ha ha ! "

' But you're fully convinced that it was an hallucination ? "

' Oh, no ; not a bit an hallucination ! It was simply Fedka
the convict, the robber who escaped from prison. But that's not
the point. What do you suppose I did ? I gave him all I had,
everything in my purse, and now he's sure I've given him that on
account ! "

' You met him at night, and he made such a suggestion ?
Surely you must see that you're being caught in their nets on
every side ! "

s

274 THE POSSESSED

' Well, let them be. But you've got some question at the
tip of your tongue, you know. I see it by your eyes," he added
with a resentful and irritable smile.

Dasha was frightened.

"I've no question at all, and no doubt whatever ; you'd
better be quiet ! ': she cried in dismay, as though waving off
his question.

:{ Then you're convinced that I won't go to Fedka's little
shop ? "

' Oh, God ! " she cried, clasping her hands. " Why do you
torture me like this ? "

" Oh, forgive me my stupid joke. I must be picking up bad
manners from them. Do you know, ever since last night I feel
awfully inclined to laugh, to go on laughing continually for
ever so long. It's as though I must explode with laughter. It's
like an illness. . . . Oh ! my mother's coming in. I always
know by the rumble when her carriage has stopped at the
entrance."

Dasha seized his hand.

" God save you from your demon, and . . . call me, call me
quickly ! "

" Oh ! a fine demon ! It's simply a little nasty, scrofulous
imp, with a cold in his head, one of the unsuccessful ones. But
you have something you don't dare to say again, Dasha ? "

She looked at him with pain and reproach, and turned towards
the door.

" Listen," he called after her, with a malignant and distorted
smile. "If . . . Yes, if, in one word, if . . . you understand,
even if I did go to that little shop, and if I called you after that —
would you come then ? "

She went out, hiding her face in her hands, and neither turning
nor answering.

" She will come even after the shop," he whispered, thinking
a moment, and an expression of scornful disdain came into his
face. " A nurse ! H'm ! . . . but perhaps that's what I
want."

CHAPTER IV
ALL IN EXPECTATION

The impression made on the whole neighbourhood by the story of
the duel, which was rapidly noised abroad, was particularly
remarkable from the unanimity with which every one hastened
to take up the cudgels for Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. Many of his
former enemies declared themselves his friends. The chief
reason for this change of front in public opinion was chiefly
due to one person, who had hitherto not expressed her opinion,
but who now very distinctly uttered a few words, which at
once gave the event a significance exceedingly interesting to the
vast majority. This was how it happened. On the day after
the duel, all the town was assembled at the Marshal of Nobility's
in honour of his wife's nameday. Yulia Mihailovna was present,
or, rather, presided, accompanied by Lizaveta Nikolaevna,
radiant with beauty and peculiar gaiety, which struck many of our
ladies at once as particularly suspicious at this time. And I may
mention, by the way, her engagement to Mavriky Nikolaevitch
was by now an established fact. To a playful question from
a retired general of much consequence, of whom we shall have
more to say later, Lizaveta Nikolaevna frankly replied that
evening that she was engaged. And only imagine, not one of
our ladies would believe in her engagement. They all persisted
in assuming a romance of some sort, some fatal family secret,
something that had happened in Switzerland, and for some
reason imagined that Yulia Mihailovna must have had some hand
in it. It was difficult to understand why these rumours, or rather
fancies, persisted so obstinately, and why Yulia Mihailovna was
so positively connected with it. As soon as she came in, all
turned to her with strange looks, brimful of expectation. It
must be observed that owing to the freshness of the event, and
certain circumstances accompanying it, at the party people talked
of it with some circumspection, in undertones. Besides, nothing
yet was known of the line taken by the authorities. As far as
was known, neither of the combatants had been troubled by the
police. Every one knew, for instance, that Gaganov had set

275

276 THE POSSESSED

off home early in the morning to Duhovo, without being hindered.
Meanwhile, of course, all were eager for some one to be the first
to speak of it aloud, and so to open the door to the general
impatience. They rested their hopes on the general above-
mentioned, and they were not disappointed.

This general, a landowner, though not a wealthy one, was one
of the most imposing members of our club, and a man of an
absolutely unique turn of mind. He flirted in the old-fashioned
way with the young ladies, and was particularly fond, in large
assemblies, of speaking aloud with all the weightiness of a
general, on subjects to which others were alluding in discreet
whispers. This was, so to say, his special role in local society.
He drawled, too, and spoke with peculiar suavity, probably
having picked up the habit from Russians travelling abroad,
or from those wealthy landowners of former days who had
suffered most from the emancipation. Stepan Trofimovitch had
observed that the more completely a landowner was ruined, the
more suavely he lisped and drawled his words. He did, as a fact,
lisp and drawl himself, but was not aware of it in himself.

The general spoke like a person of authority. He was, besides,
a distant relation of Gaganov's, though he was on bad terms
with him, and even engaged in litigation with him. He had,
moreover, in the past, fought two duels himself, and had even
been degraded to the ranks and sent to the Caucasus on account
of one of them. Some mention was made of Varvara Petrovna's
having driven out that day and the day before, after being kept
indoors " by illness," though the allusion was not to her, but to
the marvellous matching of her four grey horses of the Stavrogins'
own breeding. The general suddenly observed that he had met
"young Stavrogin" that day, on horseback. . . . Every one
was instantly silent. The general munched his lips, and suddenly
proclaimed, twisting in his fingers his presentation gold snuff-box.

" I'm sorry I wasn't here some years ago ... I mean when I
was at Carlsbad . . . H'm ! I'm very much interested in that
young man about whom I heard so many rumours at that time.
H'm ! And, I say, is it true that he's mad ? Some one told
me so then. Suddenly I'm told that he has been insulted by
some student here, in the presence of his cousins, and he slipped
under the table to get away from him. And yesterday I heard
from Stepan Vysotsky that Stavrogin had been fighting with
Gaganov. And simply with the gallant object of offering himself
as a target to an infuriated man, just to get rid of him. H'm !

ALL IN EXPECTATION 277

Quite in the style of the guards of the twenties. Is there any
house where he visits here ? "

The general paused as though expecting an answer. A way
had been opened for the public impatience to express
itself.

" What could be simpler ? " cried Yulia Mihailovna, raising
her voice, irritated that all present had turned their eyes upon
her, as though at a word of command. " Can one wonder that
Stavrogin fought Gaganov and took no notice of the student ?
He couldn't challenge a man who used to be his serf ! "

A noteworthy saying ! A clear and simple notion, yet it
had entered nobody's head till that moment. It was a saying
that had extraordinary consequences. All scandal and gossip,
all the petty tittle-tattle was thrown into the background,
another significance had been detected. A new character was
revealed whom all had misjudged ; a character, almost ideally
severe in his standards. Mortally insulted by a student, that is,
an educated man, no longer a serf, he despised the affront because
his assailant had once been his serf. Society had gossiped and
slandered him ; shallow- minded people had looked with contempt
on a man who had been struck in the face. He had despised a
public opinion, which had not risen to the level of the highest
standards, though it discussed them.

" And, meantime, you and I, Ivan Alexandrovitch, sit and
discuss the correct standards," one old club member observed to
another, with a warm and generous glow of self-reproach.

" Yes, Pyotr Mihailovitch, yes," the other chimed in with zest,
" talk of the younger generation ! "

"It's not a question of the younger generation," observed a
third, putting in his spoke, " it's nothing to do with the younger
generation ; he's a star, not one of the younger generation ; that's
the way to look at it."

" And it's just that sort we need ; they're rare people."

The chief point in all this was that the " new man," besides
showing himself an unmistakable nobleman, was the wealthiest
landowner in the province, and was, therefore, bound to be a
leading man who could be of assistance. I've already alluded
in passing to the attitude of the landowners of our province.

People were enthusiastic :

" He didn't merely refrain from challenging the student. He
put his hands behind him, note that particularly, your
excellency," somebody pointed out,

278 THE POSSESSED

" And he didn't haul him up before the new law-courts,
either," added another.

" In spite of the fact that for a personal insult to a nobleman
he'd have got fifteen roubles damages ! He he he ! "

" No, I'll tell you a secret about the new courts," cried a third,
in a frenzy of excitement, " if anyone's caught robbing or
swindling and convicted, he'd better run home while there's yet
time, and murder his mother. He'll be acquitted of everything
at once, and ladies will wave their batiste handkerchiefs from
the platform. It's the absolute truth ! "

" It's the truth. It's the truth ! "

The inevitable anecdotes followed : Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's
friendly relations with Count K. were recalled. Count K.'s
stern and independent attitude to recent reforms was well known,
as well as his remarkable public activity, though that had some-
what fallen off of late. And now, suddenly, every one was
positive that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was betrothed to one of the
count's daughters, though nothing had given grounds for such
a supposition. And as for some wonderful adventures in
Switzerland with Lizaveta Nikolaevna, even the ladies quite
dropped all reference to it. I must mention, by the way, that the
Drozdovs had by this time succeeded in paying all the visits
they had omitted at first. Every one now confidently considered
Lizaveta Nikolaevna a most ordinary girl, who paraded her
delicate nerves. Her fainting on the day of Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch's arrival was explained now as due to her terror at the
student's outrageous behaviour. They even increased the
prosaicness of that to which before they had striven to give such
a fantastic colour. As for a lame woman who had been talked
of, she was forgotten completely. They were ashamed to
remember her.

" And if there had been a hundred lame girls — we've all been
young once ! "

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's respectfulness to his mother was
enlarged upon. Various virtues were discovered in him. People
talked with approbation of the learning he had acquired in the
four years he had spent in German universities. Gaganov's
conduct was declared utterly tactless : " not knowing friend from
foe." Yulia Mihailovna's keen insight was unhesitatingly
admitted.

So by the time Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch made his appearance
among them he was received by every one with naive solemnity.

ALL IN EXPECTATION 279

In all eyes fastened upon him could be read eager anticipation.
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch at once wrapped himself in the most
austere silence, which, of course, gratified every one much more
than if he had talked till doomsday. In a word, he was a success,
he was the fashion. If once one has figured in provincial society,
there's no retreating into the background. Nikolay Vsye vole-
do vitch began to fulfil all his social duties in the province
punctiliously as before. He was not found cheerful company :
" a man who has seen suffering ; a man not like other people ;
he has something to be melancholy about." Even the pride and
disdainful aloofness for which he had been so detested four years
before was now liked and respected.

Varvara Petrovna was triumphant. I don't know whether she
grieved much over the shattering of her dreams concerning
Lizaveta Nikolaevna. Family pride, of course, helped her to
get over it. One thing was strange : Varvara Petrovna was
suddenly convinced that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch really had
" made his choice " at Count K.'s. And what was strangest of
all, she was led to believe it by rumours which reached her on
no better authority than other people. She was afraid to ask
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch a direct question. Two or three times,
however, she could not refrain from slyly and good-humouredly
reproaching him for not being open with her. Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch smiled and remained silent. The silence was taken
as a sign of assent. And yet, all the time she never forgot the
cripple. The thought of her lay like a stone on her heart, a
nightmare, she was tortured by strange misgivings and surmises,
and all this at the same time as she dreamed of Count K.'s
daughters. But of this we shall speak later. Varvara Petrovna
began again, of course, to be treated with extreme deference and
respect in society, but she took little advantage of it and went out
rarely.

She did, however, pay a visit of ceremony to the governor's
wife. Of course, no one had been more charmed and delighted
by Yulia Mihailovna's words spoken at the marshal's soiree than
she. They lifted a load of care off her heart, and had at once
relieved much of the distress she had been suffering since that
luckless Sunday.

' I misunderstood that woman," she declared, and with her
characteristic impulsiveness she frankly told Yulia Mihailovna
that she had come to thank her. Yulia Mihailovna was flattered,
but she behaved with dignity. She was beginning about this

280 THE POSSESSED

time to be very conscious of her own importance, too much so,
in fact. She announced, for example, in the course of conversa-
tion, that she had never heard of Stepan Trofimovitch as a leading
man or a savant.

" I know young Verhovensky, of course, and make much of
him. He's imprudent, but then he's young ; he's thoroughly
well-informed, though. He's not an out-of-date, old-fashioned
critic, anyway." Varvara Petrovna hastened to observe that
Stepan Trofimovitch had never been a critic, but had, on the
contrary, spent all his life in her house. He was renowned
through circumstances of his early career, " only too well known
to the whole world," and of late for his researches in Spanish
history. Now he intended to write also on the position of
modern German universities, and, she believed, something about
the Dresden Madonna too. In short, Varvara Petrovna refused
to surrender Stepan Trofimovitch to the tender mercies of Yulia
Mihailovna.

" The Dresden Madonna ? You mean the Sistine Madonna ?
Chere Varvara Petrovna, I spent two hours sitting before that
picture and came away utterly disillusioned. I could make
nothing of it and was in complete amazement. Karmazinov,
too, says it's hard to understand it. They all see nothing in it
now, Russians and English alike. All its fame is just the talk
of the last generation."

" Fashions are changed then ? "

" What I think is that one mustn't despise our younger genera-
tion either. They cry out that they're communists, but what
I say is that we must appreciate them and mustn't be hard
on them. I read everything now — the papers, communism
the natural sciences — I get everything because, after all, one
must know where one's living and with whom one has to do.
One mustn't spend one's whole life on the heights of one's own
fancy. I've come to the conclusion, and adopted it as a principle,
that one must be kind to the young people and so keep them from
the brink. Believe me, Varvara Petrovna, that none but we
who make up good society can by our kindness and good influence
keep them from the abyss towards which they are brought by the
intolerance of all these old men. I am glad though to learn from
you about Stepan Trofimovitch. You suggest an idea to me : he
may be useful at our literary matinee, you know I'm arranging
for a whole day of festivities, a subscription entertainment for the
benefit j^of the poor governesses of our province. They are

ALL IN EXPECTATION 281

scattered about Russia ; in our district alone we can reckon up
six of them. Besides that, there are two girls in the telegraph
office, two are being trained in the academy, the rest would like
to be but have not the means. The Russian woman's fate is a
terrible one, Varvara Petrovna ! It's out of that they're making
the university question now, and there's even been a meeting of
the Imperial Council about it. In this strange Russia of ours
one can do anything one likes ; and that, again, is why it's only
by the kindness and the direct warm sympathy of all the better
classes that we can direct this great common cause in the true
path. Oh, heavens, have we many noble personalities among
us ! There are some, of course, but they are scattered far and
wide. Let us unite and we shall be stronger. In one word, I
shall first have a literary matinee, then a light luncheon, then
an interval, and in the evening a ball. We meant to begin the
evening by living pictures, but it would involve a great deal of
expense, and so, to please the public, there will be one or two
quadrilles in masks and fancy dresses, representing well-known
literary schools. This humorous idea was suggested by Kar-
mazinov. He has been a great help to me. Do you know he's
going to read us the last thing he's written, which no one has seen
yet. He is laying down the pen, and will write no more. This
last essay is his farewell to the public. It's a charming little
thing called ' Merci.' The title is French ; he thinks that more
amusing and even subtler. I do, too. In fact I advised it. I
think Stepan Trofimovitch might read us something too, if it
were quite short and . . . not so very learned. I believe
Pyotr Stepanovitch and some one else too will read something.
Pyotr Stepanovitch shall run round to you and tell you the
programme. Better still, let me bring it to you myself."

" Allow me to put my name down in your subscription list too.
I'll tell Stepan Trofimovitch and will beg him to consent."

Varvara Petrovna returned home completely fascinated. She
was ready to stand up for Yulia Mihailovna through thick and
thin, and for some reason was already quite put out with Stepan
Trofimovitch, while he, poor man, sat at home, all unconscious.

:' I'm in love with her. I can't understand how I could be so
mistaken in that woman," she said to Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
and Pyotr Stepanovitch, who dropped in that evening.

'' But you must make peace with the old man all the same,"
Pyotr Stepanovitch submitted. " He's in despair. You've
quite sent him to Coventry. Yesterday he met your carriage

282 THE POSSESSED

and bowed, and you turned away. We'll trot him out, you
know ; I'm reckoning on him for something, and he may still bo
useful."

" Oh, he'll read something."

" I don't mean only that. And I was meaning to drop in on
him to-day. So shall I tell him ? "

" If you like. I don't know, though, how you'll arrange it,"
she said irresolutely. " I was meaning to have a talk with him
myself, and wanted to fix the time and place."

She frowned.

" Oh, it's not worth while fixing a time. I'll simply give him
the message."

1 Very well, do. Add that I certainly will fix a time to see
him though. Be sure to say that too."

Pyotr Stepanovitch ran off, grinning. He was, in fact, to the
best of my recollection, particularly spiteful all this time, and
ventured upon extremely impatient sallies with almost every
one. Strange to say, every one, somehow, forgave him. It was
generally accepted that he was not to be looked at from the
ordinary standpoint. I may remark that he took up an extremely
resentful attitude about Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's duel. It
took him unawares. He turned positively green when he was
told of it. Perhaps his vanity was wounded : he only heard of it
next day when every one knew of it.

" You had no right to fight, you know," he whispered to
Stavrogin, five days later, when he chanced to meet him at the
club. It was remarkable that they had not once met during those
five days, though Pyotr Stepanovitch had dropped in at Varvara
Petrovna's almost every day.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at him in silence with an
absent-minded air, as though not understanding what was the
matter, and he went on without stopping. He was crossing
the big hall of the club on his way to the refreshment room.

" You've been to see Shatov too. . . . You mean to make
it known about Marya Timofyevna," Pyotr Stepanovitch
muttered, running after him, and, as though not thinking of
what he was doing he clutched at his shoulder.

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch shook his hand off and turned round
quickly to him with a menacing scowl. Pyotr Stepanovitch
looked at him with a strange, prolonged smile. It all lasted
only one moment. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch walked on.

ALL IN EXPECTATION 283

II

He went to the " old man " straight from Varvara Petrovna's,
and he was in such haste simply from spite, that he might
revenge himself for an insult of which I had no idea at that
time. The fact is that at their last interview on the Thursday
of the previous week, Stepan Trofimovitch, though the dispute
was one of his own beginning, had ended by turning Pyotr
Stepanovitch out with his stick. He concealed the incident
from me at the time. But now, as soon as Pyotr Stepanovitch
ran in with his everlasting grin, which was so naively conde-
scending, and his unpleasantly inquisitive eyes peering into every
corner, Stepan Trofimovitch at once made a signal aside to me,
not to leave the room. This was how their real relations came
to be exposed before me, for on this occasion I heard their whole
conversation.

Stepan Trofimovitch was sitting stretched out on a lounge.
He had grown thin and sallow since that Thursday. Pyotr
Stepanovitch seated himself beside him with a most familiar air,
unceremoniously tucking his legs up under him, and taking
up more room on the lounge than deference to his father should
have allowed. Stepan Trofimovitch moved aside, in silence,
and with dignity.

On the table lay an open book. It was the novel, " What's to
be done ? " Alas, I must confess one strange weakness in my
friend ; the fantasy that he ought to come forth from his solitude
and fight a last battle was getting more and more hold upon his
deluded imagination. I guessed that he had got the novel and
was studying it solely in order that when the inevitable conflict
with the " shriekers " came about he might know their methods
and arguments beforehand, from their very " catechism," and
in that way be prepared to confute them all triumphantly,
before her eyes. Oh, how that book tortured him ! He sometimes
flung it aside in despair, and leaping up, paced about the room
almost in a frenzy.

" I agree that the author's fundamental idea is a true one," he
said to me feverishly, " but that only makes it more awful. It's
just our idea, exactly ours ; we first sowed the seed, nurtured
it, prepared the way, and, indeed, what could they say^new,
after us ? But, heavens ! How it's all expressed, distorted,

284 THE POSSESSED

mutilated ! " he exclaimed, tapping the book with his fingers.
" Were these the conclusions we were striving for. Who can
understand the original idea in this ? "

" Improving your mind ? ' sniggered Pyotr Stepanovitch,
taking the book from the table and reading the title. " It's
high time. I'll bring you better, if you like."

Stepan Trofimovitch again preserved a dignified silence. I
was sitting on a sofa in the corner.

Pyotr Stepanovitch quickly explained the reason of his coming.
Of course, Stepan Trofimovitch was absolutely staggered, and
he listened in alarm, which was mixed with extreme indignation.

" And that Yulia Mihailovna counts on my coming to read
for her ! "

" Well, they're by no means in such need of you. On the
contrary, it's by way of an attention to you, so as to make up
to Varvara Petrovna. But, of course, you won't dare to refuse,
and I expect you want to yourself," he added with a grin. " You
old fogies are all so devilishly ambitious. But, I say though,
you must look out that it's not too boring. What have you
got ? Spanish history, or what is it ? You'd better let me look
at it three days beforehand, or else you'll put us to sleep
perhaps."

The hurried and too barefaced coarseness of these thrusts
was obviously premeditated. He affected to behave as though
it were impossible to talk to Stepan Trofimovitch in different
and more delicate language. Stepan Trofimovitch resolutely
persisted in ignoring his insults, but what his son told him made
a more and more overwhelming impression upon him.

" And she, she herself sent me this message through you ? "
he asked, turning pale.

" Well, you see, she means to fix a time and place for a mutual
explanation, the relics of your sentimentalising. You've been
coquetting with her for twenty years and have trained her to the
most ridiculous habits. But don't trouble yourself, it's quite
different now. She keeps saying herself that she's only beginning
now to ' have her eyes opened.' I told her in so many words
that all this friendship of yours is nothing but a mutual pouring
forth of sloppiness. She told me lots, my boy. Poo ! what a
flunkey's place you've been filling all this time. I positively
blushed for you."

" I filling a flunkey's place ? " cried Stepan Trofimovitch,
unable to restrain himself.

ALL IN EXPECTATION 285

11 Worse, you've been a parasite, that is, a voluntary flunkey
too lazy to work, while you've an appetite for money. She, too,
understands all that now. It's awful the things she's been telling
me about you, anyway. I did laugh, my boy, over your letters
to her ; shameful and disgusting. But you're all so depraved,
so depraved ! There's always something depraving in charity —
you're a good example of it ! "

" She showed you my letters ! "

" All ; though, of course, one couldn't read them all. Foo,
what a lot of paper you've covered ! I believe there are more
than two thousand letters there. And do you know, old chap,
I believe there was one moment when she'd have been ready
to marry you. You let slip your chance in the silliest way. Of
course, I'm speaking from your point of view, though, anyway, it
would have been better than now when you've almost been
married to ' cover another man's sins,' like a buffoon, for a jest,
for money."

" For money ! She, she says it was for money ! " Stepan
Trofimovitch wailed in anguish.

" What else, then ? But, of course, I stood up for you. That's
your only line of defence, you know. She sees for herself that
you needed money like every one else, and that from that point
of view maybe you were right. I proved to her as clear as twice
two makes four that it was a mutual bargain. She was a
capitalist and you were a sentimental buffoon in her service.
She's not angry about the money, though you have milked her
like a goat. She's only in a rage at having believed in you for
twenty years, at your having so taken her in over these noble
sentiments, and made her tell lies for so long. She never will
admit that she told lies of herself, but you'll catch it the more
for that. I can't make out how it was you didn't see that you'd
have to have a day of reckoning. For after all you had some
sense. I advised her yesterday to put you in an almshouse, a
genteel one, don't disturb yourself ; there'll be nothing humilia-
ting ; I believe that's what she'll do. Do you remember your
last letter to me, three weeks ago % "

" Can you have shown her that ? " cried Stepan Trofimovitch,
leaping up in horror.

" Rather ! First thing. The one in which you told me she
was exploiting you, envious of your talent; oh, yes, and that
about ' other men's sins.' You have got a conceit though, my
boy ! How I did laugh. As a rule your letters are very tedious.

286 THE POSSESSED

You write a horrible style. I often don't read them at all, and
I've one lying about to this day, unopened. I'll send it to you
to-morrow. But that one, that last letter of yours was the tip-
top of perfection ! How I did laugh ! Oh, how I laughed ! "

" Monster, monster ! " wailed Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Foo, damn it all, there's no talking to you. I say, you're
getting huffy again as you were last Thursday."

Stepan Trofimovitch drew himself up, menacingly.

" How dare you speak to me in such language ? "

" What language % It's simple and clear."

" Tell me, you monster, are you my son or not ? "

' You know that best. To be sure all fathers are disposed
to be blind in such cases."

" Silence ! Silence ! " cried Stepan Trofimovitch, shaking all
over.

" You see you're screaming and swearing at me as you did last
Thursday. You tried to lift your stick against me, but you
know, I found that document. I was rummaging all the evening
in my trunk from curiosity. It's true there's nothing definite,
you can take that comfort. It's only a letter of my mother's to
that Pole. But to judge from her character . . ."

" Another word and I'll box your ears."

" What a set of people ! " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, suddenly
addressing himself to me. " You see, this is how we've been
ever since last Thursday. I'm glad you're here this time, any-
way, and can judge between us. To begin with, a fact : he
reproaches me for speaking like this of my mother, but didn't
he egg me on to it ? In Petersburg before I left the High School,
didn't he wake me twice in the night, to embrace me, and cry like
a woman, and what do you suppose he talked to me about at
night ? Why, the same modest anecdotes about my mother !
It was from him I first heard them."

" Oh, I meant that in a higher sense ! Oh, you didn't under-
stand me ! You understood nothing, nothing."

" But, anyway, it was meaner in you than in me, meaner,
acknowledge that. You see, it's nothing to me if you like. I'm
speaking from your point of view. Don't worry about my point
of view. I don't blame my mother ; if it's you, then it's you, if
it's a Pole, then it's a Pole, it's all the same to me. I'm not to
blame because you and she managed so stupidly in Berlin. As
though you could have managed things better. Aren't you an
absurd set, after that ? And does it matter to you whether I'm

ALL IN EXPECTATION 287

your son or not ? Listen," he went on, turning to me again,
" he's never spent a penny on me all his life ; till I was sixteen he
didn't know me at all ; afterwards he robbed me here, and now
he cries out that his heart has been aching over me all his life,
and carries on before me like an actor. I'm not Varvara Petrovna,
mind you."

He got up and took his hat.

" I curse you henceforth ! "

Stepan Trofimovitch, as pale as death, stretched out his hand
above him.

" Ach, what folly a man will descend to ! " cried Pyotr Stepano-
vitch, actually surprised. " Well, good-bye, old fellow, I shall
never come and see you again. Send me the article beforehand,
don't forget, and try and let it be free from nonsense. Facts,
facts, facts. And above all, let it be short. Good-bye."

Ill

Outside influences, too, had come into play in the matter,
however. Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly had some designs on
his parent. In my opinion he calculated upon reducing the
old man to despair, and so to driving him to some open scandal
of a certain sort. This was to serve some remote and quite other
object of his own, of which I shall speak hereafter. All sorts
of plans and calculations of this kind were swarming in masses
in his mind at that time, and almost all, of course, of a fantastic
character. He had designs on another victim beside Stepan
Trofimovitch. In fact, as appeared afterwards, his victims were
not few in number, but this one he reckoned upon particularly,
and it was Mr. von Lembke himself.

Andrey Antonovitch von Lembke belonged to that race, so
favoured by nature, which is reckoned by hundreds of thousands
at the Russian census, and is perhaps unconscious that it forms
throughout its whole mass a strictly organised union. And this
union, of course, is not planned and premeditated, but exists
spontaneously in the whole race, without words or agreements
as a moral obligation consisting in mutual support given by all
members of the race to one another, at all times and places, and
under all circumstances. Andrey Antonovitch had the honour
of being educated in one of those more exalted Russian educa-
tional institutions which are filled with the youth from families

288 THE POSSESSED

well provided with wealth or connections. Almost immediately
on finishing their studies the pupils were appointed to rather
important posts in one of the government departments. Andrey
Antonovitch had one uncle a colonel of engineers, and another
a baker. But he managed to get into this aristocratic school,
and met many of his fellow-countrymen in a similar position.
He was a good-humoured companion, was rather stupid at his
studies, but always popular. And when many of his companions
in the upper forms — chiefly Russians — had already learnt to
discuss the loftiest modern questions, and looked as though
they were only waiting to leave school to settle the affairs of the
universe, Andrey Antonovitch was still absorbed in the most
innocent schoolboy interests. He amused them all, it is true, by
his pranks, which were of a very simple character, at the most a
little coarse, but he made it his object to be funny. At one time
he would blow his nose in a wonderful way when the professor
addressed a question to him, thereby making his schoolfellows
and the professor laugh. Another time, in the dormitory, he
would act some indecent living picture, to the general applause, or
he would play the overture to " Fra Diavolo " with his nose
rather skilfully. He was distinguished, too, by intentional
untidiness, thinking this, for some reason, witty. In his very last
year at school he began writing Russian poetry.

Of his native language he had only an ungrammatical know-
ledge, like many of his race in Russia. This turn for versifying
drew him to a gloomy and depressed schoolfellow, the son of a
poor Russian general, who was considered in the school to be a
great future light in literature. The latter patronised him.
But it happened that three years after leaving school this melan-
choly schoolfellow, who had flung up his official career for the
sake of Russian literature, and was consequently going about in
torn boots, with his teeth chattering with cold, wearing a light
summer overcoat in the late autumn, met, one day on the
Anitchin bridge, his former protege, " Lembka," as he always
used to be called at school. And, what do you suppose ? He
did not at first recognise him, and stood still in surprise. Before
him stood an irreproachably dressed young man with wonderfully
well-kept whiskers of a reddish hue, with pince-nez, with patent-
leather boots, and the freshest of gloves, in a full overcoat from
Sharmer's, and with a portfolio under his arm. Lembke was
cordial to his old schoolfellow, gave him his address, and begged
him to come and see him some evening. It appeared, too, that

ALL IN EXPECTATION 289

he was by now not " Lembka " but " Von Lembke." The school-
fellow came to see him, however, simply from malice perhaps.
On the staircase, which was covered with red felt and was rather
ugly and by no means smart, he was met and questioned by the
house-porter. A bell rang loudly upstairs. But instead of the
wealth which the visitor expected, he found Lembke in a very
little side-room, which had a dark and dilapidated appearance,
partitioned into two by a large dark green curtain, and furnished
with very old though comfortable furniture, with dark green
blinds on high narrow windows. Von Lembke lodged in the
house of a very distant relation, a general who was his patron.
He met his visitor cordially, was serious and exquisitely polite.
They talked of literature, too, but kept within the bounds of
decorum. A manservant in a white tie brought them some
weak tea and little dry, round biscuits. The schoolfellow, from
spite, asked for some seltzer water. It was given him, but after
some delays, and Lembke was somewhat embarrassed at having
to summon the footman a second time and give him orders. But
of himself he asked his visitor whether he would like some supper,
and was obviously relieved when he refused and went away. In
short, Lembke was making his career, and was living in depen-
dence on his fellow-countryman, the influential general.

He was at that time sighing for the general's fifth daughter,
and it seemed to him that his feeling was reciprocated. But
Amalia was none the less married in due time to an elderly
factory-owner, a German, and an old comrade of the general's.
Andrey Antonovitch did not shed many tears, but made a paper
theatre. The curtain drew up, the actors came in, and gesticu-
lated with their arms. There were spectators in the boxes, the
orchestra moved their bows across their fiddles by machinery,
the conductor waved his baton, and in the stalls officers and
dandies clapped their hands. It was all made of cardboard, it
was all thought out and executed by Lembke himself. He spent
six months over this theatre. The general arranged a friendly
party on purpose. The theatre was exhibited, all the general's
five daughters, including the newly married Amalia with her
factory-owner, numerous fraus and frauleins with their men folk,
attentively examined and admired the theatre, after which they
danced. Lembke was much gratified and was quickly consoled.

The years passed by and his career was secured. He always
obtained good posts and always under chiefs of his own race ;
and he worked his way up at last to a very fine position

290 THE POSSESSED

for a man of his age. He had, for a long time, been wishing
to marry and looking about him carefully. Without the
knowledge of his superiors he had sent a novel to the
editor of a magazine, but it had not been accepted. On
the other hand, he cut out a complete toy railway, and again
his creation was most successful. Passengers came on to the
platform with bags and portmanteaux, with dogs and children,
and got into the carriages. The guards and porters moved away,
the bell was rung, the signal was given, and the train started off.
He was a whole year busy over this clever contrivance. But he
had to get married all the same. The circle of his acquaintance
was fairly wide, chiefly in the world of his compatriots, but his
duties brought him into Russian spheres also, of course.
Finally, when he was in his thirty-ninth year, he came in for a
legacy. His uncle the baker died, and left him thirteen thousand
roubles in his will. The one thing needful was a suitable post.
In spite of the rather elevated style of his surroundings in the
service, Mr. von Lembke was a very modest man. He would
have been perfectly satisfied with some independent little govern-
ment post, with the right to as much government timber as he
liked, or something snug of that sort, and he would have been
content all his life long. But now, instead of the Minna or
Ernestine he had expected, Yulia Mihailovna suddenly appeared
on the scene. His career was instantly raised to a more elevated
plane. The modest and precise man felt that he too was capable
of ambition.

Yulia Mihailovna had a fortune of two hundred serfs, to reckon
in the old style, and she had besides powerful friends. On the
other hand Lembke was handsome, and she was already over
forty. It is remarkable that he fell genuinely in love with her
by degrees as he became more used to being betrothed to her.
On the morning of his wedding day he sent her a poem. She
liked ail this very much, even the poem ; it's no joke to be forty.
He was very quickly raised to a certain grade and received a
certain order of distinction, and then was appointed governor of
our province.

Before coming to us Yulia Mihailovna worked hard at moulding
her husband. In her opinion he was not without abilities, he
knew how to make an entrance and to appear to advantage, he
understood how to listen and be silent with profundity, had
acquired a quite distinguished deportment, could make a speech,
indeed had even some odds and ends of thought, and had caught

ALL IN EXPECTATION 291

the necessary gloss of modern liberalism. What worried her.
however, was that he was not very open to new ideas, and after
the long, everlasting plodding for a career, was unmistakably
beginning to feel the need of repose. She tried to infect him with
her own ambition, and he suddenly began making a toy church :
the pastor came out to preach the sermon, the congregation
listened with their hands before them, one lady was drying her
tears with her handkerchief, one old gentleman was blowing his
nose ; finally the organ pealed forth. It had been ordered
from Switzerland, and made expressly in spite of all expense.
Yulia Mihailovna, in positive alarm, carried off the whole
structure as soon as she knew about it, and locked it up in a box
in her own room. To make up for it she allowed him to write a
novel on condition of its being kept secret. From that time she
began to reckon only upon herself. Unhappily there was a good
deal of shallowness and lack of judgment in her attitude. Destiny
had kept her too long an old maid. Now one idea after another
fluttered through her ambitious and rather over-excited brain „
She cherished designs, she positively desired to rule the province,
dreamed of becoming at once the centre of a circle, adopted
political sympathies. Von Lembke was actually a little alarmed,
though, with his official tact, he quickly divined that he had
no need at all to be uneasy about the government of the province
itself. The first two or three months passed indeed very satis-
factorily. But now Pyotr Stepanovitch had turned up, and
something queer began to happen.

The fact was that young Verhovensky, from the first step, had
displayed a flagrant lack of respect for Andrey Antonovitch, and
had assumed a strange right to dictate to him ; while Yulia
Mihailovna, who had always till then been so jealous of her
husband's dignity, absolutely refused to notice it ; or, at any
rate, attached no consequence to it. The young man became a
favourite, ate, drank, and almost slept in the house. Von Lembke
tried to defend himself, called him " young man " before other
people, and slapped him patronisingly on the shoulder, but made
no impression. Pyotr Stepanovitch always seemed to be
laughing in his face even when he appeared on the surface to be
talking seriously to him, and he would say the most startling
things to him before company. Returning home one day he
found the young man had installed himself in his study and was
asleep on the sofa there, uninvited. He explained that he had
come in, and finding no one at home had " had a good sleep."

292 THE POSSESSED

Von Lembke was offended and again complained to his wife.
Laughing at his irritability she observed tartly that he evidently
did not know how to keep up his own dignity ; and that with her,
anyway, "the boy" had never permitted himself any undue
familiarity, " he was naive and fresh indeed, though not regardful
of the conventions of society." Von Lembke sulked. This time
she made peace between them. Pyotr Stepanovitch did not
go so far as to apologise, but got out of it with a coarse jest, which
might at another time have been taken for a fresh offence, but was
accepted on this occasion as a token of repentance. The weak
spot in Andrey Antonovitch's position was that he had blundered
in the first instance by divulging the secret of his novel to him.
Imagining him to be an ardent young man of poetic feeling and
having long dreamed of securing a listener, he had, during the
early days of their acquaintance, on one occasion read aloud
two chapters to him. The young man had listened without
disguising his boredom, had rudely yawned, had vouchsafed no
word of praise ; but on leaving had asked for the manuscript that
he might form an opinion of it at his leisure, and Andrey Antono-
vitch had given it him. He had not returned the manuscript
since, though he dropped in every day, and had turned off all
inquiries with a laugh. Afterwards he declared that he had lost
it in the street. At the time Yulia Mihailovna was terribly angry
with her husband when she heard of it.

" Perhaps you told him about the church too ? " she burst
out almost in dismay.

Von Lembke unmistakably began to brood, and brooding was
bad for him, and had been forbidden by the doctors. Apart
from the fact that there were signs of trouble in the province, of
which we will speak later, he had private reasons for brooding,
his heart was wounded, not merely his official dignity. When
Andrey Antonovitch had entered upon married life, he had never
conceived the possibility of conjugal strife, or dissension in the
future. It was inconsistent with the dreams he had cherished all
his life of his Minna or Ernestine. He felt that he was unequal
to enduring domestic storms. Yulia Mihailovna had an open
explanation with him at last.

" You can't be angry at this," she said, " if only because you've
still as much sense as he has, and are immeasurably higher in the
social scale. The boy still preserves many traces of his old free-
thinking habits ; I believe it's simply mischief ; but one can
do nothing suddenly, in a hurry ; you must do things by degrees.

ALL IN EXPECTATION 293

We must make much of our young people ; I treat them with
affection and hold them back from the brink."

" But he says such dreadful things," Von Lembke objected.
" I can't behave tolerantly when he maintains in my presence
and before other people that the government purposely drenches
the people with vodka in order to brutalise them, and so keep
them from revolution. Fancy my position when I'm forced to
listen to that before every one."

As he said this, Von Lembke recalled a conversation he had
recently had with Pyotr Stepanovitch. With the innocent object
of displaying his Liberal tendencies he had shown him his own
private collection of every possible kind of manifesto, Russian and
foreign, which he had carefully collected since the year 1859, not
simply from a love of collecting but from a laudable interest
in them. Pyotr Stepanovitch, seeing his object, expressed the
opinion that there was more sense in one line of some manifestoes
than in a whole government department, " not even excluding
yours, maybe."

Lembke winced.

"But this is premature among us, premature," he pro-
nounced almost imploringly, pointing to the manifestoes.

" No, it's not premature ; you see you're afraid, so it's not
premature."

" But here, for instance, is an incitement to destroy churches."

" And why not ? You're a sensible man, and of course you
don't believe in it yourself, but you know perfectly well that you
need religion to brutalise the people. Truth is honester than
falsehood. ..."

" I agree, I agree, I quite agree with you, but it is premature,
premature in this country ..." said Von Lembke, frowning.

" And how can you be an official of the government after that,
when you agree to demolishing churches, and marching on
Petersburg armed with staves, and make it all simply a question of
date ? "

Lembke was greatly put out at being so crudely caught.

" It's not so, not so at all," he cried, carried away and more and
more mortified in his amour-propre. " You're young, and know
nothing of our aims, and that's why you're mistaken. You see,
my dear Pyotr Stepanovitch, you call us officials of the govern-
ment, don't you ? Independent officials, don't you ? But let
me ask you, how are we acting ? Ours is the responsibility,
but in the long run we serve the cause of progress just as you do.

294 THE POSSESSED

We only hold together what you are unsettling, and what, but for
us, would go to pieces in all directions. We are not your enemies,
not a bit of it. We say to you, go forward, progress, you may
even unsettle things, that is, things that are antiquated and
in need of reform. But we will keep you, when need be, within
necessary limits, and so save you from yourselves, for without us
you would set Russia tottering, robbing her of all external
decency, while our task is to preserve external decency. Under-
stand that we are mutually essential to one another. In England
the Whigs and Tories are in the same way mutually essential to
one another. Well, you're Whigs and we're Tories. That's how
I look at it."

Andrey Antonovitch rose to positive eloquence. He had been
fond of talking in a Liberal and intellectual style even in Peters-
burg, and the great thing here was that there was no one to play
the spy on him.

Pyotr Stepanovitch was silent, and maintained an unusually
grave air. This excited the orator more than ever.

" Do you know that I, the ' person responsible for the
province,' " he went on, walking about the study, " do you know
I have so many duties I can't perform one of them, and, on the
other hand, I can say just as truly that there's nothing for me
to do here. The whole secret of it is, that everything depends
upon the views of the government. Suppose the government
were ever to found a republic, from policy, or to pacify public
excitement, and at the same time to increase the power of the
governors, then we governors would swallow up the republic ; and
not the republic only. Anything you like we'll swallow up. I, at
least, feel that I am ready. In one word, if the government
dictates to me by telegram, activite devorante, I'll supply
activite devorante. I've told them here straight in their faces :
' Dear sirs, to maintain the equilibrium and to develop all the
provincial institutions one thing is essential ; the increase of the
power of the governor.' You see it's necessary that all these
institutions, the zemstvos, the law-courts, should have a two-fold
existence, that is, on the one hand, it's necessary they should
exist (I agree that it is necessary), on the other hand, it's necessary
that they shouldn't. It's all according to the views of the
government. If the mood takes them so that institutions seem
suddenly necessary, I shall have them at once in readiness.
The necessity passes and no one will find them under my rule.
That's what I understand by activite devorante, and you cant

ALL IN EXPECTATION 295

have it without an increase of the governor's power. We're
talking tete-a-tete. You know I've already laid before the
government in Petersburg the necessity of a special sentinel
before the governor's house. I'm awaiting an answer."

" You ought to have two," Pyotr Stepanovitch commented.
" Why two ? " said Von Lembke, stopping short before him.
" One's not enough to create respect for you. You certainly
ought to have two."

Andrey Antonovitch made a wry face.

" You . . . there's no limit to the liberties you take, Pyotr
Stepanovitch. You take advantage of my good-nature, you
say cutting things, and play the part of a bourru bienfaisant. ..."
" Well, that's as you please," muttered Pyotr Stepanovitch ;
" anyway you pave the way for us and prepare for our
success."

" Now, who are ' we,' and what success ? " said Von Lembke,
staring at him in surprise. But he got no answer.

Yulia Mihailovna, receiving a report of the conversation, was
greatly displeased.

" But I can't exercise my official authority upon your
favourite," Andrey Antonovitch protested in self-defence,
" especially when we're tete-a-tUe. . . . I may say too much . . .
in the goodness of my heart."

" From too much goodness of heart. I didn't know you'd got
a collection of manifestoes. Be so good as to show them to me."
" But ... he asked to have them for one day."
" And you've let him have them, again ! " cried Yulia Mihail-
ovna getting angry. " How tactless ! "

" I'll send some one to him at once to get them."
" He won't give them up."

" I'll insist on it," cried Von Lembke, boiling over, and he
jumped up from his seat. " Who's he that we should be so
afraid of him, and who am I that I shouldn't dare to do any-
thing ? "

" Sit down and calm yourself," said Yulia Mihailovna, checking
him. " I will answer your first question. He came to me with
the highest recommendations. He's talented, and sometimes
says extremely clever things. Karmazinov tells me that he has
connections almost everywhere, and extraordinary influence over
the younger generation in Petersburg and Moscow. And if
through him I can attract them all and group them round myself,
I shall be saving them from perdition by guiding them into a

296 THE POSSESSED

new outlet for their ambitions. He's devoted to me with his
whole heart and is guided by me in everything."

;i But while they're being petted . . . the devil knows what
they may not do. Of course, it's an idea ..." said Von Lembke,
vaguely defending himself, " but . . . but here I've heard
that manifestoes of some sort have been found in X district."

:' But there was a rumour of that in the summer — manifestoes,
false bank-notes, and all the rest of it, but they haven't found
one of them so far. Who told you ? "

" I heard it from Von Blum."

" Ah, don't talk to me of your Blum. Don't ever dare
mention him again ! "

Yulia Mihailovna flew into a rage, and for a moment could not
speak. Von Blum was a clerk in the governor's office whom she
particularly hated. Of that later.

' Please don't worry yourself about Verhovensky," she said
in conclusion. " If he had taken part in any mischief he wouldn't
talk as he does to you, and every one else here. Talkers are not
dangerous, and I will even go so far as to say that if anything
were to happen I should be the first to hear of it through him.
He's quite fanatically devoted to me."

I will observe, anticipating events that, had it not been for
Yulia Mihailovna's obstinacy and self-conceit, probably nothing
of all the mischief these wretched people succeeded in bringing
about amongst us would have happened. She was responsible
for a great deal

CHAPTER V
ON THE EVE OF THE FfiTE

The date of the fete which Yulia Mihailovna was getting up
for the benefit of the governesses of our province had been
several times fixed and put off. She had invariably bustling round
her Pyotr Stepanovitch and a little clerk, Lyamshin, who used
at one time to visit Stepan Trofimovitch, and had suddenly found
favour in the governor's house for the way he played the piano
and now was of use running errands . Liputin was there a good deal
too, and Yulia Mihailovna destined him to be the editor of a new
independent provincial paper. There were also several ladies,
married and single, and lastly, even Karmazinov who, though
he could not be said to bustle, announced aloud with a complacent
air that he would agreeably astonish every one when the literary
quadrille began. An extraordinary multitude of donors and
subscribers had turned up, all the select society of the town ; but
even the unselect were admitted, if only they produced the
cash. Yulia Mihailovna observed that sometimes it was a positive
duty to allow the mixing of classes, " for otherwise who is to
enlighten them ? "

A private drawing-room committee was formed, at which it
was decided that the fete was to be of a democratic character.
The enormous list of subscriptions tempted them to lavish
expenditure. They wanted to do something on a marvellous
scale — that's why it was put off. They were still undecided
where the ball was to take place, whether in the immense hou^e
belonging to the marshal's wife, which she was willing to give up
to them for the day, or at Varvara Petrovna's mansion at
Skvoreshniki. It was rather a distance to Skvoreshniki, but
many of the committee were of opinion that it would be " freer "
there. Varvara Petrovna would dearly have liked it to have
been in her house. It's difficult to understand why this
proud woman seemed almost making up to Yulia Mihailovna.
Probably what pleased her was that the latter in her turn
seemed almost fawning upon Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch and
was more gracious to him than to anyone. I repeat again that

297

298 THE POSSESSED

Pyotr Stepanovitch was always, in continual whispers, strengthen-
ing in the governor's household an idea he had insinuated there
already, that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch was a man who had very
mysterious connections with very mysterious circles, and that he
had certainly come here with some commission from them.

People here seemed in a strange state of mind at the time.
Among the ladies especially a sort of frivolity was conspicuous,
and it could not be said to be a gradual growth. Certain very
free-and-easy notions seemed to be in the air. There was a sort of
dissipated gaiety and levity, and I can't say it was always quite
pleasant. A lax way of thinking was the fashion. Afterwards
when it was all over, people blamed Yulia Mihailovna, her circle,
her attitude. But it can hardly have been altogether due to
Yulia Mihailovna. On the contrary ; at first many people vied
with one another in praising the new governor's wife for her
success in bringing local society together, and for making things
more lively. Several scandalous incidents took place, for which
Yulia Mihailovna was in no way responsible, but at the time people
were amused and did nothing but laugh, and there was no one
to check them. A rather large group of people, it is true, held
themselves aloof, and had views of their own on the course of
events. But even these made no complaint at the time ; they
smiled, in fact.

I remember that a fairly large circle came into existence,
as it were, spontaneously, the centre of which perhaps was really
to be found in Yulia Mihailovna' s drawing-room. In this
intimate circle which surrounded her, among the younger
members of it, of course, it was considered admissible to play all
sorts of pranks, sometimes rather free-and-easy ones, and, in
fact, such conduct became a principle among them. In this
circle there were even some very charming ladies. The young
people arranged picnics, and even parties, and sometimes went
about the town in a regular cavalcade, in carriages and on
horseback. They sought out adventures, even got them up
themselves, simply for the sake of having an amusing story to
tell. They treated our town as though it were a sort of Glupov.
People called them the jeerers or sneerers, because they did not
stick at anything. It happened, for instance, that the wife of a
local lieutenant, a little brunette, very young though she looked
worn out from her husband's ill-treatment, at an evening party
thoughtlessly sat down to play whist for high stakes in the fervent
hope of winning enough to buy herself a mantle, and instead of

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 29&

winning, lost fifteen roubles. Being afraid of her husband, and
having no means of paying, she plucked up the courage of
former days and ventured on the sly to ask for a loan, on the
spot, at the party, from the son of our mayor, a very nasty youth,
precociously vicious. The latter not only refused it, but went
laughing aloud to tell her husband. The lieutenant, who
certainly was poor, with nothing but his salary, took his wife home
and avenged himself upon her to his heart's content in spite of
her shrieks, wails, and entreaties on her knees for forgiveness.
This revolting story excited nothing but mirth all over the town,
and though the poor wife did not belong to Yulia Mihailovna's
circle, one of the ladies of the " cavalcade," an eccentric and
adventurous character who happened to know her, drove round,
and simply carried her off to her own house. Here she was at once
taken up by our madcaps, made much of, loaded with presents,
and kept for four days without being sent back to her husband.
She stayed at the adventurous lady's all day long, drove about
with her and all the sportive company in expeditions about
the town, and took part in dances and merry-making. They
kept egging her on to haul her husband before the court and to
make a scandal. They declared that they would all support her
and would come and bear witness. The husband kept quiet,
not daring to oppose them. The poor thing realised at last that
she had got into a hopeless position and, more dead than alive
with fright, on the fourth day she ran off in the dusk from her
protectors to her lieutenant. It's not definitely known what took
place between husband and wife, but two shutters of the low-
pitched little house in which the lieutenant lodged were not opened
for a fortnight. Yulia Mihailovna was angry with the mischief-
makers when she heard about it all, and was greatly displeased
with the conduct of the adventurous lady, though the latter
had presented the lieutenant's wife to her on the day she carried
her off. However, this was soon forgotten.

Another time a petty clerk, a respectable head of a family,
married his daughter, a beautiful girl of seventeen, known to
every one in the town, to another petty clerk, a young man who
came from a different district. But suddenly it was learned that
the young husband had treated the beauty very roughly on the
wedding night, chastising her for what he regarded as a stain on
his honour. Lyamshin, who was almost a witness of the affair,
because he got drunk at the wedding and so stayed the night,
as soon as day dawned, ran round with the diverting intelligence.

300 THE POSSESSED

Instantly a party of a dozen was made up, all of them on horse-
back, some on hired Cossack horses, Pyotr Stepanovitch, for
instance, and Liputin, who, in spite of his grey hairs, took part in
almost every scandalous adventure of our reckless youngsters.
When the young couple appeared in the street in a droshky with
a pair of horses to make the calls which are obligatory in our town
on the day after a wedding, in spite of anything that may happen,
the whole cavalcade, with merry laughter, surrounded the droshky
and followed them about the town all the morning. They did
not, it's true, go into the house, but waited for them outside,
on horseback. They refrained from marked insult to the bride
or bridegroom, but still they caused a scandal. The whole
town began talking of it. Every one laughed, of course. But
at this Von Lembke was angry, and again had a lively scene
with Yulia Mihailovna. She, too, was extremely angry, and
formed the intention of turning the scapegraces out of her house.
But next day she forgave them all after persuasions from Pyotr
Stepanovitch and some words from Karmazinov, who considered
the affair rather amusing.

" It's in harmony with the traditions of the place," he said.
" Anyway it's characteristic and . . . bold ; and look, every
one's laughing, you're the only person indignant."

But there were pranks of a certain character that were abso-
lutely past endurance.

A respectable woman of the artisan class, who went about
selling gospels, came into the town. People talked about her,
because some interesting references to these gospel women had
just appeared in the Petersburg papers. Again the same buffoon,
Lyamshin, with the help of a divinity student, who was taking a
holiday while waiting for a post in the school, succeeded, on the
pretence of buying books from the gospel woman, in thrusting into
her bag a whole bundle of indecent and obscene photographs from
abroad, sacrificed expressly for the purpose, as we learned after-
wards, by a highly respectable old gentleman (I will omit his name)
with an order on his breast, who, to use his own words, loved " a
healthy laugh and a merry jest." When the poor woman went to
take out the holy books in the bazaar, the photographs were
scattered about the place. There were roars of laughter and
murmurs of indignation. A crowd collected, began abusing her,
and would have come to blows if the police had not arrived in the
nick of time. The gospel woman was taken to the lock-up, and
only in the evening, thanks to the efforts of Mavriky Nikolaevitch,

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 301

who had learned with indignation the secret details of this loath-
some affair, she was released and escorted out of the town. At
this point Yulia Mihailovna would certainly have forbidden
Lyamshin her house, but that very evening the whole circle
brought him to her with the intelligence that he had just com-
posed a new piece for the piano, and persuaded her at least to
hear it. The piece turned out to be really amusing, and bore the
comic title of " The Franco- Prussian War." It began with the
menacing strains of the "Marseillaise " :

" Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons"

There is heard the pompous challenge, the intoxication of
future victories. But suddenly mingling with the masterly
variations on the national hymn, somewhere from some corner
quite close, on one side come the vulgar strains of "Mein lieber
Augustin." The "Marseillaise" goes on unconscious of them.
The " Marseillaise " is at the climax of its intoxication with its own
grandeur ; but Augustin gains strength ; Augustin grows more
and more insolent, and suddenly the melody of Augustin begins
to blend with the melody of the " Marseillaise." The latter
begins, as it were, to get angry ; becoming aware of Augustin
at last she tries to fling him off, to brush him aside like a tiresome
insignificant fly. But " Mein lieber Augustin " holds his ground
firmly, he is cheerful and self-confident, he is gleeful and impudent,
and the " Marseillaise " seems suddenly to become terribly
stupid. She can no longer conceal her anger and mortification ;
it is a wail of indignation, tears, and curses, with hands out-
stretched to Providence.

" Pas un pouce de notre terrain ; pas une de nos forter esses ."

But she is forced to sing in time with " Mein lieber Augustin."
Her melody passes in a sort of foolish way into Augustin ; she
yields and dies away. And only by snatches there is heard
again :

" Qu'un sang impur ..."

But at once it passes very offensively into the vulgar waltz.
She submits altogether. It is Jules Favre sobbing on Bismarck's
bosom and surrendering everything. . . . But at this point
Augustin too grows fierce ; hoarse sounds are heard ; there is
a suggestion* of countless gallons of beer, of a frenzy of self-
glorification, demands for millions, for fine cigars, champagne,
and hostages. Augustin passes into a wild yell. . . . "The
Franco- Prussian War" is over. Our circle applauded, Yulia
Mihailovna smiled, and said, " Now, how is one to turn him

302 THE POSSESSED

out?' Peace was made. The rascal really had talent. Stepan
Trofimovitch assured me on one occasion that the very highest
artistic talents may exist in the most abominable blackguards,
and that the one thing does not interfere with the other. There
was a rumour afterwards that Lyamshin had stolen this burlesque
from a talented and modest young man of his acquaintance,
whose name remained unknown. But this is beside the mark.
This worthless fellow who had hung about Stepan Trofimovitch
for years, who used at his evening parties, when invited, to
mimic Jews of various types, a deaf peasant woman making her
confession, or the birth of a child, now at Yulia Mihailovna's
caricatured Stepan Trofimovitch himself in a killing way, under
the title of " A Liberal of the Forties." Everybody shook with
laughter, so that in the end it was quite impossible to turn him
out : he had become too necessary a person. Besides he fawned
upon Pyotr Stepanovitch in a slavish way, and he, in his turn,
had obtained by this time a strange and unaccountable influence
over Yulia Mihailovna.

I wouldn't have talked about this scoundrel, and, indeed, he
would not be worth dwelling upon, but there was another
revolting story, so people declare, in which he had a hand, and
this story I cannot omit from my record.

One morning the news of a hideous and revolting sacrilege
was all over the town. At the entrance to our immense market-
place there stands the ancient church of Our Lady's Nativity,
which was a remarkable antiquity in our ancient town. At
the gates of the precincts there is a large ikon of the Mother of
God fixed behind a grating in the wall. And behold, one night
the ikon had been robbed, the glass of the case was broken, the
grating was smashed and several stones and pearls (I don't know
whether they were very precious ones) had been removed from
the crown and the setting. But what was worse, besides the
theft a senseless, scoffing sacrilege had been perpetrated. Behind
the broken glass of the ikon they found in the morning, so it was
said, a live mouse. Now, four months since, it has been estab-
lished beyond doubt that the crime was committed by the convict
Fedka, but for some reason it is added that Lyamshin took
part in it. At the time no one spoke of Lyamshin or had any
suspicion of him. But now every one says it was he who put
the mouse there. I remember all our responsible officials were
rather staggered. A crowd thronged round the scene of the
crime from early morning. There was a crowd continually

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 303

before it, not a very huge one, but always about a hundred people,
some coming and some going. As they approached they crossed
themselves and bowed down to the ikon. They began to give
offerings, and a church dish made its appearance, and with the
dish a monk. But it was only about three o'clock in the afternoon
it occurred to the authorities that it was possible to prohibit the
crowds standing about, and to command them when they had
prayed, bowed down and left their offerings, to pass on. Upon
Von Lembke this unfortunate incident made the gloomiest
impression. As I was told, Yulia Mihailovna said afterwards
it was from this ill-omened morning that she first noticed in her
husband that strange depression which persisted in him until he
left our province on account of illness two months ago, and, I
believe, haunts him still in Switzerland, where he has gone for a
rest after his brief career amongst us.

I remember at one o'clock in the afternoon I crossed the market-
place ; the crowd was silent and their faces solemn and gloomy.
A merchant, fat and sallow, drove up, got out of his carriage,
made a bow to the ground, kissed the ikon, offered a rouble,
sighing, got back into his carriage and drove off. Another
carriage drove up with two ladies accompanied by two of our
scapegraces. The young people (one of whom was not quite
young) got out of their carriage too, and squeezed their way up
to the ikon, pushing people aside rather carelessly. Neither of
the young men took off his hat, and one of them put a pince-nez
on his nose. In the crowd there was a murmur, vague but
unfriendly. The dandy with the pince-nez took out of his
purse, which was stuffed full of bank-notes, a copper farthing and
flung it into the dish. Both laughed, and, talking loudly, went
back to their carriage. At that moment Lizaveta Nikolaevna
galloped up, escorted by Mavriky Nikolaevitch. She jumped
off her horse, flung the reins to her companion, who, at her bidding,
remained on his horse, and approached the ikon at the very
moment when the farthing had been flung down. A flush of
indignation suffused her cheeks ; she took off her round hat and
her gloves, fell straight on her knees before the ikon on the
muddy pavement, and reverently bowed down three times to
the earth. Then she took out her purse, but as it appeared
she had only a few small coins in it she instantly took off her
diamond ear-rings and put them in the dish.

" May I ? May I 1 For the adornment of the setting ? "
she asked the monk.

304 THE POSSESSED

"It is permitted," replied the latter, " every gift is good."
The crowd was silent, expressing neither dissent nor approval.

Liza got on her horse again, in her muddy riding-habit, and

galloped away.

II

Two days after the incident I have described I met her in a
numerous company, who were driving out on some expedition
in three coaches, surrounded by others on horseback. She
beckoned to me, stopped her carriage, and pressingly urged me
to join their party. A place was found for me in the carriage,
and she laughingly introduced me to her companions, gorgeously
attired ladies, and explained to me that they were all going on a
very interesting expedition. She was laughing, and seemed
somewhat excessively happy. Just lately she had been very
lively, even playful, in fact.

The expedition was certainly an eccentric one. They were all
going to a house the other side of the river, to the merchant
Sevastyanov's. In the lodge of this merchant's house our
saint and prophet, Semyon Yakovlevitch, who was famous not
only amongst us but in the surrounding provinces and even in
Petersburg and Moscow, had been living for the last ten years,
in retirement, ease, and comfort. Every one went to see him,
especially visitors to the neighbourhood, extracting from him
some crazy utterance, bowing down to him, and leaving an
offering. These offerings were sometimes considerable, and if
Semyon Yakovlevitch did not himself assign them to some other
purpose were piously sent to some church or more often to the
monastery of Our Lady. A monk from the monastery
was always in waiting upon Semyon Yakovlevitch with this
object.

All were in expectation of great amusement. No one of the
party had seen Semyon Yakovlevitch before, except Lj-amshin,
who declared that the saint had given orders that he should
be driven out with a broom, and had with his own hand flung
two big baked potatoes after him. Among the party I noticed
Pyotr Stepanovitch, again riding a hired Cossack horse, on which
he sat extremely badly, and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, also on
horseback. The latter did not always hold aloof from social
diversions, and on such occasions always wore an air of gaiety,
although, as always, he spoke little and seldom. When our party

/ ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 305

/ r>ad crossed the bridge and reached the hotel of the town, some
one suddenly announced that in one of the rooms of the hotel
they had just found a traveller who had shot himself, and
were expecting the police. At once the suggestion was made
that they should go and look at the suicide. The idea met with
approval : our ladies had never seen a suicide. I remember
one of them said aloud on the occasion, " Everything's so boring,
one can't be squeamish over one's amusements, as long as they're
interesting." Only a few of them remained outside. The
others went in a body into the dirty corridor, and amongst the
others I saw, to my amazement, Lizaveta Nikolaevna. The
door of the room was open, and they did not, of course, dare to
prevent our going in to look at the suicide. He was quite a
young lad, not more than nineteen. He must have been very good-
looking, with thick fair hair, with a regular oval face, and a fine,
pure forehead. The body was already stiff, and his white young
face looked like marble. On the table lay a note, in his hand-
writing, to the effect that no one was to blame for his death,
that he had killed himself because he had " squandered " four
hundred roubles. The word " squandered " was used in the letter ;
in the four lines of his letter there were three mistakes in spelling.
A stout country gentleman, evidently a neighbour, who had
been staying in the hotel on some business of his own, was
particularly distressed about it. From his words it appeared
that the boy had been sent by his family, that is, a widowed
mother, sisters, and aunts, from the country to the town in order
that, under the supervision of a female relation in the town,
he might purchase and take home with him various articles for
the trousseau of his eldest sister, who was going to be married.
The family had, with sighs of apprehension, entrusted him with
the four hundred roubles, the savings of ten years, and had sent
him on his way with exhortations, prayers, and signs of the
cross. The boy had till then been well-behaved and trust-
worthy. Arriving three days before at the town, he had not gone
to his relations, had put up at the hotel, and gone straight to
the club in the hope of finding in some back room a " travelling
banker," or at least some game of cards for money. But that
evening there was no " banker " there or gambling going on.
Going back to the hotel about midnight he asked for champagne,
Havana cigars, and ordered a supper of six or seven dishes.
But the champagne made him drunk, and the cigar made him
sick, so that he did not touch the food when it was brought to

TI

306 THE POSSESSED

him, and went to bed almost unconscious. Waking next morning
as fresh as an apple, he went at once to the gipsies' camp, which
was in a suburb beyond the river, and of which he had heard the
day before at the club. He did not reappear at the hotel for two
days. At last, at five o'clock in the afternoon of the previous
day, he had returned drunk, had at once gone to bed, and had slept
till ten o'clock in the evening. On waking up he had asked
for a cutlet, a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem, and some grapes,
paper, and ink, and his bill. No one noticed anything special
about him ; he was quiet, gentle, and friendly. He must have
shot himself at about midnight, though it was strange that no
one had heard the shot, and they only raised the alarm at midday,
when, after knocking in vain, they had broken in the door. The
bottle of Chateau d'Yquem was half empty, there was half a plate-
ful of grapes left too. The shot had been fired from a little three-
chambered revolver, straight into the heart. Very little blood
had flowed. The revolver had dropped from his hand on to
the carpet. The boy himself was half lying in a corner of the
sofa. Death must have been instantaneous. There was no
trace of the anguish of death in the face ; the expression was
serene, almost happy, as though there were no cares in his life.
All our party stared at him with greedy curiosity. In every
misfortune of one's neighbour there is always something cheering
for an onlooker — whoever he may be. Our ladies gazed in
silence, their companions distinguished themselves by their
wit and their superb equanimity. One observed that his was
the best way out of it, and that the boy could not have hit upon
anything more sensible ; another observed that he had had
a good time if only for a moment. A third suddenly blurted
out the inquiry why people had begun hanging and shooting
themselves among us of late, as though they had suddenly lost
their roots, as though the ground were giving way under every one's
feet. People looked coldly at this raisonneur. Then Lyamshin,
who prided himself on playing the fool, took a bunch of grapes
from the plate ; another, laughing, followed his example, and
a third stretched out his hand for the Chateau d'Yquem. But
the head of police arriving checked him, and even ordered that
the room should be cleared. As every one had seen all they
wanted they went out without disputing, though Lyamshin
began pestering the police captain about something. The
general merrymaking, laughter, and playful talk were twice as
lively on the latter half of the way.

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 307

We arrived at Semyon Yakovlevitch's just at one o'clock. The
gate of the rather large house stood unfastened, and the approach
to the lodge was open. We learnt at once that Semyon Yakov-
levitch was dining, but was receiving guests. The whole crowd of
us went in. The room in which the saint dined and received
visitors had three windows, and was fairly large. It was divided
into two equal parts by a wooden lattice-work partition, which
ran from wall to wall, and was three or four feet high. Ordinary
visitors remained on the outside of this partition, but lucky ones
were by the saint's invitation admitted through the partition
doors into his half of the room. And if so disposed he made
them sit down on the sofa or on his old leather chairs. He
himself invariably sat in an old-fashioned shabby Voltaire * cn
arm-chair. , He was a rather big, bloated-looking, yellow-faced' tJ
man of five and fifty, with a bald head and scanty flaxen hair. \Cp^yi
He wore no beard ; his right cheek was swollen, and his mouth j '
seemed somehow twisted awry. He had a large wart on the )
left side of his nose ; narrow eyes, and a calm, stolid, sleepy f
expression. ./He waif dressed in European style, in a black coat, '
but had no waistcoat or tie. A rather coarse, but white shirt,
peeped out below his coat. There was something the matter
with his feet, I believe, and he kept them in slippers. I've heard
that he had at one time been a clerk, and received a rank in the
service. He had just finished some fish soup, and was beginning
his second dish of potatoes in their skins, eaten with salt. He
never ate anything else, but he drank a great deal of tea, of which
he was very fond. Three servants provided by the merchant
were running to and fro about him. One of them was in a
swallow-tail, the second looked like a workman, and the third
like a verger. There was also a very lively boy of sixteen.
Besides the servants there was present, holding a jug, a reverend,
grey-headed monk, who was a little too fat. On one of the tables
a huge samovar was boiling, and a tray with almost two dozen
glasses was standing near it. On another table opposite offerings
had been placed : some loaves and also some pounds of sugar,
two pounds of tea, a pair of embroidered slippers, a foulard
handkerchief, a length of cloth, a piece of linen, and so on.
Money offerings almost all went into the monk's jug. The room
was full of people, at least a dozen visitors, of whom two were
sitting with Semyon Yako vlevitch on the other side of the partition.
One was a grey-headed old pilgrim of the peasant class, and the
other a little, dried-up monk, who sat demurely, with his eyes

308 THE POSSESSED

cast down. The other visitors were all standing on the near
bide of the partition, and were mostly, too, of the peasant class,
except one elderly and poverty-stricken lady, one landowner, and
a stout merchant, who had come from the district town, a man
with a big beard, dressed in the Russian style, though he was
known to be worth a hundred thousand.

All were waiting for their chance, not daring to speak of them-
selves. Four were on their knees, but the one who attracted
most attention was the landowner, a stout man of forty-five,
kneeling right at the partition, more conspicuous than any one,
waiting reverently for a propitious word or look from Semyon
Yakovlevitch. He had been there for about an hour already,
but the saint still did not notice him.

Our ladies crowded right up to the partition, whispering gaily
and laughingly together. They pushed aside or got in front of
all the other visitors, even those on their knees, except the land-
owner, who remained obstinately in his prominent position
even holding on to the partition. Merry and greedily inquisitive
eyes were turned upon Semyon Yakovlevitch, as well as lorgnettes,
pince-nez, and even opera-glasses. Lyamshin, at any rate,
looked through an opera-glass. Semyon Yakovlevitch calmly
and lazily scanned all with his little eyes.

" Milovzors ! Milovzors ! ': he deigned to pronounce, in a
hoarse bass, and slightly staccato.

All our party laughed : " What's the meaning of ' Milovzors ' ? "'
But Semyon Yakovlevitch relapsed into silence, and finished
his potatoes. Presently he wiped his lips with his napkin, and
they handed him tea.

As a rule, he did not take tea alone, but poured out some for
his visitors, but by no means for all, usually pointing himself to
those he wished to honour. And his choice always surprised
people by its unexpectedness. Passing by the wealthy and the
high-placed, he sometimes pitched upon a peasant or some
decrepit old woman. Another time he would pass over the beggars
to honour some fat wealthy merchant. Tea was served diffe-
rently, too, to different people, sugar was put into some of the
glasses and handed separately with others, while some got it
without any sugar at all. This time the favoured one was the
monk sitting by him, who had sugar put in ; and the old pilgrim,
to whom it was given without any sugar. The fat monk with the
jug, from the monastery, for some reason had none handed to
him at all, though up till then he had had his glass every day.

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 309

" Semyon Yokovlevitch, do say something to me. I've been
longing to make your acquaintance for ever so long," carolled
the gorgeously dressed lady from our carriage, screwing up her
eyes and smiling. She was the lady who had observed that one
must not be squeamish about one's amusements, so long as they
were interesting. Semyon Yakovlevitch did not even look at
her. The kneeling landowner uttered a deep, sonorous sigh,
like the sound of a big pair of bellows.

" With sugar in it ! " said Semyon Yakovlevitch suddenly,
pointing to the wealthy merchant. The latter moved forward
and stood beside the kneeling gentleman.

" Some more sugar for him ! " ordered Semyon Yakovlevitch,
after the glass had already been poured out. They put some
more in. " More, more, for him ! " More was put in a third time,
and again a fourth. The merchant began submissively drinking
his syrup.

" Heavens ! " whispered the people, crossing themselves. The
kneeling gentleman again heaved a deep, sonorous sigh.

" Father ! Semyon Yakovlevitch ! " The voice of the poor

ady rang out all at once plaintively, though so sharply that it

was startling. Our party had shoved her back to the wall.

" A whole hour, dear father, I've been waiting for grace. Speak

to me. Consider my case in my helplessness."

" Ask her," said Semyon Yakovlevitch to the verger, who
went to the partition.

" Have you done what Semyon Yakovlevitch bade you last
time ? " he asked the widow in a soft and measured voice.

" Done it ! Father Semyon Yakovlevitch. How can one do
it with them ? " wailed the widow. " They're cannibals ; they're
lodging a complaint against me, in the court ; they threaten to
take it to the senate. That's how they treat their own mother ! "

" Give her ! " Semyon Yakovlevitch pointed to a sugar-loaf.
The boy skipped up, seized the sugar-loaf and dragged it to the
widow.

" Ach, father ; great is your merciful kindness. What am I
to do with so much ? " wailed the widow.

iS More, more," said Semyon Yakovlevitch lavishly.

They dragged her another sugar-loaf. "More, more ! " the
saint commanded. They took her a third, and finally a fourth.
The widow was surrounded with sugar on all sides. The monk
from the monastery sighed ; all this might have gone to the
monastery that day as it had done on former occasions.

310 THE POSSESSED

" What am I to do with so much," the widow sighed obse-
quiously. "It's enough to make one person sick ! ... Is it
some sort of a prophecy, father ? "

" Be sure it's by way of a prophecy," said some one in the crowd.

" Another pound for her, another ! " Semyon Yakovlevitch
persisted.

There was a whole sugar-loaf still on the table, but the saint
ordered a pound to be given, and they gave her a pound.

" Lord have mercy on us ! " gasped the people, crossing them-
selves. "It's surely a prophecy."

" Sweeten your heart for the future with mercy and loving
kindness, and then come to make complaints against your own
children ; bone of your bone. That's what we must take this
emblem to mean," the stout monk from the monastery, who had
had no tea given to him, said softly but self-complacently,
taking upon himself the role of interpreter in an access of wounded
vanity.

" What are you saying, father ? " cried the widow, suddenly
infuriated. " Why, they dragged me into the fire with a rope
round me when the Verhishins' house was burnt, and they
locked up a dead cat in my chest. They are ready to do any
villainy. ..."

" Away with her ! Away with her ! " Semyon Yakovlevitch
said suddenly, waving his hands.

The verger and the boy dashed through the partition. The
verger took the widow by the arm, and without resisting she
trailed to the door, keeping her eyes fixed on the loaves of
sugar that had been bestowed on her, which the boy dragged
after her.

" One to be taken away. Take it away," Semyon Yakovle-
vitch commanded to the servant like a workman, who remained
with him. The latter rushed after the retreating woman, and
the three servants returned somewhat later bringing back one
loaf of sugar which had been presented to the widow and now
taken away from her. She carried off three, however.

" Semyon Yakovlevitch," said a voice at the door. " I
dreamt of a bird, a jackdaw ; it flew out of the water and flew
into the fire. What does the dream mean ? "

" Frost," Semyon Yakovlevitch pronounced.

" Semyon Yakovlevitch, why don't you answer me all this
time ?■ I've been interested in you ever so long," the lady of our
party began again.

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 311

" Ask him ! " said Semyon Yakovlevitch, not heeding her, but
pointing to the kneeling gentleman.

The monk from the monastery to whom the order was given
moved sedately to the kneeling figure.

" How have you sinned ? And was not some command laid
upon you ? "

" Not to fight ; not to give the rein to my hands," answered
the kneeling gentleman hoarsely.

" Have you obeyed ? " asked the monk.
" I cannot obey. My own strength gets the better of me."
" Away with him, away with him ! With a broom, with a
broom ! " cried Semyon Yakovlevitch, waving his hands. The
gentleman rushed out of the room without waiting for this
penalty.

' He's left a gold piece where he knelt," observed the monk,
picking up a half -imperial.

" For him ! " said the saint, pointing to the rich merchant.
The latter dared not refuse it, and took it.

" Gold to gold," the monk from the monastery could not refrain
from saying.

" And give him some with sugar in it," said the saint, pointing
to Mavriky Nikolaevitch. The servant poured out the tea and
took it by mistake to the dandy with the pince-nez.

" The long one, the long one ! " Semyon Yakovlevitch corrected
him.

Mavriky Nikolaevitch took the glass, made a military half-
bow, and began drinking it. I don't know why, but all our party
burst into peals of laughter.

" Mavriky Nikolaevitch," cried Liza, addressing him suddenly.
'' That kneeling gentleman has gone away. You kneel down
in his place."

Mavriky Nikolaevitch looked at her in amazement.
" I beg you to. You'll do me the greatest favour. Listen,
Mavriky Nikolaevitch," she went on, speaking in an emphatic,
obstinate, excited, and rapid voice. " You must kneel down ;
I must see you kneel down. If you won't, don't come near me.
I insist, I insist ! "

I don't know what she meant by it ; but she insisted upon it
relentlessly, as though she were in a fit. Mavriky Nikolaevitch,
as we shall see later, set down these capricious impulses, which
had been particularly frequent of late, to outbreaks of blind
hatred for him, not due to spite, for, on the contrary, she esteemed

312 THE POSSESSED

him, loved him, and respected him, and he knew that himself —
but from a peculiar unconscious hatred which at times she could
not control.

In silence he gave his cup to an old woman standing behind
him, opened the door of the partition, and, without being invited,
stepped into Semyon Yakovlevitch's private apartment, and
knelt down in the middle of the room in sight of all. I imagine
that he was deeply shocked in his candid and delicate heart
by Liza's coarse and mocking freak before the whole company.
Perhaps he imagined that she would feel ashamed of herself,
seeing his humiliation, on which she had so insisted. Of course
no one but he would have dreamt of bringing a woman to reason
by so naive and risky a proceeding. He remained kneeling with
his imperturbable gravity — long, tall, awkward, and ridiculous.
But our party did not laugh. The unexpectedness of the action
produced a painful shock. Every one looked at Liza.

" Anoint, anoint ! " muttered Semyon Yakovlevitch.

Liza suddenly turned white, cried out, and rushed through the
partition. Then a rapid and hysterical scene followed. She
began pulling Mavriky Nikolaevitch up with all her might,
tugging at his elbows with both hands.

" Get up ! Get up ! " she screamed, as though she were
crazy. " Get up at once, at once. How dare you ? "

Mavriky Nikolaevitch got up from his knees. She clutched
his arms above the elbow and looked intently into his face.
There was terror in her expression.

" Milovzors ! Milovzors ! " Semyon Yakovlevitch repeated
again.

She dragged Mavriky Nikolaevitch back to the other part
of the room at last. There was some commotion in all our
company. The lady from our carriage, probably intending to
relieve the situation, loudly and shrilly asked the saint for the
third time, with an affected smile :

" Well, Semyon Yakovlevitch, won't you utter some saying
for me ? I've been reckoning so much on you."

" Out with the , out with the ," said Semyon Yakovle-
vitch, suddenly addressing her, with an extremely indecent
word. The words were uttered savagely, and with horrifying
distinctness. Our ladies shrieked, and rushed headlong away,
while the gentlemen escorting them burst into Homeric laughter.
So ended our visit to Semyon Yakovlevitch.

At this point, however, there took place, I am told, an extremely

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 313

enigmatic incident, and, I must own, it was chiefly on account
of it that I have described this expedition so minutely.

I am told that when all flocked out, Liza, supported by Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, was jostled against Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch in
the crush in the doorway. I must mention that since that Sunday
morning when she fainted they had not approached each other,
nor exchanged a word, though they had met more than once.
I saw them brought together in the doorway. I fancied they both
stood still for an instant, and looked, as it were, strangely at
one another, but I may not have seen rightly in the crowd. It
is asserted, on the contrary, and quite seriously, that Liza, glancing
at Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, quickly raised her hand to the level
of his face, and would certainly have struck him if he had not
drawn back in time. Perhaps she was displeased with the
expression of his face, or the way he smiled, particularly just
after such an episode with Mavriky Nikolaevitch. I must admit
I saw nothing myself, but all the others declared they had,
though they certainly could not all have seen it in such a crush,
though perhaps some may have. But I did not believe it at
the time. I remember, however, that Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
was rather pale all the way home.

Ill

Almost at the same time, and certainly on the same day,
the interview at last took place between Stepan Trofimovitch
and Varvara Petrovna. She had long had this meeting in her
mind, and had sent word about it to her former friend, but for
some reason she had kept putting it off till then. It took
place at Skvoreshniki : Varvara Petrovna arrived at her country
house all in a bustle : it had been definitely decided the evening
before that the fete was to take place at the marshal's, but
Varvara Petrovna' s rapid brain at once grasped that no one
could prevent her from afterwards giving her own special
entertainment at Skvoreshniki, and again assembling the whole
town. Then every one could see for themselves whose house
was best, and in which more taste was displayed in receiving
guests and giving a ball. Altogether she was hardly to be recog-
nised. She seemed completely transformed, and instead of the
unapproachable "noble lady" (Stepan Trofimovitch's expression)
seemed changed into the most commonplace, whimsical society

314 THE POSSESSED

woman. But perhaps this may only have been on the
surface.

When she reached the empty house she had gone through
all the rooms, accompanied by her faithful old butler, Alexey
Yegorytch, and by Fomushka, a man who had seen much of
life and was a specialist in decoration. They began to consult
and deliberate : what furniture was to be brought from the
town house, what things, what pictures, where they were to be
put, how the conservatories and flowers could be put to the best
use, where to put new curtains, where to have the refreshment
rooms, whether one or two, and so on and so on. And, behold,
in the midst of this exciting bustle she suddenly took it into her
head to send for Stepan Trofimovitch.

The latter had long before received notice of this interview
and was prepared for it, and he had every day 'been expecting
just such a sudden summons. As he got into the carriage he
crossed himself : his fate was being decided. He found his
friend in the big drawing-room on the little sofa in the recess,
before a little marble table with a pencil and paper in her hands.
Fomushka, with a yard measure, was measuring the height
of the galleries and the windows, while Varvara Petrovna
herself was writing down the numbers and making notes on the
margin. She nodded in Stepan Trofimovitch' s direction without
breaking off from what she was doing, and when the latter
muttered some sort of greeting, she hurriedly gave him her hand,
and without looking at him motioned him to a seat beside
her.

" I sat waiting for five minutes, c mastering my heart,' " he
told me afterwards. " I saw before me not the woman whom
I had known for twenty years. An absolute conviction that all
was over gave me a strength which astounded even her. I swear
that she was surprised at my stoicism in that last hour."

Varvara Petrovna suddenly put down her pencil on the table
ana turned quickly to Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Stepan Trofimovitch, we have to talk of business. I'm sure
you have prepared all your fervent words and various phrases,
but we'd better go straight to the point, hadn't we ? '

She had been in too great a hurry to show the tone she meant
to take. And what might not come next ?

" Wait, be quiet ; let me speak. Afterwards you shall,
though really I don't know what you can answer me," she said
in a rapid patter. " The twelve hundred roubles of your pension

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 315

I consider a sacred obligation to pay you as long as you live.
Though why a sacred obligation, simply a contract ; that would
be a great deal more real, wouldn't it ? If you like, we'll write
it out . Special arrangements have been made in case of my death .
But you are receiving from me at present lodging, servants, and
your maintenance in addition. Reckoning that in money it
would amount to fifteen hundred roubles, wouldn't it ? I will
add another three hundred roubles, making three thousand
roubles in all. Will that be enough a year for you ? I think
that's not too little ? In any extreme emergency I would add
something more. And so, take your money, send me back my
servants, and live by yourself where you like in Petersburg, in
Moscow, abroad, or here, only not with me. Do you hear ? "

" Only lately those lips dictated to me as imperatively and as
suddenly very different demands," said Stepan Trofimovitch
slowly and with sorrowful distinctness. " I submitted . . .
and danced the Cossack dance to please you. Oui, la comparaison
peut etre permise. C'etait comme un petit Cosaque du Don qui
sautait sur sa prop/re tombe. Now ..."

" Stop, Stepan Trofimovitch, you are horribly long-winded.
You didn't dance, but came to see me in a new tie, new linen,
gloves, scented and pomatumed. I assure you that you were
very anxious to get married yourself ; it was written on your face,
and I assure you a most unseemly expression it was. If I did
not mention it to you at the time, it was simply out of delicacy.
But you wished it, you wanted to be married, in spite of the
abominable things you wrote about me and your betrothed. Now
it's very different. And what has the Cosaque du Don to do
with it, and what tomb do you mean ? I don't understand the
comparison. On the contrary, you have only to live. Live as
long as you can. I shall be delighted."

"In an almshouse ? "

"In an almshouse ? People don't go into almshouses with
three thousand roubles a year. Ah, I remember," she laughed.
;' Pyotr Stepanovitch did joke about an almshouse once. Bah,
there certainly is a special almshouse, which is worth considering.
It's for persons who are highly respectable ; there are colonels
there, and there's positively one general who wants to get into
it. If you went into it with all your money, you would find
peace, comfort, servants to wait on you. There you could
occupy yourself with study, and could always make up a party
for cards."

316 THE POSSESSED

" Passons."

" Passons ? " Varvara Petrovna winced. " But, if so, that's
all. You've been informed that we shall live henceforward
entirely apart."

" And that's all ? " he said. " All that's left of twenty years ?
Our last farewell ? "

" You're awfully fond of these exclamations, Stepan Trofimo-
vitch. It's not at all the fashion. Nowadays people talk
roughly but simply. You keep harping on our twent}' years !
Twenty years of mutual vanity, and nothing more. Every
letter you've written me was written not for me but for posterity.
You're a stylist, and not a friend, and friendship is only a splendid
word. In reality — a mutual exchange of sloppiness. ..."

" Good heavens ! How many sayings not your own ! Lessons
learned by heart ! They've already put their uniform on you
too. You, too, are rejoicing ; you, too, are basking in the
sunshine. Chere, chere, for what a mess of pottage you have
sold them your freedom ! "

" I'm not a parrot, to repeat other people's phrases ! " cried
Varvara Petrovna, boiling over. " You may be sure I have
stored up many sayings of my own. What have you been
doing for me all these twenty years ? You refused me even
the books I ordered for you, though, except for the binder, they
would have remained uncut. What did you give me to read
when I asked you during those first years to be my guide ?
Always Kapfig, and nothing but Kapfig. You were jealous of my
culture even, and took measures. And all the while every one's
laughing at you. I must confess I always considered you only as a
critic. You are a literary critic and nothing more. When on
the way to Petersburg I told you that I meant to found a journal
and to devote my whole life to it, you looked at me ironically
at once, and suddenly became horribly supercilious."

" That was not that, not that. ... we were afraid then of
persecution. . . ." .

" It was just that. And you couldn't have been afraid of
persecution in Petersburg at that time. Do you remember
that in February, too, when the news of the emancipation came,
you ran to me in a panic, and demanded that I should at once
give you a written statement that the proposed magazine
had nothing to do with you ; that the young people had been
coming to see me and not you ; that you were only a tutor
who lived in the house, only because he had not yet received

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 317

his salary. Isn't that so ? Do remember that ? You have
distinguished yourself all your life, Stepan Trofimovitch."

" That was only a moment of weakness, a moment when we
were alone," he exclaimed mournfully. " But is it possible,
is it possible, to break off eve^thing for the sake of such petty
impressions ? Can it be that nothing more has been left between
us after those long years ? "

" You are horribly calculating ; you keep trying to leave me
in your debt. When you came back from abroad you looked
down upon me and wouldn't let me utter a word, but when I came
back myself and talked to you afterwards of my impressions of
the Madonna, you wouldn't hear me, you began smiling con-
descendingly into your cravat, as though I were incapable of
the same feelings as you."

" It was not so. It was probably not so. J'ai oublie ! "

" No ; it was so," she answered, " and, what's more, you've
nothing to pride yourself on. That's all nonsense, and one of
your fancies. Now, there's no one, absolutely no one, in ecstasies
over the Madonna ; no one wastes time over it except old men
who are hopelessly out of date. That's established."

" Established, is it ? "

" It's of no use whatever. This jug's of use because one can
pour water into it. This pencil's of use because you can write any-
thing with it. But that woman's face is inferior to any face in
nature. Try drawing an apple, and put a real apple beside it.
Which would you take ? You wouldn't make a mistake, I'm
sure. This is what all our theories amount to, now that the
first light of free investigation has dawned upon them."

" Indeed, indeed."

k' You laugh ironically. And what used you to say to me about
charity ? Yet the enjoyment derived from charity is a haughty
and immoral enjoyment. The rich man's enjoyment in his
wealth, his power, and in the comparison of his importance with
the poor. Charity corrupts giver and taker alike ; and, what's
more, does not attain it's object, as it only increases poverty.
Fathers who don't want to work crowd round the charitable
like gamblers round the gambling-table, hoping for gain, while
the pitiful farthings that are flung them are a hundred times
too little. Have you given away much in your life ? Less than
a rouble, if you try and think. Try to remember when last
you gave away anything ; it'll be two years ago, maybe four.
You make an outcry and only hinder things. Charity ought

318 THE POSSESSED

to be forbidden by law, even in the present state of society .
In the new regime there will be no poor at all."

" Oh, what an eruption of borrowed phrases ! So it's come to
the new regime already ? Unhappy woman, God help you ! "

" Yes ; it has, Stepan Trofimovitch. You carefully concealed
all these new ideas from me, though every one's familiar with
them nowadays. And you did it simply out of jealousy, so as
to have power over me. So that now even that Yulia is a
hundred miles ahead of me. But now my eyes have been opened.
I have defended you, Stepan Trofimovitch, all I could, but there
is no one who does not blame you."

" Enough ! " said he, getting up from his seat. " Enough !
And what can I wish you now, unless it's repentance ? "

" Sit still a minute, Stepan Trofimovitch. I have another
question to ask you. You've been told of the invitation to
read at the literary matinee. It was arranged through me.
Tell me what you're going to read ? "

" Why, about that very Queen of Queens, that ideal of
humanity, the Sistine Madonna, who to your thinking is
inferior to a glass or a pencil."

" So you're not taking something historical ? " said Varvara
Petrovna in mournful surprise. " But they won't listen to you.
You've got that Madonna on your brain. You seem bent on
putting every one to sleep ! Let me assure you, Stepan Trofimo-
vitch, I am speaking entirely in your own interest. It would
be a different matter if you would take some short but interesting
story of mediaeval court life from Spanish history, or, better still,
some anecdote, and pad it out with other anecdotes and witty
phrases of your own. There were magnificent courts then ;
ladies, you know, poisonings. Karmazinov says it would be
strange if you couldn't read something interesting from Spanish
history."

" Karmazinov — that fool who has written himself out — looking
for a subject for me ! "

" Karmazinov, that almost imperial intellect. You are too
free in your language, Stepan Trofimovitch."

" Your Karmazinov is a spiteful old woman whose day is
over. Chere, chere, how long have you been so enslaved by
them ? Oh God ! "

" I can't endure him even now for the airs he gives himself.
But I do justice to his intellect. I repeat, I have done my best
to defend you as far as I could. And why do you insist on being

ON THE EVE OF THE FETE 319

absurd and tedious ? On the contrary, come on to the platform
with a dignified smile as the representative of the last generation,
and tell them two or three anecdotes in your witty way, as only
you can tell things sometimes. Though you may be an old
man now, though you may belong to a past age, though you may
have dropped behind them, in fact, yet you'll recognise it yourself,
with a smile, in your preface, and all will see that j^ou're an
amiable, good-natured, witty relic ... in brief, a man of the
old savour, and so far advanced as to be capable of appreciating
at their value all the absurdities of certain ideas which you have
hitherto followed. Come, as a favour to me, I beg you."

" Chere, enough. Don't ask me. I can't. I shall speak
of the Madonna, but I shall raise a storm that will either crush
them all or shatter me alone."

" It will certainly be you alone, Stepan Trofimovitch."

" Such is my fate. I will speak of the contemptible slave, of
the stinking, depraved flunkey who will first climb a ladder with
scissors in his hands, and slash to pieces the divine image of the
great ideal, in the name of equality, envy, and . . . digestion.
Let my curse thunder out upon them, and then — then . . ."

" The madhouse ? "

" Perhaps. But in any case, whether I shall be left vanquished
or victorious, that very evening I shall take my bag, my beggar's
bag. I shall leave all my goods and chattels, all your presents,
all your pensions and promises of future benefits, and go forth
on foot to end my life a tutor in a merchant's family or to die
somewhere of hunger in a ditch. I have said it. Aha jacta est"

He got up again.

"I've been convinced for years," said Varvara Petrovna,
getting up with flashing eyes, " that your only object in life is
to put me and my house to shame by your calumnies ! What
do you mean by being a tutor in a merchant's family or dying in
a ditch ? It's spite, calumny, and nothing more."

" You have always despised me. But I will end like a knight,
faithful to my lady. Your good opinion has always been dearer
to me than anything. From this moment I will take nothing,
but will worship you disinterestedly."

" How stupid that is ! "

' You have never respected me. I may have had a mass of
weaknesses. Yes, I have sponged on you. I speak the language
of nihilism, but sponging has never been the guiding motive of
my action. It has happened so of itself. I don't know how,

320 THE POSSESSED

... I always imagined there was something higher than meat
and drink between us, and — I've never, never been a scoundrel !
And so, to take the open road, to set things right. I set off late,
late autumn out of doors, the mist lies over the fields, the hoar-
frost of old age covers the road before me, and the wind howls
about the approaching grave. . . . But so forward, forward,
on my new way

' Filled with purest love and fervour,
Faith which my sweet dream did yield?

Oh, my dreams. Farewell. Twenty years. Alea jacta est ! "

His face was wet with a sudden gush of tears. He took
his hat.

" I don't understand Latin," said Varvara Petrovna, doing
her best to control herself.

Who knows, perhaps, she too felt like crying. But caprice
and indignation once more got the upper hand.

" I know only one thing, that all this is childish nonsense.
You will never be capable of carrying out your threats, which
are a mass of egoism. You will set off nowhere, to no merchant ;
you'll end very peaceably on my hands, taking your pension, and
receiving your utterly impossible friends on Tuesdays. Good-bye,
Stepan Trofimovitch."

"Alea jacta est ! " He made her a deep bow, and returned home,
almost dead with emotion.

CHAPTER VI
PYOTR STEPANO VETCH IS BUSY

The date of the fete was definitely fixed, and Von Lembke became
more and more depressed. He was full of strange and sinister
forebodings, and this made Yulia Mihailovna seriously uneasy.
Indeed, things were not altogether satisfactory. Our mild
governor had left the affairs of the province a little out of gear ;
at the moment we were threatened with cholera ; serious out-
breaks of cattle plague had appeared in several places ; fires
were prevalent that summer in towns and villages ; whilst among
the peasantry foolish rumours of incendiarism grew stronger and
stronger. Cases of robbery were twice as numerous as usual.
But all this, of course, would have been perfectly ordinary had
there been no other and more weighty reasons to disturb the
equanimity of Andrey Antonovitch, who had till then been in
good spirits.

What struck Yulia Mihailovna most of all was that he became
more silent and, strange to say, more secretive every day. Yet
it was hard to imagine what he had to hide. It is true that
he rarely opposed her and as a rule followed her lead without
question. At her instigation, for instance, two or three regula-
tions of a risky and hardly legal character were introduced with
the object of strengthening the authority of the governor.
There were several ominous instances of transgressions being
condoned with the same end in view ; persons who deserved to
be sent to prison and Siberia were, solely because she insisted,
recommended for promotion. Certain complaints and inquiries
were deliberately and systematically ignored. All this came
out later on. Not only did Lembke sign everything, but he
did not even go into the question of the share taken by his wife
in the execution of his duties. On the other hand, he began at
times to be restive about " the most trifling matters," to the
surprise of Yulia Mihailovna. No doubt he felt the need to make
up for the days of suppression by brief moments of mutiny.
Unluckily, Yulia Mihailovna was unable, for all her insight, to
understand this honourable punctiliousness in an honourable

321 x

322 THE POSSESSED

character. Alas, she had no thought to spare for that, and that
was the source of many misunderstandings.

There are some things of which it is not suitable for me to
write, and indeed I am not in a position to do so. It is not my
business to discuss the blunders of administration either, and I
prefer to leave out this administrative aspect of the subject
altogether. In the chronicle I have begun I've set before myself
a different task. Moreover a great deal will be brought to light
by the Commission of Inquiry which has just been appointed for
our province ; it's only a matter of waiting a little. Certain
explanations, however, cannot be omitted.

But to return to Yulia Mihailovna. The poor lady (I feel very
sorry for her) might have attained all that attracted and allured
ner (renown and so on) without any such violent and eccentric
actions as she resolved upon at the very first step. But either
from an exaggerated passion for the romantic or from the frequently
blighted hopes of her youth, she felt suddenly, at the change of
her fortunes, that she had become one of the specialty elect,
almost God's anointed, " over whom there gleamed a burning
tongue of fire," and this tongue of flame was the root of the
mischief, for, after all, it is not like a chignon, which will fit anj^
woman's head. But there is nothing of which it is more difficult,
to convince a woman than of this ; on the contrary, anyone
who cares to encourage the delusion in her will always be sur$
to meet with success. And people vied with one another in
encouraging the delusion in Yulia Mihailovna. The poor woman
became at once the sport of conflicting influences, w:hile fully
persuaded of her own originality. Many clever people feathered
their nests and took advantage of her simplicity during the
brief period of her rule in the province. And what a jumble
there was under this assumption of independence ! She was
fascinated at the same time by the aristocratic element and the
system of big landed properties and the increase of the governor's
power, and the democratic element, and the new reforms and
discipline, and free- thinking and stray Socialistic notions, and the
correct tone of the aristocratic salon and the free-and-easy, almost
pot-house, manners of the young people that surrounded her.
She dreamed of " giving happiness " and reconciling the irrecon-
cilable, or, rather, of uniting all and everything in the adoration
of her own person. She had favourites too ; she was particularh
fond of Pyotr Stepanovitch, who had recourse at times to tb
grossest flattery in dealing with her. But she was attracted b

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 323

him for another reason, an amazing one, and most characteristic
of the poor lady : she was always hoping that he would reveal
to her a regular conspiracy against the government. Difficult
as it is to imagine such a thing, it really was the case. She
fancied for some reason that there must be a nihilist plot con-
cealed in the province. By his silence at one time and his hints
at another Pyotr Stepanovitch did much to strengthen this
strange idea in her. She imagined that he was in communication
Avith every revolutionary element in Russia but at the same
time passionately devoted to her. To discover the plot, to
receive the gratitude of the government, to enter on a brilliant
career, to influence the young " by kindness," and to restrain
them from extremes — all these dreams existed side by side in
her fantastic brain. She had saved Pyotr Stepanovitch, she had
conquered him (of this she was for some reason firmly convinced) ;
she would save others. None, none of them should perish, she
should save them all ; she would pick them out ; she would send
in the right report of them ; she would act in the interests of the
loftiest justice, and perhaps posterity and Russian liberalism
would bless her name ; yet the conspiracy would be discovered.
Every advantage at once.

Still it was essential that Andrey Antonovitch should be in
rather better spirits before the festival. He must be cheered
ap and reassured. For this purpose she sent Pyotr Stepanovitch
to him in the hope that he would relieve his depression by some
means of consolation best known to himself, perhaps by giving
him some information, so to speak, first hand. She put implicit
faith in his dexterity.

It was some time since Pyotr Stepanovitch had been in Mr. von
Lembke's study. He popped in on him just when the sufferer
was in a most stubborn mood.

II

A combination of circumstances had arisen which Mr. von
Lembke was quite unable to deal with. In the very district
where Pyotr Stepanovitch had been having a festive time a sub-
lieutenant had been called up to be censured by his immediate
Superior, and the reproof was given in the presence of the whole
nnpany. The sub-lieutenant was a young man fresh from
.^tersburg, always silent and morose, of dignified appearance

324 THE POSSESSED

though small, stout, and rosy-cheeked. He resented the repri-
mand and suddenly, with a startling shriek that astonished the
whole company, he charged at his superior officer with his head
bent down like a wild beast's, struck him, and bit him on the
shoulder with all his might ; they had difficulty in getting him
off. There was no doubt that he had gone out of his mind ;
anyway, it became known that of late he had been observed
performing incredibly strange actions. He had, for instance,
flung two ikons belonging to his landlady out of his lodgings
and smashed up one of them with an axe ; in his own room he
had, on three stands resembling lecterns, laid out the works of
Vogt, Moleschott, and Biichner, and before each lectern he used
to burn a church wax-candle. From the number of books
found in his rooms it could be gathered that he was a well-read
man. If he had had fifty thousand francs he would perhaps have
sailed to the island of Marquisas like the " cadet " to whom
Herzen alludes with such sprightly humour in one of his writings.
When he was seized, whole bundles of the most desperate mani-
festoes were found in his pockets and his lodgings.

Manifestoes are a trivial matter too, and to my thinking not
worth troubling about. We have seen plenty of them. Besides,
they were not new manifestoes ; they were, it was said later,
just the same as had been circulated in the X province, and
Liputin, who had travelled in that district and the neighbouring
province six weeks previously, declared that he had seen exactly
the same leaflets there then. But what struck Andrey Antono-
vitch most was that the overseer of Shpigulin's factory had brought
the police just at the same time two or three packets of exactly
the same leaflets as had been found on the lieutenant. The
bundles, which had been dropped in the factory in the night,
had not been opened, and none of the factory-hands had had time
to read one of them. The incident was a trivial one, but it set
Andrey Antonovitch pondering deeply. The position presented
itself to him in an unpleasantly complicated light.

In this factory the famous " Shpigulin scandal " was just
then brewing, which made so much talk among us and got into
the Petersburg and Moscow papers with all sorts of variations.
Three weeks previously one of the hands had fallen ill and died
of Asiatic cholera ; then several others were stricken down.
The whole town was in a panic, for the cholera was coming nearer
and nearer and had reached the neighbouring province. I may
observe that satisfactory sanitary measures had been, so far as

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 325

possible, taken to meet the unexpected guest. But the factory
belonging to the Shpigulins, who were millionaires and well-
connected people, had somehow been overlooked. And there
was a sudden outcry from every one that this factory was the
hot-bed of infection, that the factory itself, and especially the
quarters inhabited by the workpeople, were so inveterately filthy
that even if cholera had not been in the neighbourhood there
might well have been an outbreak there. Steps were immediately
taken, of course, and Andrey Antonovitch vigorously insisted
on their being carried out without delay within three weeks.
The factory was cleansed, but the Shpigulins, for some unknown
reason, closed it. One of the Shpigulin brothers always lived
in Petersburg and the other went away to Moscow when the
order was given for cleansing the factory. The overseer pro-
ceeded to pay off the workpeople and, as it appeared, cheated
them shamelessly. The hands began to complain among them-
selves, asking to be paid fairly, and foolishly went to the police,
though without much disturbance, for they were not so very
much excited. It was just at this moment that the manifestoes
were brought to Andrey Antonovitch by the overseer.

Pyotr Stepanovitch popped into the study unannounced, like
an intimate friend and one of the family ; besides, he had a
message from Yulia Mihailovna. Seeing him, Lembke frowned
grimly and stood still at the table without welcoming him. Till
that moment he had been pacing up and down the study and
had been discussing something tete-a-t&te with his clerk Blum,
a very clumsy and surly German whom he had brought with
him from Petersburg, in spite of the violent opposition of
Yulia Mihailovna. On Pyotr Stepanovitch' s entrance the
clerk had moved to the door, but had not gone out. Pyotr
Stepanovitch even fancied that he exchanged significant glances
with his chief.

" Aha, I've caught you at last, you secretive monarch of the
town ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch cried out laughing, and laid his
hand over the manifesto on the table. " This increases your
collection, eh ? "

Andrey Antonovitch flushed crimson ; his face seemed to
twitch.

" Leave off, leave off at once ! " he cried, trembling with
rage. " And don't you dare ... sir ... "

" What's the matter with you ? You seem to be angry ! "

" Allow me to inform you, sir, that I've no intention of putting

326 THE POSSESSED

up with your sans faQon henceforward, and I beg you to re-
member ..."

" Why, damn it all, he is in earnest ! "

" Hold your tongue, hold your tongue " — Von Lembke stamped
on the carpet — " and don't dare ..."

God knows what it might have come to. Alas, there was one
circumstance involved in the matter of which neither Pyotr
Stepanovitch nor even Yulia Mihailovna herself had any idea.
The luckless Andrey Antonovitch had been so greatly upset
during the last few days that he had begun to be secretly jealous
of his wife and Pyotr Stepanovitch. In solitude, especially at
night, he spent some very disagreeable moments.

" Well, I imagined that if a man reads you his novel two days
running till after midnight and wants to' hear your opinion of it,
he has of his own act discarded official relations, anyway. . . .
Yulia Mihailovna treats me as a friend ; there's no making you
out," Pyotr Stepanovitch brought out, with a certain dignity
indeed. " Here is your novel, by the way." He laid on the
table a large heavy manuscript rolled up in blue paper.

Lembke turned red and looked embarrassed.

' Where did you find it ? " he asked discreetly, with a rush of
joy which he was unable to suppress, though he did his utmost
to conceal it.

" Only fancy, done up like this, it rolled under the chest of
drawers. I must have thrown it down carelessly on the chest
when I went out. It was only found the day before yesterday,
when the floor was scrubbed. You did set me a task, though ! '

Lembke dropped his eyes sternly.

" I haven't slept for the last two nights, thanks to you. It
was found the day before yesterday, but I kept it, and have
been reading it ever since. I've no time in the day, so I've read
it at night. Well, I don't like it ; it's not my way of looking
at things. But that's no matter ; I've never set up for being
a critic, but I couldn't tear myself away from it, my dear man,
though I didn't like it ! The fourth and fifth chapters are . . .
they really are . . . damn it all, they are beyond words ! And
what a lot of humour you've packed into it ; it made me laugh !
How you can make fun of things sans que cela paraisse ! As
for the ninth and tenth chapters, it's all about love ; that's not
my line, but it's effective though. I was nearly blubbering over
Egrenev's letter, though you've shown him up so cleverly. . . .
You know, it's touching, though at the same time you want to

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 327

show the false side of him, as it were, don't you ? Have I
guessed right ? But I could simply beat you for the ending.
For what are you setting up ? Why, the same old idol of
domestic happiness, begetting children and making money ;
' they were married and lived happy ever afterwards ' — come,
it's too much ! You will enchant your readers, for even I
couldn't put the book down ; but that makes it all the worse !
The reading public is as stupid as ever, but it's the duty of
sensible people to wake them up, while you . . . But that's
enough. Good-bye. Don't be cross another time ; I came in
to you because I had a couple of words to say to you, but you are
so unaccountable ..."

Andrey Antonovitch meantime took his novel and locked it
up in an oak bookcase, seizing the opportunity to wink to Blum
to disappear. The latter withdrew with a long, mournful face.

" I am not unaccountable, I am simply . . . nothing but
annoyances," he muttered, frowning but without anger, and
sitting down to the table. " Sit down and say what you have
to say. It's a long time since I've seen you, Pyotr Stepanovitch,
only don't burst upon me in the future with such manners . . .
sometimes, when one has business, it's ..."

" My manners are always the same. ..."

" I know, and I believe that you mean nothing by it, but
sometimes one is worried. . . . Sit down."

Pyotr Stepanovitch immediately lolled back on the sofa and
drew his legs under him.

Ill

" What sort of worries ? Surely not these trifles ? ' He
nodded towards the manifesto. " I can bring you as many of
them as you like ; I made their acquaintance in X province."

' You mean at the time you were staying there ? '

" Of course, it was not in my absence. I remember there was
a hatchet printed at the top of it. Allow me." (He took up the
manifesto.) " Yes, there's the hatchet here too ; that's it, the
very same."

" Yes, here's a hatchet. You see, a hatchet."

" Well, is it the hatchet that scares you ? "

" No, it's not . . . and I am not scared ; but this business
... it is a business ; there are circumstances."

323 THE POSSESSED

" What sort ? That it's come from the factory ? He he !
But do you know, at that factory the workpeople will soon be
writing manifestoes for themselves."

" What do you mean ? " Von Lembke stared at him severely.

" What I say. You've only to look at them. You are too soft,
Andrey Antonovitch ; you write novels. But this has to be
handled in the good old way."

1 What do you mean by the good old way ? What do you
mean by advising me ? The factory has been cleaned ; I gave
the order and they've cleaned it."

" And the workmen are in rebellion. They ought to be
flogged, every one of them ; that would be the end of it."

11 In rebellion ? That's nonsense ; I gave the order and
they've cleaned it."

" Ech, you are soft, Andrey Antonovitch ! "

" In the first place, I am not so soft as you think, and in the
second place ..." Von Lembke was piqued again. He had
exerted himself to keep up the conversation with the young man
from curiosity, wondering if he would tell him anything new.

"Ha ha, an old acquaintance again," Pyotr Stepanovitch
interrupted, pouncing on another document that lay under a
paper-weight, something like a manifesto, obviously printed
abroad and in verse. " Oh, come, I know this one by heart,
' A Noble Personality.' Let me have a look at it — yes, * A
Noble Personality ' it is. I made acquaintance with that
personality abroad. Where did you unearth it ? "

" You say you've seen it abroad ? " Von Lembke said eagerly.

" I should think so, four months ago, or may be five."

" You seem to have seen a great deal abroad." Von Lembke
looked at him subtly.

Pyotr Stepanovitch, not heeding him, unfolded the document
and read the poem aloud :

"A NOBLE PERSONALITY

" He was not of rank exalted,
He was not of noble birth,
He was bred among the people
In the breast of Mother Earth.
But the malice of the nobles
And the Tsar's revengeful wrath
Drove him forth to grief and torture
On the martyr's chosen path.

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 329

He set out to teach the people

Freedom, love, equality,

To exhort them to resistance ;

But to flee the penalty

Of the prison, whip and gallows.

To a foreign land he went.

While the people waited hoping

From Smolensk to far Tashkent,

Waited eager for his coming

To rebel against their fate,

To arise and crush the Tsardom

And the nobles' vicious hate,

To share all the wealth in common,

And the antiquated thrall

Of the church, the home and marriage

To abolish once for all."

" You got it from that officer, I suppose, eh ? " asked Pyotr
Stepanovitch.

" Why, do you know that officer, then, too ? "
" I should think so. I had a gay time with him there for
two days ; he was bound to go out of his mind."
" Perhaps he did not go out of his mind."
" You think he didn't because he began to bite ? '
" But, excuse me, if you saw those verses abroad and then,
it appears, at that officer's . . ."

" What, puzzling, is it ? You are putting me through an
examination, Andrey Antonovitch, I see. You see," he began
suddenly with extraordinary dignity, " as to what I saw abroad
I have already given explanations, and my explanations were
found satisfactory, otherwise I should not have been gratifying
this town with my presence. I consider that the question as
regards me has been settled, and I am not obliged to give any
further account of myself, not because I am an informer, but
because I could not help acting as I did. The people who wrote
to Yulia Mihailovna about me knew what they were talking
about, and they said I was an honest man. . . . But that's
neither here nor there ; I've come to see you about a serious
matter, and it's as well you've sent your chimney-sweep away.
It's a matter of importance to me, Andrey Antonovitch. I
shall have a very great favour to ask of you."

" A favour ? H'm # . . by all means ; I am waiting and,

330 THE POSSESSED

I confess, with curiosity. And I must add, Pyotr Stepanovitch,
that you surprise me not a little."

Von Lembke was in some agitation. Pyotr Stepanovitch
crossed his legs.

" In Petersburg," he began, " I talked freely of most things,
but there were things — this, for instance " (he tapped the " Noble
Personality " with his finger) " about which I held my tongue —
in the first place, because it wasn't worth talking about, and
secondly, because I only answered questions. I don't care to
put myself forward in such matters ; in that I see the distinction
between a rogue and an honest man forced by circumstances.
Well, in short, we'll dismiss that. But now . . . now that these
fools . . . now that this has come to the surface and is in your
hands, and I see that you'll find out all about it — for you are a
man with eyes and one can't tell beforehand what you'll do —
and these fools are still going on, I . . . I . . . well, the fact is,
I've come to ask you to save one man, a fool too, most likely
mad, for the sake of his youth, his misfortunes, in the name
of your humanity. . . . You can't be so humane only in the
novels you manufacture ! " he said, breaking off with coarse
sarcasm and impatience.

In fact, he was seen to be a straightforward man, awkward
and impolitic from excess of humane feeling and perhaps from
excessive sensitiveness — above all, a man of limited intelligence,
as Von Lembke saw at once with extraordinary subtlety. He
had indeed long suspected it, especially when during the previous
week he had, sitting alone in his study at night, secretly cursed
him with all his heart for the inexplicable way in which he had
gained Yulia Mihailovna's good graces.

' For whom are you interceding, and what does all this
mean ? " he inquired majestically, trying to conceal his curiosity.

' It . . . it's . . . damn it ! It's not my fault that I trust
you ! Is it my fault that I look upon you as a most honourable
and, above all, a sensible man . . . capable, that is, of under-
standing . . . damn ..."

The poor fellow evidently could not master his emotion.

' You must understand at last," he went on, " you must
understand that in pronouncing his name I am betraying him
to you — I am betraying him, am I not ? I am, am I not ? '

' But how am I to guess if you don't make up your mind to
speak out ? "

i; That's just it ; you always cut the ground from under one's

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 331

feet with your logic, damn it. . . . Well, here goes . . . this
1 noble personality,' this ' student ' ... is Shatov . . . that's
all."

" Shatov ? How do you mean it's Shatov ? "

" Shatov is the ' student ' who is mentioned in this. He lives
here, he was once a serf, the man who gave that slap. ..."

" I know, I know." Lembke screwed up his eyes. " But
excuse me, what is he accused of ? Precisely and, above all,
what is your petition ? "

" I beg you to save him, do you understand ? I used to know
him eight years ago, I might almost say I was his friend," cried
Pyotr Stepanovitch, completely carried away. ;' But I am not
bound to give you. an account of my past life," he added, with
a gesture of dismissal. " All this is of no consequence ; it's the
case of three men and a half, and with those that are abroad you
can't make up a dozen. But what I am building upon is your
humanity and your intelligence. You will understand and you
will put the matter in its true light, as the foolish dream of a man
driven crazy ... by misfortunes, by continued misfortunes,
and not as some impossible political plot or God knows what ! ':

He was almost gasping for breath.

" H'm. I see that he is responsible for the manifestoes with
the axe," Lembke concluded almost majestically. " Excuse me,
though, if he were the only person concerned, how could he
have distributed it both here and in other districts and in the
X province . . . and, above all, where did he get them ? "

" But I tell you that at the utmost there are not more than
five people in it — a dozen perhaps. How can I tell ? "

" You don't know ? "

" How should I know ? — damn it all."

1 Why, you knew that Shatov was one of the conspirators."

" Ech ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch waved his hand as though to
keep off the overwhelming penetration of the inquirer. " Well,
listen. I'll tell you the whole truth : of the manifestoes I know
nothing — that is, absolutely nothing. Damn it all, don't you
know what nothing means ? . . . That sub-lieutenant, to be sure,
and somebody else and some one else here . . . and Shatov
perhaps and some one else too — well, that's the lot of them . . .
a wretched lot. . . . But I've come to intercede for Shatov.
He must be saved, for this poem is his, his own composition,
and it was through him it was published abroad ; that I know
or a fact, but of the manifestoes I really know nothing."

332 THE POSSESSED

" If the poem is his work, no doubt the manifestoes are too.
But what data have you for suspecting Mr. Shatov ? "

Pyotr Stepanovitch, with the air of a man driven out of all
patience, pulled a pocket-book out of his pocket and took a
note out of it.

' Here are the facts," he cried, flinging it on the table.

Lembke unfolded it ; it turned out to be a note written six
months before from here to some address abroad. It was a brief
note, only two lines :

" I can't print ' A Noble Personality ' here, and in fact I
can do nothing ; print it abroad. « -r Shatov "

Lembke looked intently at Pyotr Stepanovitch. Varvara
Petrovna had been right in saying that he had at times the
expression of a sheep.

" You see, it's like this," Pyotr Stepanovitch burst out. " He
wrote this poem here six months ago, but he couldn't get it printed
here, in a secret printing press, and so he asks to have it printed
abroad. . . . That seems clear."

1 Yes, that's clear, but to whom did he write ? That's not
clear yet," Lembke observed with the most subtle irony.

" Why, Kirillov, of course ; the letter was written to Kirillov
abroad. . . . Surely you knew that ? What's so annoying is
that perhaps you are only putting it on before me, and most
likely you knew all about this poem and everything long ago !
How did it come to be on your table ? It found its way there
somehow ! Why are you torturing me, if so ? "

He feverishly mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

" I know something, perhaps." Lembke parried dexterously.
" But who is this Kirillov ? "

" An engineer who has lately come to the town. He was
Stavrogin's second, a maniac, a madman ; your sub-lieutenant
may really only be suffering from temporary delirium, but Kirillov
is a thoroughgoing madman — thoroughgoing, that I guarantee.
Ah, Andrey Antonovitch, if the government only knew what
sort of people these conspirators all are, they wouldn't have the
heart to lay a finger on them. Every single one of them ought
to be in an asylum ; I had a good look at them in Switzerland
and at the congresses."

;' From which they direct the movement here ? '

" Why, who directs it ? Three men and a half. It makes
one sick to think of them. And what sort of movement is

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 333

there here ? Manifestoes ! And what recruits have they made ?
Sub-lieutenants in brain fever and two or three students ! You
are a sensible man : answer this question. Why don't people
of consequence join their ranks ? Why are they all students
and half-baked boys of twenty- two % And not many of those.
I dare say there are thousands of bloodhounds on their track,
but have they tracked out many of them ? Seven ! I tell you
it makes one sick."

Lembke listened with attention but with an expression that
seemed to say, " You don't feed nightingales on fairy-tales."

" Excuse me, though. You asserted that the letter was sent
abroad, but there's no address on it ; how do you come to know
that it was addressed to Mr. Kirillov and abroad too and . . .
and . . . that it really was written by Mr. Shatov ? "

" Why, fetch some specimen of Shatov' s writing and compare
it. You must have some signature of his in your office. As
for its being addressed to Kirillov, it was Kirillov himself showed
it me at the time."

" Then you were yourself . . ."

" Of course I was, myself. They showed me lots of things out
there. And as for this poem, they say it was written by Herzen
to Shatov when he was still wandering abroad, in memory of
their meeting, so they say, by way of praise and recommenda-
tion— damn it all . . . and Shatov circulates it among the
young people as much as to say, ' This was Herzen' s opinion of
me.

" Ha ha ! " cried Lembke, feeling he had got to the bottom of it
at last. " That's just what I was wondering : one can understand
the manifesto, but what's the object of the poem ? "

' Of course you'd see it. Goodness knows why I've been
babbling to you. Listen. Spare Shatov for me and the rest
may go to the devil — even Kirillov, who is in hiding now, shut
up in Filipov's house, where Shatov lodges too. They don't
like me because I've turned round . . . but promise me Shatov
and I'll dish them all up for you. I shall be of use, Andrey
Antonovitch ! I reckon nine or ten men make up the whole
wretched lot. I am keeping an eye on them myself, on my own
account. We know of three already : Shatov, Kirillov, and
that sub-lieutenant. The others I am only watching carefully
. . . though I am pretty sharp-sighted too. It's the same
over again as it was in the X province : two students, a school-
boy, two noblemen of twenty, a teacher, and a half-pay major

334 THE POSSESSED

of sixty, crazy with drink, have been caught with manifestoes ;
that was all — you can take my word for it, that was all ; it was
quite a surprise that that was all. But I must have six days.
I have reckoned it out — six days, not less. If you want to arrive
at any result, don't disturb them for six days and I can kill all
the birds with one stone for you ; but if you nutter them before,
the birds will fly away. But spare me Shatov. I speak for
Shatov. . . . The best plan would be to fetch him here secretly,
in a friendly way, to your study and question him without
disguising the facts. ... I have no doubt he'll throw himself
at your feet and burst into tears ! He is a highly strung and
unfortunate fellow ; his wife is carrying on with Stavrogin. Be
kind to him and he will tell you everything, but I must have six
days. . . . And, above all, above all, not a word to Yulia
Mihailovna. It's a secret. May it be a secret ? "

" What ? " cried Lembke, opening wide his eyes. " Do you
mean to say you said nothing of this to Yulia Mihailovna ? '

" To her ? Heaven forbid ! Ech, Andrey Antonovitch !
You see, I value her friendship and I have the highest respect
for her . . . and all the rest of it . . . but I couldn't make
such a blunder. I don't contradict her, for, as you know your-
self, it's dangerous to contradict her. I may have dropped a
word to her, for I know she likes that, but to suppose that I
mentioned names to her as I have to you or anything of that
sort ! My good sir ! Why am I appealing to you ? Because
you are a man, anyway, a serious person with old-fashioned
firmness and experience in the service. You've seen life. You
must know by heart every detail of such affairs, I expect, from
what you've seen in Petersburg. But if I were to mention
those two names, for instance, to her, she'd stir up such a hubbub.
. . . You know, she would like to astonish Petersburg. No,
she's too hot-headed, she really is."

" Yes, she has something of that fougue," Andrey Antonovitch
muttered with some satisfaction, though at the same time he
resented this unmannerly fellow's daring to express himself
rather freely about Yulia Mihailovna. But Pyotr Stepanovitch
probably imagined that he had not gone far enough and that
he must exert himself further to flatter Lembke and make a
complete conquest of him.

" Fougue is just it," he assented. "She may be a woman
of genius, a literary woman, but she would scare our sparrows.
She wouldn't be able to keep quiet for six hours, let alone six

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 335

days. Ech, Andrey Antonovitch, don't attempt to tie a woman
down for six days ! You do admit that I have some experience —
in this sort of thing, I mean ; I know something about it, and
you know that I may very well know something about it. I am
not asking for six days for fun but with an object."

" 1 have heard . . ." (Lembke hesitated to utter his thought)
" I have heard that on your return from abroad you made some
expression . . . as it were of repentance, in the proper quarter ? "

" Well, that's as it may be."

" And, of course, I don't want to go into it. . . . But it has
seemed to me all along that you've talked in quite a different
style— about the Christian faith, for instance, about social
institutions, about the government even. . . ."

"I've said lots of things, no doubt, I am saying them still ;
but such ideas mustn't be applied as those fools do it, that's
the point. What's the good of biting his superior's shoulder ?
You agreed with me yourself, only you said it was premature."

" I didn't mean that when I agreed and said it was premature."

" You weigh every word you utter, though. He he ! You
are a careful man ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch observed gaily all of a
sudden. :' Listen, old friend. I had to get to know you ; that's
why I talked in my own style. You are not the only one I get
to know like that. Maybe I needed to find out your character."

" What's my character to you ? "

" How can I tell what it may be to me ? " He laughed again.
' You see, my dear and highly respected Andrey Antonovitch,
you are cunning, but it's not come to that yet and it certainly
never will come to it, you understand ? Perhaps you do under-
stand. Though I did make an explanation in the proper quarter
when I came back from abroad, and I really don't know why a
man of certain convictions should not be able to work for the
advancement of his sincere convictions . . . but nobody there
has yet instructed me to investigate your character and I've
not undertaken any such job from them. Consider : I need not
have given those two names to you. I might have gone straight
there ; that is where I made my first explanations. And if I'd
been acting with a view to financial profit or my own interest in
any way, it would have been a bad speculation on my part, for
now they'll be grateful to you and not to me at headquarters.
I've done it solely for Shatov's sake," Pyotr Stepanovitch added
generously, " for Shatov's sake, because of our old friendship. . . .
But when you take up your pen to write to headquarters, you

330 THE POSSESSED

may put in a word for me, if you like. . . . I'll make no objec-
tion, he he ! Adieu, though ; I've stayed too long and there
was no need to gossip so much ! " he added with some amiability,
and he got up from the sofa.

' On the contrary, I am very glad that the position has been
denned, so to speak." Von Lembke too got up and he too
looked pleasant, obviously affected by the last words. " I
accept your services and acknowledge my obligation, and you
may be sure that anything I can do by way of reporting your
zeal . . ."

" Six days — the great thing is to put it off for six days,
and that you shouldn't stir for those six days, that's what I
want."

" So be it."

" Of course, I don't tie your hands and shouldn't venture to.
You are bound to keep watch, only don't flutter the nest too
soon ; I rely on your sense and experience for that. But I
should think you've plenty of bloodhounds and trackers of your
own in reserve, ha ha ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch blurted out with
the gaiety and irresponsibility of youth.

" Not quite so." Lembke parried amiably. " Young people
are apt to suppose that there is a great deal in the background.
. . . But, by the way, allow me one little word : if this Kirillov
was Stavrogin's second, then Mr. Stavrogin too . . ."

" What about Stavrogin ? "

" I mean, if they are such friends ? "

" Oh, no, no, no ! There you are quite out of it, though you
are cunning. You really surprise me. I thought that you had
some information about it. . . . H'm . . . Stavrogin — it's quite
the opposite, quite. . . . Avis au lecteur"

" Do you mean it ? And can it be so ? " Lembke articulated
mistrustfully. " Yulia Mihailovna told me that from what she
heard from Petersburg he is a man acting on some sort of instruc-
tions, so to speak. ..."

" I know nothing about it ; I know nothing, absolutely nothing.
Adieu. Avis au lecteur ! " Abruptly and obviously Pyotr
Stepanovitch declined to discuss it.

He hurried to the door.

" Stay, Pyotr Stepanovitch, stay," cried Lembke. " One other
tiny matter and I won't detain you."

He drew an envelope out of a table drawer.

" Here is a little specimen of the same kind of thing, and I

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 337

let you see it to show how completely I trust you. Here, and
tell me your opinion."

In the envelope was a letter, a strange anonymous letter
addressed to Lembke and only received by him the day before.
With intense vexation Pyotr Stepanovitch read as follows :

" Your Excellency, — For such you are by rank. Herewith
I make known that there is an attempt to be made on the life of
personages of general's rank and on the Fatherland. For it's
working up straight for that. I myself have been disseminating
unceasingly for a number of years. There's infidelity too.
There's a rebellion being got up and there are some thousands of
manifestoes, and for every one of them there will be a hundred
running with their tongues out, unless they've been taken away
beforehand by the police. For they've been promised a mighty
lot of benefits, and the simple people are foolish, and there's
vodka too. The people will attack one after another, taking
them to be guilty, and, fearing both sides, I repent of what I
had no share in, my circumstances being what they are. If
you want information to save the Fatherland, and also the
Church and the ikons, I am the only one that can do it. But
only on condition that I get a pardon from the Secret Police by
telegram at once, me alone, but the rest may answer for it.
Put a candle every evening at seven o'clock in the porter's
window for a signal. Seeing it, I shall believe and come to kiss
the merciful hand from Petersburg. But on condition there's
a pension for me, for else how am I to live ? You won't regret it
for it will mean a star for you. You must go secretly or they'll
wring your neck. Your excellency's desperate servant falls at
your feet.

"Repentant Free-thinker Incognito."

Von Lembke explained that the letter had made its appearance
in the porter's room when it was left empty the day before.

" So what do you think ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch asked almost
rudely.

" I think it's an anonymous skit by way of a hoax."
" Most likely it is. There's no taking you in."
" What makes me think that is that it's so stupid."
" Have you received such documents here before ? '
" Once or twice, anonymous letters."

" Oh, of course they wouldn't be signed. In a different style ?
In different handwritings ? "

Y

33S THE POSSESSED

Yes."

" And were they buffoonery like this one ? "

11 Yes, ;uid y6u know . . . very disgusting."

1 Well, if you had them before, it must be the same thing
now."

' Especially because it's so stupid. Because these people
are educated and wouldn't write so stupidly."

" Of course, of course."

11 But what if this is some one who really wants to turn
informer ? "

''It's not very likely," Pyotr Stepanovitch rapped out dryly.
" What does he mean by a telegram from the Secret Police and
a pension ? It's obviously a hoax."

" Yes, yes," Lembke admitted, abashed.

4 1 tell you what : you leave this with me. I can certainly
find out for you before I track out the others."

" Take it," Lembke assented, though with some hesitation.

" Have you shown it to anyone ? "

" Is it likely ! No."

" Not to Yulia Mihailovna ? "

" Oh, Heaven forbid ! And for God's sake don't you show it
her ! " Lembke cried in alarm. " She'll be so upset . . . and
will be dreadfully angry with me."

" Yes, you'll be the first to catch it ; she'd say you brought it
on yourself if people write like that to you. I know what
women's logic is. Well, good-bye. I dare say I shall bring you
the writer in a couple of days or so. Above all, our compact ! '

IV

Though Pyotr Stepanovitch was perhaps far from being a
stupid man, Fedka the convict had said of him truly " that he
would make up a man himself and go on living with him too."
He came away from Lembke fully persuaded that for the next
six days, anyway, he had put his mind at rest, and this interval
was absolutely necessary for his own purposes. But it was a
false idea and founded entirely on the fact that he had made up
for himself once for all an Andrey Antonovitch who was a
perfect simpleton.

Like every morbidly suspicious man, Andrey Antonovitch
waa always exceedingly and joyfully trustful the moment he got

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 339

on to sure ground. The new turn of affairs struck him at first
in a rather favourable light in spite of some fresh and trouble-
some complications. Anyway, his former doubts fell to the
ground. Besides, he had been so tired for the last few days, so
exhausted and helpless, that his soul involuntarily yearned for
rest. But alas ! he was again uneasy. The long time he had
spent in Petersburg had left ineradicable traces in his heart.
The official and even the secret history of the " younger genera-
tion " was fairly familiar to him — he was a curious man and used
to collect manifestoes — but he could never understand a word
of it. Now he felt like a man lost in a forest. Every instinct
told him that there was something in Pyotr Stepanovitch's words
utterly incongruous, anomalous, and grotesque, " though there's
no telling what may not happen with this ' younger generation,'
and the devil only knows what's going on among them," he
mused, lost in perplexity.

And at this moment, to make matters worse, Blum poked his
head in. He had been waiting not far off through the whole of
Pyotr Stepanovitch's visit. This Blum was actually a distant
relation of Andrey Antonovitch, though the relationship had
always been carefully and timorously concealed. I must apolo-
gise to the reader for devoting a few words here to this insignificant
person. Blum was one of that strange class of " unfortunate "
Germans who are unfortunate not through lack of ability but
through some inexplicable ill luck. " Unfortunate " Germans
are not a myth, but really do exist even in Russia, and are of a
special type. Andrey Antonovitch had always had a quite
touching sympathy for him, and wherever he could, as he rose
himself in the service, had promoted him to subordinate positions
under him ; but Blum had never been successful. Either the
post was abolished after he had been appointed to it, or a new
chief took charge of the department ; once he was almost arrested
by mistake with other people. He was precise, but he was gloomy
to excess and to his own detriment. He was tall and had red
hair ; he stooped and was depressed and even sentimental ; and
in spite of his being humbled by his life, he was obstinate and
persistent as an ox, though always at the wrong moment. For
Andrey Antonovitch he, as well as his wife and numerous family,
had cherished for many years a reverent devotion. Except
Andrey Antonovitch no one had ever liked him. Yulia Mihailovna
would have discarded him from the first, but could not overcome
her husband's obstinacy. It was the cause of their first conjugal

340 THE POSSESSED

quarrel. It had happened soon after their marriage, in the early
days of their honeymoon, when she was confronted with Blum,
who, together with the humiliating secret of his relationship, had
been until then carefully concealed from her. Andrey Antono-
vitch besought her with clasped hands, told her pathetically all
the story of Blum and their friendship from childhood, but
Yulia Mihailovna considered herself disgraced for ever, and even
had recourse to fainting. Von Lembke would not budge an
inch, and declared that he would not give up Blum or part from
him for anything in the world, so that she was surprised at last
and was obliged to put up with Blum. It was settled, however,
that the relationship should be concealed even more carefully
than before if possible, and that even Blum's Christian name
and patronymic should be changed, because he too was for
some reason called Andrey Antonovitch. Blum knew no one
in the town except the German chemist, had not called on
anyone, and led, as he always did, a lonely and niggardly exist-
ence. He had long been aware of Andrey Antonovitch' s literary
peccadilloes. He was generally summoned to listen to secret
Ute-a-tUe readings of his novel ; he would sit like a post for six
hours at a stretch, perspiring and straining his utmost to keep
awake and smile. On reaching home he would groan with his
long-legged and lanky wife over their benefactor's unhappy
weakness for Russian literature.

Andrey Antonovitch looked with anguish at Blum.
" I beg you to leave me alone, Blum," he began with agitated
haste, obviously anxious to avoid any renewal of the previous
conversation which had been interrupted by Pyotr Stepanovitch.
" And yet this may be arranged in the most delicate way and
with no publicity ; you have full power." Blum respectfully but
obstinately insisted on some point, stooping forward and coming
nearer and nearer by small steps to Andrey Antonovitch.

" Blum, you are so devoted to me and so anxious to serve me
that I am always in a panic when I look at you."

" You always say witty things, and sleep in peace satisfied
with what you've said, but that's how you damage yourself."

" Blum, I have just convinced myself that it's quite a mistake,
quite a mistake."

" Not from the words of that false, vicious young man whom
you suspect yourself ? He has won you by his flattering praise
of your talent for literature."

" Blum, you understand nothing about it ; your project is

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 341

absurd, I tell you. We shall find nothing and there will be a
fearful upset and laughter too, and then Yulia Mihailovna ..."
" We shall certainly find everything we are looking for." Blum
advanced firmly towards him, laying his right hand on his heart.
" We will make a search suddenly early in the morning, carefully
showing every consideration for the person himself and strictly
observing all the prescribed forms of the law. The young men,
Lyamshin and Telyatnikov, assert positively that we shall
find all we want. They were constant visitors there. Nobody
is favourably disposed to Mr. Verhovensky. Madame Stavrogin
has openly refused him her graces, and every honest man, if only
there is such a one in this coarse town, is persuaded that a hotbed
of infidelity and social doctrines has always been concealed
there. He keeps all the forbidden books, Ryliev's ' Reflections,'
all Herzens works. ... I have an approximate catalogue, in
case of need."

" Oh heavens ! Every one has these books ; how simple you
are, my poor Blum."

" And many manifestoes," Blum went on without heeding the
observation. " We shall end by certainly coming upon traces
of the real manifestoes here. That young Verhovensky I feel
very suspicious of."

" But you are mixing up the father and the son. They are
not on good terms. The son openly laughs at his father."
" That's only a mask."

' Blum, you've sworn to torment me ! Think ! he is a con-
spicuous figure here, after all. He's been a professor, he is a
well-known man. He'll make such an uproar and there will
be such gibes all over the town, and we shall make a mess of it
all. . . . And only think how Yulia Mihailovna will take it."
Blum pressed forward and did not listen.
" He was only a lecturer, only a lecturer, and of a low rank
when he retired." He smote himself on the chest. " He has
no marks of distinction. He was discharged from the service
on suspicion of plots against the government. He has been
under secret supervision, and undoubtedly still is so. And in
view of the disorders that have come to light now, you are
undoubtedly bound in duty. You are losing your chance of
distinction by letting slip the real criminal."

'Yulia Mihailovna! Get away, Blum," Von Lembke cried
suddenly, hearing the voice of his spouse in the next room.
Blum started but did not give in,

242 THE POSSESSED

" Allow me, allow me," he persisted, pressing both hands
still more tightly on his chest.

" Get away ! " hissed Andrey Antonovitch. " Do what you
like . . . afterwards. Oh, my God ! "

The curtain was raised and Yulia Mihailovna made her appear-
ance. She stood still majestically at the sight of Blum, casting
a haughty and offended glance at him, as though the very
presence of this man was an affront to her. Blum respectfully
made her a deep bow without speaking and, doubled up with
veneration, moved towards the door on tiptoe with his arms held
a little away from him.

Either because he really took Andrey Antonovitch's last
hysterical outbreak as a direct permission to act as he was asking,
or whether he strained a point in this case for the direct advan-
tage of his benefactor, because he was too confident that success
would crown his efforts ; anyway, as we shall see later on, this
conversation of the governor with his subordinate led to a very
surprising event which amused many people, became public
property, moved Yulia Mihailovna to fierce anger, utterly
disconcerting Andrey Antonovitch and reducing him at the
crucial moment to a state of deplorable indecision.

V

It was a busy day for Pyotr Stepanovitch. From Von Lembke
he hastened to Bogoyavlensky Street, but as he went along
Bykovy Street, past the house where Karmazinov was staying,
he suddenly stopped, grinned, and went into the house. The
servant told him that he was expected, which interested him,
as he had said nothing beforehand of his coming.

But the great writer really had been expecting him, not
only that day but the day before and the day before that. Three
days before he had handed him his manuscript Merci (which
he had meant to read at the literary matinee at Yulia Mihailovna's
fete). He had done this out of amiability, fully convinced that
he was agreeably flattering the young man's vanity by letting
him read the great work beforehand. Pyotr Stepanovitch had
noticed long before that this vainglorious, spoiled gentleman,
who was so offensively unapproachable for all but the elect, this
writer " with the intellect of a statesman," was simply trying
to curry favour with him, even with avidity. I believe the young

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 343

man guessed at last that Karmazinov considered him, if not
the leader of the whole secret revolutionary movement in Russia,
at least one of those most deeply initiated into the secrets of the
Russian revolution who had an incontestable influence on the
younger generation. The state of mind of " the cleverest man
in Russia " interested Pyotr Stepanovitch, but hitherto he had,
for certain reasons, avoided explaining himself.

The great writer was staying in the house belonging to his
sister, who was the wife of a Jcammerherr and had an estate in
the neighbourhood. Both she and her husband had the deepest
reverence for their illustrious relation, but to their profound
regret both of them happened to be in Moscow at the time of his
visit, so that the honour of receiving him fell to the lot of an old
lady, a poor relation of the kammerherr's, who had for years
lived in the family and looked after the housekeeping. All the
household had moved about on tiptoe since Karmazinov' s arrival.
The old lady sent news to Moscow almost every day, how he
had slept, what he had deigned to eat, and had once sent a
telegram to announce that after a dinner-party at the mayor's
he was obliged to take a spoonful of a well-known medicine.
She rarely plucked up courage to enter his room, though he
behaved courteously to her, but dryly, and only talked to her of
what was necessary.

When Pyotr Stepanovitch came in, he was eating his morning
cutlet with half a glass of red wine. Pyotr Stepanovitch had
been to see him before and always found him eating this cutlet,
which he finished in his presence without ever offering him
anything. After the cutlet a little cup of coffee was served.
The footman who brought in the dishes wore a swallow-tail coat,
noiseless boots, and gloves.

" Ha ha ! " Karmazinov got up from the sofa, wiping his mouth
with a table-napkin, and came forward to kiss him with an air
of unmixed delight — after the characteristic fashion of Russians
if they are very illustrious. But Pyotr Stepanovitch knew by
experience that, though Karmazinov made a show of kissing
him, he really only proffered his cheek, and so this time he did
the same : the cheeks met. Karmazinov did not show that he
noticed it, sat down on the sofa, and affably offered Pyotr
Stepanovitch an easy chair facing him, in which the latter
stretched himself at once.

'You don't . . . wouldn't like some lunch?" inquired
Karmazinov, abandoning his usual habit but with an air, of

344 THE POSSESSED

course, which would prompt a polite refusal. Pyotr Stepanovitch
at once expressed a desire for lunch. A shade of offended
surprise darkened the face of his host, but only for an instant ;
he nervously rang for the servant and, in spite of air his breeding,
raised his voice scornfully as he gave orders for a second lunch
to be served.

" What will you have, cutlet or coffee ? " he asked once more.

" A cutlet and coffee, and tell him to bring some more wine.
I am hungry," answered Pyotr Stepanovitch, calmly scrutinising
his host's attire. Mr. Karmazinov was wearing a sort of indoor
wadded jacket with pearl buttons, but it was too short, which
was far from becoming to his rather comfortable stomach and
the solid curves of his hips. But tastes differ. Over his knees
he had a checkered woollen plaid reaching to the floor, though
it was warm in the room.

" Are you unwell ? " commented Pyotr Stepanovitch.

" No, not unwell, but I am afraid of being so in this climate,"
answered the writer in his squeaky voice, though he uttered each
word with a soft cadence and agreeable gentlemanly lisp. "I've
been expecting you since yesterday."

" Why ? I didn't say I'd come."

" No, but you have my manuscript. Have you . . . read
it?"

" Manuscript ? Which one ? "

Karmazinov was terribly surprised.

" But you've brought it with you, haven't you ? " He was
so disturbed that he even left off eating and looked at Pyotr
Stepanovitch with a face of dismay.

" Ah, that Bonjour you mean. ..."

" Merci."

" Oh, all right. I'd quite forgotten it and hadn't read it ;
I haven't had time. I really don't know, it's not in my pockets
... it must be on my table. Don't be uneasy, it will be found."

" No, I'd better send to your rooms at once. It might be
lost ; besides, it might be stolen."

" Oh, who'd want it ! But why are you so alarmed % Why,
Yulia Mihailovna told me you always have several copies made —
one kept at a notary's abroad, another in Petersburg, a third in
Moscow, and then you send some to a bank, I believe."

" But Moscow might be burnt again and my manuscript with
it. No, I'd better send at once."

" Stay, here it is ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled a roll of

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 345

note-paper out of a pocket at the back of his coat. " It's a little
crumpled. Only fancy, it's been lying there with my pocket-
handkerchief ever since I took it from you ; I forgot it."

Karmazinov greedily snatched the manuscript, carefully
examined it, counted the pages, and laid it respectfully beside
him on a special table, for the time, in such a way that he would
not lose sight of it for an instant.

" You don't read very much, it seems ? " he hissed, unable
to restrain himself.

" No, not very much."

" And nothing in the way of Russian literature ? '

" In the way of Russian literature ? Let me see, I have read
something. ... ' On the Way ' or ' Away ! ' or ' At the Parting
of the Ways ' — something of the sort ; I don't remember. It's
a long time since I read it, five years ago. I've no time."

A silence followed.

' When I came I assured every one that you were a very
intelligent man, and now I believe every one here is wild over
you."

" Thank you," Pyotr Stepanovitch answered calmly.

Lunch was brought in. Pyotr Stepanovitch pounced on the
cutlet with extraordinary appetite, had eaten it in a trice, tossed
off the wine and swallowed his coffee.

" This boor," thought Karmazinov, looking at him askance
as he munched the last morsel and drained the last drops —
" this boor probably understood the biting taunt in my words
• . . and no doubt he has read the manuscript with eagerness ;
he is simply lying with some object. But possibly he is not
lying and is only genuinely stupid. I like a genius to be rather
stupid. Mayn't he be a sort of genius among them ? Devil take
the fellow ! "

He got up from the sofa and began pacing from one end of the
room to the other for the sake of exercise, as he always did after
lunch.

" Leaving here soon ? " asked Pyotr Stepanovitch from his
easy chair, lighting a cigarette.

" I really came to sell an estate and I am in the hands of my
bailiff."

' You left, I believe, because they expected an epidemic out
there after the war ? "

" N-no, not entirely for that reason," Mr. Karmazinov went
on, uttering his phrases with an affable intonation, and each

346 THE POSSESSED

time he turned round in pacing the corner there was a faint but
jaunty quiver of his right leg. " I certainly intend to live as
long as I can." He laughed, not without venom. " There is
something in our Russian nobility that makes them wear out
very quickly, from every point of view. But I wish to wear
out as late as possible, and now I am going abroad for good ;
there the climate is better, the houses are of stone, and everything
stronger. Europe will last my time, I think. What do you
think ? "

" How can I tell ? "

' H'm. If the Babylon out there really does fall, and great
will be the fall thereof (about which I quite agree with you, yet
I think it will last my time), there's nothing to fall here in Russia,
comparatively speaking. There won't be stones to fall, every-
thing will crumble into dirt. Holy Russia has less power of
resistance than anything in the world. The Russian peasantry
is still held together somehow by the Russian God ; but according
to the latest accounts the Russian God is not to be relied upon,
and scarcely survived the emancipation ; it certainly gave Him
a severe shock. And now, what with railways, what with
you . . . I've no faith in the Russian God."

" And how about the European one ? "

" I don't believe in any. I've been slandered to the youth
of Russia. I've always sympathised with every movement
among them. I was shown the manifestoes here. Every one
looks at them with perplexity because they are frightened at
the way things are put in them, but every one is convinced o£
their power even if they don't admit it to themselves. Every-
body has been rolling downhill, and every one has known for
ages that they have nothing to clutch at. I am persuaded of
the success of this mysterious propaganda, if only because
Russia is now pre-eminently the place in all the world where
anything you like may happen without any opposition. I
understand only too well why wealthy Russians all flock abroad,
and more and more so every year. It's simply instinct. If the
ship is sinking, the rats are the first to leave it. Holy Russia
is a country of wood, of poverty . . . and of danger, the country
of ambitious beggars in its upper classes, while the immense
majority live in poky little huts. She will be glad of any way
of escape ; you have only to present it to her. It's only the
government that still means to resist, but it brandishes its
cudgel in the dark and hits its own men. Everything here is

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 347

doomed and awaiting the end. Russia as she is has no future.
I have become a German and I am proud of it."

" But you began about the manifestoes. Tell me everything :
how do you look at them ? "

" Every one is afraid of them, so they must be influential.
They openly unmask what is false and prove that there is nothing
to lay hold of among us, and nothing to lean upon. They speak
aloud while all is silent. What is most effective about them
(in spite of their style) is the incredible boldness with which they
look the truth straight in the face. To look facts straight in
the face is only possible to Russians of this generation. No, in
Europe they are not yet so bold ; it is a realm of stone, there
there is still something to lean upon. So far as I see and am
able to judge, the whole essence of the Russian revolutionary
idea lies in the negation of honour. I like its being so boldly and
fearlessly expressed. No, in Europe they wouldn't understand
it yet, but that's just what we shall clutch at. For a Russian
a sense of honour is only a superfluous burden, and it always
has been a burden through all his history. The open ' right to
dishonour " will attract him more than anything. I belong to
the older generation and, I must confess, still cling to honour,
but only from habit. It is only that I prefer the old forms,
granted it's from timidity ; you see one must live somehow what's
left of one's life."

He suddenly stopped.

" I am talking," he thought, " while he holds his tongue
and watches me. He has come to make me ask him a direct
question. And I shall ask him."

" Yulia Mihailovna asked me by some stratagem to find out
from you what the surprise is that you are preparing for the
ball to-morrow," Pyotr Stepanovitch asked suddenly.

" Yes, there really will be a surprise and I certainly shall
astonish . . ." said Karmazinov with increased dignity. " But
I won't tell you what the secret is."

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not insist.

" There is a young man here called Shatov," observed the
great writer. " Would you believe it, I haven't seen him."

" A very nice person. What about him ? "

" Oh, nothing. He talks about something. Isn't he the
person who gave Stavrogin that slap in the face ? "

" Yes."

" And what's your opinion of Stavrogin ? "

350 THE POSSESSED

" I dislike you very much, but you can be perfectly sure —
though I don't regard it as loyalty and disloyalty."

" But do you know " (Pyotr Stepanovitch was startled again)
" we must talk things over thoroughly again so as not to get in
a muddle. The business needs accuracy, and you keep giving
me such shocks. Will you let me speak ? "

" Speak," snapped Kirillov, looking away.

" You made up your mind long ago to take your life ... I
mean, you had the idea in your mind. Is that the right expres-
sion ? Is there any mistake about that ? "

" I have the same idea still."

" Excellent. Take note that no one has forced it on you."

" Rather not ; what nonsense you talk."

" I dare say I express it very stupidly. Of course, it would
be very stupid to force anybody to it. I'll go on. You were a
member of the society before its organisation was changed, and
confessed it to one of the members."

" I didn't confess it, I simply said so."

" Quite so. And it would be absurd to confess such a thing.
What a confession ! You simply said so. Excellent."

"No, it's not excellent, for you are being tedious. I am not
obliged to give you any account of myself and you can't under-
stand my ideas. I want to put an end to my life, because
that's my idea, because I don't want to be afraid of death,
because . . . because there's no need for you to know. What
do you want ? Would you like tea ? It's cold. Let me get
you another glass."

Pyotr Stepanovitch actually had taken up the teapot and
was looking for an empty glass. Kirillov went to the cupboard
and brought a clean glass.

" I've just had lunch at Karmazinov's," observed his visitor,
<i then I listened to him talking, and perspired and got into a
sweat again running here. I am fearfully thirsty."

" Drink. Cold tea is good."

Kirillov sat down on his chair again and again fixed his eyes
on the farthest corner.

" The idea had arisen in the society," he went on in the same
voice, " that I might be of use if I killed myself, and that when
you get up some bit of mischief here, and they are looking for
the guilty, I might suddenly shoot myself and leave a letter
saying I did it all, so that you might escape suspicion for another
year."

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 351

" For a few days, anyway ; one day is precious."

" Good. So for that reason they asked me, if I would, to
wait. I said I'd wait till the society fixed the day, because it
makes no difference to me."

" Yes, but remember that you bound yourself not to make
up your last letter without me and that in Russia you would be
at my . . . well, at my disposition, that is for that purpose only.
I need hardly say, in everything else, of course, you are free,"
Pyotr Stepanovitch added almost amiably.

" I didn't bind myself, I agreed, because it makes no difference
to me."

" Good, good. I have no intention of wounding your vanity,
but ..."

" It's not a question of vanity."

" But remember that a hundred and twenty thalers were
collected for your journey, so you've taken money."

"Not at all." Kirillov fired up. "The money was not on
that condition. One doesn't take money for that."

" People sometimes do."

" That's a lie. I sent a letter from Petersburg, and in Peters-
burg I paid you a hundred and twenty thalers ; I put it in your
hand . . . and it has been sent off there, unless you've kept it
for yourself."

" All right, all right, I don't dispute anything ; it has been
sent off. All that matters is that you are still in the same
mind."

" Exactly the same. When you come and tell me it's time,
I'll carry it all out. Will it be very soon ? "

" Not very many days. . . . But remember, we'll make up
the letter together, the same night."

" The same day if you like. You say I must take the respon-
sibility for the manifestoes on myself ? "

" And something else too."

" I am not going to make myself out responsible for every-
thing."

' What won't you be responsible for ? " said Pyotr Stepano-
vitch again.

' What I don't choose ; that's enough. I don't want to talk
about it any more."

Pyotr Stepanovitch controlled himself and changed the
subject.

" To speak of something else," he began, " will you be with us

THE POSSESSED

• „ . It's Virdnsky's name-day ; that's the pretext
this evening? Its \ urging
for our meeting." ^

« I don't want to You must. We must impress

« Do me a favour. Do come. faoe well>

them by our number and our looks You

i^^^n^orMa^Uktllov. /< Very -,,, I'll come,
You tniriK so B. what time is it ?

paper with you.'

"What's that for ? ,.~ n„ to you, and it's my special
« Why, it makes no difference to yo >, listen>

request* You'll only have to sit s. 11, speak, g ^^

and sometimes seem to make a note,
if you like. - « 55

« What nonsense '^JVifierence to you I You keep
"Whv, smce it mates no ^ ^
saying that it's just the same to you.

« No, what for ? " h societyi the inspector,

"Why, because that me^ ^ of them here that possibly
has stopped at Moscow and toW ^omeo^ think ^

the inspector may turn up «ht ,J ^ ^ weeks already,
are the inspector. And as you

they'll be still more surprised. inspector in Moscow.

4tage tricks. Youh»ventgot^ m p ^ ^.^ .g
" Well, suppose I haven t-~^ , You are a member
of yours and what bother wdl it be to you
of the society yourself u d hold my tongue,

" Tell them I am the inspector 1 U sit su
but I won't have the pencil and paper.

But why

» I don't want to." he turned positively

hat. ,x, , 9 ,i hp brought out suddenly, in *

« Is that fellow with you ? he brougi

low voice. fj

" Yes " i • Don't be uneasy.

"That's good. rfl^ttamW^. Theoldwoma>
"lam not uneasy . -tie is onry

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 353

is in the hospital, her daughter-in-law is dead. I've been
alone for the last two days. I've shown him the place in the
paling where you can take a board out ; he gets through, no
one sees."

"I'll take him away soon."

" He says he has got plenty of places to stay the night in."

" That's rot ; they are looking for him, but here he wouldn't
be noticed. Do you ever get into talk with him ? "

" Yes, at night. He abuses you tremendously. I've been
reading the ' Apocalypse ' to him at night, and we have tea. He
listened eagerly, very eagerly, the whole night."

" Hang it all, you'll convert him to Christianity ! "

" He is a Christian as it is. Don't be unea. y, he'll do the
murder. Whom do you want to murder ? "

" No, I don't want him for that, I want him for something
different. . . . And does Shatov know about Fedka V "

" I don't talk to Shatov, and I don't see him."

" Is he angry ? "

" No, we are not angry, only we shun one another. We lay
too long side by side in America."

" I am going to him directly."

" As you like."

" Stavrogin and I may come and see you from there, about
ten o'clock."

"Do."

" I want to talk to him about something important. . . .
I say, make me a present of your ball ; what do you want with it
now ? I want it for gymnastics too. I'll pay you for it if you
like."

" You can take it without."

Pyotr Stepanovitch put the ball in the back pocket of his coat.

" But I'll give you nothing against Stavrogin," Kirillov
muttered after his guest, as he saw him out. The latter looked
at him in amazement but did not answer.

Kirillov' s last words perplexed Pyotr Stepanovitch extremely ;
he had not time yet to discover their meaning, but even while
he was on the stairs of Shatov's lodging he tried to remove all
trace of annoyance and to assume an amiable expression. Shatov
was at home and rather unwell. He was lying on his bed, though
dressed.

' What bad luck ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch cried out in the
doorway. " Are you really ill ? "

z

354 THE POSSESSED

The amiable expression of his face suddenly vanished ; there
was a gleam of spite in his eyes.

" Not at all." Shatov jumped up nervously. " I am not ill
at all ... a little headache ..."

He was disconcerted ; the sudden appearance of such a visitor
positively alarmed him.

" You mustn't be ill for the job I've come about," I^otr
Stepanovitch began quickly and, as it were, peremptorily.
" Allow me to sit down." (He sat down.) " And you sit down again
on your bedstead ; that's right. There will be a partj^ of our
fellows at Virginsky's to-night on the pretext of his birthday ;
it will have no political character, however — we've seen to that.
I am coming vith Nikolay Stavrogin. I would not, of course,
have dragged you there, knowing your way of thinking at present
. . . simply to save your being worried, not because we think
you would betray us. But as things have turned out, you will
have to go. You'll meet there the very people with whom we
shall finally settle how you are to leave the society and to whom
you are to hand over what is in your keeping. We'll do it without
being noticed ; I'll take you aside into a corner ; there'll be a
lot of people and there's no need for every one to know. I must
confess I've had to keep my tongue wagging on your behalf ;
but now I believe they've agreed, on condition you hand over the
printing press and all the papers, of course. Then you can go
where you please."

Shatov listened, frowning and resentful. The nervous alarm
of a moment before had entirely left him.

" I don't acknowledge any sort of obligation to give an account
to the devil knows whom," he declared definitely. "No one
has the authority to set me free."

" Not quite so. A great deal has been entrusted to you
You hadn't the right to break off simply. Besides, you made no
clear statement about it, so that you put them in an ambiguous
position."

" I stated my position clearly by letter as soon as I arrived
here."

" No, it wasn't clear," Pyotr Stepanovitch retorted calmly.
" I sent you * A Noble Personality ' to be printed here, an
meaning the copies to be kept here till they were wanted ; an
the two manifestoes as well. You returned them with an
ambiguous letter which explained nothing."

" I refused definitely to print them."

i

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 355

" Well, not definitely. You wrote that you couldn't, but you
didn't explain for what reason. ' I can't ' doesn't mean ' I
don't want to.' It might be supposed that you were simply
unable through circumstances. That was how they took it,
and considered that you still meant to keep up your connection
with the society, so that they might have entrusted something
to you again and so have compromised themselves. They say
here that you simply meant to deceive them, so that you might
betray them when you got hold of something important. I have
defended you to the best of my powers, and have shown your
brief note as evidence in your favour. But I had to admit on
rereading those two lines that they were misleading and not
conclusive."

" You kept that note so carefully then ? "

" My keeping it means nothing ; I've got it still."

" Well, I don't care, damn it ! " Shatov cried furiously.
" Your fools may consider that I've betrayed them if they like —
what is it to me ? I should like to see what you can do to
me ? "

" Your name would be noted, and at the first success of the
revolution you would be hanged."

" That's when you get the upper hand and dominate
Russia ? "

" You needn't laugh. I tell you again, I stood up for you.
Anyway, I advise you to turn up to-day. Why waste words
through false pride ? Isn't it better to part friends ? In any
case you'll have to give up- the printing press and the old type
and papers — that's what we must talk about."

" I'll come," Shatov muttered, looking down thoughtfully.

Pyotr Stepanovitch glanced askance at him from his place.

" Will Stavrogin be there ? " Shatov asked suddenly, raising
his head.

" He is certain to be."

"Ha ha!"

Again they were silent for a minute. Shatov grinned disdain-
fully and irritably.

" And that contemptible ' Noble Personality ' of yours, that
I wouldn't print here. Has it been printed ? " he asked.

" Yes."

" To make the schoolboys believe that Herzen himself had
written it in your album ? " * ~~

" Yes, Herzen himself."

356 THE POSSESSED

Again they were silent for three minutes. At last Shatov got
up from the bed.

" Go out of my room ; I don't care to sit with you."

" I'm going," Pyotr Stepanovitch brought out with positive
alacrity, getting up at once. " Only one word : Kirillov is
quite alone in the lodge now, isn't he, without a servant ? "

" Quite alone. Get along ; I can't stand being in the same
room with you."

" Well, you are a pleasant customer now ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch
reflected gaily as he went out into the street, " and you will be
pleasant this evening too, and that just suits me ; nothing better
could be wished, nothing better could be wished ! The Russian
God Himself seems helping me."

VII

He had probably been very busy that day on all sorts of errands
and probably with success, which was reflected in the self-satisfied
expression of his face when at six o'clock that evening he turned
up at Stavrogin's. But he was not at once admitted : Stavrogin
had just locked himself in the study with Mavriky Nikolaevitch.
This news instantly made Pyotr Stepanovitch anxious. He
seated himself close to the study door to wait for the visitor to
go away. He could hear conversation but could not catch the
words. The visit did not last long ; soon he heard a noise, the
sound of an extremely loud and abrupt voice, then the door I
opened and Mavriky Nikolaevitch came out with a very pale
face. He did not notice Pyotr Stepanovitch, and quickly passed
by. Pyotr Stepanovitch instantly ran into the study.

I cannot omit a detailed account of the very brief interview
that had taken place between the two " rivals " — an interview
which might well have seemed impossible under the circum-
stances, but which had yet taken place.

This is how it had come about. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
had been enjoying an after-dinner nap on the couch in his study
when Alexey Yegorytch had announced the unexpected visitor
Hearing the name, he had positively leapt up, unwilling to believe
it. But soon a smile gleamed on his lips — a smile of haughty
triumph and at the same time of a blank, incredulous wonder
The visitor, Mavriky Nikolaevitch, seemed struck by the expresn
sion of that smile as he came in ; anyway, he stood still in th«

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 357

middle of the room as though uncertain whether to come further
in or to turn back. Stavrogin succeeded at once in transforming
the expression of his face, and with an air of grave surprise took
a step towards him. The visitor did not take his outstretched
hand, but awkwardly moved a chair and, not uttering a word,
sat down without waiting for his host to do so. Nikolay Vsyevo-
lodovitch sat down on the sofa facing him obliquely and, looking
at Mavriky Nikolaevitch, waited in silence.

" If you can, marry Lizaveta Nikolaevna," Mavriky Nikolae-
vitch brought out suddenly at last, and what was most curious,
it was impossible to tell from his tone whether it was an entreaty,
a recommendation, a surrender, or a command.

Stavrogin still remained silent, but the visitor had evidently
said all he had come to say and gazed at him persistently, waiting
for an answer.

"If I am not mistaken (but it's quite certain), Lizaveta
Nikolaevna is already betrothed to you," Stavrogin said at last.

" Promised and betrothed," Mavriky Nikolaevitch assented
firmly and clearly.

" You have . . . quarrelled ? Excuse me, Mavriky Nikolae-
vitch."

" No, she ' loves and respects me ' ; those are her words. Her
words are more precious than anything."

" Of that there can be no doubt."

" But let me tell you, if she were standing in the church at
her wedding and you were to call her, she'd give up me and
every one and go to you."

" From the wedding ? "

" Yes, and after the wedding."

" Aren't you making a mistake ? "

" No. Under her persistent, sincere, and intense hatred for
you love is flashing out at every moment . . . and madness . . .
the sincerest infinite love and . . . madness ! On the contrary,
behind the love she feels for me, which is sincere too, every
moment there are flashes of hatred . . . the most intense hatred !
[ could never have fancied all these transitions . . . before."

" But I wonder, though, how could you come here and dispose
i)f the hand of Lizaveta Nikolaevna 'i Have you the right to
io so ? Has she authorised you ? "

Mavriky Nikolaevitch frowned and for a minute he looked
lown.

" That's all words on your part," he brought out suddenly,

358 THE POSSESSED

u words of revenge and triumph ; I am sure you can read between
the lines, and is this the time for petty vanity ? Haven't you
satisfaction enough ? Must I really dot my i's and go into it
all ? Very well, I will dot my i's, if you are so anxious for my
humiliation. I have no right, it's impossible for me to be
authorised ; Lizaveta Nikolaevna knows nothing about it and
her betrothed has finally lost his senses and is only fit for a
madhouse, and, to crown everything, has come to tell you so
himself. You are the only man in the world who can make
her happy, and I am the one to make her unhappy. You are
trying to get her, you are pursuing her, but — I don't know why —
you won't marry her. If it's because of a lovers' quarrel abroad
and I must be sacrificed to end it, sacrifice me. She is too
unhappy and I can't endure it. My words are not a sanction,
not a prescription, and so it's no slur on your pride. If you care
to take my place at the altar, you can do it without any
sanction from me, and there is no ground for me to come to you
with a mad proposal, especially as our marriage is utterly
impossible after the step I am taking now. I cannot lead her
to the altar feeling myself an abject wretch. What I am doing
here and my handing her over to you, perhaps her bitterest foe,
is to my mind something so abject that I shall never get
over it."

" Will you shoot yourself on our wedding day ? "
" No, much later. Why stain her bridal dress with my blood ?
Perhaps I shall not shoot myself at all, either now or later."
" I suppose you want to comfort me by saying that ? "
" You ? What would the blood of one more mean to you ? ':
He turned pale and his eyes gleamed. A minute of silence
followed.

" Excuse me for the questions I've asked you," Stavrogin begar
again ; " some of them I had no business to ask you, but one oi
them I think I have every right to put to you. Tell me, whal
facts have led you to form a conclusion as to my feelings foi
Lizaveta Nikolaevna ? I mean to a conviction of a degree o:
feeling on my part as would justify your coming here . . . anl
risking such a proposal."

" What ? " Mavriky Nikolaevitch positively started. " Haven'
you been trying to win her ? Aren't you trying to win her, anc
don't you want to win her ? "

" Generally speaking, I can't speak of my feeling for thi
woman or that to a third person or to anyone except the womai

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 359

herself. You must excuse it, it's a constitutional peculiarity.
But to make up for it, I'll tell you the truth about everything
else ; I am married, and it's impossible for me either to marry
or to try ' to win ' anyone."

Mavriky Nikolaevitch was so astounded that he started back
in his chair and for some time stared fixedly into Stavrogin's
face.

" Only fancy, I never thought of that," he muttered. " You
said then, that morning, that you were not married . . . and
so I believed you were not married."

He turned terribly pale ; suddenly he brought his fist down on
the table with all his might.

;' If after that confession you don't leave Lizaveta Nikolaevna
alone, if you make her unhappy, I'll kill you with my stick like
a dog in a ditch ! "

He jumped up and walked quickly out of the room. Pyotr
Stepanovitch, running in, found his host in a most unexpected
frame of mind.

" Ah, that's you ! " Stavrogin laughed loudly ; his laughter
seemed to be provoked simply by the appearance of Pyotr
Stepanovitch as he ran in with such impulsive curiosity.

" Were you listening at the door ? Wait a bit. W^hat have
you come about ? I promised you something, didn't I ? Ah,
bah ! I remember, to meet * our fellows.' Let us go. I am
delighted. You couldn't have thought of anything more
appropriate."

He snatched up his hat and they both went at once out of the
house.

" Are you laughing beforehand at the prospect of seeing
' our fellows ' ? " chirped gaily Pyotr Stepanovitch, dodging
round him with obsequious alacrity, at one moment trying to
walk beside his companion on the narrow brick pavement and
at the next running right into the mud of the road ; for Stavrogin
walked in the middle of the pavement without observing that
he left no room for anyone else.

;i I am not laughing at all," he answered loudly and gaily ;
" on the contrary, I am sure that you have the most serious
set of people there."

' ' Surly dullards,' as you once deigned to express it."

" Nothing is more amusing sometimes than a surly dullard."

" Ah, you mean Mavriky Nikolaevitch ? I am convinced he
came to give up his betrothed to you, eh ? I egged him on to

360 THE POSSESSED

do it, indirectly, would you believe it ? And if he doesn't give
her up, we'll take her, anyway, won't we — eh ? "

Pyotr Stepanovitch knew no doubt that he was running some
risk in venturing on such sallies, but when he was excited he
preferred to risk anything rather than to remain in uncertainty.
Stavrogin only laughed.

" You still reckon you'll help me ? " he asked.
" If you call me. But you know there's one way, and the best
one." '

" Do I know your way ? "

" Oh no, that's a secret for the time. Only remember, a secret
has its price."

" I know what it costs," Stavrogin muttered to himself, but
he restrained himself and was silent.

" What it costs ? What did you say ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch
was startled.

" I said, ' Damn you and your secret ! ' You'd better be
telling me who will be there. I know that we are going to a
name-day party, but who will be there ? "
" Oh, all sorts ! Even Kirillov."
" All members of circles ? "

" Hang it all, you are in a hurry ! There's not one circle formed
yet."

" How did you manage to distribute so many manifestoes
then ? "

" Where we are going only four are members of the circle. The
others on probation are spying on one another with jealous
eagerness, and bring reports to me. They are a trustworthy set.
Et's all material which we must organise, and then we must clear
out. But you wrote the rules yourself, there's no need to
explain."

" Are things going badly then ? Is there a hitch ? "
" Going ? Couldn't be better. It will amuse you : the first
thing which has a tremendous effect is giving them titles. Nothing
has more influence than a title. I invent ranks and duties on
purpose ; I have secretaries, secret spies, treasurers, presidents,
registrars, their assistants — they like it awfully, it's taken
capitally. Then, the next force is sentimentalism, of course.
You know, amongst us socialism spreads principally through
sentimentalism. But the trouble is these lieutenants who bite ;
sometimes you put your foot in it. Then come the out-and-out
rogues ; well, they are a good sort, if you like, and sometimes

PYOTR STEPANOVITCH IS BUSY 361

very useful ; but they waste a lot of one's time, they want inces-
sant looking after. And the most important force of all — the
cement that holds everything together — is their being ashamed
of having an opinion of their own. That is a force ! And
whose work is it, whose precious achievement is it, that not
one idea of their own is left in their heads ! They think originality
a disgrace."

" If so, why do you take so much trouble ? "

" Why, if people lie simply gaping at every one, how can you
resist annexing them ? Can you seriously refuse to believe in
the possibility of success ? Yes, you have the faith, but one
wants will. It's just with people like this that success is possible.
I tell you I could make them go through fire ; one has only to
din it into them that they are not advanced enough. The fools
reproach me that I have taken in every one here over the central
committee and ' the innumerable branches.' You once blamed
me for it yourself, but where's the deception ? You and I are
the central committee and there will be as many branches as
we like."

" And always the same sort of rabble ! "

" Raw material. Even they will be of use."

" And you are still reckoning on me ? "

" You are the chief, you are the head ; I shall only be a
subordinate, your secretary. We shall take to our barque, you
know ; the oars are of maple, the sails are of silk, at the helm
sits a fair maiden, Lizaveta Nikolaevna . . . hang it, how does
it go in the ballad ? "

" He is stuck," laughed Stavrogin. " No, I'd better give you
my version. There you reckon on your fingers the forces that
make up the circles. All that business of titles and sentimentalism
is a very good cement, but there is something better ; persuade
four members of the circle to do for a fifth on the pretence
that he is a traitor, and you'll tie them all together with the
blood they've shed as though it were a knot. They'll be your
slaves, they won't dare to rebel or call you to account.
Ha ha ha i "

" But you . . . you shall pay for those words," Pyotr Stepa-
novitch thought to himself, " and this very evening, in fact. You
go too far."

This or something like this must have been Pyotr Stepano-
vitch's reflection. They were approaching Virginsky's house.

" You've represented me, no doubt, as a member from abroad,

362 THE POSSESSED

an inspector in connection with the Internationale ? " Stavrogin
asked suddenly.

" No, not an inspector ; you won't be an inspector ; but you
are one of the original members from abroad, who knows the
most important secrets — that's your role. You are going to
speak, of course ? "

" What's put that idea into your head ? "

" Now you are bound to speak."

Stavrogin positively stood still in the middle of the street in
surprise, not far from a street lamp. Pyotr Stepanovitch faced
his scrutiny calmly and defiantly. Stavrogin cursed and went
on.

" And are you going to speak ? " he suddenly asked Pyotr
Stepanovitch.

"No, I am going to listen to you."

" Damn you, you really are giving me an idea ? "

" What idea ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch asked quickly.

" Perhaps I will speak there, but afterwards I will give you a
hiding — and a sound one too, you know."

" By the way, I told Karmazinov this morning that you said
he ought to be thrashed, and not simply as a form but to hurt3
as they flog peasants."

" But I never said such a thing ; ha ha ! "

" No matter. Se non e vero ..."

" Well, thanks. I am truly obliged."

" And another thing. Do you know, Karmazinov says that
the essence of our creed is the negation of honour, and that by
the open advocacy of a right to be dishonourable a Russian can
be won over more easily than by anything."

" An excellent saying ! Golden words ! " cried Stavrogin.
61 He's hit the mark there ! The right to dishonour — why,
they'd all flock to us for that, not one would stay behind ! And
listen, Verhovensky, you are not one of the higher police, are
you ? "

" Anyone who has a question like that in his mind doesn't
utter it."

" I understand, but we are by ourselves."

" No, so far I am not one of the higher police. Enough, here
we are. Compose your features, Stavrogin ; I always do mine
when I go in. A gloomy expression, that's all, nothing more is
wanted ; it's a very simple business."

CHAPTER VII
A MEETING

Virginsky lived in his own house, or rather his wife's, in
Muravyin Street. It was a wooden house of one story, and
there were no lodgers in it. On the pretext of Virginsky' s
name-day party, about fifteen guests were assembled ; but the
entertainment was not in the least like an ordinary provincial
name-day party. From the very beginning of their married
life the husband and wife had agreed once for all that it was
utterly stupid to invite friends to celebrate name-days, and that
" there is nothing to rejoice about in fact." In a few years they
had succeeded in completely cutting themselves off from all
society. Though he was a man of some ability, and by no means
very poor, he somehow seemed to every one an eccentric fellow
who was fond of solitude, and, what's more, " stuck up in con-
versation." Madame Virginsky was a midwife by profession,
and by that very fact was on the lowest rung of the social ladder,
lower even than the priest's wife in spite of her husband's rank
as an officer. But she was conspicuously lacking in the humility
befitting her position. And after her very stupid and unpardon-
ably open liaison on principle with Captain Lebyadkin, a notorious
rogue, even the most indulgent of our ladies turned away from
her with marked contempt. But Madame Virginsky accepted
all this as though it were what she wanted. It is remarkable
that those very ladies applied to Arina Prohorovna (that is,
Madame Virginsky) when they were in an interesting condition,
rather than to any one of the other three accoucheuses of the
town. She was sent for even by country families living in the
neighbourhood, so great was the belief in her knowledge, luck,
and skill in critical cases. It ended in her practising only among
the wealthiest ladies ; she was greedy of money. Feeling her
power to the full, she ended by not putting herself out for
anyone. Possibly on purpose, indeed, in her practice in the
best houses she used to scare nervous patients by the most
incredible and nihilistic disregard of good manners, or by jeering
at "everything holy," at the very time when "everything

363

364 THE POSSESSED

holy " might have come in most useful. Our town doctor,
Rozanov — he too was an accoucheur — asserted most positively
that on one occasion when a patient in labour was crying out
and calling on the name of the Almighty, a free-thinking sally
from Arina Prohorovna, fired off like a pistol-shot, had so
terrifying an effect on the patient that it greatly accelerated her
delivery.

But though she was a nihilist, Madame Virginsky did not,
when occasion arose, disdain social or even old-fashioned super-
stitions and customs if they could be of any advantage to herself.
She would never, for instance, have stayed away from a baby's
christening, and always put on a green silk dress with a train and
adorned her chignon with curls and ringlets for such events,
though at other times she positively revelled in slovenliness.
And though during the ceremony she always maintained " the
most insolent air," so that she put the clergy to confusion, yet
when it was over she invariably handed champagne to the guests
(it was for that that she came and dressed up), and it was no
.use trying to take the glass without a contribution to her
" porridge bowl."

The guests who assembled that evening at Virginsky' s (mostly
men) had a casual and exceptional air. There was no supper
nor cards. In the middle of the large drawing-room, which
was papered with extremely old blue paper, two tables had been
put together and covered with a large though not quite clean
table-cloth, and on them two samovars were boiling. The end
of the table was taken up by a huge tray with twenty-five glasses
on it and a basket with ordinary French bread cut into a number
of slices, as one sees it in genteel boarding-schools for boys or
girls. The tea was poured out by a maiden lady of thirty, Arina
Prohorovna's sister, a silent and malevolent creature, with flaxen
hair and no eyebrows, who shared her sister's progressive ideas
and was an object of terror to Virginsky himself in domestic
life. There were only three ladies in the room : the lady of the
house, her eyebrowless sister, and Virginsky's sister, a girl who
had just arrived from Petersburg. Arina Prohorovna, a good-
looking and buxom woman of seven-and-twenty, rather dis-
hevelled, in an everyday greenish woollen dress, was sitting
scanning the guests with her bold eyes, and her look seemed in
haste to say, " You see I am not in the least afraid of anything."
Miss Virginsky, a rosy-cheeked student and a nihilist, who was
also good-looking, short, plump and round as a little ball, had

A MEETING 365

settled herself beside Arina Prohorovna, almost in her travelling
clothes. She held a roll of paper in her hand, and scrutinised the
guests with impatient and roving eyes. Virginsky himself was
rather unwell that evening, but he came in and sat in an easy
chair by the tea-table. All the guests were sitting down too, and
the orderly way in which they were ranged on chairs suggested
a meeting. Evidently all were expecting something and were
filling up the interval with loud but irrelevant conversation.
When Stavrogin and Verhovensky appeared there was a sudden
hush.

But I must be allowed to give a few explanations to make
things clear.

I believe that all these people had come together in the agree-
able expectation of hearing something particularly interesting,
and had notice of it beforehand. They were the flower of the
reddest Radicalism of our ancient town, and had been carefully
picked out by Virginsky for this " meeting." I may remark,
too, that some of them (though not very many) had never
visited him before. Of course most of the guests had no clear
idea why they had been summoned. It was true that at that
time all took Pyotr Stepanovitch for a fully authorised emissary
from abroad ; this idea had somehow taken root among them
at once and naturally flattered them. And yet among the citizens
assembled ostensibly to keep a name-day, there were some who
had been approached with definite proposals. Pyotr Verho-
vensky had succeeded in getting together a " quintet " amongst
us like the one he had already formed in Moscow and, as appeared
later, in our province among the officers. It was said that he
had another in X province. This quintet of the elect were
sitting now at the general table, and very skilfully succeeded in
giving themselves the air of being quite ordinary people, so that
no one could have known them. They were — since it is no
longer a secret — first Liputin, then Virginsky himself, then
Shigalov (a gentleman with long ears, the brother of Madame
Virginsky), Lyamshin, and lastly a strange person called Tolka-
tchenko, a man of forty, who was famed for his vast knowledge
of the people, especially of thieves and robbers. He used to
frequent the taverns on purpose (though not only with the object
of studying the people), and plumed himself on his shabby clothes,
tarred boots, and crafty wink and a flourish of peasant phrases.
Lyamshin had once or twice brought him to Stepan Trofimovitch's
gatherings, where, however, he did not make a great sensation.

366 THE POSSESSED

He used to make his appearance in the town from time to time,
chiefly when he was out of a job ; he was employed on the
railway.

Every one of these fine champions had formed this first group
in the fervent conviction that their quintet was only one of
hundreds and thousands of similar groups scattered all over
Russia, and that they all depended on some immense central
but secret power, which in its turn was intimately connected
with the revolutionary movement all over Europe. But I regret
to say that even at that time there was beginning to be dissension
among them. Though they had ever since the spring been
expecting Pyotr Verhovensky, whose coming had been heralded
first by Tolkatchenko and then by the arrival of Shigalov,
though they had expected extraordinary miracles from him, and
though they had responded to his first summons without the
slightest criticism, yet they had no sooner formed the quintet
than they all somehow seemed to feel insulted ; and I really
believe it was owing to the promptitude with which they con-
sented to join. They had joined, of course, from a not ignoble
feeling of shame, for fear people might say afterwards that they
had not dared to join ; still they felt Pyotr Verhovensky ought
to have appreciated their heroism and have rewarded it by telling
them some really important bits of news at least. But Verho-
vensky was not at all inclined to satisfy their legitimate curiosity,
and told them nothing but what was necessary ; he treated them
in general with great sternness and even rather casually. This
was positively irritating, and Comrade Shigalov was already egging
the others on to insist on his " explaining himself," though, of
course, not at Virginsky's, where so many outsiders were present.

I have an idea that the above-mentioned members of the first
quintet were disposed to suspect that among the guests of
Virginsky's that evening some were members of other groups,
unknown to them, belonging to the same secret organisation and
founded in the town by the same Verhovensky ; so that in
fact all present were suspecting one another, and posed in
various ways to one another, which gave the whole party
a very perplexing and even romantic air. Yet there were
persons present who were beyond all suspicion. For instance, a
major in the service, a near relation of Virginsky, a perfectly
innocent person who had not been invited but had come of
himself for the name-day celebration, so that it was impossible
not to receive him. But Virginsky was qute unperturbed, as

A MEETING 36'/

the major was "incapable of betraying them" ; for in spite of
his stupidity he had all his life been fond of dropping in wherever
extreme Radicals met ; he did not sympathise with their ideas
himself, but was very fond of listening to them. What's more,
he had even been compromised indeed. It had happened in his
youth that whole bundles of manifestoes and of numbers of The
Bell had passed through his hands, and although he had been
afraid even to open them, yet he would have considered it
absolutely contemptible to refuse to distribute them — and there
are such people in Russia even to this day.

The rest of the guests were either types of honourable amour-
propre crushed and embittered, or types of the generous impulsive-
ness of ardent youth. There were two or three teachers, of
whom one, a lame man of forty-five, a master in the high school,
was a very malicious and strikingly vain person ; and two or
three officers. Of the latter, one very young artillery officer
who had only just come from a military training school, a silent
lad who had not yet made friends with anyone, turned up now
at Virginsky's with a pencil in his hand, and, scarcely taking
any part in the conversation, continually made notes in his note-
book. Everybody saw this, but every one pretended not to.
There was, too, an idle divinity student who had helped Lyamshin
to put indecent photographs into the gospel- woman's pack.
He was a solid youth with a free-and-easy though mistrustful
manner, with an unchangeably satirical smile, together with a
calm air of triumphant faith in his own perfection. There was
also present, I don't know why, the mayor's son, that unpleasant
and prematurely exhausted youth to whom I have referred
already in telling the story of the lieutenant's little wife. He
was silent the whole evening. Finally there was a very enthusi-
astic and tousle-headed schoolboy of eighteen, who sat with the
gloomy air of a young man whose dignity has been wounded,
evidently distressed by his eighteen years. This infant was
already the head of an independent group of conspirators which
had been formed in the highest class of the gymnasium, as it
came out afterwards to the surprise of every one.

I haven't mentioned Shatov. He was there at the farthest
corner of the table, his chair pushed back a little out of the row.
He gazed at the ground, was gloomily silent, refused tea and
bread, and did not for one instant let his cap go out of his hand,
as though to show that he was not a visitor, but had come on
business, and when he liked would get up and go away. Kirillov

368 THE POSSESSED

was not far from him. He, too, was very silent, but he did not
look at the ground ; on the contrary, he scrutinised intently
every speaker with his fixed, lustreless eyes, and listened to
everything without the slightest emotion or surprise. Some of
the visitors who had never seen him before stole thoughtful
glances at him. I can't say whether Madame Virginsky knew
anything about the existence of the quintet. I imagine she
knew everything and from her husband. The girl-student, of
course, took no part in anything ; but she had an anxiety of her
own : she intended to stay only a day or two and then to go on
farther and farther from one university town to another "to
show active sympathy with the sufferings of poor students and
to rouse them to protest." She was taking with her some
hundreds of copies of a lithographed appeal, I believe of her own
composition. It is remarkable that the schoolboy conceived
an almost murderous hatred for her from the first moment,
though he saw her for the first time in his life ; and she felt the
same for him. The major was her uncle, and met her to-day
for the first time after ten years. When Stavrogin and Verho-
vensky came in, her cheeks were as red as cranberries : she had
just quarrelled with her uncle over his views on the woman
question.

II

With conspicuous nonchalance Verhovensky lounged in the
chair at the upper end of the table, almost without greeting
anyone. His expression was disdainful and even haughty.
Stavrogin bowed politely, but in spite of the fact that they were
all only waiting for them, everybody, as though acting on
instruction, appeared scarcely to notice them. The lady of the
house turned severely to Stavrogin as soon as he was seated.

" Stavrogin, will you have tea ? "

" Please," he answered.

" Tea for Stavrogin," she commanded her sister at the samovar.
"And you, will you ? " (This was to Verhovensky.)

" Of course. What a question to ask a visitor ! And give me
cream too ; you always give one such filthy stuff by way of tea,
and with a name-day party in the house ! "

" What, you believe in keeping name-days too ! " the girl-
student laughed suddenly. " We were just talking of that."

±1 lVJ.XLiX!jJLJJUN\jr ,50y

" That's stale," muttered the schoolboy at the other end of
the table.

" What's stale ? To disregard conventions, even the most
innocent is not stale ; on the contrary, to the disgrace of every
one, so far it's a novelty," the girl-student answered instantly,
darting forward on her chair. ' Besides, there are no innocent
conventions," she added with intensity.

" I only meant," cried the schoolboy with tremendous excite-
ment, " to say that though conventions of course are stale and
must be eradicated, yet about name-days everybody knows
that they are stupid and very stale to waste precious time upon,
which has been wasted already all over the world, so that it
would be as well to sharpen one's wits on something more
useful. ..."

" You drag it out so, one can't understand what you mean,"
shouted the girl.

" I think that every one has a right to express an opinion as
well as every one else, and if I want to express my opinion like
anybody else ..."

" No one is attacking your right to give an opinion," the lady
of the house herself cut in sharply. " You were only asked not
to ramble because no one can make out what you mean."

' But allow me to remark that you are not treating me with
respect. If I couldn't fully express my thought, it's not from
want of thought but from too much thought," the schoolboy
muttered, almost in despair, losing his thread completely.

" If you don't know how to talk, you'd better keep quiet,"
blurted out the girl.

The schoolboy positively jumped from his chair.

" I only wanted to state," he shouted, crimson with shame
and afraid to look about him, " that you only wanted to
show off your cleverness because Mr. Stavrogin came in — so
there ! "

" That's a nasty and immoral idea and shows the worthless-
ness of your development. I beg you not to address me again,"
the girl rattled off.

" Stavrogin," began the lady of the house, " they've been
discussing the rights of the family before you came — this officer
here " — she nodded towards her relation, the major — " and, of
course, I am not going to worry you with such stale nonsense,
which has been dealt with long ago. But how have the rights
and duties of the family come about in the superstitious form in

2a

370 THE POSSESSED

which they exist at present ? That's the question. What's
your opinion ? "

" What do you mean by ' come about ' ? " Stavrogin asked in
his turn.

" We know, for instance, that the superstition about God
came from thunder and lightning." The girl-student rushed into
the fray again, staring at Stavrogin with her eyes almost jumping
out of her head. " It's well known that primitive man, scared
by thunder and lightning, made a god of the unseen enemy,
feeling their weakness before it. But how did the superstition
of the family arise ? How did the family itself arise ? '

" That's not quite the same thing. . . ." Madame Virginsky
tried to check her.

" I think the answer to this question wouldn't be quite dis-
creet," answered Stavrogin.

" How so ? " said the girl-student, craning forward suddenly.
But there was an audible titter in the group of teachers, which
was at once caught up at the other end by Lyamshin and the
schoolboy and followed by a hoarse chuckle from the major.

" You ought to write vaudevilles," Madame Virginsky observed
to Stavrogin.

" It does you no credit, I don't know what your name is," the
girl rapped out with positive indignation.

" And don't you be too forward," boomed the major. " You
are a young lady and you ought to behave modestly, and you
keep jumping about as though you were sitting on a needle."

" Kindly hold your tongue and don't address me familiarly
with your nasty comparisons. I've never seen you before and
I don't recognise the relationship."

" But I am your uncle ; I used to carry you about when you
were a baby ! "

" I don't care what babies you used to carry about. I didn't
ask you to carry me. It must have been a pleasure to you to
do so, you rude officer. And allow me to observe, don't dare to
address me so familiarly, unless it's as a fellow-citizen. I forbid
you to do it, once for all."

" There, they are all like that ! " cried the major, banging the
table with his fist and addressing Stavrogin, who was sitting
opposite. " But, allow me, I am fond of Liberalism and modern
ideas, and I am fond of listening to clever conversation ; masculine
conversation, though, I warn you. But to listen to these women,
these flighty windmills — no, that makes me ache all over !

A MEETING 371

Don't wriggle about ! " he shouted to the girl, who was leaping
up from her chair. " No, it's my turn to speak, I've been
insulted."

" You can't say anything yourself, and only hinder other
people talking," the lady of the house grumbled indignantly.

" No, I will have my say," said the major hotly, addressing
Stavrogin. " I reckon on you, Mr. Stavrogin, as a fresh person
who has only just come on the scene, though I haven't the honour
of knowing you. Without men they'll perish like flies — that's
what I think. All their woman question is only lack of originality.
I assure you that all this woman question has been invented for
them by men in foolishness and to their own hurt. I only thank
God I am not married. There's not the slightest variety in
them, they can't even invent a simple pattern ; they have to
get men to invent them for them ! Here I used to carry her in
my arms, used to dance the mazurka with her when she was
ten years old ; to-day she's come, naturally I fly to embrace
her, and at the second word she tells me there's no God. She
might have waited a little, she was in too great a hurry ! Clever
people don't believe, I dare say ; but that's from their cleverness.
But you, chicken, what do you know about God, I said to her.
' Some student taught you, and if he'd taught you to light the
lamp before the ikons you would have lighted it.' "

' You keep telling lies, you are a very spiteful person. I
proved to you just now the untenability of your position," the
girl answered contemptuously, as though disdaining further
explanations with such a man. " I told you just now that we've
all been taught in the Catechism if you honour your father and
your parents you will live long and have wealth. That's in the
Ten Commandments. If God thought it necessary to offer rewards
for love, your God must be immoral. That's how I proved it
to you. It wasn't the second word, and it was because you
asserted your rights. It's not my fault if you are stupid and
don't understand even now. You are offended and you are
spiteful — and that's what explains all your generation."

" You're a goose ! " said the major.

" And you are a fool ! "

" You can call me names ! "

' Excuse me, Kapiton Maximitch, you told me yourself you
don't believe in God," Liputin piped from the other end of the
table.

' What if I did say so — that's a different matter. I believe ,

372 THE POSSESSED

perhaps, only not altogether. Even if I don't believe altogether,
still I don't say God ought to be shot. I used to think about
God before I left the hussars. From all the poems you would
think that hussars do nothing but carouse and drink. Yes, I
did drink, maybe, but would you believe it, I used to jump out
of bed at night and stood crossing myself before the images
with nothing but my socks on, praying to God to give me faith ;
for even then I couldn't be at peace as to whether there was a
God or not. It used to fret me so ! In the morning, of course,
one would amuse oneself and one;s faith would seem to be lost
again ; and in fact I've noticed that faith„always seems to be
less in the daytime."

' Haven't you any cards ? ' asked Verhovensky, with a
mighty yawn, addressing Madame Virginsky.

:' I sympathise with your question, I sympathise entirely,"
the girl-student broke in hotly, flushed with indignation at the
major's words.

' We are wasting precious time listening to silly talk," snapped
out the lady of the house, and she looked reprovingly at her
husband.

The girl pulled herself together.

" I wanted to make a statement to the meeting concerning the
sufferings of the students and their protest, but as time is being
wasted in immoral conversation ..."

" There's no such thing as moral or immoral," the schoolboy
brought out, unable to restrain himself as soon as the girl began.

" I knew that, Mr. Schoolboy, long before you were taught it."

" And I maintain," he answered savagely, " that you are a
child come from Petersburg to enlighten us all, though we know
for ourselves the commandment ' honour thy father and thy
mother,' which you could not repeat correctly ; and the fact
that it's immoral every one in Russia knows from Byelinsky."

" Are we ever to have an end of this ? " Madame Virginsky
said resolutely to her husband. As the hostess, she blushed for
the ineptitude of the conversation, especially as she noticed
smiles and even astonishment among the guests who had been
invited for the first time.

" Gentlemen," said Virginsky, suddenly lifting up his voice,
" if anyone wishes to say anything more nearly connected with
our business, or has any statement to make, I call upon him to]
do so without wasting time."

"I'll venture to ask one question," said the lame teacherl

A MEETING 373

suavely. He had been sitting particularly decorously and had
not spoken till then. " I should like to know, are we some sort
of meeting, or are we simply a gathering of ordinary mortals
paying a visit ? I ask simply for the sake of order and so as
not to remain in ignorance."

This " sly " question made an impression. People looked at
each other, every one expecting some one else to answer, and
suddenly all, as though at a word of command, turned their eyes
to Verhovensky and Stavrogin.

" I suggest our voting on the answer to the question whether
we are a meeting or not," said Madame Virginsky.

" I entirely agree with the suggestion,' ' Liputin chimed in,
" though the question is rather vague."

" I agree too." " And so do I," cried voices.

" I too think it would make our proceedings more in order,"
confirmed Virginsky.

"To the vote then," said his wife. " Lyamshin, please sit
down to the piano ; you can give your vote from there when the
voting begins."

" Again ! " cried Lyamshin. "I've strummed enough for
you."

" I beg you most particularly, sit down and play. Don't you
care to do anything for the cause ? "

" But I assure you, Arina Prohorovna, nobody is eaves-
dropping. It's only your fancy. Besides, the windows are
high, and people would not understand if they did hear."

" We don't understand ourselves," some one muttered.

" But I tell you one must always be on one's guard. I mean
in case there should be spies," she explained to Verhovensky.
" Let them hear from the street that we have music and a name-
day party."

" Hang it all ! " Lyamshin swore, and sitting down to the
piano, began strumming a valse, banging on the keys almost
with his fists, at random.

" I propose that those who want it to be a meeting should
put up their right hands," Madame Virginsky proposed.

Some put them up, others did not. Some held them up and
then put them down again and then held them up again.

" Foo ! I don't understand it at all," one officer shouted.

" I don't either," cried the other.

" Oh, I understand," cried a third. " If it's yes, you hold
your hand up."

374 THE POSSESSED

" But what does ' yes ' mean ? "
" Means a meeting."
" No, it means not a meeting."

"I voted for a meeting," cried the schoolboy to Madame
Virginsky.

" Then why didn't you hold up your hand ? "
' I was looking at you. You didn't hold up yours, so I didn't
hold up mine."

" How stupid ! I didn't hold up my hand because I proposed
it. Gentlemen, now I propose the contrary. Those who want
a meeting^ sit still and do nothing ; those who don't, hold up
their right hands."

" Those who don't want it ? " inquired the schoolboy.
" Are you doing it on purpose ? " cried Madame Virginsky
wrathfully.

" No. Excuse me, those who want it, or those who don't
want it ? For one must know that definitely," cried two or
three voices.

' Those who don't want it — those who donH want it."
' Yes, but what is one to do, hold up one's hand or not hold
it up if one doesn't want it ? " cried an officer.

:' Ech, we are not accustomed to constitutional methods
yet ! " remarked the major.

" Mr. Lyamshin, excuse me, but you are thumping so that
no one can hear anything," observed the lame teacher.

" But, upon my word, Arina Prohorovna, nobody is listening,
really ! " cried Lyamshin, jumping up. " I won't play ! I've
come to you as a visitor, not as a drummer ! "

" Gentlemen," Virginsky went on, " answer verbally, are we
a meeting or not ? "

" We are ! We are ! " was heard on all sides.
" If so, there's no need to vote, that's enough. Are you
satisfied, gentlemen ? Is there any need to put it to the vote ? "
" No need — no need, we understand."
" Perhaps some one doesn't want it to be a meeting ? '
" No, no ; we all want it."

" But what does ' meeting ' mean ? " cried a voice.
No one answered.

"We must choose a chairman," people cried from different
parts of the room.

" Our host, of course, our host ! "

" Gentlemen, if so," Virginsky, the chosen chairman, began,

A MEETING 375

" I propose my original motion. If anyone wants to say any-
thing more relevant to the subject, or has some statement to
make, let him bring it forward without loss of time."

There was a general silence. The eyes of all were turned again
on Verhovensky and Stavrogin.

" Verhovensky, have you no statement to make ? " Madame
Virginsky asked him directly.

" Nothing whatever," he answered, yawning and stretching
on his chair. " But I should like a glass of brandy."

" Stavrogin, don't you want to ? "

" Thank you, I don't drink."

" I mean don't you want to speak, not don't you want brandy."

" To speak, what about ? No, I don't want to."

" They'll bring you some brandy," she answered Verhovensky.

The girl-student got up. She had darted up several times
already.

" I have come to make a statement about the sufferings of
poor students and the means of rousing them to protest."

But she broke off. At the other end of the table a rival had
risen, and all eyes turned to him. Shigalov, the man with the
long ears, slowly rose from his seat with a gloomy and sullen
air and mournfully laid on the table a thick notebook filled with
extremely small handwriting. He remained standing in silence.
Many people looked at the notebook in consternation, but
Liputin, Virginsky, and the lame teacher seemed pleased.

" I ask leave to address the meeting," Shigalov pronounced
sullenly but resolutely.

" You have leave." Virginsky gave his sanction.

The orator sat down, was silent for half a minute, and pro-
nounced in a solemn voice,

" Gentlemen ! "

" Here's the brandy," the sister who had been pouring out
tea and had gone to fetch brandy rapped out, contemptuously
and disdainfully putting the bottle before Verhovensky, together
with the wineglass which she brought in her fingers without a
tray or a plate.

The interrupted orator made a dignified pause.

" Never mind, go on, I am not listening," cried Verhovensky,
pouring himself out a glass.

:' Gentlemen, asking your attention and, as you will see later,
soliciting your aid in a matter of the first importance," Shigalov
began again, " I must make some prefatory remarks."

376 THE POSSESSED

" Arina Prohorovna, haven't you some scissors ? " Pyotr
Stepanovitch asked suddenly.

" What do you want scissors for ? " she asked, with wide-open
eyes.

"I've forgotten to cut my nails ; I've been meaning to for
the last three days," he observed, scrutinising his long and dirty
nails with unruffled composure.

Arina Prohorovna crimsoned, but Miss Virginsky seemed
pleased.

' I believe I saw them just now on the window." She got
up from the table, went and found the scissors, and at once
brought them. Pyotr Stepanovitch did not even look at her,
took the scissors, and set to work with them. Arina Prohorovna
grasped that these were realistic manners, and was ashamed of
her sensitiveness. People looked at one another in silence. The
lame teacher looked vindictively and enviously at Verhovensky.
Shigalov went on.

" Dedicating my energies to the study of the social organisa-
tion which is in the future to replace the present condition of
things, I've come to the conviction that all makers of social
systems from ancient times up to the present year, 187-, have
been dreamers, tellers of fairy-tales, fools who contradicted
themselves, who understood nothing of natural science and the
strange animal called man. Plato, Rousseau, Fourier, columns
of aluminium, are only fit for sparrows and not for human
society. But, now that we are all at last preparing to act, a
new form of social organisation is essential. In order to avoid
further uncertainty, I propose my own system of world-
organisation. Here it is." He tapped the notebook. " I
wanted to expound my views to the meeting in the most concise
form possible, but I see that I should need to add a great many
verbal explanations, and so the whole exposition would occupy
at least ten evenings, one for each of my chapters." (There
was the sound of laughter.) " I must add, besides, that my
system is not yet complete." (Laughter again.) " I am per-
plexed by my own data and my conclusion is a direct contra-
diction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from
unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism." I will add,
however, that there can be no solution of the social problem
but mine."

The laughter grew louder and louder, but it came chiefly from
the younger and less initiated visitors. There was an expression

A MEETING 377

of some annoyance on the faces of Madame Virginsky, Liputin,
and the lame teacher.

" If you've been unsuccessful in making your system con-
sistent, and have been reduced to despair yourself, what could
we do with it ? " one officer observed warily.

" You are right, Mr. Officer " — Shigalov turned sharply to
him — " especially in using the word despair. Yes, I am reduced
to despair. Nevertheless, nothing can take the place of the
system set forth in my book, and there is no other way out of
it ; no one can invent anything else. And so I hasten without
loss of time to invite the whole society to listen for ten evenings
to my book and then give their opinions of it. If the members
are unwilling to listen to me, let us break up from the start —
the men to take up service under government, the women to
their cooking ; for if you reject my solution you'll find no other,
none whatever ! If they let the opportunity slip, it will simply
be their loss, for they will be bound to come back to it again."

There was a stir in the company. "Is he mad, or what ? "
voices asked.

" So the whole point lies in Shigalov's despair," Lyamshin
commented, " and the essential question is whether he must
despair or not ? "

" Shigalov's being on the brink of despair is a personal
question," declared the schoolboy.

" I propose we put it to the vote how far Shigalov's despair
affects the common cause, and at the same time whether it's
worth while listening to him or not," an officer suggested gaily.

" That's not right." The lame teacher put in his spoke at
last. As a rule he spoke with a rather mocking smile, so that
it was difficult to make out whether he was in earnest or joking.
If That's not right, gentlemen. Mr. Shigalov is too much devoted
to his task and is also too modest. I know his book. He
[suggests as a final solution of the question the division of man-
kind into two unequal parts. One-tenth enjoys absolute liberty
and unbounded power over the other nine-tenths. The others
have to give up all individuality and become, so to speak, a
herd, and, through boundless submission, will by a series of
regenerations attain primaeval innocence, something like the
Garden of Eden. They'll have to work, however. The measures
proposed by the author for depriving nine-tenths of mankind
of their freedom and transforming them into a herd through the
education of whole generations are very remarkable, founded

378 THE POSSESSED

on the facts of nature and highly logical. One may not agree
with some of the deductions, but it would be difficult to doubt
the intelligence and knowledge of the author. It's a pity that
the time required — ten evenings — is impossible to arrange for,
or we might hear a great deal that's interesting."

" Can you be in earnest ? " Madame Virginsky addressed the
lame gentleman with a shade of positive uneasiness in her voice,
" when that man doesn't know what to do with people and so
turns nine-tenths of them into slaves ? I've suspected him for
a long time."

" You say that of your own brother ? " asked the lame man.

" Relationship ? Are you laughing at me ? "

" And besides, to work for aristocrats and to obey them as
though they were gods is contemptible ! " observed the girl-
student fiercely.

" What I propose is not contemptible ; it's paradise, an
earthly paradise, and there can be no other on earth," Shigalov
pronounced authoritatively.

" For my part," said Lyainshin, "if I didn't know what to
do with nine-tenths of mankind, I'd take them and blow them
up into the air instead of putting them in paradise. I'd only
leave a handful of educated people, who would live happily ever
afterwards on scientific principles."

" No one but a buffoon can talk like that ! " cried the girl,
flaring up.

" He is a buffoon, but he is of use," Madame Virginsky
whispered to her.

" And possibly that would be the best solution of the problem,"
said Shigalov, turning hotly to Lyamshin. " You certainly
don't know what a profound thing you've succeeded in saying,
my merry friend. But as it's hardly possible to carry out your
idea, we must confine ourselves to an earthly paradise, since that's
what they call it."

" This is pretty thorough rot," broke, as though involuntarily,
from Yerhovensky. Without even raising his eyes, however, he
went on cutting his nails with perfect nonchalance.

" Why is it rot ? " The lame man took it up instantly, aa
though he had been lying in wait for his first words to catch at
them. " Why is it rot ? Mr. Shigalov is somewhat fanatical
in his love for humanity, but remember that Fourier, still more
Cabet and even Proudhon himself, advocated a number of the
most despotic and even fantastic measures. Mr. Shigalov is

A MEETING 379

perhaps far more sober in his suggestions than they are. I assure
you that when one reads his book it's almost impossible not to
agree with some things. He is perhaps less far from realism
than anyone and his earthly paradise is almost the real
one — if it ever existed — for the loss of which man is always
sighing."

" I knew I was in for something," Verhovensky muttered
again.

" Allow me," said the lame man, getting more and more
excited. " Conversations and arguments about the future
organisation of society are almost an actual necessity for all
thinking people nowadays. Herzen was occupied with nothing
else all his life. Byelinsky, as I know on very good authority,
used to spend whole evenings with his friends debating and
settling beforehand even the minutest, so to speak, domestic,
details of the social organisation of the future."

" Some people go crazy over it," the major observed suddenly.

" We are more likely to arrive at something by talking, any-
way, than by sitting silent and posing as dictators," Liputin
hissed, as though at last venturing to begin the attack.

" I didn't mean Shigalov when I said it was rot," Verhovensky
mumbled. " You see, gentlemen," — he raised his eyes a trifle — ■
" to my mind all these books, Fourier, Cabet, all this talk about
the right to work, and Shigalov's theories — are all like novels
of which one can write a hundred thousand — an aesthetic enter-
tainment. I can understand that in this little town you are
pored, so you rush to ink and paper."

:' Excuse me," said the lame man, wriggling on his chair,
though we are provincials and of course objects of commisera-
tion on that ground, yet we know that so far nothing has happened
n the world new enough to be worth our weeping at having
nissed it. It is suggested to us in various pamphlets made
ibroad and secretly distributed that we should unite and form
groups with the sole object of bringing about universal destruc-
tion. It's urged that, however much you tinker with the world,
rau can't make a good job of it, but that by cutting off a hundred
trillion heads and so lightening one's burden, one can jump over
he ditch more safely. A fine idea, no doubt, but quite as
mpracticable as Shigalov's theories, which you referred to just
low so contemptuously."

' Well, but I haven't come here for discussion." Verhovensky
t drop this significant phrase, and, as though quite unaware

,

380 THE POSSESSED

of his blunder, drew the candle nearer to him that he might see
better.

'" It's a pity, a great pity, that you haven't come for discussion
and it's a great pity that you are so taken up just now with
3^our toilet."

" What's my toilet to you ? "

' To remove a hundred million heads is as difficult as to
transform the world by propaganda. Possibly more difficulty
especially in Russia," Liputin ventured again.

'' It's Russia they rest their hopes on now," said an officer.

" We've heard they are resting their hopes on it," interposed
the lame man. " W^e know that a mysterious finger is pointing
to our delightful country as the land most fitted to accomplish
the great task. But there's this : by the gradual solution oi
the problem by propaganda I shall gain something, anyway —
I shall have some pleasant talk, at least, and shall even get some
recognition from government for my services to the cause oi ,
society. But in the second way, by the rapid method of cuttinJ
off a hundred million heads, what benefit shall I get personally
If you began advocating that, your tongue might be cut out."

" Yours certainly would be," observed Verhovensky.
' You see. And as under the most favourable circumstance,'
you would not get through such a massacre in less than fifty o
at the best thirty years — for they are not sheep, you know, an(
perhaps they would not let themselves be slaughtered — wouldn'
it be better to pack one's bundle and migrate to some quie
island beyond calm seas and there close one's eyes tranquilly
Believe me " — he tapped the table significantly with his finger—
" you will only promote emigration by such propaganda an<
nothing else ! "

He finished evidently triumphant. He was one of the intellect
of the province. Liputin smiled slyly, Virginsky listened rathe
dejectedly, the others followed the discussion with great atter
tion, especially the ladies and officers. They all realised tha
the advocate of the hundred million heads theory had been drive
into a corner, and waited to see what would come of it.

" That was a good saying of yours, though," Verhovensk
mumbled more carelessly than ever, in fact with an air of positiv
boredom. " Emigration is a good idea. But all the same,
in spite of all the obvious disadvantages you foresee, moi
and more come forward every day ready to fight for tb
common cause, it will be able to do without you. It's a nej

A MEETING 381

religion, my good friend, coming to take the place of the old
one. That's why so many fighters come forward, and it's a
big movement. You'd better emigrate ! And, you know, I
should advise Dresden, not ' the calm islands.' To begin
with, it's a town that has never been visited by an epidemic,
and as you are a man of culture, no doubt you are afraid of
death. Another thing, it's near the Russian frontier, so you
can more easily receive your income from your beloved Father-
land. Thirdly, it contains what are called treasures of art, and
you are a man of aesthetic tastes, formerly a teacher of literature,
I believe. And, finally, it has a miniature Switzerland of its
own — to provide you with poetic inspiration, for no doubt you
write verse. In fact it's a treasure in a nutshell ! "

There was a general movement, especially among the officers.
In another instant they would have all begun talking at once.
But the lame man rose irritably to the bait.

" No, perhaps I am not going to give up the common cause.
You must understand that ..."

" What, would you join the quintet if I proposed it to you ? "
Verhovensky boomed suddenfy, and he laid down the scissors.

Every one seemed startled. The mysterious man had revealed
himself too freely. He had even spoken openly of the " quintet."

" Every one feels himself to be an honest man and will not
] shirk his part in the common cause " — the lame man tried to
.wriggle out of it — " but . . ."

" No, this is not a question which allows of a but," Verhovensky
interrupted harshly and peremptorily. " I tell you, gentlemen,
I must have a direct answer. I quite understand that, having
come here and having called you together myself, I am bound
to give you explanations " (again an unexpected revelation),

but I can give you none till I know what is your attitude to
the subject. To cut the matter short — for we can't go on talking
for another thirty years as people have done for the last thirty —
I ask you which you prefer : the slow way, which consists in
the composition of socialistic romances and the academic ordering
of the destinies of humanity a thousand years hence, while
despotism will swallow the savoury morsels which would almost
fly into your mouths of themselves if you'd take a little trouble ;
or do you, whatever it may imply, prefer a quicker way which
will at last untie your hands, and will let humanity make its
, Dwn social organisation in freedom and in action, not on paper ?
They shout ' a hundred million heads ' ; that may be only a

380 THE POSSESSED

of his blunder, drew the candle nearer to him that he might see
better.

" It's a pity, a great pity, that you haven't come for discussion,
and it's a great pity that you are so taken up just now with
your toilet."

" What's my toilet to you ? "

" To remove a hundred million heads is as difficult as to
transform the world by propaganda. Possibly more difficult,
especialty in Russia," Liputin ventured again.

" It's Russia they rest their hopes on now," said an officer.

" We've heard they are resting their hopes on it," interposed
the lame man. " We know that a mysterious finger is pointing
to our delightful country as the land most fitted to accomplish
the great task. But there's this : by the gradual solution of
the problem by propaganda I shall gain something, anyway —
I shall have some pleasant talk, at least, and shall even get some
recognition from government for my services to the cause of
society. But in the second way, by the rapid method of cutting

off a hundred million heads, what benefit shall I get personally
If you began advocating that, your tongue might be cut out."

" Yours certainly would be," observed Verhovensky.

" You see. And as under the most favourable circumstances
you would not get through such a massacre in less than fifty or)
at the best thirty years — for they are not sheep, you know, and
perhaps they would not let themselves be slaughtered — wouldn't
it be better to pack one's bundle and migrate to some quiet
island beyond calm seas and there close one's eyes tranquilly ?
Believe me " — he tapped the table significantly with his finger — \
" you will only promote emigration by such propaganda and]
nothing else ! "

He finished evidently triumphant. He was one of the intellects
of the province. Liputin smiled slyly, Virginsky listened ratherj
dejectedly, the others followed the discussion with great attend
tion, especially the ladies and officers. They all realised that
the advocate of the hundred million heads theory had been driven
into a corner, and waited to see what would come of it.

" That was a good saying of yours, though," Verhovensky
mumbled more carelessly than ever, in fact with an air of positive
boredom. " Emigration is a good idea. But all the same, if
in spite of all the obvious disadvantages you foresee, more
and more come forward every day ready to fight for the
common cause, it will be able to do without you. It's a ne^

cti

A MEETING 381

religion, my good friend, coming to take the place of the old
one. That's why so many fighters come forward, and it's a
big movement. You'd better emigrate ! And, you know, I
should advise Dresden, not ; the calm islands.' To begin
with, it's a town that has never been visited by an epidemic,
and as you are a man of culture, no doubt you are afraid of
death. Another thing, it's near the Russian frontier, so you
can more easily receive your income from your beloved Father-
land. Thirdly, it contains what are called treasures of art, and
you are a man of aesthetic tastes, formerly a teacher of literature,

believe. And, finally, it has a miniature Switzerland of its
own — to provide you with poetic inspiration, for no doubt you
write verse. In fact it's a treasure in a nutshell ! "

There was a general movement, especially among the officers.
In another instant they would have all begun talking at once.
But the lame man rose irritably to the bait.

No, perhaps I am not going to give up the common cause.
You must understand that ..."

' What, would you join the quintet if I proposed it to you ? "
Verhovensky boomed suddenty, and he laid down the scissors.

Every one seemed startled. The mysterious man had revealed
himself too freely. He had even spoken openly of the " quintet."
Every one feels himself to be an honest man and will not
shirk his part in the common cause "■ — the lame man tried to
wriggle out of it — " but ..."

6 No, this is not a question which allows of a but," Verhovensky
interrupted harshly and peremptorily. " I tell you, gentlemen,

must have a direct answer. I quite understand that, having
come here and having called you together myself, I am bound
to give you explanations " (again an unexpected revelation),

but I can give you none till I know what is your attitude to
the subject. To cut the matter short — for we can't go on talking
for another thirty years as people have done for the last thirty —
I ask you which you prefer : the slow way, which consists in
the composition of socialistic romances and the academic ordering
of the destinies of humanity a thousand years hence, while
despotism will swallow the savoury morsels which would almost
fly into your mouths of themselves if you'd take a little trouble ;
or do you, whatever it may imply, prefer a quicker way which
will at last untie your hands, and will let humanity make its
own social organisation in freedom and in action, not on paper ?
They shout ' a hundred million heads ' ; that may be only a

lor
tl
nei

382 THE POSSESSED

metaphor ; but why be afraid of it if, with the slow day-dreams
on paper, despotism in the course of some hundred years will
devour not a hundred but five hundred million heads ? Take
note too that an incurable invalid will not be cured whatever
prescriptions are written for him on paper. On the contrary,
if there is delay, he will grow so corrupt that he will infect us
too and contaminate all the fresh forces which one might still
reckon upon now, so that we shall all at last come to grief
together. I thoroughly agree that it's extremely agreeable to
chatter liberally and eloquently, but action is a little trying. . . .
However, I am no hand at talking ; I came here with communica-
tions, and so I beg all the honourable company not to vote, but
simply and directly to state which you prefer : walking at a
snail's pace in the marsh, or putting on full steam to get across it ?"

" I am certainly for crossing at full steam ! " cried the school-
boy in an ecstasy.

" So am I," Lyamshin chimed in.

" There can be no doubt about the choice," muttered an officer,
followed- by another, then by some one else. What struck them
all most was that Verhovensky had come " with communica-
tions " and had himself just promised to speak.

" Gentlemen, I see that almost all decide for the policy of the
manifestoes," he said, looking round at the company.

" All, all ! " cried the majority of voices.

" I confess I am rather in favour of a more humane policy,"]
said the major, " but as all are on the other side, I go with all!
the rest."

" It appears, then, that even you are not opposed to it," saidP
Verhovensky, addressing the lame man.

" I am not exactly . . ." said the latter, turning rather red J
" but if I do agree with the rest now, it's simply not to break!
up. . . ."

" You are all like that ! Ready to argue for six months tol
practise your Liberal eloquence and in the end you vote the samel
as the rest ! Gentlemen, consider though, is it true that you
are all ready ? "

(Ready for what ? The question was vague, but very
alluring.)

"All are, of course ! " voices were heard. But all were looking
at one another.

" But afterwards perhaps you will resent having agreed sol
quickly ? That's almost always the way with you."

A MEETING 383

The company was excited in various ways, greatly excited.
The lame man flew at him.

" Allow me to observe, however, that answers to such questions
are conditional. Even if we have given our decision, you must
note that questions put in such a strange way . . ."

" In what strange way ? "

"Ina way such questions are not asked."

" Teach me how, please. But do you know, I felt sure you'd
be the first to take offence."

" You've extracted from us an answer as to our readiness for
immediate action ; but what right had you to do so ? By
what authority do you ask such questions ? "

" You should have thought of asking that question rsooner !
Why did you answer ? You agree and then you go back on
it!"

" But to my mind the irresponsibility of your principal
question suggests to me that you have no authority, no right,
and only asked from personal curiosity."

" What do you mean ? What do you mean ? " cried Verho-
vensky, apparently beginning to be much alarmed.

' Why, that the initiation of new members into anything you
ike is done, anyway, tUe-a-tete and not in the company of twenty
Deople one doesn't know ! " blurted out the lame man. He had
aid all that was in his mind because he was too irritated to
estrain himself. Verho vensky turned to the general company
with a capitally simulated look of alarm.

" Gentlemen, I deem it my duty to declare that all this is
'oily, and that our conversation has gone too far. I have so
:ar initiated no one, and no one has the right to say of me that

initiate members. We were simply discussing our opinions.
That's so, isn't it ? But whether that's so or not, you alarm
oae very much." He turned to the lame man again. " I
lad no idea that it was unsafe here to speak of such practi-
cally innocent matters except tete-a-tete. Are you afraid of
nformers ? Can there possibly be an informer among us
lere \ "

The excitement became tremendous ; all began talking.

" Gentlemen, if that is so," Verhovensky went on, " I have
compromised myself more than anyone, and so I will ask you
X) answer one question, if you care to, of course. You are all
perfectly free."

* What question ? What question ? " every one clamoured.

384 THE POSSESSED

" A question that will make it clear whether we are to remain
together, or take up our hats and go our several ways without
speaking."

" The question ! The question ! "

" If any one of us knew of a proposed political murder, would
he, in view of all the consequences, go to give information, or
would he stay at home and await events ? Opinions may differ]
on this point. The answer to the question will tell us clearly
whether we are to separate, or to remain together and for far
longer than this one evening. Let me appeal to you first." He
turned to the lame man.

" Why to me first ? "

" Because you began it all. Be so good as not to prevaricate ;
it won't help you to be cunning. But please yourself, it's for;
you to decide."

" Excuse me, but such a question is positively insulting."

" No, can't you be more exact than that ? "

"I've never been an agent of the Secret Police," replied the]
latter, wriggling more than ever.

" Be so good as to be more definite, don't keep us waiting."

The lame man was so furious that he left off answering.!
Without a word he glared wrathfully from under his spectacles
at his tormentor.

" Yes or no ? Would you inform or not ? " cried Verhovensk'yJ

" Of course I wouldn't," the lame man shouted twice as
loudly.

" And no one would, of course not ! " cried many voices.

" Allow me to appeal to you, Mr. Major. Would you informj
or not ? " Verhovensky went on. " And note that I appeal toj
you on purpose."

" I won't inform."

" But if you knew that some one meant to rob and murder
some one else, an ordinary mortal, then you would inform and]
give warning ? "

" Yes, of course ; but that's a private affair, while the other
would be a political treachery. I've never been an agent of the
Secret Police."

" And no one here has," voices cried again. " It's an un-J
necessary question. Every one will make the same answer. '
There are no informers here."

" What is that gentleman getting up for ? " cried the girl-]
student.

A MEETING 385

*' That's Shatov. What are you getting up for ? " cried the
lady of the house.

Shatov did, in fact, stand up. He was holding his cap in his
hand and looking at Verhovensky. Apparently he wanted to
say something to him, but was hesitating. His face was pale
and wrathful, but he controlled himself. He did not say one
word, but in silence walked towards the door.

"Shatov, this won't make things better for you!" Verho-
vensky called after him enigmatically.

" But it will for you, since you are a spy and a scoundrel ! "
Shatov shouted to him from the door, and he went out.

Shouts and exclamations again.

" That's what comes of a test," cried a voice.

" It's been of use," cried another.

" Hasn't it been of use too late ? " observed a third.

" Who invited him ? Who let him in ? Who is he ? Who is
Shatov ? Will he inform, or won't he ? " There was a shower of
questions.

' If he were an informer he would have kept up appearances
instead of cursing it all and going away," observed some one.

' See, Stavrogin is getting up too. Stavrogin has not
answered the question either," cried the girl-student.

Stavrogin did actually stand up, and at the other end of the
table Kirillov rose at the same time.

' Excuse me, Mr. Stavrogin," Madame Virginsky addressed
him sharply, " we all answered the question, while you are going
away without a word."

:' I see no necessity to answer the question which interests
you," muttered Stavrogin.

" But we've compromised ourselves and you won't," shouted
several voices.

' What business is it of mine if you have compromised your-
selves ? " laughed Stavrogin, but his eyes flashed.

' What business ? What business ? " voices exclaimed.

Many people got up from their chairs.

" Allow me, gentlemen, allow me," cried the lame man.

Mr. Verhovensky hasn't answered the question either ; he has
only asked it."

The remark produced a striking effect. All looked at one
janother. Stavrogin laughed aloud in the lame man's face and
[went out ; Kirillov followed him ; Verhovensky ran after them
|into the passage.

2b

386 THE POSSESSED

" What are you doing ? " he faltered, seizing Stavrogin's hand
and gripping it with all his might in his. Stavrogin pulled away
his hand without a word.

"Be at Kirillov's directly, I'll come. . . .It's absolutely
necessary for me to see you ! . . ."

" It isn't necessary for me," Stavrogin cut him short.

" Stavrogin will be there," Kirillov said finally. " Stavrogin,
it is necessary for you. I will show you that there."

They went out.

CHAPTER VIII

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH

They had gone. Pyotr Stepanovitch was about to rush back
to the meeting to bring order into chaos, but probably reflecting
that it wasn't worth bothering about, left everything, and two
minutes later was flying after the other two. On the way he
remembered a short cut to Filipov's house. He rushed along
it, up to his knees in mud, and did in fact arrive at the very
moment when Stavrogin and Kirillov were coming in at the
gate.

" You here already ? " observed Kirillov. " That's good.
Come in."

" How is it you told us you lived alone," asked Stavrogin,
passing a boiling samovar in the passage.

" You will see directly who it is I live with," muttered Kirillov.
" Go in."

They had hardly entered when Verhovensky at once took
out of his pocket the anonymous letter he had taken from
Lembke, and laid it before Stavrogin. They all then sat down.
Stavrogin read the letter in silence.

" Well ? " he asked.

" That scoundrel will do as he writes," Verhovensky explained.

So, as he is under your control, tell me how to act. I assure
ou he may go to Lembke to-morrow."

" Well, let him go."

" Let him go ! And when we can prevent him, too ! "

" You are mistaken. He is not dependent on me. Besides,
I don't care ; he doesn't threaten me in any way ; he only
threatens you."

" You too."

" I don't think so."

" But there are other people who may not spare you. Surely
jrou understand that ? Listen, Stavrogin. This is only playing
frith words. Surely you don't grudge the money ? "

' Why, would it cost money ? "

' It certainly would ; two thousand or at least fifteen hundred.

■Srive it to me to-morrow or even to-day, and to-morrow evening

387

388 THE POSSESSED

I'll send him to Petersburg for you. That's just what he wants.
If you like, he can take Marya Timofyevna. Note that."

There was something distracted about him. He spoke, as
it were, without caution, and he did not reflect on his words.
Stavrogin watched him, wondering.

"I've no reason to send Marya Timofyevna away." ■

" Perhaps you don't even want to," Pyotr Stepanovitch smiled
ironically.

" Perhaps I don't."

" In short, will there be the money or not ? " he cried with
angry impatience, and as it were peremptorily, to Stavrogin.
The latter scrutinised him gravely.

" There won't be the money."

" Look here, Stavrogin ! You know something, or have
done something already ! You are going it ! "

His face worked, the corners of his mouth twitched, and he
suddenly laughed an unprovoked and irrelevant laugh.

" But you've had money from your father for the estate, '
Stavrogin observed calmly. " Maman sent you six or eight
thousand for Stepan Trofimovitch. So you can pay the fifteen
hundred out of your own money. I don't care to pay for
other people. I've given a lot as it is. It annoys me. . .
He smiled himself at his own words.

" Ah, you are beginning to joke ! "

Stavrogin got up from his chair. Verhovensky instantly
jumped up too, and mechanically stood with his back to the
door as though barring the way to him. Stavrogin had already
made a motion to push him aside and go out, when he stopped
short.

" I won't give up Shatov to you," he said. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch started. They looked at one another.

" I told you this evening why you needed Shatov's blood, '!
said Stavrogin, with flashing eyes. " It's the cement you want
to bind your groups together with. You drove Shatov awai
cleverly just now. You knew very well that he wouldn'1
promise not to inform and he would have thought it mean t<
lie to you. But what do you want with me ? What do yoi
want with me ? Ever since we met abroad you won't let m<
alone. The explanation you've given me so far was simprjfl
raving. Meanwhile you are driving at my giving Lebyadkinl
fifteen hundred roubles, so as to give Fedka an opportunity to'
murder him. I know that you think I want my wife murderecfi

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH 389

too. You think to tie my hands by this crime, and have me
in your power. That's it, isn't it ? What good will that be
to you ? What the devil do you want with me ? Look
at me. Once for all, am I the man for you ? And let me
alone."

" Has Fedka been to you himself ? " Verhovensky asked
breathlessly.

" Yes, he came. His price is fifteen hundred too. . . .
But here ; he'll repeat it himself . There he stands." Stavrogin
stretched out his hand.

Pyotr Stepanovitch turned round quickly. A new figure,
Fedka, wearing a sheep-skin coat, but without a cap, as though
he were at home, stepped out of the darkness in the doorway.
He stood there laughing and showing his even white teeth.
His black eyes, with yellow whites, darted cautiously about the
room watching the gentlemen. There was something he did not
understand. He had evidently been just brought in by Kirillov,
and his inquiring eyes turned to the latter. He stood in the
doorway, but was unwilling to come into the room.

" I suppose you got him ready here to listen to our bargaining,
or that he may actually see the money in our hands. Is that it ? '
asked Stavrogin ; and without waiting for an answer he walked
out of the house. Verhovensky, almost frantic, overtook him
at the gate.

" Stop ! Not another step ! " he cried, seizing him by the
arm. Stavrogin tried to pull away his arm, but did not succeed.
He was overcome with fury. Seizing Verhovensky by the hair
with his left hand he flung him with all his might on the ground
and went out at the gate. But he had not gone thirty paces
before Verhovensky overtook him again.

" Let us make it up ; let us make it up !" he murmured in a
spasmodic whisper.

Stavrogin shrugged his shoulders, but neither answered nor
turned round.

" Listen. I will bring you Lizaveta Nikolaevna to-morrow ;
shall I ? No ? Why don't you answer ? Tell me what you
want. I'll do it. Listen. I'll let you have Shatov. Shall I ? "

" Then it's true that you meant to kill him ? " cried
Stavrogin.

" What do you want with Shatov ? What is he to you ? "
Pyotr Stepanovitch went on, gasping, speaking rapidly. He
was in a frenzy, and kept running forward and seizing Stavrogin

390 THE POSSESSED

by the elbow, probably unaware of what he was doing. " Listen.
I'll let you have him. Let's make it up. Your price is a very
great one, but . . . Let's make it up ! "

Stavrogin glanced at him at last, and was amazed. The
eyes, the voice, were not the. same as always, or as they had
been in the room just now. What he saw was almost another
face. The intonation of the voice was different. Verhovensky
besought, implored. He was a man from whom what was most
precious was being taken or had been taken, and who was still
stunned by the shock.

" But what's the matter with you ? " cried Stavrogin. The
other did not answer, but ran after him and gazed at him with
the same imploring but yet inflexible expression.

" Let's make it up ! " he whispered once more. " Listen.
Like Fedka, I have a knife in my boot, but I'll make it up
with you ! "

' But what do you want with me, damn you ? " Stavrogin
cried, with intense anger and amazement. " Is there some
mystery about it ? Am I a sort of talisman for you ? "

" Listen. We are going to make a revolution," the other
muttered rapidly, and almost in delirium. " You don't believe
we shall make a revolution ? We are going to make such an
upheaval that everything will be uprooted from its foundation.
Karmazinov is right that there is nothing to lay hold of. Kar-
mazinov is very intelligent. Another ten such groups in different
parts of Russia — and I am safe."

" Groups of fools like that ? " broke reluctantly from
Stavrogin.

" Oh, don't be so clever, Stavrogin ; don't be so clever yourself.
And you know you are by no means so intelligent that you need
wish others to be. You are afraid, you have no faith. You are
frightened at our doing things on such a scale. And why are
they fools ? They are not such fools. No one has a mind of
his own nowadays. There are terribly few original minds
nowadays. Virginsky is a pure-hearted man, ten times as
pure as you or I ; but never mind about him. Liputin is a
rogue, but I know one point about him. Every rogue has some
point in him. . . . Lyamshin is the only one who hasn't, but he
is in my hands. A few more groups, and I should have money
and passports everywhere ; so much at least. Suppose it were
only that ? And safe places, so that they can search as they
like. They might uproot one group but the3^d stick at the next.

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH 391

We'll set things in a ferment. . . . Surely you don't think that
we two are not enough ? "

" Take Shigalov, and let me alone. . . ."

" Shigalov is a man of genius ! Do you know he is a geniur
like Fourier, but bolder than Fourier ; stronger. I'll look after
him. He's discovered ' equality ' ! "

" He is in a fever ; he is raving ; something very queer has
happened to him," thought Stavrogin, looking at him once more.
Both walked on without stopping.

" He's written a good thing in that manuscript," Verhovensky
went on. " He suggests a system of spying. Every member of
the society spies on the others, and it's his duty to inform against
them. Every one belongs to all and all to every one. All are
slaves and equal in their slavery. In extreme cases he advocates
slander and murder, but the great thing about it is equality.
To begin with, the level of education, science, and talents is
lowered. A high level of education and science is only possible
for great intellects, and they are not wanted. The great intellects
have always seized the power and been despots. Great intellects
cannot help being despots and they've always done more harm
than good. They will be banished or put to death. Cicero will
have his tongue cut out, Copernicus will have his eyes put out,
Shakespeare will be stoned — that's Shigalovism. Slaves are
bound to be equal. There has never been either freedom or
equality without despotism, but in the herd there is bound to be
equality, and that's Shigalovism ! Ha ha ha ! Do you think
it strange ? I am for Shigalovism."

Stavrogin tried to quicken his pace, and to reach home as soon
as possible. " If this fellow is drunk, where did he manage to
get drunk ? " crossed his mind. " Can it be the brandy ? "

" Listen, Stavrogin. To level the mountains is a fine idea,
not an absurd one. I am for Shigalov. Down with culture.
We've had enough science ! Without science we have material
enough to go on for a thousand years, but one must have dis-
cipline. The one thing wanting in the world is discipline. The
thirst for culture is an aristocratic thirst. The moment you have
family ties or love you get the desire for property. We will
destroy that desire ; we'll make use of drunkenness, slander,
spying ; we'll make use of incredible corruption ; we'll stifle
every genius in its infancy. We'll reduce all to a common
denominator ! Complete equality ! ' We've learned a trade, and
we are honest men ; we need nothing more,' that was an answer

392 THE POSSESSED

given by English working-men recently. Only the necessary is
necessary, that's the motto of the whole world henceforward.
But it needs a shock. That's for us, the directors, to look
after. Slaves must have directors. Absolute submission,
absolute loss of individuality, but once in thirty years Shigalov
would let them have a shock and they would all suddenly begin
eating one another up, to a certain point, simply as a precaution
against boredom. Boredom is an aristocratic sensation. The
Shigalovians will have no desires. Desire and suffering are
our lot, but Shigalovism is for the slaves."

" You exclude yourself ? " Stavrogin broke in again.

" You, too. Do you know, I have thought of giving up the
world to the Pope. Let him come forth, on foot, and barefoot,
and show himself to the rabble, saying, ' See what they have
brought me to ! ' and they will all rush after him, even the troops.
The Pope at the head, with us round him, and below us — Shiga-
lovism. All that's needed is that the Internationale should
come to an agreement with the Pope ; so it will. And the
old chap will agree at once. There's nothing else he can do.
Remember my words ! Ha ha ! Is it stupid ? Tell me, is
it stupid or not ? "

" That's enough ! " Stavrogin muttered with vexation.

" Enough ! Listen. I've given up the Pope ! Damn Shiga-
lovism ! Damn the Pope ! We must have something more
everyday. Not Shigalovism, for Shigalovism is a rare speci-
men of the jeweller's art. It's an ideal ; it's in the future.
Shigalov is an artist and a fool like every philanthropist.
We need coarse work, and Shigalov despises coarse work.
Listen. The Pope shall be for the west, and you shall be
for us, you shall be for us ! "

" Let me alone, you drunken fellow ! " muttered Stavrogin,
and he quickened his pace.

" Stavrogin, you are beautiful," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch,
almost ecstatically. " Do you know that you are beautiful !
What's the most precious thing about you is that you sometimes
don't know it. Oh, I've studied you ! I often watch you
on the sly ! There's a lot of simpleheartedness and naivete
about you still. Do you know that ? There still is, there is !
You must be suffering and suffering genuinely from that simple-
heartedness. I love beauty. I am a nihilist, but I love beauty.
Are nihilists incapable of loving beauty ? It's only idols
they dislike, but I love an idol. You are my idol ! You injure

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH 393

no one, and every one hates you. You treat every one as an
equal, and yet every one is afraid of you — that's good. Nobody
would slap you on the shoulder. You are an awful aristocrat.
An aristocrat is irresistible when he goes in for democracy ! To
sacrifice life, your own or another's is nothing to you. You are
just the man that's needed. It's just such a man as you that
I need. I know no one but you. You are the leader, you are
the sun and I am your worm."

He suddenly kissed his hand. A shiver ran down Stavrogin's
spine, and he pulled away his hand in dismay. They stood
still.

" Madman ! " whispered Stavrogin.

" Perhaps I am raving ; perhaps I am raving," Pyotr Stepano-
vitch assented, speaking rapidly. " But I've thought of the
first step ! Shigalov would never have thought of it. There
are lots of Shigalovs, but only one man, one man in Russia
has hit on the first step and knows how to take it. And I am
that man ! Why do you look at me ? I need you, you ;
without you I am nothing. Without you I am a fly, a bottled
idea ; Columbus without America."

Stavrogin stood still and looked intently into his wild eyes.

" Listen. First of all we'll make an upheaval," Verhovensky
went on in desperate haste, continually clutching at Stavrogin's
left sleeve. "I've already told you. We shall penetrate to the
peasantry. Do you know that we are tremendously powerful
already ? Our party does not consist only of those who commit
murder and arson, fire off pistols in the traditional fashion, or
jbite colonels. They are only a hindrance. I don't accept any-
thing without discipline. I am a scoundrel, of course, and not a
socialist. Ha ha ! Listen. I've reckoned them all up : a
|teacher who laughs with children at their God and at their cradle
is on our side. The lawyer who defends an educated murderer
because he is more cultured than his victims and could not
Ihelp murdering them to get money is one of us. The schoolboys
who murder a peasant for the sake of sensation are ours. The
juries who acquit every criminal are ours. The prosecutor who
trembles at a trial for fear he should not seem advanced enough
is ours, ours. Among officials and literary men we have lots,
lots, and they don't know it themselves. On the other hand,
the docility of schoolboys and fools has reached an extreme
pitch ; the schoolmasters are bitter and bilious. On all sides we
see vanity puffed up out of all proportion ; brutal, monstrous

394 THE POSSESSED

appetities. ... Do you know how many we shall catch by little,
ready-made ideas ? When I left Russia, Littre's dictum that
crime is insanity was all the rage ; I come back and I find that
crime is no longer insanity, but simply common sense, almost a
duty ; anyway, a gallant protest. ' How can we expect a cul-
tured man not to commit a murder, if he is in need of money.'
But these are only the firstfruits. The Russian God has already
been vanquished by cheap vodka. The peasants are drunk,
the mothers are drunk, the children are drunk, the churches are
empty, and in the peasant courts one hears, ' Two hundred lashes
or stand us a bucket of vodka.' Oh, this generation has only to
grow up. It's only a pity we can't afford to wait, or we might
have let them get a bit more tipsy ! Ah, what a pity there's no
proletariat ! But there will be, there will be ; we are going
that way. ..."

" It's a pity, too, that we've grown greater fools," muttered
Stavrogin, moving forward as before.

" Listen. I've seen a child of six years old leading home his
drunken mother, whilst she swore at him with foul words. Do*
you suppose I am glad of that ? When it's in our hands, maybe
we'll mend things ... if need be, we'll drive them for forty
years into the wilderness. . . . But one or two generations of!
vice are essential now ; monstrous, abject vice by which a man
is transformed into a loathsome, cruel, egoistic reptile. That's
what we need ! And what's more, a little ' fresh blood ' that
we may get accustomed to it. Why are you laughing ? I am
not contradicting myself. I am only contradicting the philan- 1
thropists and Shigalovism, not myself ! I am a scoundrel, not
a socialist. Ha ha ha ! I'm only sorry there's no time. 1 1
promised Karmazinov to begin in May, and to make an end I
by October. Is that too soon ? Ha ha ! Do you know what,.
Stavrogin ? Though the Russian people use foul language,
there's nothing cynical about them so far. Do you know the
serfs had more self-respect than Karmazinov ? Though the^jj
were beaten they always preserved their gods, which is more than I
Karmazinov's done."

" Well, Verhovensky, this is the first time I've heard you talk, I
and I listen with amazement," observed Stavrogin. "So you'
are really not a socialist, then, but some sort of . . . ambitious
politician ? "

;' A scoundrel, a scoundrel ! You are wondering what I am.
I'll tell you what I am directly, that's what I am leading up to.

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH 395

t was not for nothing that I kissed your hand. But the people
lust believe that we know what we are after, while the other side

0 nothing but ' brandish their cudgels and beat their own
)llowers.' Ah, if we only had more time ! That's the only
rouble, we have no time. We will proclaim destruction. . . .
Vhj is it, why is it that idea has such a fascination. But we must
ave a little exercise ; we must. We'll set fires going. . . . We'll
3t legends going. Every scurvy ' group ' will be of use. Out of
dose very groups I'll pick you out fellows so keen they'll not
brink from shooting, and be grateful for the honour of a job, too.
Veil, and there will be an upheaval ! There's going to be such
n upset as the world has never seen before. . . . Russia will be
verwhelmed with darkness, the earth will weep for its old gods.

. . Well, then we shall bring forward . . . whom ? "

" Whom."

" Ivan the Tsarevitch."

" Who-m ? "

" Ivan the Tsarevitch. You ! You ! "

Stavrogin thought a minute.

" A pretender ? " he asked suddenly, looking with intense
irprise at his frantic companion. " Ah ! so that's your plan
t last ! "

" We shall say that he is ' in hiding,' " Verhovensky said softly,

1 a sort of tender whisper, as though he really were drunk
|ideed. " Do you know the magic of that phrase, ' he is in
iding ' ? But he will appear, he will appear. We'll set a
:gend going better than the Skoptsis'. He exists, but no one
as seen him. Oh, what a legend one can set going ! And the
reat thing is it will be a new force at work ! And we need
lat ; that's what they are crying for. What can Socialism do :
's destroyed the old forces but hasn't brought in any new.
lut in this we have a force, and what a force ! Incredible.
^e only need one lever to lift up the earth. Everything will
se up ! "

" Then have you been seriously reckoning on me ? " Stavrogin
lid with a malicious smile.

"Why do you laugh, and so spitefully ? Don't frighten me.
am like a little child now. I can be frightened to death by one
Inile like that. Listen. I'll let no one see you, no one. So it
Lust be. He exists, but no one has seen him ; he is in hiding;

Jnd do you know, one might show you, to one out of a hundred
lousand, for instance. And the rumour will spread over all

396 THE POSSESSED

the land, ' We've seen him, we've seen him.' " Ivan Filipovitch
the God of Sabaoth,* has been seen, too, when he ascended
into heaven in his chariot in the sight of men. They saw him
with their own eyes. And you are not an Ivan Filipovitch.
You are beautiful and proud as a God ; you are seeking nothing
for yourself, with the halo of a victim round you, ' in hiding.'
The great thing is the legend. You'll conquer them, you'll
have only to look, and you will conquer them. He is ' in hiding,'
and will come forth bringing a new truth. And, meanwhile,
we'll pass two or three judgments as wise as Solomon's. The
groups, you know, the quintets — we've no need of newspapers.
If out of ten thousand petitions only one is granted, all would
come with petitions. In every parish, every peasant will know
that there is somewhere a hollow tree where petitions are to be
put. And the whole land will resound with the cry, ' A new
just law is to come,' and the sea will be troubled and the whole
gimcrack show will fall to the ground, and then we shall consider
how to build up an edifice of stone. For the first time ! We
are going to build it, we, and only we! "

" Madness," said Stavrogin.

" Why, why don't you want it ? Are you afraid ? That's
why I caught at you, because you are afraid of nothing. Is it
unreasonabe ? But you see, so far I am Columbus without
America. Would Columbus without America seem reason-
able ? "

Stravrogin did not speak. Meanwhile they had reached the
house and stopped at the entrance.

" Listen," Verhovensky bent down to his ear. " I'll do it
for you without the money. I'll settle Marya Timofyevna
to-morrow ! . . . Without the money, and to-morrow I'll bring
you Liza. Will you have Liza to-morrow ? "

" Is he really mad ? " Stavrogin wondered smiling. The front
door was opened.

" Stavrogin — is America ours ? " said Verhovensky, seizing
his hand for the last time.

" What for ? " said Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, gravely and
sternly.

" You don't care, I knew that ! " cried Verhovensky in ail
access of furious anger. " You are lying, you miserable, profligate,
perverted, little aristocrat ! I don't believe you, you've the

* The reference is to the legend current in the sect of Flagellants. — Trans-
lator's note.

IVAN THE TSAREVITCH 397

appetite of a wolf ! . . . Understand that you've cost me such
a price, I can't give you up now ! There's no one on earth but
you ! I invented you abroad ; I invented it all, looking at you.
If I hadn't watched you from my corner, nothing of all this would
have entered my head ! "

Stavrogin went up the steps without answering.

" Stavrogin ! " Verhovensky called after him, " I give you a
day . . . two, then . . . three, then ; more than three I can'1
and then you're to answer ! "

CHAPTER IX

A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S

Meanwhile an incident had occurred which astounded me and
shattered Stepan Trofimovitch. At eight o'clock in the morning
Nastasya ran round to me from him with the news that her
master was " raided." At first I could not make out what she
meant ; I could only gather that the " raid " was carried out
by officials, that they had come and taken his papers, and that
a soldier had tied them up in a bundle and " wheeled them away
in a barrow." It was a fantastic story. I hurried at once to
Stepan Trofimovitch.

I found him in a surprising condition : upset and in great
agitation, but at the same time unmistakably triumphant. On
the table in the middle of the room the samovar was boiling,
and there was a glass of tea poured out but untouched and
forgotten. Stepan Trofimovitch was wandering round the table
and peeping into every corner of the room, unconscious of what
he was doing. He was wearing his usual red knitted jacket, but
seeing me, he hurriedly put on his coat and waistcoat — a thing
he had never done before when any of his intimate friends found
him in his jacket. He took me warmly by the hand at once.

" Enfin un ami I " (He heaved a deep sigh.) " Cher, I've
sent to you only, and no one knows anything. We must give
Nastasya orders to lock the doors and not admit anyone, except,
of course them. . . . Vous comprenez ? "

He looked at me uneasily, as though expecting a reply. I
made haste, of course, to question him, and from his disconnected
and broken sentences, full of unnecessary parentheses, I succeeded
in learning that at seven o'clock that morning an official of the
province had * all of a sudden ' called on him.

" Pardon, fai oublie son nom. II n'est pas du pays, but I
think he came to the town with Lembke, quelque chose de bete
et d'Allemand dans la physionomie. II s'appelle Rosenthal."

" Wasn't it Blum ? " *

" Yes, that was his name. Vous le connaissez ? Quelque chose
d'h&be'te' et de tres content dans la figure, pourtant tres severe, roide
et sirieux. A type of the police, of the submissive subordinates,

je m'y connais. I was still asleep, and, would you believe it, he

398

A KA1D AT »TJ!irAJN TKUJflMUV ITCH'S 399

asked to have a look at my books and manuscripts ! Oui, je
m'en souviens, il a employe ce mot. He did not arrest me, but
only the books. II se tenait a distance, and when he began to
explain his visit he looked as though I . . . enfin il avait Vair
de croire que je tomberai sur lui immediatement et que je commen-
cerai a le battre comme pldtre. Tous ces gens du has etage sont comme
ca when they have to do with a gentleman. I need hardly say
I understood it all at once. Voild vingt ans que je m'y prepare.

I opened all the drawers and handed him all the keys ; I gave
them myself, I gave him all. Tetais digne et calme. From the
books he took the foreign edition of Herzen, the bound volume
of The Bell, four copies of my poem, et enfin tout ca. Then he
took my letters and my papers et quelques-unes de mes ebauches
historiques, critiques et politiques. All that they carried off.
Nastasya says that a soldier wheeled them away in a barrow
and covered them with an apron ; oui, c'est cela, with an apron."

It sounded like delirium. Who could make head or tail of
it ? I pelted him with questions again. Had Blum come alone,
or with others ? On whose authority ? By what right ? How
had he dared ? How did he explain it ?

" II etait seul, bien seul, but there was some one else dans
Vantichambre, oui, je m'en souviens, et puis . . . Though I
believe there was some one else besides, and there was a guard
standing in the entry. You must ask Nastasya ; she knows all
about it better than I do. J'etais surexcite, voyez-vous. II
parlait, il parlait . . . un tas de choses ; he said very little
though, it was I said all that. ... I told him the story of my life,
simply from that point of view, of course. J'etais surexciU, mais
digne, je vous assure. ... I am afraid, though, I may have shed
tears. They got the barrow from the shop next door."

" Oh, heavens ! how could all this have happened ? But
for mercy's sake, speak more exactly, Stepan Trofimovitch.
What you tell me sounds like a dream."

" Cher, I feel as though I were in a dream myself Savez-vous !

II a prononce le nom de Telyatnikof, and I believe that that man
was concealed in the entry. Yes, I remember, he suggested
calling the prosecutor and Dmitri Dmitritch, I believe . . .
qui me doit encore quinze roubles I won at cards, soit dit en
passant. Enfin, je n'ai pas trop compris. But I got the better
of them, and what do I care for Dmitri Dmitritch ? I believe
I begged him very earnestly to keep it quiet ; I begged him
particularly, most particularly. I am afraid I demeaned myself,

400 THE POSSESSED

in fact, comment croyez-vous ? Enfin il a consenti. Yes, I remember,
he suggested that himself — that it would be better to keep it
quiet, for he had only come ' to have a look round ' et rien de
plus, and nothing more, nothing more . . . and that if they
find nothing, nothing will happen. So that we ended it all en
amis, je suis tout a fait content"

' Why, then he suggested the usual course of proceedings in
such cases and regular guarantees, and you rejected them your-
self,'' I cried with friendly indignation.

" Yes, it's better without the guarantees. And why make a
scandal ? Let's keep it en amis so long as we can. You know,
in our town, if they get to know it . . . mes ennemis, et "puis, a
quoi bon, le procureur, ce cochon de notre procureur, qui deux fois
m'a manque de politesse et qu'on a rosse a plaisir V autre annee chez
cette charmante et belle Natalya Pavlovna quand il se cacha dans son
boudoir. Et puis, mon ami, don't make objections and don't
depress me, I beg you, for nothing is more unbearable when a
man is in trouble than for a hundred friends to point out to him
what a fool he has made of himself. Sit down though and have
some tea. I must admit I am awfully tired. . . . Hadn't I
better lie down and put vinegar on my head ? What do you
think ? "

" Certainly," I cried, " ice even. You are very much upset.
You are pale and your hands are trembling. Lie down, rest, and
put off telling me. I'll sit by you and wait."

He hesitated, but I insisted on his lying down. Nastasya
brought a cup of vinegar. I wetted a towel and laid it on his
head. Then Nastasya stood on a chair and began lighting a
lamp before the ikon in the corner. I noticed this with surprise ;
there had never been a lamp there before and now suddenly it
had made its appearance.

" I arranged for that as soon as they had gone away,"
muttered Stepan Trofimovitch, looking at me slyly. " Quand
on a de ces choses-ld dans sa chambre et qu'on vient vous arreter
it makes an impression and they are sure to report that they have
seen it. . . ."

When she had done the lamp, Nastasya stood in the doorway,
leaned her cheek in her right hand, and began gazing at hii
with a lachrymose air.

" Eloignez-la on some excuse," he nodded to me from th(
sofa. " I can't endure this Russian sympathy, et puis ct
m'embete"

A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S 401

But she went away of herself. I noticed that he kept looking
towards the door and listening for sounds in the passage.

" II faut itre pr&t, voyez-vous," he said, looking at me signifi-
cantly, " chaque moment . . . they may come and take one and,
phew ! — a man disappears."

" Heavens ! who'll come ? Who will take you ? "

" Voyez-vous, mon cher, I asked straight out when he was
going away, what would they do to me now."

" You'd better have asked them where you'd be exiled ! '
I cried out in the same indignation.

" That's just what I meant when I asked, but he went away
without answering. Voyez-vous : as for linen, clothes, warm
things especially, that must be as they decide ; if they tell me
to take them — all right, or they might send me in a soldier's
overcoat . But I thrust thirty-five roubles " (he suddenly
propped his voice, looking towards the door by which Nastasya
had gone out) " in a slit in my waistcoat pocket, here, feel. . . .
I believe they won't take the waistcoat off, and left seven roubles
in my purse to keep up appearances, as though that were all I
have. You see, it's in small change and the coppers are on the
(table, so they won't guess that I've hidden the money, but will
suppose that that's all. For God knows where I may have to
leep to-night ! "

I bowed my head before such madness. It was obvious that
, man could not be arrested and searched in the way he was
lescribing, and he must have mixed things up. It's true it all
lappened in the days before our present, more recent regulations,
t is true, too, that according to his own account they had
)ffered to follow the more regular procedure, but he " got the
)etter of them " and refused. ... Of course not long ago a
governor might, in extreme cases. . . . But how could this be
in extreme case ? That's what baffled me.

"No doubt they had a telegram from Petersburg," Stepan
rrofimovitch said suddenly.

" A telegram ? About you ? Because of the works of Herzen
/nd your poem ? Have you taken leave of your senses ? What
3 there in that to arrest you f or ? "

I was positively angry. He made a grimace and was evidently
lortified — not at my exclamation, but at the idea that there
fas no ground for arrest.

I Who can tell in our day what he may not be arrested for ? "
e muttered enigmatically;

2c

402 THE POSSESSED

A wild and nonsensical idea crossed my mind.

" Stepan Trofimovitch, tell me as a friend," I cried, " as a real
friend, I will not betray you : do you belong to some secret
society or not ? "

.And on this, to my amazement, he was not quite certain
whether he was or was not a member of some secret society.

" That depends, voyez-vous"

" How do you mean ' it depends ' ? "

" When with one's whole heart one is an adherent of progress
and . . . who can answer it ? You may suppose you don't
belong, and suddenly it turns out that you do belong to some-
thing."

" Now is that possible ? It's a case of yes or no."

" Gela date de Petersburg when she and I were meaning to
found a magazine there. That's what's at the root of it. She
gave them the slip then, and they forgot us, but now they've
remembered. Cher, cher, don't you know me ? " he cried
hysterically. " And they'll take us, put us in a cart, and march
us off to Siberia for ever, or forget us in prison."

And he suddenly broke into bitter weeping. His tears posi-
tively streamed. He covered his face with his red silk handker-
chief and sobbed, sobbed convulsively for five minutes. It
wrung my heart. This was the man who had been a prophet
among us for twenty years, a leader, a patriarch, the Kukolnik
who had borne himself so loftily and majestically before all of
us, before whom we bowed down with genuine reverence, feeling
proud of doing so — and all of a sudden here he was sobbing,]
sobbing like a naughty child waiting for the rod which the-l
teacher is fetching for him. I felt fearfully sorry for him. Hej
believed in the reality of that " cart " as he believed that I was]
sitting by his side, and he expected it that morning, at oncej
that very minute, and all this on account of his Herzen and somel
poem ! Such complete, absolute ignorance of everyday reality!
was touching and somehow repulsive.

At last he left off crying, got up from the sofa and began
walking about the room again, continuing to talk to me, though ,
he looked out of the window every minute and listened to every
sound in the passage. Our conversation was still disconnected.
All my assurances and attempts to console him rebounded from
him like peas from a wall. He scarcely listened, but yet what
he needed was that I should console him and keep on talking
with that object. I saw that he could not do without me now,

A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S 403

and would not let me go for anything. I remained, and we
spent more than two hours together. In conversation he recalled
that Blum had taken with him two manifestoes he had found.

" Manifestoes ! " I said, foolishly frightened. "Do you mean
to say you ..."

" Oh, ten were left here," he answered with vexation (he talked
to me at one moment in a vexed and haughty tone and at the
next with dreadful plaintiveness and humiliation), " but I had
disposed of eight already, and Blum only found two."

And he suddenly flushed with indignation.

" Vous me mettez avec ces gens-la ! Do you suppose I could
be working with those scoundrels, those anonymous libellers,
with my son Pyotr Stepanovitch, avec ces es frits forts de la Idchete ?
Oh, heavens ! "

" Bah ! haven't they mixed you up perhaps ? . . . But it's
nonsense, it can't be so," I observed.

" Savez-vous" broke from him suddenly, " I feel at moments
que je ferai la-bas quelque esclandre. Oh, don't go away, don't
leave me alone ! Ma carriere est finie aujourdhui, je le sens.
Do you know, I might fall on somebody there and bite him, like
that lieutenant."

He looked at me with a strange expression — alarmed, and at
the same time anxious to alarm me. He certainly was getting
more and more exasperated with somebody and about some-
thing as time went on and the police-cart did not appear ; he
was positively wrathful. Suddenly Nastasya, who had come
from the kitchen into the passage for some reason, upset a
clothes-horse there. Stepan Trofimovitch trembled and turned
numb with terror as he sat ; but when the noise was explained,
he almost shrieked at Nastasya and, stamping, drove her back
to the kitchen. A minute later he said, looking at me in despair :

" I am ruined ! Cher " — he sat down suddenly beside me
and looked piteously into my face — " cher, it's not Siberia I am
afraid of, I swear. Oh, jevous jure ! " (Tears positively stood in
his eyes.) " It's something else I fear."

I saw from his expression that he wanted at last to tell me
something of great importance which he had till now refrained
from telling.

" I am afraid of disgrace," he whispered mysteriously.

" What disgrace ? On the contrary ! Believe me, Stepan
Trofimovitch, that all this will be explained to-day and will end
to your advantage. ..."

404 THE POSSESSED

" Are you so sure that they will pardon me ? "
" Pardon you ? What ! What a word ! What have you
done ? I assure you you've done nothing."

" Qu'eri savez-vous ; all my life has been . . . cher . . .
They'll remember everything . . . and if they find nothing, it
will be worse still" he added all of a sudden, unexpectedly.
" How do you mean it will be worse ? "
" It will be worse."
" I don't understand."

" My friend, let it be Siberia, Archangel, loss of rights — if I
must perish, let me perish ! But ... I am afraid of something
else." (Again whispering, a scared face, mystery.)
" But of what ? Of what ? "

" They'll flog me," he pronounced, looking at me with a face
of despair.

" Who'll flog you ? What for ? Where ? " I cried, feeling
alarmed that he was going out of his mind.

" Where ? Why there . . . where ' that's ' done."
" But where is it done ? "

" Eh, cher" he whispered almost in my ear. " The floor
suddenly gives way under you, you drop half through. . . .
Every one knows that."

" Legends ! " I cried, guessing what he meant. " Old tales.
Can you have believed them till now ? " I laughed.

" Tales ! But there must be foundation for them ; flogged
men tell no tales. I've imagined it ten thousand times."
" But you, why you ? You've done nothing, you know."
" That makes it worse. They'll find out I've done nothing
and flog me for it."

" And you are sure that you'll be taken to Petersburg for that."

" My friend, I've told you already that I regret nothing, ma

car r tire est finie. From that hour when she said good-bye to

me at Skvoreshniki my life has had no value for me . . . but

disgrace, disgrace, que dira-t-elle if she finds out ? "

He looked at me in despair. And the poor fellow flushed all
over. I dropped my eyes too.

" She'll find out nothing, for nothing will happen to you.j
I feel as if I were speaking to you for the first time in my life,
Stepan Trofimovitch, you've astonished me so this morning."

" But, my friend, this isn't fear. For even if I am pardoned,
even if I am brought here and nothing is done to me — then I
am undone. Elle me soupconnera toute sa vie — me, me, the

A RAID AT STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S 405

poet, the thinker, the man whom she has worshipped for twenty-
two years ! "

" It will never enter her head."

" It will," he whispered with profound conviction. ' We've
talked of it several times in Petersburg, in Lent, before we came
away, when we were both afraid. . . . Elle me sowpconnera
toute sa vie . . . and how can I disabuse her ? It won't sound
likely. And in this wretched town who'd believe it, c'est
invraisembldble. . . . Et puis les femmes, she will be pleased.
She will be genuinely grieved like a true friend, but secretly she
will be pleased. ... I shall give her a weapon against me for
the rest of my life. Oh, it's all over with me ! Twenty years
of such perfect happiness with her . . . and now ! "
He hid his face in his hands.

" Stepan Trofimovitch, oughtn't you to let Varvara Petrovna
know at once of what has happened ? " I suggested.

" God preserve me!" he cried, shuddering and leaping up
from his place. " On no account, never, after what was said
at parting at Skvoreshniki — never ! "
His eyes flashed.

We went on sitting together another hour or more, I believe,
expecting something all the time — the idea had taken such hold
of us. He lay down again, even closed his eyes, and lay for
twenty minutes without uttering a word, so that I thought he
was asleep or unconscious. Suddenly he got up impulsively,
pulled the towel off his head, jumped up from the sofa, rushed
to the looking-glass, with trembling hands tied his cravat, and
in a voice of thunder called to Nastasya, telling her to give him
his overcoat, his new hat and his stick.

" I can bear no more," he said in a breaking voice. ' I can't,
I can't ! I am going myself."

" Where ? " I cried, jumping up too.

" To Lembke. Cher, I ought, I am obliged. It's my duty.
I am a citizen and a man, not a worthless chip. I have rights ;
I want my rights. . . . For twenty years I've not insisted on
my rights. All my life I've neglected them criminally . . . but
now I'll demand them. He must tell me everything — every-
thing. He received a telegram. He dare not torture me ; if
so, let him arrest me, let him arrest me ! "

He stamped and vociferated almost with shrieks.
" I approve of what you say," I said, speaking as calmly as
possible, on purpose, though I was very much afraid for him.

406 THE POSSESSED

" Certainty it is better than sitting here in such misery, but I
can't approve of your state of mind. Just see what you look
like and in what a state you are going there ! Ilfaut itre digne et
calme avec Lembke. You really might rush at some one there
and bite him."

" I am giving myself up. I am walking straight into the jaws
of the lion. ..."

" I'll go with you."

" I expected no less of you, I accept your sacrifice, the sacrifice
of a true friend ; but only as far as the house, only as far as the
house. You ought not, you have no right to compromise your-
self further by being my confederate. Oh, croyez-moi, je serai
calme. I feel that I am at this moment d la hauteur de tout ce
qu'il y a de plus sacred . . .

" I may perhaps go into the house with you," I interrupted
him. " I had a message from their stupid committee yesterday
through Vysotsky that they reckon on me and invite me to the
fete to-morrow as one of the stewards or whatever it is . . . one
of the six young men whose duty it is to look after the trays, wait
on the ladies, take the guests to their places, and wear a rosette
of crimson and white ribbon on the left shoulder. I meant to
refuse, but now why shouldn't I go into the house on the excuse
of seeing Yulia Mihailovna herself about it ? ... So we will
go in together."

He listened, nodding, but I think he understood nothing. We
stood on the threshold.

" Cher " — he stretched out his arm to the lamp before the
ikon — " cher, I have never believed in this, but ... so be it,
so be it ! " He crossed himself." Allons ! "

" Well, that's better so," I thought as I went out on to the
steps with him. " The fresh air will do him good on the way,
and we shall calm down, turn back, and go home to bed. . . ."

But I reckoned without my host. On the way an adventure
occurred which agitated Stepan Trofimovitch even more, and
finally determined him to go on . . . so that I should never
have expected of our friend so much spirit as he suddenly dis-
played that morning. Poor friend, kind-hearted friend !

CHAPTER X

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING

The adventure that befell us on the way was also a surprising
one. But I must tell the story in due order. An hour before
Stepan Trofimovitch and I came out into the street, a crowd of
people, the hands from Shpigulins' factory, seventy or more in
number, had been marching through the town, and had been
an object of curiosity to many spectators. They walked inten-
tionally in good order and almost in silence. Afterwards it was
asserted that these seventy had been elected out of the whole
number of factory hands, amounting to about nine hundred,
to go to the governor and to try and get from him, in the absence
of their employer, a just settlement of their grievances against
the manager, who, in closing the factory and dismissing the
workmen, had cheated them all in an impudent way — a fact
which has since been proved conclusively. Some people still
deny that there was any election of delegates, maintaining that
seventy was too large a number to elect, and that the crowd
simply consisted of those who had been most unfairly treated,
and that they only came to ask for help in their own case, so
that the general "mutiny" of the factory workers, about which
there was such an uproar later on, had never existed at all.
Others fiercely maintained that these seventy men were not
simple strikers but revolutionists, that is, not merely that they
| were the most turbulent, but that they must have been worked
upon by seditious manifestoes. The fact is, it is still uncertain
| whether there had been any outside influence or incitement at
work or not. My private opinion is that the workmen had not
read the seditious manifestoes at all, and if they had read them,
would not have understood one word, for one reason because the
authors of such literature write very obscurely in spite of the
boldness of their style. But as the workmen really were in a
difficult plight and the police to whom they appealed would not
enter into their grievances, what could be more natural than
their idea of going in a body to " the general himself " if possible,
with the petition at their head, forming up in an orderly way
before his door, and as soon as he showed himself, all falling on

407

408 THE POSSESSED

their knees and crying out to him as to providence itself ? To
my mind there is no need to see in this a mutiny or even a depu-
tation, for it's a traditional, historical mode of action ; the
Russian people have always loved to parley with " the general
himself " for the mere satisfaction of doing so, regardless of how
the conversation may end.

And so I am quite convinced that, even though Pyotr Stepano-
vitch, Liputin, and perhaps some others — perhaps even Fedka
too — had been flitting about among the workpeople talking to
them (and there is fairly good evidence of this), they had only
approached two, three, five at the most, trying to sound them,
and nothing had come of their conversation. As for the mutiny
they advocated, if the factory- workers did understand anything
of their propaganda, they would have left off listening to it at
once as to something stupid that had nothing to do with them.
Fedka was a different matter : he had more success, I believe,
than Pyotr Stepanovitch. Two workmen are now known for a
fact to have assisted Fedka in causing the fire in the town which
occurred three days afterwards, and a month later three men
who had worked in the factory were arrested for robbery and
arson in the province. But if in these cases Fedka did lure them j
to direct and immediate action, he could only have succeeded
with these five, for we heard of nothing of the sort being done j
by others.

Be that as it may, the whole crowd of workpeople had at last
reached the open space in front of the governor's house and were!
drawn up there in silence and good order. Then, gaping open-
mouthed at the front door, they waited. I am told that as soon I
as they halted they took off their caps, that is, a good half -hour j
before the appearance of the governor, who, as ill-luck would*
have it, was not at home at the moment. The police made
their appearance at once, at first individual policemen and then <t
as large a contingent of them as could be gathered together J
they began, of course, by being menacing, ordering them to I
break up. But the workmen remained obstinately, like a flock
of sheep at a fence, and replied laconically that they had come
to see " the general himself " ; it was evident that they were
firmly determined. The unnatural shouting of the police ceased,
and was quickly succeeded by deliberations, mysterious whispered
instructions, and stern, fussy perplexity, which wrinkled the brows
of the police officers. The head of the police preferred to await
the arrival of the " governor himself." It was not true that he

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 409

galloped to the spot with three horses at full speed, and began
hitting out right and left before he alighted from his carriage.
It's true that he used to dash about and was fond of dashing
about at full speed in a carriage with a yellow back, and while
his trace-horses, who were so trained to carry their heads that
they looked " positively perverted," galloped more and more
frantically, rousing the enthusiasm of all the shopkeepers in
the bazaar, he would rise up in the carriage, stand erect, holding
on by a strap which had been fixed on purpose at the side, and
with his right arm extended into space like a figure on a monu-
ment, survey the town majestically. But in the present case
he did not use his fists, and though as he got out of the carriage he
could not refrain from a forcible expression, this was simply done
to keep up his popularity. There is a still more absurd story that
soldiers were brought up with bayonets, and that a telegram
was sent for artillery and Cossacks ; those are legends which are
not believed now even by those who invented them. It's an
absurd story, too, that barrels of water were brought from the
fire brigade, and that people were drenched with water from
them. The simple fact is that Ilya Ilyitch shouted in his heat
that he wouldn't let one of them come dry out of the water ;
probably this was the foundation of the barrel legend which got
into the columns of the Petersburg and Moscow newspapers.
Probably the most accurate version was that at first all the
available police formed a cordon round the crowd, and a mes-
senger was sent for Lembke, a police superintendent, who dashed
off in the carriage belonging to the head of the police on the way
to Skvoreshniki, knowing that Lembke had gone there in his
carriage half an hour before.

But I must confess that I am still unable to answer the question
how they could at first sight, from the first moment, have trans-
formed an insignificant, that is to say an ordinary, crowd of
petitioners, even though there were several of them, into a
rebellion which threatened to shake the foundations of the
state. Why did Lembke himself rush at that idea when he
arrived twenty minutes after the messenger ? I imagine (but
again it's only my private opinion) that it was to the interest
of Ilya Ilyitch, who was a crony of the factory manager's,
to represent the crowd in this light to Lembke, in order to
prevent him from going into the case ; and Lembke himself had
put the idea into his head. In the course of the last two days
he had had two unusual and mysterious conversations with

410 THE POSSESSED

him. It is true they were exceedingly obscure, but Ilya Ilyitch
was able to gather from them that the governor had thoroughly
made up his mind that there were political manifestoes, and that
Shpigulins' factory hands were being incited to a Socialist rising,
and that he was so persuaded of it that he would perhaps have
regretted it if the story had turned out to be nonsense. " He
wants to get distinction in Petersburg," our wily Ilya Ilyitch
thought to himself as he left Von Lembke ; " well, that just
suits me."

But I am convinced that poor Andrey Antonovitch would
not have desired a rebellion even for the sake of distinguishing
himself. He was a most conscientious official, who had lived
in a state of innocence up to the time of his marriage. And
was it his fault that, instead of an innocent allowance of wood
from the government and an equally innocent Minnchen, a princess
of forty summers had raised him to her level ? I know almost
for certain that the unmistakable symptoms of the mental
condition which brought poor Andrey Antonovitch to a well-
known establishment in Switzerland, where, I am told, he is now
regaining his energies, were first apparent on that fatal morning.
But once we admit that unmistakable signs of something were
visible that morning, it may well be allowed that similar symptoms
may have been evident the day before, though not so clearly.
I happen to know from the most private sources (weli, you may
assume that Yulia Mihailovna later on, not in triumph but
almost in remorse — for a woman is incapable of complete remorse —
revealed part of it to me herself) that Andrey Antonovitch had
gone into his wife's room in the middle of the previous night,
past two o'clock in the morning, had waked her up, and had
insisted on her listening to his " ultimatum." He demanded it
so insistently that she was obliged to get up from her bed in
indignation and curl-papers, and, sitting down on a couch, she
had to listen, though with sarcastic disdain. Only then she
grasped for the first time how far gone her Andrey Antonovitch
was, and was secretly horrified. She ought to have thought
what she was about and have been softened, but she concealed
her horror and was more obstinate than ever. Like every wife
she had her own method of treating Andrey Antonovitch, which
she had tried more than once already and with it driven him to
frenzy. Yulia Mihailovna' s method was that of contemptuous
silence, for one hour, two, a whole day, and almost for three days
and nights — silence whatever happened, whatever he said,

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 411

whatever he did, even if he had clambered up to throw himself
out of a three -story window — a method unendurable for a
ensitive man ! Whether Yulia Mihailovna meant to punish
er husband for his blunders of the last few days and the jealous
envy he, as the chief authority in the town, felt for her adminis-
trative abilities ; whether she was indignant at his criticism
of her behaviour with the young people and local society gene-
rally, and lack of comprehension of her subtle and far-sighted
political aims ; or was angry with his stupid and senseless jealousy
of Pyotr Stepanovitch — however that may have been, she made
up her mind not to be softened even now, in spite of its
being three o'clock at night, and though Andrey Antonovitch
wsls in a state of emotion such as she had never seen him in
before.

Pacing up and down in all directions over the rugs of her
boudoir, beside himself, he poured out everything, everything,
}uite disconnectedly, it's true, but everything that had been
rankling in his heart, for — " it was outrageous." He began by
saying that he was a laughing-stock to every one and " was
being led by the nose." " Curse the expression," he squealed, at
}nce catching her smile, " let it stand, it's true. . . . No, madam,
he time has come ; let me tell you it's not a time for laughter
md feminine arts now. We are not in the boudoir of a mincing
ady, but like two abstract creatures in a balloon who have met
o speak the truth." (He was no doubt confused and could not
ind the right words for his ideas, however just they were.) " It
s you, madam, you who have destroyed my happy past. I took
lp this post simply for your sake, for the sake of your ambition.

. You smile sarcastically ? Don't triumph, don't be in a
lurry. Let me tell you, madam, let me tell you that I should
lave been equal to this position, and not only this position but
i dozen positions like it, for I have abilities ; but with you,
nadam, with you — it's impossible, for with you here I have no
bilities. There cannot be two centres, and you have created
)wo — one of mine and one in your boudoir — two centres of power,
nadam, but I won't allow it, I won't allow it ! In the service,
is in marriage, there must be one centre, two are impossible.

. How have you repaid me ? " he went on. " Our marriage
las been nothing but your proving to me all the time, every
lour, that I am a nonentity, a fool, and even a rascal, and I
lave been all the time, every hour, forced in a degrading way to
wove to you that I am not a nonentity, not a fool at all, and

412 THE POSSESSED

that I impress every one with my honourable character. Isn't
that degrading for both sides ? "

At this point he began rapidly stamping with both feet onj
the carpet, so that Yulia Mihailovna was obliged to get up with
stern dignity. He subsided quickly, but passed to being pathetics
and began sobbing (yes, sobbing !), beating himself on the breast]
almost for five minutes, getting more and more frantic at Yulia]
Mihailovna's profound silence. At last he made a fatal blunder,]
and let slip that he was jealous of Pyotr Stepanovitch. Realising!
that he had made an utter fool of himself, he became savagely]
furious, and shouted that he " would not allow them to deny]
God " and that he would " send her salon of irresponsible infidels
packing," that the governor of a province was bound to believe'
in God " and so his wife was too," that he wouldn't put up with]
these young men ; that " you, madam, for the sake of your]
own dignity, ought to have thought of your husband and to
have stood up for his intelligence even if he were a man of poor!
abilities (and I'm by no means a man of poor abilities !), and yetj
it's your doing that every one here despises me, it was you putl
them all up to it ! " He shouted that he would annihilate the
woman question, that he would eradicate every trace of it, thata
to-morrow he would forbid and break up their silly fete for the!
benefit of the governesses (damn them !), that the first governess}
he came across to-morrow morning he would drive out of the?
province " with a Cossack ! I'll make a point of it ! " he shrieked.!
i; Do you know," he screamed, " do you know that your rascals
are inciting men at the factory, and that I know it ? Let me
tell you, I know the names of four of these rascals and that Ij
am going out of my mind, hopelessly, hopelessly ! . . ."

But at this point Yulia Mihailovna suddenly broke her silenca
and sternly announced that she had long been aware of theses-
criminal designs, and that it was all foolishness, and that he had
taken it too seriously, and that as for these mischievous fellows!
she knew not only those four but all of them (it was a lie) ; buw
that she had not the faintest intention of going out of her mind
on account of it, but, on the contrary, had all the more confidence (
in her intelligence and hoped to bring it all to a harmonious
conclusion : to encourage the young people, to bring them to
reason, to show them suddenly and unexpectedly that their
designs were known, and then to point out to them new aims for
rational and more noble activity.

Oh, how can I describe the effect of this on Andrey Antono-*

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 413

qtch ! Hearing that Pyotr Stepanovitch had duped him again
nd had made a fool of him so coarsely, that he had* told her much
nore than he had told him, and sooner than him, and that
>erhaps Pyotr Stepanovitch was the chief instigator of all these
riminal designs — he flew into a frenzy. " Senseless but malig-
Lant woman," he cried, snapping his bonds at one blow, " let
ae tell you, I shall arrest your worthless lover at once, I shall
mt him in fetters and send him to the fortress, or — I shall jump
>ut of window before your eyes this minute ! "

Yulia Mihailovna, turning green with anger, greeted this tirade
t once with a burst of prolonged, ringing laughter, going off
nto peals such as one hears at the French theatre when a Parisian
actress, imported for a fee of a hundred thousand to play a
ioquette, laughs in her husband's face for daring to be jealous
>f her.

Von Lembke rushed to the window, but suddenly stopped as
hough rooted to the spot, folded his arms across his chest, and,
vhite as a corpse, looked with a sinister gaze at the laughing
ady. " Do you know, Yulia, do you know," he said in a gasping
,nd suppliant voice, " do you know that even I can do some-
hing ? " But at the renewed and even louder laughter that
ollowed his last words he clenched his teeth, groaned, and
uddenly rushed, not towards the window, but at his spouse,
vith his fist raised ! He did not bring it down — no, I repeat
gain and again, no ; but it was the last straw. He ran to his
>wn room, not knowing what he was doing, flung himself, dressed
is he was, face downwards on his bed, wrapped himself convul-
ively, head and all, in the sheet, and lay so for two hours —
ncapable of sleep, incapable of thought, with a load on his heart
tnd blank, immovable despair in his soul. Now and then he
ihivered all over with an agonising, feverish tremor. Dis-
connected and irrelevant things kept coming into his mind : at
me minute he thought of the old clock which used to hang on
lis wall fifteen years ago in Petersburg and had lost the
ninute-hand ; at another of the cheerful clerk, Millebois, and
low they had once caught a sparrow together in Alexandrovsky
Park and had laughed so that they could be heard all over the
Dark, remembering that one of them was already a college
tssessor. I imagine that about seven in the morning he must
|iave fallen asleep without being aware of it himself, and must
lave slept with enjoyment, with agreeable dreams.

Waking about ten o'clock, he jumped wildly out of bed

414 THE POSSESSED

remembered everything at once, and slapped himself on the head ;
he refused his* breakfast, and would see neither Blum nor the
chief of the police nor the clerk who came to remind him that he
was expected to preside over a meeting that morning ; he would
listen to nothing, and did not want to understand. He ran like
one possessed to Yulia Mihailovna's part of the house. There
Sofya Antropovna, an old lady of good family who had lived for
years with Yulia Mihailovna, explained to him that his wife had
set off at ten o'clock that morning with a large company in three
carriages to Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin's, to Skvoreshniki, to
look over the place with a view to the second fete which was
planned for a fortnight later, and that the visit to-day had been
arranged with Varvara Petrovna three days before. Over-
whelmed with this news, Andrey Antonovitch returned to his'
study and impulsively ordered the horses. He could hardly
wait for them to be got ready. His soul was hungering for
Yulia Mihailovna; — to look at her, to be near her for five minutes ;
perhaps she would glance at him, notice him, would smile as
before, forgive him . . . O-oh ! " Aren't the horses ready ? 1
Mechanically he opened a thick book lying on the table. (He;
sometimes used to try his fortune in this way with a book,
opening it at random and reading the three lines at the top of
the right-hand page.) What turned up was : " Tout est pour le
mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles." — Voltaire, Candide.
He uttered an ejaculation of contempt and ran to get into the,
carriage. " Skvoreshniki ! "

The coachman said afterwards that his master urged him onj
all the way, but as soon as they were getting near the mansion:
he suddenly told him to turn and drive back to the town, bidding
him " Drive fast ; please drive fast ! " Before they reached
the town wall " master told me to stop again, got out of the
carriage, and went across the road into the field ; I thought he
felt ill but he stopped and began looking at the flowers, and so<
he stood for a time. It was strange, really ; I began to feel j
quite uneasy." This was the coachman's testimony. I remember
the weather that morning : it was a cold, clear, but windy
September day ; before Andrey Antonovitch stretched a for-
bidding landscape of bare fields from which the crop had long
been harvested ; there were a few dying yellow flowers, pitiful
relics blown about by the howling wind. Did he want to compare
himself and his fate with those wretched flowers battered by '
the autumn and the frost ? I don't think so : in fact I feel sure

FILLBUSTEKS. A FATAL MUKJNIJNCi 415

it was not so, and that he realised nothing about the flowers
in spite of the evidence of the coachman and of the police super-
intendent, who drove up at that moment and asserted afterwards
that he found the governor with a bunch of yellow flowers in
his hand. This police superintendent, Flibusterov by name,
was an ardent champion of authority who had only recently
come to our town but had already distinguished himself and
become famous by his inordinate zeal, by a certain vehemence
in the execution of his duties, and his inveterate inebriety.
Jumping out of the carriage, and not the least disconcerted at
the sight of what the governor was doing, he blurted out all in
one breath, with a frantic expression, yet with an air of convic-
tion, that " There's an upset in the town."

" Eh ? What ? " said Andrey Antonovitch, turning to him
,]. i with a stern face, but without a trace of surprise or any recollec-
tion of his carriage and his coachman, as though he had been in
his own study.

" Police-superintendent Flibusterov, your Excellency. There's
a riot in the town."

" Filibusters ? " Andrey Antonovitch said thoughtfully.

" Just so, your Excellency. The Shpigulin men are making a
riot."

" The Shpigulin men ! . . ."

The name " Shpigulin " seemed to remind him of something.
He started and put his finger to his forehead : " The Shpigulin
men ! " In silence, and still plunged in thought, he walked
without haste to the carriage, took his seat, and told the coach-
man to drive to the town. The police-superintendent followed
in the droshky.

I imagine that he had vague impressions of many interesting
things of all sorts on the way, but I doubt whether he had any
definite idea or any settled intention as he drove into the open
space in front of his house. But no sooner did he see the resolute
and orderly ranks of " the rioters," the cordon of police, the
helpless (and perhaps purposely helpless) chief of police, and
the general expectation of which he was the object, than all
the blood rushed to his heart. With a pale face he stepped out
of his carriage.

" Caps off ! " he said breathlessly and hardly audibly. " On
your knees ! " he squealed, to the surprise of every one, to his
own surprise too, and perhaps the very unexpectedness of the
position was the explanation of what followed. Can a sledge

416 THE POSSESSED

on a switchback at carnival stop short as it flies down the hill ?
What made it worse, Andrey Antonovitch had been all his life
serene in character, and never shouted or stamped at anyone ;
and such people are always the most dangerous if it once happens
that something sets their sledge sliding downhill. Everything
was whirling before his eyes.

" Filibusters ! " he yelled still more shrilly and absurdly, and
his voice broke. He stood, not knowing what he was going to
do, but knowing and feeling in his whole being that he certainly
would do something directly.

" Lord ! " was heard from the crowd. A lad began crossing
himself ; three or four men actually did try to kneel down, but
the whole mass moved three steps forward, and suddenly all
began talking at once : " Your Excellency ... we were hired
for a term . . . the manager . . . you mustn't say," and so
on and so on. It was impossible to distinguish anything.

Alas ! Andrey Antonovitch could distinguish nothing : the
flowers were still in his hands. The riot was as real to him as
the prison carts were to Stepan Trofimovitch. And flitting to
and fro in the crowd of " rioters " who gazed open-eyed at him,
he seemed to see Pyotr Stepanovitch, who had egged them on —
Pyotr Stepanovitch, whom he hated and whose image had never
left him since yesterday.

" Rods ! " he cried even more unexpectedly. A dead silence
followed.

From the facts I have learnt and those I have conjectured,
this must have been what happened at the beginning ; but I
have no such exact information for what followed, nor can I
conjecture it so easily. There are some facts, however.

In the first place, rods were brought on the scene with strange
rapidity ; they had evidently been got ready beforehand in
expectation by the intelligent chief of the police. Not more
than two, or at most three, were actually flogged, however ;
that fact I wish to lay stress on. It's an absolute fabrication to
say that the whole crowd of rioters, or at least half of them, were
punished. It is a nonsensical story, too, that a poor but respect-
able lady was caught as she passed by and promptly thrashed ;
yet I read myself an account of this incident afterwards among
the provincial items of a Petersburg newspaper. Many people
in the town talked of an old woman called Avdotya Petrovna
Tarapygin who lived in the almshouse by the cemetery. She
was said, on her way home from visiting a friend, to have forced

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 417

her way into the crowd of spectators through natural curiosity.
Seeing what was going on, she cried out, " What a shame ! "
and spat on the ground. For this it was said she had been seized
and flogged too. This story not only appeared in print, but
in our excitement we positively got up a subscription for her
benefit. I subscribed twenty kopecks myself. And would you
believe it ? It appears now that there was no old woman called
Tarapygin living in the almshouse at all ! I went to inquire at
the almshouse by the cemetery myself ; they had never heard
of anyone called Tarapygin there, and, what's more, they were
quite offended when I told them the story that was going round.
I mention this fabulous Avdotya Petrovna because what hap-
pened to her (if she really had existed) very nearly happened to
Stepan Trofimovitch. Possibly, indeed, his adventure may
have been at the bottom of the ridiculous tale about the old
woman, that is, as the gossip went on growing he was transformed
into this old dame.

What I find most difficult to understand is how he came to
slip away from me as soon as he got into the square. As I had
a misgiving of something very unpleasant, I wanted to take
him round the square straight to the entrance to the governor's,
but my own curiosity was roused, and I stopped only for one
minute to question the first person I came across, and suddenly
I looked round and found Stepan Trofimovitch no longer at my
side. Instinctively I darted off to look for him in the most
dangerous place ; something made me feel that his sledge, too,
was flying downhill. And I did, as a fact, find him in the very
centre of things. I remember I seized him by the arm ; but he
looked quietly and proudly at me with an air of immense
authority.

" Cher" he pronounced in a voice which quivered on a breaking
note, " if they are dealing with people so unceremoniously before
us, in an open square, what is to be expected from that man, for
instance ... if he happens to act on his own authority ? "

And shaking with indignation and with an intense desire to
defy them, he pointed a menacing, accusing finger at Flibusterov,
who was gazing at us open-eyed two paces away.

;' That man ! " cried the latter, blind with rage. " What
man ? And who are you ? " He stepped up to him, clenching
his fist. ' Who are you ? " he roared ferociously, hysterically,
and desperately. (I must mention that he knew Stepan Trofimo-
vitch perfectly well by sight.) Another moment and he would

2d

418 THE POSSESSED

have certainly seized him by the collar ; but luckily, hearing
him shout, Lembke turned his head. He gazed intensely
but with perplexity at Stepan Trofimovitch, seeming to
consider something, and suddenly he shook his hand impatiently.
Flibusterov was checked. I drew Stepan Trofimovitch out
of the crowd, though perhaps he may have wished to retreat
himself.

" Home, home," I insisted ; "it was certainly thanks to
Lembke that we were not beaten."

"Go, my friend ; I am to blame for exposing you to this.
You have a future and a career of a sort before you, while I —
mon heure est sonnee."

He resolutely mounted the governor's steps. The hall-porter
knew me ; I said that we both wanted to see Yulia Mihailovna.
We sat down in the waiting-room and waited. I was unwilling
to leave my friend, but I thought it unnecessary to say anything
more to him. He had the air of a man who had consecrated
himself to certain death for the sake of his country. We sat
down, not side by side, but in different corners — I nearer to the
entrance, he at some distance facing me, with his head bent in
thought, leaning lightly on his stick. He held his wide-brimmed
hat in his left hand. We sat like that for ten minutes.

II

Lembke suddenly came in with rapid steps, accompanied by
the chief of police, looked absent-mindedly at us and, taking
no notice of us, was about to pass into his study on the right, but
Stepan Trofimovitch stood before him blocking his way. The
tall figure of Stepan Trofimovitch, so unlike other people, made
an impression. Lembke stopped.

" Who is this % " he muttered, puzzled, as if he were questioning
the chief of police, though he did not turn his head towards him,
and was all the time gazing at Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Retired college assessor, Stepan Trofimovitch Verhovensky,
your Excellency," answered Stepan Trofimovitch, bowing
majestically. His Excellency went on staring at him with a
very blank expression, however.

" What is it ? " And with the curtness of a great official he
turned his ear to Stepan Trofimovitch with disdainful impatience,.

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 419

taking him for an ordinary person with a written petition of
some sort.

" I was visited and my house was searched to-day by an
official acting in your Excellency's name ; therefore I am
desirous ..."

" Name ? Name ? " Lembke asked impatiently, seeming
suddenly to have an inkling of something. Stepan Trofimovitch
repeated his name still more majestically.

" A- a- ah ! It's . . . that hotbed . . . You have shown
yourself, sir, in such a light. . . . Are you a professor ? a
professor ? "

" I once had the honour of giving some lectures to the young
men of the X university."

" The young men ! " Lembke seemed to start, though I am
ready to bet that he grasped very little of what was going on
or even, perhaps, did not know with whom he was talking.

" That, sir, I won't allow," he cried, suddenly getting terribly
angry. " I won't allow young men ! It's all these manifestoes ?
It's an assault on society, sir, a piratical attack, filibustering. . . .
What is your request ? "

" On the contrary, your wife requested me to read something
to-morrow at her fete. I've not come to make a request but to
ask for my rights. . . ."

" At the fete ? There'll be no fete. I won't allow your fete.
A lecture ? A lecture ? " he screamed furiously.

" I should be very glad if you would speak to me rather more
politely, your Excellency, without stamping or shouting at me
as though I were a boy."

" Perhaps you understand whom you are speaking to ? " said
Lembke, turning crimson.

" Perfectly, your Excellency."

" I am protecting society while you are destroying it ! . . .
You ... I remember about you, though : you used to be a
tutor in the house of Madame Stavrogin ? "

' Yes, I was in the position ... of tutor ... in the house
of Madame Stavrogin."

" And have been for twenty years the hotbed of all that has
now accumulated ... all the fruits. ... I believe I saw you
just now in the square. You'd better look out, sir, you'd better
look out ; your way of thinking is well known. You may be
sure that I keep my eye on you. I cannot allow your lectures,
sir, I cannot. Don't come with such requests to me."

420 THE POSSESSED

He would have passed on again.

" I repeat that your Excellency is mistaken ; it was your wife
who asked me to give, not a lecture, but a literary reading at
the fete to-morrow. But I decline to do so in any case now.
I humbly request that you will explain to me if possible how,
why, and for what reason I was subjected to an official search
to-day ? Some of my books and papers, private letters to me,
were taken from me and wheeled through the town in a barrow."

" Who searched you ? " said Lembke, starting and returning
to full consciousness of the position. He suddenly flushed all
over. He turned quickly to the chief of police. At that moment
the long, stooping, and awkward figure of Blum appeared in
the doorway.

" Why, this official here," said Stepan Trofimovitch, indicating
him. Blum came forward with a face that admitted his respon-
sibility but showed no contrition.

" Vous ne faites que des betises," Lembke threw at him in a
tone of vexation and anger, and suddenly he was transformed
and completely himself again.

" Excuse me," he muttered, utterly disconcerted and turning
absolutely crimson, " all this ... all this was probably a mere
blunder, a misunderstanding . . . nothing but a misunder-
standing."

" Your Excellency," observed Stepan Trofimovitch, " once
when I was young I saw a characteristic incident. In the
corridor of a theatre a man ran up to another and gave him a
sounding smack in the face before the whole public. Perceiving
at once that his victim was not the person whom he had intended
to chastise but some one quite different who only slightly
resembled him, he pronounced angrily, with the haste of one
whose moments are precious — as your Excellency did just now —
* I've made a mistake . . . excuse me, it was a misunderstanding,
nothing but a misunderstanding.' And when the offended man
remained resentful and cried out, he observed to him, with
extreme annoyance : ' Why, I tell you it was a misunderstanding.
What are you crying out about ? ' "

" That's . . . that's very amusing, of course " — Lembke gave
a wry smile — " but . . . but can't you see how unhappy I am
myself ? "

He almost screamed, and seemed about to hide his face in
his hands.

This unexpected and piteous exclamation, almost a sob, was

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 421

almost more than one could bear. It was probably the first
moment since the previous day that he had full, vivid conscious-
ness of all that had happened — and it was followed by complete,
humiliating despair that could not be disguised — who knows, in
another minute he might have sobbed aloud. For the first
moment Stepan Trofimovitch looked wildly at him ; then he
suddenly bowed his head and in a voice pregnant with feeling
pronounced : ,

" Your Excellency, don't trouble yourself with my petulant
complaint, and only give orders for my books and letters to be
restored to me. . . ."

He was interrupted. At that very instant Yulia Mihailovna
returned and entered noisily with all the party which had accom-
panied her. But at this point I should like to tell my story in
as much detail as possible.

Ill

In the first place, the whole company who had filled three
carriages crowded into the waiting-room. There was a special
entrance to Yulia Mihailovna's apartments on the left as one
entered the house ; but on this occasion they all went through
the waiting-room — and I imagine just because Stepan Trofimo-
vitch was there, and because all that had happened to him as
well as the Shpigulin affair had reached Yulia Mihailovna's ears
as she drove into the town. Lyamshin, who for some mis-
demeanour had not been invited to join the party and so knew
all that had been happening in the town before anyone else,
brought her the news. With spiteful glee he hired a wretched
Cossack nag and hastened on the way to Skvoreshniki to meet
the returning cavalcade with the diverting intelligence. I fancy
that, in spite of her lofty determination, Yulia Mihailovna was
a little disconcerted on hearing such surprising news, but probably
only for an instant. The political aspect of the affair, for
instance, could not cause her uneasiness ; Pyotr Stepanovitch
had impressed upon her three or four times that the Shpigulin
ruffians ought to be flogged, and Pyotr Stepanovitch certainly
had for some time past been a great authority in her eyes. " But
. . . anyway, I shall make him pay for it," she doubtless reflected,
the "he," of course, referring to her spouse. I must observe
in passing that on this occasion, as though purposely, Pyotr

422 THE POSSESSED

Stepanovitch had taken no part in the expedition, and no one
had seen him all day. I must mention too, by the way, that
Varvara Petrovna had come back to the town with her guests
(in the same carriage with Yulia Mihailovna) in order to be
present at the last meeting of the committee which was arranging
the fete for the next day. She too must have been interested,
and perhaps even agitated, by the news about Stepan Trofimo-
vitch communicated by Lyamshin.

The hour of reckoning for Andrey Antonovitch followed at
once. Alas ! he felt that from the first glance at his admirable
wife. With an open air and an enchanting smile she went quickly
up to Stepan Trofimovitch, held out her exquisitely gloved hand,
and greeted him with a perfect shower of flattering phrases —
as though the only thing she cared about that morning was to
make haste to be charming to Stepan Trofimovitch because at
last she saw him in her house. There was not one hint of the
search that morning ; it was as though she knew nothing of it.
There was not one word to her husband, not one glance in his
direction — as though he had not been in the room. What's
more, she promptly confiscated Stepan Trofimovitch and carried
him off to the drawing-room — as though he had had no interview
with Lembke, or as though it was not worth prolonging if he
had. I repeat again, I think that in this, Yulia Mihailovna, in
spite of her aristocratic tone, made another great mistake.
And Karmazinov particularly did much to aggravate this.
(He had taken part in the expedition at Yulia Mihailovna' s
special request, and in that way had, incidentally, paid his
visit to Varvara Petrovna, and she was so poor-spirited as to be
perfectly delighted at it.) On seeing Stepan Trofimovitch, he
called out from the doorway (he came in behind the rest)
and pressed forward to embrace him, even interrupting Yulia
Mihailovna.

" What years, what ages ! At last . . . excellent ami''

He made as though to kiss him, offering his cheek, of course,
and Stepan Trofimovitch was so fluttered that he could not
avoid saluting it.

" Cher,'" he said to me that evening, recalling all the events
of that day, " I wondered at that moment which of us was the
most contemptible : he, embracing me only to humiliate me,
or I, despising him and his face and kissing it on the spot, though
I might have turned away. . . . Foo ! "

" Come, tell me about yourself, tell me everything," Kar-

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 423

mazinov drawled and lisped, as though it were possible for him
on the spur of the moment to give an account of twenty-five
years of his life. But this foolish trifling was the height of
" chic."

" Remember that the last time we met was at the Granovsky
dinner in Moscow, and that twenty-four years have passed since
then ..." Stepan Trofimovitch began very reasonably (and
consequently not at all in the same " chic " style).

" Ce cher homme," Karmazinov interrupted with shrill fami-
liarity, squeezing his shoulder with exaggerated friendliness.
" Make haste and take us to your room, Yulia Mihailovna ;
there he'll sit down and tell us everything."

" And yet I was never at all intimate with that peevish old
woman," Stepan Trofimovitch went on complaining to me
that same evening, shaking with anger ; "we were almost boys,
and I'd begun to detest him even then . . . just as he had me,
of course."

Yulia Mihailovna' s drawing-room filled up quickly. Varvara
Petrovna was particularly excited, though she tried to appear
indifferent, but I caught her once or twice glancing with hatred
at Karmazinov and with wrath at Stepan Trofimovitch — the
wrath of anticipation, the wrath of jealousy and love : if Stepan
Trofimovitch had blundered this time and had let Karmazinov
make him look small before every one, I believe she would have
leapt up and beaten him. I have forgotten to say that Liza
too was there, and I had never seen her more radiant, carelessly
light-hearted, and happy. Mavriky Nikolaevitch was there too,
of course. In the crowd of young ladies and rather vulgar
young men who made up Yulia Mihailovna' s usual retinue, and
among whom this vulgarity was taken for sprightliness, and
cheap cynicism for wit, I noticed two or three new faces : a
very obsequious Pole who was on a visit in the town ; a German
doctor, a sturdy old fellow who kept loudly laughing with
great zest at his own wit ; and lastly, a very young princeling
from Petersburg like an automaton figure, with the deportment
of a state dignitary and a fearfully high collar. But it was
evident that Yulia Mihailovna had a very high opinion of this
visitor, and was even a little anxious of the impression her
salon was making on him.

" Cher M. Karmazinov,'" said Stepan Trofimovitch, sitting
in a picturesque pose on the sofa and suddenly beginning to lisp
as daintily as Karmazinov himself, " cher M. Karmazinov, the

424 THE POSSESSED

life of a man of our time and of certain convictions, even after an
interval of twenty-five years, is bound to seem monotonous ..."

The German went off into a loud abrupt guffaw like a neigh,
evidently imagining that Stepan Trofimovitch had said some-
thing exceedingly funny. The latter gazed at him with studied
amazement but produced no effect on him whatever. The
prince, too, looked at the German, turning head, collar and all,
towards him and putting up his pince-nez, though without the
slightest curiosity.

' . . . Is bound to seem monotonous," Stepan Trofimovitch
intentionally repeated, drawling each word as deliberately and
nonchalantly as possible. " And so my life has been throughout
this quarter of a century, et comme on trouve partout plus de \
moines que de raison, and as I am entirely of this opinion, it has
come to pass that throughout this quarter of a century I . . ."

" C'est charmant, les moines" whispered Yulia Mihailovna,
turning to Varvara Petrovna, who was sitting beside her.

Varvara Petrovna responded with a look of pride. But Kar-
mazinov could not stomach the success of the French phrase,
and quickly and shrilly interrupted Stepan Trofimovitch.

" As for me, I am quite at rest on that score, and for the
past seven years I've been settled at Karlsruhe. And last year,
when it was proposed by the town council to lay down a new
water-pipe, I felt in my heart that this question of water-pipes in
Karlsruhe was dearer and closer to my heart than all the questions
of my precious Fatherland ... in this period of so-called
reform."

" I can't help sympathising, though it goes against the
grain," sighed Stepan Trofimovitch, bowing his head signifi-
cantly.

Yulia Mihailovna was triumphant : the conversation was
becoming profound and taking a political turn.

" A drain-pipe ? " the doctor inquired in a loud voice.

" A water-pipe, doctor, a water-pipe, and I positively assisted
them in drawing up the plan."

The doctor went off into a deafening guffaw. Many people
followed his example, laughing in the face of the doctor, who
remained unconscious of it and was highly delighted that every
one was laughing.

" You must allow me to differ from you, Karmazinov," Yulia
Mihailovna hastened to interpose. " Karlsruhe is all very well,
but you are fond of mystifying people, and this time we don't

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 425

believe you. What Russian writer has presented so many
modern types, has brought forward so many contemporary
problems, has put his finger on the most vital modern points which
make up the type of the modern man of action ? You, only
you, and no one else. It's no use your assuring us of your coldness
towards your own country and your ardent interest in the water-
pipes of Karlsruhe. Ha ha ! "

" Yes, no doubt," lisped Karmazinov. " I have portrayed
in the character of Pogozhev all the failings of the Slavophils
and in the character of Nikodimov all the failings of the
Westerners. ..."

" I say, hardly all ! " Lyamshin whispered slyly.

" But I do this by the way, simply to while away the tedious
hours and to satisfy the persistent demands of my fellow-
countrymen."

" You are probably aware, Stepan Trofimovitch," Yulia
Mihailovna went on enthusiastically, " that to-morrow we shall
have the delight of hearing the charming lines . . . one of the
last of Semyon Yakovlevitch's exquisite literary inspirations —
it's called Merci. He announces in this piece that he will
write no more, that nothing in the world will induce him to,
if angels from Heaven or, what's more, all the best society were
to implore him to change his mind. In fact he is laying down
the pen for good, and this graceful Merci is addressed to the
public in grateful acknowledgment of the constant enthusiasm
with which it has for so many years greeted his unswerving
loyalty to true Russian thought."

Yulia Mihailovna was at the acme of bliss.

" Yes, I shall make my farewell ; I shall say my Merci
and depart and there ... in Karlsruhe ... I shall close my
eyes." Karmazinov was gradually becoming maudlin.

Like many of our great writers (and there are numbers of them
amongst us), he could not resist praise, and began to be limp
at once, in spite of his penetrating wit. But I consider this is
pardonable. They say that one of our Shakespeares positively
blurted out in private conversation that " we great men can't do
otherwise," and so on, and, what's more, was unaware of it.

" There in Karlsruhe I shall close my eyes. When we have
done our duty, all that's left for us great men is to make haste
to close our eyes without seeking a reward. I shall do so too."

11 Give me the address and I shall come to Karlsruhe to visit
your tomb," said the German, laughing immoderately.

426 THE POSSESSED

" They send corpses by rail nowadays," one of the less important
young men said unexpectedly.

Lyamshin positively shrieked with delight. Yulia Mihailovna
frowned. Nikolay Stavrogin walked in.

' Why, I was told that you were locked up ? " he said aloud,
addressing Stepan Trofimovitch before every one else.

" No, it was a case of unlocking," jested Stepan Trofimovitch.

:' But I hope that what's happened will have no influence on
what I asked you to do," Yulia Mihailovna put in again. " I
trust that you will not let this unfortunate annoyance, of which
I had no idea, lead you to disappoint our eager expectations and
deprive us of the enjoyment of hearing your reading at our
literary matinee."

" I don't know, I . . . now . . ."

" Really, I am so unlucky, Varvara Petrovna . . . and only
fancy, just when I was so longing to make the personal acquaint-
ance of one of the most remarkable and independent intellects
of Russia — and here Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly talks of
deserting us."

" Your compliment is uttered so audibly that I ought to
pretend not to hear it," Stepan Trofimovitch said neatly, " but
I cannot believe that my insignificant presence is so indispensable
at your fete to-morrow. However, I . . ."

" Why, you'll spoil him ! " cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, bursting
into the room. " I've only just got him in hand — and in one
morning he has been searched, arrested, taken by the collar by
a policeman, and here ladies are cooing to him in the governor's
drawing-room. Every bone in his body is aching with rapture ;
in his wildest dreams he had never hoped for such good fortune.
Now he'll begin informing against the Socialists after this ! "

" Impossible, Pyotr Stepanovitch ! Socialism is too grand
an idea to be unrecognised by Stepan Trofimovitch." Yulia
Mihailovna took up the gauntlet with energy.

" It's a great idea but its exponents are not always great men,
et brisons-la, mon cher" Stepan Trofimovitch ended, addressing
his son and rising gracefully from his seat.

But at this point an utterly unexpected circumstance occurred.
Von Lembke had been in the room for some time but seemed
unnoticed by anyone, though every one had seen him come in.
In accordance with her former plan, Yulia Mihailovna went on
ignoring him. He took up his position near the door and with
a stern face listened gloomily to the conversation. Hearing

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 427

an allusion to the events of the morning, he began fidgeting
uneasily, stared at the prince, obviously struck by his stiffly
starched, prominent collar ; then suddenly he seemed to start
on hearing the voice of Pyotr Stepanovitch and seeing him burst
in ; and no sooner had Stepan Trofimovitch uttered his phrase
about Socialists than Lembke went up to him, pushing against
Lyamshin, who at once skipped out of the way with an affected
gesture of surprise, rubbing his shoulder and pretending that
he had been terribly bruised.

" Enough ! " said Von Lembke to Stepan Trofimovitch,
vigorously gripping the hand of the dismayed gentleman and
squeezing it with all his might in both of his. " Enough ! The
filibusters of our day are unmasked. Not another word.
Measures have been taken. ..."

He spoke loudly enough to be heard by all the room, and
concluded with energy. The impression he produced was poig-
nant. Everybody felt that something was wrong. I saw Yulia
Mihailovna turn pale. The effect was heightened by a trivial
accident. After announcing that measures had been taken,
Lembke turned sharply and walked quickly towards the door,
but he had hardly taken two steps when he stumbled over a
rug, swerved forward, and almost fell. For a moment he stood
still, looked at the rug at which he had stumbled, and, uttering
aloud " Change it ! " went out of the room. Yulia Mihailovna
ran after him. Her exit was followed by an uproar, in which
it was difficult to distinguish anything. Some said he was
f deranged," others that he was " liable to attacks " ; others
put their fingers to their forehead ; Lyamshin, in the corner,
put his two fingers above his forehead. People hinted at some
domestic difficulties — in a whisper, of course. No one took up
his hat ; all were waiting. I don't know what Yulia Mihailovna
managed to do, but five minutes later she came back, doing her
utmost to appear composed. She replied evasively that Andrey
Antonovitch was rather excited, but that it meant nothing, that
he had been like that from a child, that she knew " much better,"
and that the fete next day would certainly cheer him up. Then
followed a few flattering words to Stepan Trofimovitch simply
from civility, and a loud invitation to the members of the com-
mittee to open the meeting now, at once. Only then, all who
were not members of the committee prepared to go home ; but
ifhe painful incidents of this fatal day were not yet over.

I noticed at the moment when Nikolay Stavrogin came in

428 THE POSSESSED

that Liza looked quickly and intently at him and was for a long
time unable to take her eyes off him — so much so that at last it
attracted attention. I saw Mavriky Nikolaevitch bend over
her from behind ; he seemed to mean to whisper something
to her, but evidently changed his intention and drew himself
up quickly, looking round at every one with a guilty air. Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch too excited curiosity ; his face was paler than
usual and there was a strangely absent-minded look in his eyes.
After flinging his question at Stepan Trofimovitch he seemed to
forget about him altogether, and I really believe he even forgot
to speak to his hostess. He did not once look at Liza — not
because he did not want to, but I am certain because he did not
notice her either. And suddenly, after the brief silence that
followed Yulia Mihailovna's invitation to open the meeting
without loss of time, Liza's musical voice, intentionally loud,
was heard. She called to Stavrogin.

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, a captain who calls himself a
relation of yours, the brother of your wife, and whose name is
Lebyadkin, keeps writing impertinent letters to me, complaining
of you and offering to tell me some secrets about you. If he
really is a connection of yours, please tell him not to annoy me,
and save me from this unpleasantness."

There was a note of desperate challenge in these words — every
one realised it. The accusation was unmistakable, though
perhaps it was a surprise to herself. She was like a man who
shuts his eyes and throws himself from the roof.

But Nikolay Stavrogin's answer was even more astounding.

To begin with, it was strange that he was not in the least
surprised and listened to Liza with unruffled attention. There
was no trace of either confusion or anger in his face. Simply,
firmly, even with an air of perfect readiness, he answered the fatal
question :

" Yes, I have the misfortune to be connected with that man.
I have been the husband of his sister for nearly five years. You
may be sure I will give him your message as soon as possible,
and I'll answer for it that he shan't annoy you again."

I shall never forget the horror that was reflected on the face
of Varvara Petrovna. With a distracted air she got up from her
seat, lifting up her right hand as though to ward off a blow .
Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch looked at her, looked at Liza, at thtta
spectators, and suddenly smiled with infinite disdain ; he walked^
deliberately out of the room. Every one saw how Liza leapt!

FILIBUSTERS. A FATAL MORNING 429

up from the sofa as soon as he turned to go and unmistakably
made a movement to run after him. But she controlled herself
and did not run after him ; she went quietly out of the room
without saying a word or even looking at anyone, accompanied,
of course, by Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who rushed after her.

The uproar and the gossip that night in the town I will not
attempt to describe. Varvara Petrovna shut herself up in her
town house and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, it was said, went
straight to Skvoreshniki without seeing his mother. Stepan
Trofimovitch sent me that evening to cette chere amie to implore
her to allow him to come to her, but she would not see me. He
was terribly overwhelmed ; he shed tears. " Such a marriage !
Such a marriage ! Such an awful thing in the family ! " he
kept repeating. He remembered Karmazinov, however, and
abused him terribly. He set to work vigorously to prepare for
the reading too and — the artistic temperament ! — rehearsed
before the looking-glass and went over all the jokes and witticisms
uttered in the course of his life which he had written down in a
separate notebook, to insert into his reading next day.

" My dear, I do this for the sake of a great idea," he said to
me, obviously justifying himself. " Cher ami, I have been
stationary for twenty-five years and suddenly I've begun to
move — whither, I know not — but I've begun to move. ..."

PART III

CHAPTER I
THE FETE— FIRST PART

The fete took place in spite of all the perplexities of the pre-
ceding " Shpigulin " day. I believe that even if Lembke had
died the previous night, the fete would still have taken place
next morning — so peculiar was the significance Yulia Mihailovna
attached to it. Alas ! up to the last moment she was blind and
had no inkling of the state of public feeling. No one believed
at last that the festive day would pass without some tremendous
scandal, some " catastrophe " as some people expressed it,
rubbing their hands in anticipation. Many people, it is true,
tried to assume a frowning and diplomatic countenance ; but,
speaking generally, every Russian is inordinately delighted at
any public scandal and disorder. It is true that we did feel
something much more serious than the mere craving for a
scandal : there was a general feeling of irritation, a feeling of
implacable resentment ; every one seemed thoroughly disgusted
with everything. A kind of bewildered cynicism, a forced, as
it were, strained cynicism was predominant in every one. The
only people who were free from bewilderment were the ladies,
and they were clear on only one point : their remorseless detesta-
tion of Yulia Mihailovna. Ladies of all shades of opinion were
agreed in this. And she, poor dear, had no suspicion ; up to
the last hour she was persuaded that she was " surrounded by
followers," and that they were still " fanatically devoted to
her."

I have already hinted that some low fellows of different sorts
had made their appearance amongst us. In turbulent times
of upheaval or transition low characters always come to the
front everywhere. I am not speaking now of the so-called
" advanced " people who are always in a hurry to be in advance
of every one else (their absorbing anxiety) and who always have
some more or less definite, though often very stupid, aim. No,

430

THE FETE— FIRST PART 431

I am speaking only of the riff-raff. In every period of transition
this riff-raff, which exists in every society, rises to the surface,
and is not only without any aim but has not even a symptom
of an idea, and merely does its utmost to give expression to
uneasiness and impatience. Moreover, this riff-raff almost
always falls unconsciously under the control of the little group
of " advanced people " who do act with a definite aim, and this
little group can direct all this rabble as it pleases, if only it
does not itself consist of absolute idiots, which, however, is some-
times the case. It is said among us now that it is all over, that
Pyotr Stepanovitch was directed by the Internationale, and
Yulia Mihailovna by Pyotr Stepanovitch, while she controlled,
under his rule, a rabble of all sorts. The more sober minds
amongst us wonder at themselves now, and can't understand
how they came to be so foolish at the time.

What constituted the turbulence of our time and what transi-
tion it was we were passing through I don't know, nor I think
does anyone, unless it were some of those visitors of ours. Yet
the most worthless fellows suddenly gained predominant in-
fluence, began loudly criticising everything sacred, though till
then they had not dared to open their mouths, while the leading
people, who had till then so satisfactorily kept the upper hand,
began listening to them and holding their peace, some even
simpered approval in a most shameless way. People like
Lyamshin and Telyatnikov, like Gogol's Tentyotnikov, drivelling
home-bred editions of Radishtchev, wretched little Jews with
a mournful but haughty smile, guffawing foreigners, poets of
advanced tendencies from the capital, poets who made up with
peasant coats and tarred boots for the lack of tendencies or
talents, majors and colonels who ridiculed the senselessness of
the service, and who would have been ready for an extra rouble to
unbuckle their swords, and take jobs as railway clerks ; generals
who had abandoned their duties to become lawyers ; advanced
mediators, advancing merchants, innumerable divinity students,
women who were the embodiment of the woman question — all
these suddenly gained complete sway among us and over whom ?
Over the club, the venerable officials, over generals with wooden
legs, over the very strict and inaccessible ladies of our local
society. Since even Varvara Petrovna was almost at the beck
and call of this rabble, right up to the time of the catastrophe
with her son, our other local Minervas may well be pardoned
for their temporary aberration. Now all this is attributed, as

432 THE POSSESSED

I have mentioned already, to the Internationale. This idea has
taken such root that it is given as the explanation to visitors from
other parts. Only lately councillor Kubrikov, a man of sixty-
two, with the Stanislav Order on his breast, came forward
uninvited and confessed in a voice full of feeling that he had
beyond a shadow of doubt been for fully three months under the
influence of the Internationale. When with every deference
for his years and services he was invited to be more definite, he
stuck firmly to his original statement, though he could produce
no evidence except that " he had felt it in all his feelings," so that
they cross-examined him no further.

I repeat again, there was still even among us a small
group who held themselves aloof from the beginning, and even
locked themselves up. But what lock can stand against a
law of nature ? Daughters will grow up even in the most
careful families, and it is essential for grown-up daughters to
dance.

And so all these people, too, ended by subscribing to the
governesses' fund.

The ball was assumed to be an entertainment so brilliant,
so unprecedented ; marvels were told about it ; there were
rumours of princes from a distance with lorgnettes ; of ten
stewards, all young dandies, with rosettes on their left shoulder ;
of some Petersburg people who were setting the thing going ;
there was a rumour that Karmazinov had consented to increase
the subscriptions to the fund by reading his Merci in the
costume of the governesses of the district ; that there would be
a literary quadrille all in costume, and every costume would
symbolise some special line of thought ; and finally that " honest
Russian thought" would dance in costume — which would cer-
tainly be a complete novelty in itself. Who could resist
subscribing ? Every one subscribed.

II

The programme of the fete was divided into two parts : the
literary matinee from midday till four o'clock, and afterwards a
ball from ten o'clock onwards through the night. But in this
very programme there lay concealed germs of disorder. In
the first place, from the very beginning a rumour had gained
ground among the public concerning a luncheon immediately

THE FETE— FIRST PART 43a

after the literary matinee, or even while it was going on, during
an interval arranged expressly for it — a free luncheon, of course,
which would form part of the programme and be accompanied
by champagne. The immense price of the tickets (three
roubles) tended to confirm this rumour. " As though one
would subscribe for nothing ? The fete is arranged for twenty-
four hours, so food must be provided. People will get hungry."
This was how people reasoned in the town. I must admit that
Yulia Mihailovna did much to confirm this disastrous rumour
by her own heedlessness. A month earlier, under the first spell
of the great project, she would babble about it to anyone she
met, and even sent a paragraph to one of the Petersburg papers
about the toasts and speeches arranged for her fete. What
fascinated her most at that time was the idea of these toasts mT
she wanted to propose them herself and was continually com-
posing them in anticipation. They were to make clear what
was their banner (what was it ? I don't mind betting that the
poor dear composed nothing after all), they were to get into the
Petersburg and Moscow papers, to touch and fascinate the higher
powers and then to spread the idea over all the provinces of
Russia, rousing people to wonder and imitation.

But for toasts, champagne was essential, and as champagne
can't be drunk on an empty stomach, it followed that a lunch
was essential too. Afterwards, when by her efforts a com-
mittee had been formed and had attacked the subject more
seriously, it was proved clearly to her at once that if they were
going to dream of banquets there would be very little left for the
governesses, however well people subscribed. There were two
ways out of the difficulty : either Belshazzar's feast with toasts
and speeches, and ninety roubles for the governesses, or a con-
siderable sum of money with the fete only as a matter of form to
raise it. The committee, however, only wanted to scare her, and
had of course worked out a third course of action, which was
reasonable and combined the advantages of both, that is, a very
decent fete in every respect only without champagne, and so
yielding a very respectable sum, much more than ninety roubles.
But Yulia Mihailovna would not agree to it : her proud spirit
revolted from paltry compromise. She decided at once that if
the original idea could not be carried out they should rush to the
opposite extreme, that is, raise an enormous subscription tha
would be the envy of other provinces. " The public must
understand," she said at the end of her flaming speech to the

2e

434 THE POSSESSED

committee, " that the attainment of an object of universal
human interest is infinitely loftier than the corporeal enjoyments
of the passing moment, that the fete in its essence is only the
proclamation of a great idea, and so we ought to be content with
the most frugal German ball simply as a symbol, that is, if we
can't dispense with this detestable ball altogether," so great was
the aversion she suddenly conceived for it. But she was pacified
at last. It was then that " the literary quadrille " and the
other aesthetic items were invented and proposed as substitutes for
the corporeal enjoyments. It was then that Karmazinov finally
consented to read Merci (until then he had only tantalised
them by his hesitation) and so eradicate the very idea of victuals
from the minds of our incontinent public. So the ball was once
more to be a magnificent function, though in a different style
And not to be too ethereal it was decided that tea with lemor
and round biscuits should be served at the beginning of the ball
and later on " orchade " and lemonade and at the end even ices—
but nothing else. For those who always and everywhere art
hungry and, still more, thirsty, they might open a buffet in th<
farthest of the suite of rooms and put it in charge of Prohorovitch
the head cook of the club, who would, subject to the strid
supervision of the committee, serve whatever was wanted, at i
fixed charge, and a notice should be put up on the door of th(
hall that refreshments were extra. But on the morning the}
decided not to open the buffet at all for fear of disturbing the
reading, though the buffet would have been five rooms of
the White Hall in which Karmazinov had consented to reac
Merci.

It is remarkable that the committee, and even the mosi
practical people in it, attached enormous consequence to thii
reading. As for people of poetical tendencies, the marshal']
wife, for instance, informed Karmazinov that after the reading
she would immediately order a marble slab to be put up in thi
wall of the White Hall with an inscription in gold letters, that oi
such a day and year, here, in this place, the great writer o
Russia and of Europe had read Merci on laying aside hi
pen, and so had for the first time taken leave of the Russiai
public represented by the leading citizens of our town, and tha
this inscription would be read by all at the ball, that is, only fiv<
hours after Merci had been read. I know for a fact tha
Karmazinov it was who insisted that there should be no buffe
in the morning on any account, while he was reading, in spite o

THE FETE— FIRST PART 435

some protests from members of the committee that this was
rather opposed to our way of doing things.

This was the position of affairs, while in the town people were
still reckoning on a Belshazzar feast, that is, on refreshments
provided by the committee ; they believed in this to the last
hour. Even the young ladies were dreaming of masses of
sweets and preserves, and something more beyond their imagina-
tion. Every one knew that the subscriptions had reached a
huge sum, that all the town was struggling to go, that people
were driving in from the surrounding districts, and that there
were not tickets enough. It was known, too, that there had
been some large subscriptions apart from the price paid for
tickets : Varvara Petrovna, for instance, had paid three hundred
roubles for her ticket and had given almost all the flowers from
her conservatory to decorate the room. The marshal's wife,
who was a member of the committee, provided the house and
the lighting ; the club furnished the music, the attendants, and
gave up Prohorovitch for the whole day. There were other con-
tributions as well, though lesser ones, so much so indeed that
the idea was mooted of cutting down the price of tickets from
three roubles to two. Indeed, the committee were afraid at
first that three roubles would be too much for young ladies to
pay, and suggested that they might have family tickets, so that
every family should pay for one daughter only, while the other
young ladies of the family, even if there were a dozen specimens,
should be admitted free. But all their apprehensions turned
out to be groundless : it was just the young ladies who did
come. Even the poorest clerks brought their girls, and it was
quite evident that if they had had no girls it would never have
occurred to them to subscribe for tickets. One insignificant
little secretary brought all his seven daughters, to say nothing
of his wife and a niece into the bargain, and every one of these
persons held in her hand an entrance ticket that cost three
roubles.

It may be imagined what an upheaval it made in the town !
One has only to remember that as the fete was divided into two
parts every lady needed two costumes for the occasion — a
morning one for the matinee and a ball dress for the evening.
Many middle-class people, as it appeared afterwards, had pawned
everything they had for that day, even the family linen, even the
sheets, and possibly the mattresses, to the Jews, who had been
settling in our town in great numbers during the previous two

436 THE POSSESSED

years and who became more and more numerous as time went on.
Almost all the officials had asked for their salary in advance, and
some of the landowners sold beasts they could ill spare, and all
simply to bring their ladies got up as marchionesses, and to be as
good as anybody The magnificence of dresses on this occasion
was something unheard of in our neighbourhood. For a fort-
night beforehand the town was overflowing with funny stories
which were all brought by our wits to Yulia Mihailovna's court.
Caricatures were passed from hand to hand. I have seen some
drawings of the sort myself, in Yulia Mihailovna's album.
All this reached the ears of the families who were the source of
the jokes ; I believe this was the cause of the general hatred of
Yulia Mihailovna which had grown so strong in the town.
People swear and gnash their teeth when they think of it now.
But it was evident, even at the time, that if the committee were
to displease them in anything, or if anything went wrong at the
ball, the outburst of indignation would be something surprising.
That's why every one was secretly expecting a scandal ; and if
it was so confidently expected, how could it fail to come to pass ?
The orchestra struck up punctually at midday. Being one
of the stewards, that is, one of the twelve " young men with a
rosette," I saw with my own eyes how this day of ignominious
memory began. It began with an enormous crush at the doors.
How was it that everything, including the police, went wrong
that day ? I don't blame the genuine public : the fathers of
families did not crowd, nor did they push against anyone, in spite
of their position. On the contrary, I am told that they were
disconcerted even in the street, at the sight of the crowd shoving
in a way unheard of in our town, besieging the entry and taking
it by assault, instead of simply going in. Meanwhile the carriages
kept driving up, and at last blocked the street. Now, at the
time I write, I have good grounds for affirming that some of the
lowest rabble of our town were brought in without tickets by
Lyamshin and Liputin, possibly, too, by other people who were
stewards like me. Anyway, some complete strangers, who had
come from the surrounding districts and elsewhere, were present.
As soon as these savages entered the hall they began asking where
the buffet was, as though they had been put up to it beforehand,
and learning that there was no buffet they began swearing with
brutal directness, and an unprecedented insolence ; some of them,
it is true, were drunk when they came. Some of them were
dazed like savages at the splendour of the hall, as they had never

THE FETE— FIRST PART 437

seen anything like it, and subsided for a minute gazing at it open-
mouthed. This great White Hall really was magnificent, though
the building was falling into decay : it was of immense size, with
two rows of windows, with an old-fashioned ceiling covered with
gilt carving, with a gallery with mirrors on the walls, red and
white draperies, marble statues (nondescript but still statues)
with heavy old furniture of the Napoleonic period, white and
gold, upholstered in red velvet. At the moment I am describing,
a high platform had been put up for the literary gentlemen who
were to read, and the whole hall was filled with chairs like the
parterre of a theatre with wide aisles for the audience.

But after the first moments of surprise the most senseless
questions and protests followed. " Perhaps we don't care for a
reading. . . . We've paid our money. . . . The audience has
been impudently swindled. . . . This is our entertainment, not
the Lembkes' ! They seemed, in fact, to have been let in
for this purpose. I remember specially an encounter in which
the princeling with the stand-up collar and the face of a Dutch
doll, whom I had met the morning before at Yulia Mihailovna's,
distinguished himself. He had, at her urgent request, consented
to pin a rosette on his left shoulder and to become one of our
stewards. It turned out that this dumb wax figure could act after
a fashion of his own, if he could not talk. When a colossal pock-
marked captain, supported by a herd of rabble following at his
heels, pestered him by asking " which way to the buffet ? " he
made a sign to a police sergeant. His hint was promptly acted
upon, and in spite of the drunken captain's abuse he was dragged
out of the hall. Meantime the genuine public began to make its
appearance, and stretched in three long files between the chairs.
The disorderly elements began to subside, but the public, even
the most " respectable " among them, had a dissatisfied and
perplexed air ; some of the ladies looked positively scared.

At last all were seated ; the music ceased. People began
blowing their noses and looking about them. They waited with
too solemn an air — which is always a bad sign. But nothing was to
be seen yet of the Lembkes. Silks, velvets, diamonds glowed and
sparkled on every side ; whiffs of fragrance filled the air. The
men were wearing all their decorations, and the old men were
even in uniform. At last the marshal's wife came in with Liza.
Liza had never been so dazzlingly charming or so splendidly
dressed as that morning. Her hair was done up in curls, her
eyes sparkled, a smile^beamed on her face. She made an

438 THE POSSESSED

unmistakable sensation : people scrutinised her and whispered
about her. They said that she was looking for Stavrogin, but
neither Stavrogin nor Varvara Petrovna were there. At the
time I did not understand the expression of her face : why was
there so much happiness, such joy, such energy and strength in
that face ? I remembered what had happened the day before
and could not make it out.

But still the Lembkes did not come. This was distinctly a
blunder. I learned that Yulia Mihailovna waited till the last
minute for Pyotr Stepanovitch, without whom she could not stir
a step, though she never admitted it to herself. I must mention,
in parenthesis, that on the previous day Pyotr Stepanovitch had
at the last meeting of the committee declined to wear the rosette
of a steward, which had disappointed her dreadfully, even to the
point of tears. To her surprise and, later on, her extreme dis-
comfiture (to anticipate things) he vanished for the whole morn-
ing and did not make his appearance at the literary matinee at
all, so that no one met him till evening. At last the audience
began to manifest unmistakable signs of impatience. No one
appeared on the platform either. The back rows began applaud-
ing, as in a theatre. The elderly gentlemen and the ladies
frowned. " The Lembkes are really giving themselves unbear-
able airs." Even among the better part of the audience an absurd
whisper began to gain ground that perhaps there would not be a
fete at all, that Lembke perhaps was really unwell, and so on and
so on. But, thank God, the Lembkes at last appeared, she was
leaning on his arm ; I must confess I was in great apprehension
myself about their appearance. But the legends were disproved,
and the truth was triumphant. The audience seemed relieved.
Lembke himself seemed perfectly well. Every one, I remember,
was of that opinion, for it can be imagined how many eyes were
turned on him. I may mention, as characteristic of our society,
that there were very few of the better-class people who saw reason
to suppose that there was anything wrong with him ; his conduct
seemed to them perfectly normal, and so much so that the action
he had taken in the square the morning before was accepted and
approved.

" That's how it should have been from the first," the higher
officials declared. " If a man begins as a philanthropist he has
to come to the same thing in the end, though he does not see that
it was necessary from the point of view of philanthropy itself "-
that, at least, was the opinion at the club. They only blamed

THE FfiTE— FIRST PART 439

him for having lost his temper. " It ought to have been done
more coolly, but there, he is a new man," said the authorities.

All eyes turned with equal eagerness to Yulia Mihailovna. Of
course no one has the right to expect from me an exact account
in regard to one point : that is a mysterious, a feminine question.
But I only know one thing : on the evening of the previous day
she had gone into Andrey Antonovitch's study and was there
with him till long after midnight. Andrey Antonovitch was
comforted and forgiven. The husband and wife came to a
complete understanding, everything was forgotten, and when
at the end of the interview Lembke went down on his knees,
recalling with horror the final incident of the previous night, the
exquisite hand, and after it the lips of his wife, checked the
fervent flow of penitent phrases of the chivalrously delicate
gentleman who was limp with emotion. Every one could see
the happiness in her face. She walked in with an open-hearted
air, wearing a magnificent dress. She seemed to be at the very
pinnacle of her heart's desires, the fete — the goal and crown of
her diplomacy — was an accomplished fact. As they walked to
their seats in front of the platform, the Lembkes bowed in all
directions and responded to greetings. They were at once
surrounded. The marshal's wife got up to meet them.

But at that point a horrid misunderstanding occurred ; the
orchestra, apropos of nothing, struck up a flourish, not a trium-
phal march of any kind, but a simple flourish such as was played
at the club when some one's health was drunk at an official
dinner. I know now that Lyamshin, in his capacity of steward,
had arranged this, as though in honour of the Lembkes' entrance.
Of course he could always excuse it as a blunder or excessive
zeal. . . . Alas ! I did not know at the time that they no longer
cared even to find excuses, and that all such considerations were
from that day a thing of the past. But the flourish was not the
end of it : in the midst of the vexatious astonishment and the
smiles of the audience there was a sudden " hurrah " from the
end of the hall and from the gallery also, apparently in Lembke's
honour. The hurrahs were few, but I must confess they lasted
for some time. Yulia Mihailovna flushed, her eyes flashed.
Lembke stood still at his chair, and turning towards the voices
sternly and majestically scanned the audience. . . . They
hastened to make him sit down. I noticed with dismay the same
dangerous smile on his face as he had worn the morning before,
in his wife's drawing-room, when he stared at Stepan Trofimovitch

440 THE POSSESSED

before going up to him. It seemed to me that now, too, there
was an ominous, and, worst of all, a rather comic expression on
his countenance, the expression of a man resigned to sacrifice
himself to satisfy his wife's lofty aims. . . . Yulia Mihailovna
beckoned to me hurriedly, and whispered to me to run to Kar-
mazinov and entreat him to begin. And no sooner had I turned
away than another disgraceful incident, much more unpleasant
than the first, took place.

On the platform, the empty platform, on which till that
moment all eyes and all expectations were fastened, and where
nothing was to be seen but a small table, a chair in front of it, and
on the table a glass of water on a silver salver — on the empty
platform there suddenly appeared the colossal figure of Captain
Lebyadkin wearing a dress-coat and a white tie. I was so
astounded I could not believe my eyes. The captain seemed
confused and remained standing at the back of the platform.
Suddenly there was a shout in the audience, " Lebyadkin I
You ? " The captain's stupid red face (he was hopelessly drunk)
expanded in a broad vacant grin at this greeting. He raised
his hand, rubbed his forehead with it, shook his shaggy head and,
as though making up his mind to go through with it, took two
steps forward and suddenly went off into a series of prolonged,
blissful, gurgling, but not loud guffaws, which made him screw
up his eyes and set all his bulky person heaving. This spectacle
set almost half the audience laughing, twenty people applauded.
The serious part of the audience looked at one another gloomily ;
it all lasted only half a minute, however. Liputin, wearing his
steward's rosette, ran on to the platform with two servants ;
they carefully took the captain by both arms, while Liputin
whispered something to him. The captain scowled, muttered
" Ah, well, if that's it ! " waved his hand, turned his huge back
to the public and vanished with his escort. But a minute later
Liputin skipped on to the platform again. He was wearing the
sweetest of his invariable smiles, which usually suggested vinegar
and sugar, and carried in his hands a sheet of note-paper. With
tiny but rapid steps he came forward to the edge of the platform.

" Ladies and gentlemen," he said, addressing the public,
" through our inadvertency there has arisen a comical mis-
understanding which has been removed ; but I've hopefully
undertaken to do something at the earnest and most respectful
request of one of our local poets. Deeply touched by the
humane and lofty object ... in spite of his appearance . . .

THE FETE— FIRST PART 441

the object which has brought us all together ... to wipe away
the tears of the poor but well-educated girls of our province . . .
this gentleman, I mean this local poet . . . although desirous
of preserving his incognito, would gladly have heard his poem
read at the beginning of the ball . . . that is, I mean, of the
matinee. Though this poem is not in the programme . . . for it
has only been received half an hour ago . . . yet it has seemed to
us " — (Us ? Whom did he mean by us ? I report his confused and
incoherent speech word for word) — " that through its remarkable
naivete of feeling, together with its equally remarkable gaiety, the
poem might well be read, that is, not as something serious, but
as something appropriate to the occasion, that is to the idea . . .
especially as some lines . . . And I wanted to ask the kind
permission of the audience."

" Read it ! " boomed a voice at the back of the hall.
" Then I am to read it ? "
" Read it, read it ! " cried many voices.

' With the permission of the audience I will read it," Liputin
minced again, still with the same sugary smile. He still seemed
to hesitate, and I even thought that he was rather excited. These
people are sometimes nervous in spite of their impudence. A
divinity student would have carried it through without winking,
but Liputin did, after all, belong to the last generation.

" I must say, that is, I have the honour to say by way of
preface, that it is not precisely an ode such as used to be written
for fetes, but is rather, so to say, a jest, but full of undoubted
feeling, together with playful humour, and, so to say, the most
realistic truthfulness."
" Read it, read it ! "

He unfolded the paper. No one of course was in time to stop
him. Besides, he was wearing his steward's badge. In a
ringing voice he declaimed :

" To the local governesses of the Fatherland from the poet at
the fete :

" Governesses all, good morrow,
Triumph on this festive day.
Retrograde or vowed George-Sander —
Never mind, just frisk away ! "

:' But that's Lebyadkin's ! Lebyadkin's ! " cried several
voices. There was laughter and even applause, though not from
very many.

442 THE POSSESSED

" Teaching French to wet-nosed children,
You are glad enough to think
You can catch a worn-out sexton —
Even he is worth a wink ! "

"Hurrah! hurrah!"

" But in these great days of progress,
Ladies, to your sorrow know,
You can't even catch a sexton,
If you have not got a ' dot '."

"To be sure, to be sure, that's realism. You can't hook a
husband without a ' dot ' ! "

"But, henceforth, since through our feasting
Capital has flowed from all,
And we send you forth to conquest
Dancing, dowried from this hall —
Retrograde or vowed George-Sander,
Never mind, rejoice you may,
You're a governess with a dowry,
Spit on all and frisk away ! "

I must confess I could not believe my ears. The insolence of
it was so unmistakable that there was no possibility of excusing
Liputin on the ground of stupidity. Besides, Liputin was by no
means stupid. The intention was obvious, to me, anyway ;
they seemed in a hurry to create disorder. Some lines in these
idiotic verses, for instance the last, were such that no stupidity
could have let them pass. Liputin himself seemed to feel that
he had undertaken too much ; when he had achieved his exploit
he was so overcome by his own impudence that he did not even
leave the platform but remained standing, as though there were
something more he wanted to say. He had probably imagined
that it would somehow produce a different effect ; but even the
group of ruffians who had applauded during the reading suddenly
sank into silence, as though they, too, were overcome. What
was silliest of all, many of them took the whole episode seriously,
that is, did not regard the verses as a lampoon but actually
thought it realistic and true as regards the governesses — a poeir
with a tendency, in fact. But the excessive freedom of the
verses struck even them at last ; as for the general public they were
not only scandalised but obviously offended. I am sure I an"
not mistaken as to the impression. Yulia Mihailovna said after

THE FfiTE— FIRST PART 443

wards that in another moment she would have fallen into a
swoon. One of the most respectable old gentlemen helped his old
wife on to her feet, and they walked out of the hall accompanied
by the agitated glances of the audience. Who knows, the
example might have infected others if Karmazinov himself,
wearing a dress-coat and a white tie and carrying a manuscript
in his hand, had not appeared on the platform at that moment.
Yulia Mihailovna turned an ecstatic gaze at him as on her
deliverer. . . . But I was by that time behind the scenes. I
was in quest of Liputin.

" You did that on purpose ! " I said, seizing him indignantly
by the arm.

" I assure you I never thought . . ."he began, cringing and
ying at once, pretending to be unhappy. " The verses had
only just been brought and I thought that as an amusing
pleasantry. ..."

" You did not think anything of the sort. You can't really
think that stupid rubbish an amusing pleasantry ? "

" Yes, I do."

" You are simply lying, and it wasn't brought to you just now.
You helped Lebyadkin to compose it yourself, yesterday very
likely, to create a scandal. The last verse must have been yours,
the part about the sexton too. Why did he come on in a dress-
coat ? You must have meant him to read it, too, if he had not
been drunk ? "

Liputin looked at me coldly and ironically.
'What business is it of yours ? " he asked suddenly with
strange calm.

" What business is it of mine ? You are wearing the steward's
badge, too. . . . Where is Pyotr Stepanovitch ? "

" I don't know, somewhere here ; why do you ask ? "

" Because now I see through it. It's simply a plot against
Yulia Mihailovna so as to ruin the day by a scandal. . . ."

Liputin looked at me askance again.

" But what is it to you ? " he said, grinning. He shrugged his
shoulders and walked away.

It came over me with a rush. All my suspicions were con-
firmed. Till then, I had been hoping I was mistaken I What
was I to do ? I was on the point of asking the advice of Stepan
Trofimovitch, but he was standing before the looking-glass,
trying on different smiles, and continually consulting a piece of
paper on which he had notes. He had to go on immediately

444 THE POSSESSED

after Karmazinov, and was not in a fit state for conversation
Should I run to Yulia Mihailovna ? But it was too soon to g
to her : she needed a much sterner lesson to cure her of her con
viction that she had " a following," and that every one wa
" fanatically devoted " to her. She would not have believed
me, and would have thought I was dreaming. Besides, whal
help could she be ? " Eh," I thought, " after all, what businesl
is it of mine ? I'll take off my badge and go home when
it begins." That was my mental phrase, " when it begins " ; J
remember it.

But I had to go and listen to Karmazinov. Taking a last looll
round behind the scenes, I noticed that a good number of out!
siders, even women among them, were flitting about, going irl
and out. " Behind the scenes " was rather a narrow spac<|
completely screened from the audience by a curtain and com
municating with other rooms by means of a passage. Here oui
readers were awaiting their turns. But I was struck at thai]
moment by the reader who was to follow Stepan Trofimovitch
He, too, was some sort of professor (I don't know to this daj
exactly what he was) who had voluntarily left some educationa
institution after a disturbance among the students, and had
arrived in the town only a few days before. He, too, had bee
recommended to Yulia Mihailovna, and she had received him
with reverence. I know now that he had only spent one evening
in her company before the reading ; he had not spoken all that
evening, had listened with an equivocal smile to the jests and the
general tone of the company surrounding Yulia Mihailovna,
and had made an unpleasant impression on every one by his air of
haughtiness, and at the same time almost timorous readiness to
take offence. It was Yulia Mihailovna herself who had enlisted
his services. Now he was walking from corner to corner, and
like Stepan Trofimovitch, was muttering to himself, though he
looked on the ground instead of in the looking-glass. He was
not trying on smiles, though he often smiled rapaciously. It
was obvious that it was useless to speak to him either. He lookec
about forty, was short and bald, had a greyish beard, and was
decently dressed. But what was most interesting about him
was that at every turn he took he threw up his right fist,
brandished it above his head and suddenly brought it down
again as though crushing an antagonist to atoms. He went
through this by-play every moment. It made me uncomfortable
I hastened away to listen to Karmazinov.

THE FETE— FIRST PART 445

§( III

ki

OUt;

in;.

day

There was a feeling in the hall that something was wrong
'fj again. Let me state to begin with that I have the deepest
reverence for genius, but why do our geniuses in the decline of
their illustrious years behave sometimes exactly like little boys %
What though he was Karmazinov, and came forward with as.
^much dignity as five Kammerherrs rolled into one ? How could
he expect to keep an audience like ours listening for a whole hour
^Ho a single paper ? I have observed, in fact, that however big a
genius a man may be, he can't monopolise the attention of an
audience at a frivolous literary matinee for more than twenty
minutes with impunity. The entrance of the great writer was-
received, indeed, with the utmost respect : even the severest
elderly men showed signs of approval and interest, and the ladies
even displayed some enthusiasm. The applause was brief ?
however, and somehow uncertain and not unanimous. Yet
there was no unseemly behaviour in the back rows, till Karma-
zinov began to speak, not that anything very bad followed then,
naajbut only a sort of misunderstanding. I have mentioned already
)eeDjfchat he had rather a shrill voice, almost feminine in fact, and at
.the same time a genuinely aristocratic lisp. He had hardly
'^articulated a few words when some one had the effrontery to
™ augh aloud — probably some ignorant simpleton who knew
'™iothing of the world, and was congenitally disposed to laughter.
m> But there was nothing like a hostile demonstration ; on the
tir0Ibontrary people said " sh-h ! " and the offender was crushed.
tosBut Mr. Karmazinov, with an affected air and intonation, an-
lounced that " at first he had declined absolutely to read."
Much need there was to mention it !) " There are someline&
tfhich come so deeply from the heart that it is impossible to utter
;hem aloud, so that these holy things cannot be laid before the
Dublic " — (Why lay them then ?) — " but as he had been begged to
lo so, he was doing so, and as he was, moreover, laying down his
Den for ever, and had sworn to write no more, he had written
his last farewell ; and as he had sworn never, on any induce-
nent, to read anything in public," and so on, and so on, all in
)hat style.

But all that would not have mattered ; every one knows what
tuthors' prefaces are like, though, I may observe, that considering

isted

him

fist,

Ion

went

446 THE POSSESSED

the lack of culture of our audience and the irritability of the|
back rows, all this may have had an influence. Surely it would
have been better to have read a little story, a short tale such as he
had written in the past — over-elaborate, that is, and affected, but
sometimes witty. It would have saved the situation. No, this
was quite another story ! It was a regular oration ! Good
heavens, what wasn't there in it ! I am positive that it would
have reduced to rigidity even a Petersburg audience, let alone ours
Imagine an article that would have filled some thirty pages oJ
print of the most affected, aimless prattle ; and to make matters
worse, the gentleman read it with a sort of melancholy con-
descension as though it were a favour, so that it was almost
insulting to the audience. The subject. . . . Who could makd
it out ? It was a sort of description of certain impressions and
reminiscences. But of what % And about what ? Thougb
the leading intellects of the province did their utmost durin
the first half of the reading, they could make nothing of it, and
they listened to the second part simply out of politeness. 1
great deal was said about love, indeed, of the love of the geniu
for some person, but I must admit it made rather an awkward
impression. For the great writer to tell us about his first kiss
seemed to my mind a little incongruous with his short and fa
little figure . . . Another thing that was offensive ; these kisses
did not occur as they do with the rest of mankind. There hac
to be a framework of gorse (it had to be gorse or some such planl
that one must look up in a flora) and there had to be a tint of purpk
in the sky, such as no mortal had ever observed before, or if some
people had seen it, they had never noticed it, but he seemed tc
say, " I have seen it and am describing it to you, fools, as if ii
were a most ordinary thing." The tree under which the interest
ing couple sat had of course to be of an orange colour. Thej
were sitting somewhere in Germany. Suddenly they see Pompej
or Cassius on the eve of a battle, and both are penetrated by
chill of ecstasy. Some wood-nymph squeaked in the bushes
Gluck played the violin among the reeds. The title of the piece
he was playing was given in full, but no one knew it, so that on<
would have had to look it up in a musical dictionary. Mean
while a fog came on, such a fog, such a fog, that it was more like
a million pillows than a fog. And suddenly everything dis-
appears and the great genius is crossing the frozen Volga in i
thaw. Two and a half pages are filled with the crossing, anc
yet he falls through the ice. The genius is drowning — yoi

is lie
.but

THE Jb ET.U— *TKST J/AKT 447

imagine he was drowned ? Not a bit of it ; this was simply in
order that when he was drowning and at his last gasp, he might
catch sight of a bit of ice, the size of a pea, but pure and crystal
"asa frozen tear," and in that tear was. reflected Germany, or
more accurately the sky of Germany, and its iridescent sparkle
recalled to his mind the very tear which " dost thou remember,
fell from thine eyes when we were sitting under that emerald
tree, and thou didst cry out joyfully : ' There is no crime ! '
' No/ I said through my tears, ' but if that is so, there are no
righteous either.' We sobbed and parted for ever." She went
off somewhere to the sea coast, while he went to visit some caves,
and then he descends and descends and descends for three years
under Suharev Tower in Moscow, and suddenly in the very
bowels of the earth, he finds in a cave a lamp, and before the
lamp a hermit. The hermit is praying. The genius leans
against a little barred window, and suddenly hears a sigh. Do
you suppose it was the hermit sighing ? Much he cares about the
hermit ! Not a bit of it, this sigh simply reminds him of her first
sigh, thirty-seven years before, " in Germany, when, dost thou
remember, we sat under an agate tree and thou didst say to
me, ' Why love ? See ochra is growing all around and I love
thee ; but the ochra will cease to grow, and I shall cease to love.' '
Then the fog comes on again, Hoffman appears on the scene, the
wood-nymph whistles a tune from Chopin, and suddenly out
of the fog appears Ancus Marcius over the roofs of Rome, wearing
a laurel wreath. " A chill of ecstasy ran down our backs and we
parted for ever " — and so on and so on.

Perhaps I am not reporting it quite right and don't know how to
report it, but the drift of the babble was something of that sort.
And after all, how disgraceful this passion of our great intellects
ju for jesting in a superior way really is ! The great European
mpev philosopher, the great man of science, the inventor, the martyr
— all these who labour and are heavy laden, are to the great
Russian genius no more than so many cooks in his kitchen. He
is the master and they come to him, cap in hand, awaiting orders.
It is true he jeers superciliously at Russia too, and there is nothing
he likes better than exhibiting the bankruptcy of Russia in every
relation before the great minds of Europe, but as regards himself,
no, he is at a higher level than all the great minds of Europe ;
8 they are only material for his jests. He takes another man's
an^ idea, tacks on to it its antithesis, and the epigram is made. There
is such a thing as crime, there is no such thing as crime > there is

i. A
enius

ward

kiss

Ifal

dssef

■hat

plan'
mrpli

by a
ashes,

Mean-
re

ft IB

448 THE POSSESSED

no such thing as justice, there are no just men ; atheism,
Darwinism, the Moscow bells. . . . But alas, he no longer believes
in the Moscow bells ; Rome, laurels. . . . But he has no belief in
laurels even. . . . We have a conventional attack of Byronic
spleen, a grimace from Heine, something of Petchorin — and
the machine goes on rolling, whistling, at full speed. " But you
may praise me, you may praise me, that I like extremely ; it's
only in a manner of speaking that I lay down the pen ; I shall
bore you three hundred times more, you'll grow weary of reading
me. . . ."

Of course it did not end without trouble ; but the worst of it
was that it was his own doing. People had for some time begun
shuffling their feet, blowing their noses, coughing, and doing
everything that people do when a lecturer, whoever he may be,
keeps an audience for longer than twenty minutes at a literary
matinee. But the genius noticed nothing of all this. He went
on lisping and mumbling, without giving a thought to the
audience, so that every one began to wonder. Suddenly in a
back row a solitary but loud voice was heard :

" Good Lord, what nonsense ! "

The exclamation escaped involuntarily, and I am sure was
not intended as a demonstration. The man was simply worn
out. But Mr. Karmazinov stopped, looked sarcastically at the
audience, and suddenly lisped with the deportment of an
aggrieved kammerherr.

"I'm afraid I've been boring you dreadfully, gentlemen ? '

That was his blunder, that he was the first to speak ; for
provoking an answer in this way he gave an opening for the
rabble to speak, too, and even legitimately, so to say, while if
he had restrained himself, people would have gone on blowing
their noses and it would have passed off somehow. Perhaps he
expected applause in response to his question, but there was
no sound of applause ; on the contrary, every one seemed to
subside and shrink back in dismay.

" You never did see Ancus Marcius, that's all brag," cried a
voice that sounded full of irritation and even nervous exhaus-
tion.

" Just so," another voice agreed at once. " There are no such
things as ghosts nowadays, nothing but natural science. Look it
up in a scientific book."

" Gentlemen, there was nothing I expected less than such
objections," said Karmazinov, extremely surprised. The great

THE FfiTE— FIRST PART 449

genius had completely lost touch with his Fatherland in Karls-
ruhe.

" Nowadays it's outrageous to say that the world stands on
three fishes," a young lady snapped out suddenly. ' You can't
have gone down to the hermit's cave, Karmazinov. And who
talks about hermits nowadays ? "

" Gentlemen, what surprises me most of all is that you take
it all so seriously. However . . . however, you are perfectly
right. No one has greater respect for truth and realism than
I have. . . ."

Though he smiled ironically he was tremendously overcome.
His face seemed to express : " I am not the sort of man you think,
I am on your side, only praise me, praise me more, as much as
possible, I like it extremely. . . ."

" Gentlemen," he cried, completely mortified at last, " I see
that my poor poem is quite out of place here. And, indeed, I
am out of place here myself, I think."

'You threw at the crow and you hit the cow," some fool,
probably drunk, shouted at the top of his voice, and of course no
notice ought to have been taken of him. It is true there was a
sound of disrespectful laughter.

" A cow, you say ? " Karmazinov caught it up at once, his
voice grew shriller and shriller. " As for crows and cows,
gentlemen, I will refrain. I've too much respect for any audience
to permit myself comparisons, however harmless ; but I did
think ..." *

' You'd better be careful, sir," some one shouted from a back
row.

" But I had supposed that laying aside my pen and saying
farewell to my readers, I should be heard ..."

" No, no, we want to hear you, we want to," a few voices from
the front row plucked up spirit to exclaim at last.

" Read, read ! " several enthusiastic ladies' voices chimed in,
and at last there was an outburst of applause, sparse and feeble,
it is true.

i Believe me, Karmazinov, every one looks on it as an
honour ..." the marshal's wife herself could not resist saying.

f Mr. Karmazinov ! " cried a fresh young voice in the back
of the hall suddenly. It was the voice of a very young teacher
from the district school who had only lately come among us, an
3xcellent young man, quiet and gentlemanly. He stood up
in his place. " Mr. Karmazinov, if I had the happiness to fall in

2f

450 THE POSSESSED

love as you have described to us, I really shouldn't refer to n
love in an article intended for public reading. ..."

He flushed red all over.

" Ladies and gentlemen," cried Karmazinov, " I have finishe
I will omit the end and withdraw. Only allow me to read tl
six last lines :

" Yes, dear reader, farewell ! " he began at once from t]
manuscript without sitting down again in his chair. " Farewe
reader ; I do not greatly insist on our parting friends ; wh
need to trouble you, indeed. You may abuse me, abuse me
you will if it affords you any satisfaction. But best of all
we forget one another for ever. And if you all, readers, we
suddenly so kind as to fall on your knees and begin begging r
with tears, ' Write, oh, write for us, Karmazinov — for the sake
Russia, for the sake of posterity, to win laurels,' even then I wou
answer you, thanking you, of course, with every courtesy, ' N
we've had enough of one another, dear fellow-country me
merci ! It's time we took our separate ways ! ' Merci, men
merci ! "

Karmazinov bowed ceremoniously, and, as red as though ]
had been cooked, retired behind the scenes.

11 Nobody would go down on their knees ; a wild idea ! "

" What conceit ! "

" That's only humour," some one more reasonable suggestec

" Spare me your humour."

" I call it impudence, gentlemen ! "

" Well, he's finished now, anyway ! "

" Ech, what a dull show ! "

But all these ignorant exclamations in the back rows (thouj
they were confined to the back rows) were drowned in applau
from the other half of the audience. They called for Karmazino
Several ladies with Yulia Mihailovna and the marshal's wi
crowded round the platform. In Yulia Mihailovna' s han
was a gorgeous laurel wreath resting on another wreath of livii
rOses on a white velvet cushion.

" Laurels ! " Karmazinov pronounced with a subtle and rath
sarcastic smile. " I am touched, of course, and accept with re
emotion this wreath prepared beforehand, but still fresh ai
unwithered, but I assure you, mesdames, that I ha1
suddenly become so realistic that I feel laurels would in ti
age be far more appropriate in the hands of a skilful cook thi
in mine. . . ."

THE FETE— FIRST PART 451

" Well, a cook is more useful," cried the divinity student, who
had been at the " meeting " at Virginsky's.

There was some disorder. In many rows people jumped up
to get a better view of the presentation of the laurel wreath.

" I'd give another three roubles for a cook this minute,"
another voice assented loudly, too loudly ; insistently, in
fact.

" So would I."

" And I."

" Is it possible there's no buffet ? . . ."

" Gentlemen, it's simply a swindle. . . ."

It must be admitted, however, that all these unbridled gentle-
men still stood in awe of our higher officials and of the police
superintendent, who was present in the hall. Ten minutes later
all had somehow got back into their places, but there was not
the same good order as before. And it was into this incipient
chaos that poor Stepan Trofimovitch was thrust.

IV

I ran out to him behind the scenes once more, and had time
to warn him excitedly that in my opinion the game was up, that
he had better not appear at all, but had better go home at once
on the excuse of his usual ailment, for instance, and I would take
off my badge and come with him. At that instant he was on his
way to the platform ; he stopped suddenly, and haughtily looking
me up and down he pronounced solemnly :

' What grounds have you, sir, for thinking me capable of such
baseness ? "

I drew back. I was as sure as twice two make four that he
would not get off without a catastrophe. Meanwhile, as I stood
utterly dejected, I saw moving before me again the figure of the
professor, whose turn it was to appear after Stepan Trofimovitch,
and who kept lifting up his fist and bringing it down again with
a swing. He kept walking up and down, absorbed in himself and
muttering something to himself with a diabolical but triumphant
smile. I somehow almost unintentionally went up to him. I
'don't know what induced me to meddle again.

" Do you know," I said, " judging from many examples, if a
lecturer keeps an audience for more than twenty minutes it

452 THE POSSESSED

won't go on listening. No celebrity is able to hold his own fo
half an hour."

He stopped short and seemed almost quivering with resent
ment. Infinite disdain was expressed in his countenance.

" Don't trouble yourself," he muttered contemptuously an
walked on. At that moment Stepan Trofimovitch's voice ran
out in the hall.

" Oh, hang you all," I thought, and ran to the hall.

Stepan Trofimovitch took his seat in the lecturer's chair u
the midst of the still persisting disorder. He was greeted by tin
first rows with looks which were evidently not over-friendly. (0
late, at the club, people almost seemed not to like him, and treatec
him with much less respect than formerly.) But it was some
thing to the good that he was not hissed. I had had a strang<
idea in my head ever since the previous day : I kept fancying
that he would be received with hisses as soon as he appeared
They scarcely noticed him, however, in the disorder. Whai
could that man hope for if Karmazinov was treated like this
He was pale ; it was ten years since he had appeared before ar
audience. From his excitement and from all that I knew so wel
in him, it was clear to me that he, too, regarded his presenl
appearance on the platform as a turning-point of his fate, oi
something of the kind. That was just what I was afraid of
The man was dear to me. And what were my feelings when he
opened his lips and I heard his first phrase ?

" Ladies and gentlemen," he pronounced suddenly, as though
resolved to venture everything, though in an almost breaking
voice. " Ladies and gentlemen ! Only this morning there laj
before me one of the illegal leaflets that have been distributee
here lately, and I asked myself for the hundredth time, ' Whereii
lies its secret ? ' "

The whole hall became instantly still, all looks were turned t<
him, some with positive alarm. There was no denying, he kne\>
how to secure their interest from the first word. Heads wen
thrust out from behind the scenes ; Liputin and Lyamshii
listened greedily. Yulia Mihailovna waved to me again.

" Stop him, whatever happens, stop him," she whispered ii
agitation. I could only shrug my shoulders : how could one sto]
a man resolved to venture everything ? Alas, I understood
what was in Stepan Trofimovitch' s mind.

" Ha ha, the manifestoes ! " was whispered in the audience ; thj
whole hall was stirred.

THE FETE— FIRST PART 453

" Ladies and gentlemen, I've solved the whole mystery. The
whole secret of their effect lies in their stupidity." (His eyes
flashed.) " Yes, gentlemen, if this stupidity were intentional,
pretended and calculated, oh, that would be a stroke of genius !
But we must do them justice : they don't pretend anything.
It's the barest, most simple-hearted, most shallow stupidity.
C'est la tetise dans son essence la plus pure, quelque chose comme
un simple chimique. If it were expressed ever so little more
cleverly, every one would see at once the poverty of this shallow
stupidity. But as it is, every one is left wondering : no one can
believe that it is such elementary stupidity. ' It's impossible
that there's nothing more in it,' every one says to himself and
tries to find the sercet of it, sees a mystery in it, tries to read
between the lines — the effect is attained ! Oh, never has
stupidity been so solemnly rewarded, though it has so often
deserved it. . . . For, en parenthese, stupidity is of as much
service to humanity as the loftiest genius. . . ."

" Epigram of 1840 " was commented, in a very modest voice,
however, but it was followed by a general outbreak of noise and
uproar.

" Ladies and gentlemen, hurrah ! I propose a toast to
stupidity ! " cried Stepan Trofimovitch, defying the audience in a
perfect frenzy.

I ran up on the pretext of pouring out some water for him.
" Stepan Trofimovitch, leave off, Yulia Mihailovna entreats
you to."

" No, you leave me alone, idle young man," he cried out at me
at the top of his voice. I ran away. " Messieurs," he went
on, " why this excitement, why the outcries of indignation I

n hear ? I have come forward with an olive branch. I bring
you the last word, for in this business I have the last word — and

t(J we shall be reconciled."

er " Down with him ! " shouted some.

ill " Hush, let him speak, let him have his say ! " yelled another

lii section. The young teacher was particularly excited; having
once brought himself to speak he seemed now unable to be silent.

S" Messieurs, the last word in this business — is forgiveness. I,
an old man at the end of my life, I solemnly declare that the
spirit of life breathes in us still, and there is still a living strength
in the young generation. The enthusiasm of the youth of to-
tbdday is as pure and bright as in our age. All that has happened
is a change of aim, the replacing of one beauty by another !

A

454 THE POSSESSED

The whole difficulty lies in the question which is more beautiful,
Shakespeare or boots, Raphael or petroleum ? "

"It's treachery ! " growled some.

" Compromising questions ! "

" Agent provocateur ! "

" But I maintain," Stepan Trofimovitch shrilled at the utmost
pitch of excitement, " I maintain that Shakespeare and Raphael
are more precious than the emancipation of the serfs, more precious
than Nationalism, more precious than Socialism, more precious
than the young generation, more precious than chemistry, more
precious than almost all humanity because they are the fruit,
the real fruit of all humanity and perhaps the highest fruit that
can be. A form of beauty already attained, but for the attaining
of which I would not perhaps consent to live. . . . Oh, heavens ! "
he cried, clasping his hands, " ten years ago I said the same
thing from the platform in Petersburg, exactly the same thing,
in the same words, and in just the same way they did not under-
stand it, they laughed and hissed as now ; shallow people, what
is lacking in you that you cannot understand ? But let me tell
you, let me tell you, without the English, life is still possible for
humanity, without Germany, life is possible, without the Russians
it is only too possible, without science, without bread, life is
possible — only without beauty it is impossible, for there will
be nothing left in the world. That's the secret at the bottom of
everything, that's what history teaches ! Even science would
not exist a moment without beauty — do you know that, you
who laugh — it will sink into bondage, you won't invent a nail
even ! . . I won't yield an inch ! " he shouted absurdly in con-
fusion, and with all his might banged his fist on the table.

But all the while that he was shrieking senselessly and in-
coherently, the disorder in the hall increased. Many people
jumped up from their seats, some dashed forward, nearer to the
platform. It all happened much more quickly than I describe
it, and there was no time to take steps, perhaps no wish to.
either.

" It's all right for you, with everything found for you, yoi;
pampered creatures ! " the same divinity student bellowed at th(
foot of the platform, grinning with relish at Stepan Trofimovitch
who noticed it and darted to the very edge of the platform.

" Haven't I, haven't I just declared that the enthusiasm o:
the young generation is as pure and bright as it was, and that it it
coming to grief through being deceived only in the forms o

THE FfiTE— FIRST PART 455

beauty ! Isn't that enough for you ? And if you consider that
he who proclaims this is a father crushed and insulted, can
one — oh, shallow hearts — can one rise to greater heights of
impartiality and fairness ? . . . Ungrateful . . . unjust. . . .
Why, why can't you be reconciled ! "

And he burst into hysterical sobs. He wiped away his drop-
ping tears with his fingers. His shoulders and breast were
heaving with sobs. He was lost to everything in the world.

A perfect panic came over the audience, almost all got up from
their seats. Yulia Mihailovna, too, jumped up quickly, seizing
her husband by the arm and pulling him up too. . . . The scene
was beyond all belief.

" Stepan Trofimovitch ! " the divinity student roared gleefully.
" There's Fedka the convict wandering about the town and the
neighbourhood, escaped from prison. He is a robber and has
recently committed another murder. Allow me to ask you :
if you had not sold him as a recruit fifteen years ago to pay a
gambling debt, that is, more simply, lost him at cards, tell me,
would he have got into prison % Would he have cut men's
throats now, in his struggle for existence ? What do you say,
Mr. iEsthete ? "

I decline to describe the scene that followed. To begin with
there was a furious volley of applause. The applause did not
come from all — probably from some fifth part of the audience —
but they applauded furiously. The rest of the public made for
the exit, but as the applauding part of the audience kept pressing
forward towards the platform, there was a regular block. The
ladies screamed, some of the girls began to cry and asked to go
home. Lembke, standing up by his chair, kept gazing wildly
about him. Yulia Mihailovna completely lost her head — for
the first time during her career amongst us. As for Stepan
Trofimovitch, for the first moment he seemed literally crushed
by the divinity student's words, but he suddenly raised
his arms as though holding them out above the public and
yelled :

" I shake the dust from off my feet and I curse you. . . . It's
the end, the end. ..."

And turning, he ran behind the scenes, waving his hands
menacingly.

" He has insulted the audience ! . . . Verhovensky 1 " the
angry section roared. They even wanted to rush in pursuit of
him. It was impossible to appease them, at the moment, any

456 THE POSSESSED

way, and — a final catastrophe broke like a bomb on the assembly
and exploded in its midst : the third reader, the maniac who kept
waving his fist behind the scenes, suddenly ran on to the platform.

He looked like a perfect madman. With a broad, triumphant
smile, full of boundless self-confidence, he looked round at the
agitated hall and he seemed to be delighted at the disorder.
He was not in the least disconcerted at having to speak in such
an uproar, on the contrary, he was obviously delighted. This
was so obvious that it attracted attention at once.

' What's this now ? " people were heard asking. " Who is this ?
Sh-h ! What does he want to say ? "

" Ladies and gentlemen," the maniac shouted with all his
might, standing at the very edge of the platform and speaking with
almost as shrill, feminine a voice as Karmazinov's, but without the
aristocratic lisp. " Ladies and gentlemen ! Twenty years ago,
on the eve of war with half Europe, Russia was regarded as an
ideal country by officials of all ranks ! Literature was in the
service of the censorship ; military drill was all that was taught
at the universities ; the troops were trained like a ballet, and the
peasants paid the taxes and were mute under the lash of serfdom.
Patriotism meant the wringing of bribes from the quick and the
dead. Those who did not take bribes were looked upon as rebels
because they disturbed the general harmony. The birch copses
were extirpated in support of discipline. Europe trembled. . . .
But never in the thousand years of its senseless existence had
Russia sunk to such ignominy. . . ."

He raised his fist, waved it ecstatically and menacingly over
his head and suddenly brought it down furiously, as though
pounding an adversary to powder. A frantic yell rose from the
whole hall, there was a deafening roar of applause ; almost half
the audience was applauding : their enthusiasm was excusable.
Russia was being put to shame publicly, before every one. Who
could fail to roar with delight ?

;' This is the real thing ! Come, this is something like !
Hurrah ! Yes, this is none of your aesthetics ! "

The maniac went on ecstatically :

' Twenty years have passed since then. Universities have
been opened and multiplied. Military drill has passed into a
legend ; officers are too few by thousands, the railways have
eaten up all the capital and have covered Russia as with a spider's
web, so that in another fifteen years one will perhaps get some-
where. Bridges are rarely on fire, and fires in towns occur only at

THE FETE— FIRST PART 457

regular intervals, in turn, at the proper season. In the law courts
judgments are as wise as Solomon's, and the jury only take bribes
through the struggle for existence, to escape starvation. The
serfs are free, and flog one another instead of being flogged by
the land-owners. Seas and oceans of vodka are consumed
to support the budget, and in Novgorod, opposite the ancient
and useless St. Sophia, there has been solemnly put up a colossal
bronze globe to celebrate a thousand years of disorder and con-
fusion; Europe scowls and begins to be uneasy again. . . .
Fifteen years of reforms ! And yet never even in the most
grotesque periods of its madness has Russia sunk ..."

The last words could not be heard in the roar of the crowd.
One could see him again raise his arm and bring it down triumph-
antly again. Enthusiasm was beyond all bounds : people
yelled, clapped their hands, even some of the ladies shouted :
f Enough, you can't beat that ! " Some might have been drunk.
The orator scanned them all and seemed revelling in his own
triumph. I caught a glimpse of Lembke in indescribable excite-
ment, pointing something, out to somebody. Yulia Mihailovna,
with a pale face, said something in haste to the prince, who had
run up to her. But at that moment a group of six men, officials
more or less, burst on to the platform, seized the orator and
dragged him behind the scenes. I can't understand how he
managed to tear himself away from them, but he did escape,
darted up to the edge of the platform again and succeeded in
shouting again, at the top of his voice, waving his fist :

" But never has Russia sunk ..."

But he was dragged away again. I saw some fifteen men dash
behind the scenes to rescue him, not crossing the platform but
breaking down the light screen at the side of it. . . . I saw after-
wards, though I could hardly believe my eyes, the girl student
(Virginsky's sister) leap on to the platform with the same roll
under her arm, dressed as before, as plump and rosy as ever,
surrounded by two or three women and two or three men, and
accompanied by her mortal enemy, the schoolboy. I even
caught the phrase :

" Ladies and gentlemen, I've come to call attention to the
sufferings of poor students and to rouse them to a general
protest ..."

But I ran away. Hiding my badge in my pocket I made my
way from the house into the street by back passages which I
knew of. First of all, of course, I went to Stepan Trofimovitch's.

CHAPTER II
THE END OF THE FETE

He would not see me. He had shut himself up and was writing.
At my repeated knocks and appeals he answered through the door :

" My friend, I have finished everything. Who can ask any-
thing more of me ? "

" You haven't finished anything, you've only helped to make
a mess of the whole thing. For God's sake, no epigrams, Stepan
Trofimovitch ! Open the door. We must take steps ; they
may still come and insult you. . . ."

I thought myself entitled to be particularly severe and even
rigorous. I was afraid he might be going to do something still
more mad. But to my surprise I met an extraordinary firmness.

" Don't be the first to insult me then. I thank you for the
past, but I repeat I've done with all men, good and bad. I am
writing to Darya Pavlovna, whom I've forgotten so unpardonably
till now. You may take it to her to-morrow, if you like, now
merely

" Stepan Trofimovitch, I assure you that the matter is more
serious than you think. Do you think that you've crushed
some one there ? You've pulverised no one, but have broken
yourself to pieces like an empty bottle." (Oh, I was coarse and
discourteous ; I remember it with regret.) " You've absolutely
no reason to write to Darya Pavlovna . . . and what will you
do with yourself without me ? What do you understand about
practical life ? I expect you are plotting something else ?
You'll simply come to grief again if you go plotting something
more. . . ."

He rose and came close up to the door.

" You've not been long with them, but you've caught the
infection of their tone and language. Dieu vous pardonne, mon
ami, et Dieu vous garde. But I've always seen in you the germs
of delicate feeling, and you will get over it perhaps — apres le
temps, of course, like all of us Russians. As for what you say
about my impracticability, I'll remind you of a recent idea of
mine : a whole mass of people in Russia do nothing whatever but

458

THE END OF THE FETE 459

attack other people's impracticability with the utmost fury and
with the tiresome persistence of flies in the summer, accusing
every one of it except themselves Cher, remember that I am
excited, and don't distress me. Once more merci for everything,
and let us part like Karmazinov and the public ; that is, let us
forget each other with as much generosity as we can. He was
posing in begging his former readers so earnestly to forget him ;
quant a moi, I am not so conceited, and I rest my hopes on the
youth of your inexperienced heart. How should you remember a
useless old man for long ? ' Live more,' my friend, as Nastasya
wished me on my last name-day (ces pauvres gens ont quelquefois
des mots charmants et pleins de philosophie). I do not wish you
much happiness — it will bore you. I do not wish you trouble
either, but, following the philosophy of the peasant, I will
repeat simply ' live more ' and try not to be much bored ; this
useless wish I add from myself. Well, good-bye, and good-bye
for good. Don't stand at my door, I will not open it."

He went away and I could get nothing more out of him. In
spite of his " excitement," he spoke smoothly, deliberately,
with weight, obviously trying to be impressive. Of course he
was rather vexed with me and was avenging himself indirectly,
possibly even for the yesterday's " prison carts " and " floors that
give way." His tears in public that morning, in spite of a
triumph of a sort, had put him, he knew, in rather a comic
position, and there never was a man more solicitous of dignity
and punctilio in his relations with his friends than Stepan
Trofimovitch. Oh, I don't blame him. But this fastidiousness
and irony which he preserved in spite of all shocks reassured me
at the time. A man who was so little different from his ordinary
self was, of course, not in the mood at that moment for anything
tragic or extraordinary. So I reasoned at the time, and, heavens,
what a mistake I made ! I left too much out of my reckoning.

In anticipation of events I will quote the few first lines of the
letter to Darya Pavlovna, which she actually received the
following day :

" Mon enfant, my hand trembles, but I've done with every-
thing. You were not present at my last struggle ; you did not
come to that matinee, and you did well to stay away. But you
will be told that in our Russia, which has grown so poor in men of
character, one man had the courage to stand up and, in spite of
deadly menaces showered on him from all sides, to tell the fools

460 THE POSSESSED

the truth, that is, that they are fools. Oh, ce soni — des pauvres
petits vauriens et rien de plus, des petits — fools — voild le mot !
The die is cast ; I am going from this town for ever and I know
not whither. Every one I loved has turned from me. But you,
you are a pure and naive creature ; you, a gentle being whose life
has been all but linked with mine at the will of a capricious and
imperious heart ; you who looked at me perhaps with contempt
when I shed weak tears on the eve of our frustrated marriage ;
you, who cannot in any case look on me except as a comic figure
— for you, for you is the last cry of my heart, for you my last duty,
for you alone ! I cannot leave you for ever thinking of me as an
ungrateful fool, a churlish egoist, as probably a cruel and ungrate-
ful heart — whom, alas, I cannot forget — is every da}' describing
me to you. . . ."

And so on and so on, four large pages.

Answering his "I won't open " with three bangs with my
fist on the door, and shouting after him that I was sure he would
send Nastasya for me three times that day, but I would not
come, I gave him up and ran off to Yulia Mihailovna. •

II

There I was the witness of a revolting scene : the poor woman
was deceived to her face, and I could do nothing. Indeed, what
could I say to her ? I had had time to reconsider things a little
and reflect that I had nothing to go upon but certain feelings
and suspicious presentiments. I found her in tears, almost in
hysterics, with compresses of eau-de-Cologne and a glass of
water. Before her stood Pyotr Stepanovitch, who talked with-
out stopping, and the prince, who held his tongue as though it
had been under a lock. With tears and lamentations she
reproached Pyotr Stepanovitch for his " desertion." I was
^.struck at once by the fact that she ascribed the whole failure,
^crvthe whole ignominy of the matinee, everything in fact, to
^ Pyotr Stepanovitch's absence.

In him I observed an important change : he seemed a shade
too anxious, almost serious. As a rule he never seemed serious ;
he was always laughing, even when he was angry, and he was
often angry. Oh, he was angry now ! He was speaking
coarsely, carelessly, with vexation and impatience. He said
that he had been taken ill at Gaganov's lodging, where he had

THE END OF THE FETE 461

happened to go early in the morning. Alas, the poor woman
was so anxious to be deceived again ! The chief question which
I found being discussed was whether the ball, that is, the whole
second half of the fete, should or should not take place. Yulia
Mihailovna could not be induced to appear at the ball " after
the insults she had received that morning " ; in other words,
her heart was set on being compelled to do so, and by him, by
Pyotr Stepanovitch. She looked upon him as an oracle, and
I believe if he had gone away she would have taken to her bed
at once. But he did not want to go away ; he was desperately
anxious that the ball should take place and that Yulia Mihailovna
should be present at it.

" Come, what is there to cry about ? Are you set on having
a scene ? On venting your anger on somebody ? Well, vent
it on me ; only make haste about it, for the time is passing and
you must make up your mind. We made a mess of it with the
matinee ; we'll pick up on the ball. Here, the prince thinks as
I do. Yes, if it hadn't been for the prince, how would things
have ended there ? "

The prince had been at first opposed to the ball (that is, opposed
to Yulia Mihailovna' s appearing at it ; the ball was bound to go
on in any case), but after two or three such references to his
opinion he began little by little to grunt his acquiescence.

I was surprised too at the extraordinary rudeness of Pyotr
Stepanovitch' s tone. Oh, I scout with indignation the con-
temptible slander which was spread later of some supposed
liaison between Yulia Mihailovna and Pyotr Stepanovitch.
There was no such thing, nor could there be. He gained his
ascendency over her from the first only by encouraging her in
her dreams of influence in society and in the ministry, by entering
into her plans, by inventing them for her, and working upon her
with the grossest flattery. He had got her completely into his
toils and had become as necessary to her as the air she breathed.
Seeing me, she cried, with flashing eyes :

" Here, ask him. He kept by my side all the while, just like
the prince did. Tell me, isn't it plain that it was all a pre-
concerted plot, a base, designing plot to damage Andrey Antono-
vitch and me as much as possible ? Oh, they had arranged it
beforehand. They had a plan ! It's a party, a regular party."
' You are exaggerating as usual . You' ve always some romantic
notion in your head. But I am glad to see Mr. ..." (He pretended
to have forgotten my name.) " He'll give us his opinion."

462 THE POSSESSED

" My opinion," I hastened to put in, " is the same as Yulia
Mihailovna's. The plot is only too evident. I have brought
you these ribbons, Yulia Mihailovna. Whether the ball is to
take place or not is not my business, for it's not in my power
to decide ; but my part as steward is over. Forgive my warmth,
but I can't act against the dictates of common sense and my own
convictions."

" You hear ! You hear ! " She clasped her hands.

" I hear, and I tell you this." . He turned to me. " I think
you must have eaten something which has made you all delirious.
To my thinking, nothing has happened, absolutely nothing but
what has happened before and is always liable to happen in
this town. A plot, indeed ! It was an ugly failure, disgrace-
fully stupid. But where's the plot ? A plot against Yulia
Mihailovna, who has spoiled them and protected them and
fondly forgiven them all their schoolboy pranks ! Yulia
Mihailovna ! What have I been hammering into you for the
last month continually ? What did I warn you ? What did
you want with all these people — what did you want with them ?
What induced you to mix yourself up with these fellows ? What
was the motive, what was the object of it ? To unite society ?
But, mercy on us ! will they ever be united ? "

" When did you warn me ? On the contrary, you approved
of it, you even insisted on it. ... I confess I am so surprised.
. . . You brought all sorts of strange people to see me yourself."

" On the contrary, I opposed you ; I did not approve of it.
As for bringing them to see you, I certainly did, but only after
they'd got in by dozens and only of late to make up ' the literary
quadrille' — we couldn't get on without these -rogues. Only I
don't mind betting that a dozen or two more of the same sort
were let in without tickets to-day."

" Not a doubt of it," I agreed.

" There, you see, you are agreeing already. Think what the
tone has been lately here — I mean in this wretched town. It's
nothing but insolence, impudence ; it's been a crying scandal
all the time. And who's been encouraging it ? Who's screened
it by her authority ? Who's upset them all ? Who has made
all the small fry huffy ? All their family secrets are caricatured
in your album. Didn't you pat them on the back, your poets
and caricaturists ? Didn't you let Lyamshin kiss your hand ?
Didn't a divinity student abuse an actual state councillor in
your presence and spoil his daughter's dress with his tarred

THE END OF THE FfiTE 463

boots ? Now, can you wonder that the public is set against
you ? "

" But that's all your doing, yours ! Oh, my goodness ! "

" No, I warned you. We quarrelled. Do you hear, we
quarrelled ? "

" Why, you are lying to my face ! "

" Of course it's easy for you to say that. You need a victim
to vent your wrath on. Well, vent it on me as I've said already.
I'd better appeal to you, Mr. . . ." (He was still unable to
recall my name.) " We'll reckon on our fingers. I maintain
that, apart from Liputin, there was nothing preconcerted,
nothing ! I will prove it, but first let us analyse Liputin. He
came forward with that fool Lebyadkin's verses. Do you
maintain that that was a plot ? But do you know it might
simply have struck Liputin as a clever thing to do. Seriously,
seriously. He simply came forward with the idea of making
every one laugh and entertaining them — his protectress Yulia
Mihailovna first of all. That was all. Don't you believe it ?
Isn't that in keeping with all that has been going on here for
the last month ? Do you want me to tell the whole truth ?
I declare that under other circumstances it might have gone
off all right. It was a coarse joke — well, a bit strong, perhaps ;
but it was amusing, you know, wasn't it ? "

" What ! You think what Liputin did was clever ? " Yulia
Mihailovna cried in intense indignation. " Such stupiditj', such
tactlessness, so contemptible, so mean i It was intentional !
Oh, you are saying it on purpose ! I believe after that you are
in the plot with them yourself."

" Of course I was behind the scenes, I was in hiding, I set
it all going. But if I were in the plot — understand that, anyway
— it wouldn't have ended with Liputin. So according to you I
had arranged with my papa too that he should cause such a
scene on purpose ? Well, whose fault is it that my papa was
allowed to read ? Who tried only yesterday to prevent you
from allowing it, only yesterday ? "

" Oh, hier il avait tant & esprit, I was so reckoning on him ;
and then he has such manners. I thought with him and
Karmazinov . . . Only think ! "

" Yes, only think. But in spite of tant d' esprit papa has made
things worse, and if I'd known beforehand that he'd make such
a mess of it, I should certainly not have persuaded you yesterday
to keep the goat out of the kitchen garden, should I — since I

464 THE POSSESSED

am taking part in this conspiracy against your fete that you
are so positive about ? And yet I did try to dissuade you yester-
day ; I tried to because I foresaw it. To foresee everything
was, of course, impossible ; he probably did not know himself
a minute before what he would fire off — these nervous old men
can't be reckoned on like other people. But you can still save
the situation : to satisfy the public, send to him to-morrow by
administrative order, and with all the ceremonies, two doctors
to inquire into his health. Even to-day, in fact, and take him
straight to the hospital and apply cold compresses. Every one
would laugh, anyway, and see that there was nothing to take
offence at. I'll tell people about it in the evening at the ball,
as I am his son. Karmazinov is another story. He was
a perfect ass and dragged out his article for a whole hour.
He certainly must have been in the plot with me ! 'I'll
make a mess of it too,' he thought, ' to damage Yulia
Mihailovna.' "

" Oh, Karmazinov ! Quelle honte ! I was burning, burning
with shame for his audience ! "

" Well, I shouldn't have burnt, but have cooked him instead.
The audience was right, you know. Who was to blame for
Karmazinov, again ? Did I foist him upon you ? Was I one
of his worshippers ? Well, hang him ! But the third maniac,
the political — that's a different matter. That was every one's
blunder, not only my plot."

" Ah, don't speak of it ! That was awful, awful ! That was
my fault, entirely my fault ! "

" Of course it was, but I don't blame you for that. No one
can control them, these candid souls ! You can't always be
safe from them, even in Petersburg. He was recommended to
you, and in what terms too ! So you will admit that you are
bound to appear at the ball to-night. It's an important business.
It was you put him on to the platform. You must make it
plain now to the public that you are not in league with him,
that the fellow is in the hands of the police, and that you were
in some inexplicable way deceived. You ought to declare with
indignation that you were the victim of a madman. Because he
is a madman and nothing more. That's how you must put it
about him. I can't endure these people who bite. I say worse
things perhaps, but not from the platform, you know. And they
are talking about a senator too."

" What senator ? Who's talking ? "

THE END OF THE F^TE 465

" I don't understand it myself, you know. Do you know
anything about a senator, Yuha Mihailovna ? "

" A senator ? "

" You see, they are convinced that a senator has been appointed
to be governor here, and that you are being superseded from
Petersburg. I've heard it from lots of people."

" I've heard it too," I put in.

" Who said so ? " asked Yulia Mihailovna, flushing all over.

" You mean, who said so first ? How can I tell ? But there
it is, people say so. Masses of people are saying so. They
were saying so yesterday particularly. They are all very serious
about it, though I can't make it out. Of course the more
intelligent and competent don't talk, but even some of those
listen."

" How mean ! And . . . how stupid ! "

" Well, that's just why you must make your appearance, to
show these fools."

" I confess I feel myself that it's my duty, but . . . what if
there's another disgrace in store for us ? What if people don't
come ? No one will come, you know, no one ! "

" How hot you are ! They not come ! What about the new
clothes ? What about the girls' dresses ? I give you up as a
woman after that ! Is that your knowledge of human nature ? "

" The marshal's wife won't come, she won't."

" But, after all, what has happened ? Why won't they come ? "
he cried at last with angry impatience.

" Ignominy, disgrace — that's what's happened. I don't know
what to call it, but after it I can't face people."

" Why ? How are you to blame for it, after all ? Why do
you take the blame of it on yourself ? Isn't it rather the fault
of the audience, of your respectable residents, your patres-
familias ? They ought to have controlled the roughs and the
rowdies — for it was all the work of roughs and rowdies, nothing
serious. You can never manage things with the police alone in
any society, anywhere. Among us every one asks for a special
policeman to protect him wherever he goes. People don't
understand that society must protect itself. And what do our
patresfamilias, the officials, the wives and daughters, do in such
cases ? They sit quiet and sulk. In fact there's not enough
social initiative to keep the disorderly in check."

"Ah, that's the simple truth ! They sit quiet, sulk and . . .
gaze about them."

2G

466 THE POSSESSED

" And if it's the truth, you ought to say so aloud, proudly,
sternly, just to show that you are not defeated, to those
respectable residents and mothers of families. Oh, you can dc
it ; you have the gift when your head is clear. You will gather fe
them round you and say it aloud. And then a paragraph in the
Voice and the Financial News. Wait a bit, I'll undertake it
myself, I'll arrange it all for you. Of course there must be more
superintendence : you must look after the bulfet ; you must
ask the prince, you must ask Mr. . . . You must not desert
us, monsieur, just when we have to begin all over again. And
finally, you must appear arm-in-arm with Andrey Antonovitch
. . . How is Andrey Antonovitch ? "

" Oh, how unjustly, how untruly, how cruelly you have always
judged that angelic man ! " Yulia Mihailovna cried in a sudder.
outburst, almost with tears, putting her handkerchief to hei
eyes.

Pyotr Stepanovitch was positively taken aback for the moment
" Good heavens ! I. . . . What have I said ? I've always . . ."
" You never have, never ! You have never done him
justice."

" There's no understanding a woman," grumbled Pyoti
Stepanovitch, with a wry smile.

" He is the most sincere, the most delicate, the most angelic
of men ! The most kind-hearted of men ! "

" Well, really, as for kind-heartedness . . . I've always done
him justice. . . ."

" Never ! But let us drop it. I am too awkward in mj
defence of him. This morning that little Jesuit, the marshal','
wife, also dropped some sarcastic hints about what happenec
yesterday."

" Oh, she has no thoughts to spare for yesterday now, she i,
full of to-day. And why are you so upset at her not coming t(
the ball to-night ? Of course, she won't come after getting
mixed up in such a scandal. Perhaps it's not her fault, but stil
her reputation . . . her hands are soiled."

" What do you mean ; I don't understand ? Why ar<
her hands soiled ? " Yulia Mihailovna looked at him ii
perplexity.

" I don't vouch for the truth of it, but the town is ringing
with the story that it was she brought them together."
" What do you mean ? Brought whom together ? "
"What, do you mean to say you don't know ? " he exclaims

THE END OF THE FETE 467

with well- simulated wonder. " Why Stavrogin and Lizaveta
Nikolaevna."

" What ? How ? " we all cried out at once.
" Is it possible you don't know ? Phew ! Why, it is quite a
tragic romance : Lizaveta Nikolaevna was pleased to get out of
that lady's carriage and get straight into Stavrogin's carriage,
and slipped off with ' the latter ' to Skvoreshniki in full daylight.
Only an hour ago, hardly an hour."

We were flabbergasted. Of course we fell to questioning him,
but to our wonder, although he " happened " to be a witness of
the scene himself, he could give us no detailed account of it.
The thing seemed to have happened like this : when the
marshal's wife was driving Liza and Mavriky Nikolaevitch from
the matinee to the house of Praskovya Ivanovna (whose legs
were still bad) they saw a carriage waiting a short distance,
about twenty-five paces, to one side of the front door. When
Liza jumped out, she ran straight to this carriage ; the door
was flung open and shut again ; Liza called to Mavriky Nikolae-
vitch, " Spare me," and the carriage drove off at full speed
to Skvoreshniki. To our hurried questions whether it was by
arrangement ? Who was in the carriage ? Pyotr Stepanovitch
answered that he knew nothing about it ; no doubt it had been
arranged, but that he did not see Stavrogin himself ; possibly the
old butler, Alexey Yegorytch, might have been in the carriage.
To the question " How did he come to be there, and how did
he know for a fact that she had driven to Skvoreshniki ? " he
}| answered that he happened to be passing and, at seeing Liza,
s he had run up to the carriage (and yet he could not make out
d who was in it, an inquisitive man like him !) and that Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, far from setting off in pursuit, had not even tried
$ to stop Liza, and had even laid a restraining hand on the
01 marshal's wife, who was shouting at the top of her voice : " She
£! is going to Stavrogin, to Stavrogin." At this point I lost
Hi patience, and cried furiously to Pyotr Stepanovitch :

" It's all your doing, you rascal ! This was what you were

11 doing this morning. You helped Stavrogin, you came in the

J" carriage, you helped her into it ... it was you, you, you !

Yulia Mihailovna, he is your enemy ; he will be your ruin too !

ij Beware of him ! "

And I ran headlong out of the house. I wonder myself and

cannot make out to this day how I came to say that to him.

$ But I guessed quite right : it had all happened almost exactly

468 THE POSSESSED

as I said, as appeared later. What struck me most was the
obviously artificial way in which he broke the news. He had
not told it at once on entering the house as an extraordinary
piece of news, but pretended that we knew without his telling
us which was impossible in so short a time. And if we had
known it, we could not possibly have refrained from mentioning
it till he introduced the subject. Besides, he could not have
heard yet that the town was " ringing with gossip " about the
marshal's wife in so short a time. Besides, he had once or twice
given a vulgar, frivolous smile as he told the story, probably
considering that we were fools and completely taken in.

But I had no thought to spare for him ; the central fact
I believed, and ran from Yulia Mihailovna's, beside myself.
The catastrophe cut me to the heart. I was wounded almost
to tears ; perhaps I did shed some indeed. I was at a complete
loss what to do. I rushed to Stepan Trofimovitch's, but the
vexatious man still refused to open the door. Nastasya informed
me, in a reverent whisper, that he had gone to bed, but I did not
believe it. At Liza's house I succeeded in questioning the ser-
vants. They confirmed the story of the elopement, but knew
nothing themselves. There was great commotion in the house ;
their mistress had been attacked by fainting fits, and Mavriky
Nikolaevitch was with her. I did not feel it possible to ask for
Mavriky Nikolaevitch. To my inquiries about Pyotr Stepano-
vitch they told me that he had been in and out continually of
late, sometimes twice in the day. The servants were sad, and
showed particular respectfulness in speaking of Liza ; they were
fond of her. That she was ruined, utterly ruined, I did not
doubt ; but the psychological aspect of the matter I was utterly
unable to understand, especially after her scene with Stavrogin
the previous day. To run about the town and inquire at the
houses of acquaintances, who would, of course, by now have
heard the news and be rejoicing at it, seemed to me revolting,
besides being humiliating for Liza. But, strange to say, I ran
to see Darya Pavlovna, though I was not admitted (no one had
been admitted into the house since the previous morning).
I don't know what I could have said to her and what made me
run to her. From her I went to her brother's. Shatov listened
sullenly and in silence. I may observe that I found him more
gloomy than I had ever seen him before ; he was awfully pre-
occupied and seemed only to listen to me with an effort. He
said scarcely anything and began walking up and down his cell

THE END OF THE FETE 469

from corner to corner, treading more noisily than usual. As I
was going down the stairs he shouted after me to go to Liputin's :
" There you'll hear everything." Yet I did not go to Liputin's,
but after I'd gone a good way towards home I turned back to
Shatov's again, and, half opening the door without going in,
suggested to him laconically and with no kind of explanation,
" Won't you go to Marya Timofyevna to-day ? " At this
Shatov swore at me, and I went away. I note here that I may
not forget it that he did purposely go that evening to the other
end of the town to see Marya Timofyevna, whom he had not
seen for some time. He found her in excellent health and spirits
and Lebyadkin dead drunk, asleep on the sofa in the first room.
This was at nine o'clock. He told me so himself next day when
we met for a moment in the street. Before ten o'clock I made
up my mind to go to the ball, but not in the capacity of a
steward (besides my rosette had been left at Yulia Mihailovna's).
I was tempted by irresistible curiosity to listen, without asking
any questions, to what people were saying in the town about
all that had happened. I wanted, too, to have a look at Yulia
Mihailovna, if only at a distance. I reproached myself greatly
that I had left her so abruptly that afternoon.

Ill

All that night, with its almost grotesque incidents, and the
terrible denouement that followed in the early morning, still
seems to me like a hideous nightmare, and is, for me at least,
the most painful chapter in my chronicle. I was late for the
ball, and it was destined to end so quickly that I arrived not
long before it was over. It was eleven o'clock when I reached
the entrance of the marshal's house, where the same White Hall
in which the matinee had taken place had, in spite of the short
interval between, been cleared and made ready to serve as the
chief ballroom for the whole town, as we expected, to dance in.
But far as I had been that morning from expecting the ball to
be a success, I had had no presentiment of the full truth. Not
one family of the higher circles appeared ; even the subordinate
officials of rather more consequence were absent — and this was
a very striking fact. As for ladies and girls, Pyotr Stepanovitch's
arguments (the duplicity of which was obvious now) turned out

470 THE POSSESSED

to be utterly incorrect : exceedingly few had come ; to four
men there was scarcely one lady — and what ladies they were !
Regimental ladies of a sort, three doctors' wives with their
daughters, two or three poor ladies from the country, the seven
daughters and the niece of the secretary whom I have mentioned
already, some wives of tradesmen, of post-office clerks and other
small fry — was this what Yulia Mihailovna expected ? Half
the tradespeople even were absent. As for the men, in spite
of the complete absence of all persons of consequence, there was
still a crowd of them, but they made a doubtful and suspicious
impression. There were, of course, some quiet and respectful
officers with their wives, some of the most docile fathers of
families, like that secretary, for instance, the father of his seven
daughters. All these humble, insignificant people had come, as
one of these gentlemen expressed it, because it was " inevitable."
But, on the other hand, the mass of free-and-easy people and
the mass too of those whom Pyotr Stepanovitch and I had
suspected of coming in without tickets, seemed even bigger than
in the afternoon. So far they were all sitting in the refreshment
bar, and had gone straight there on arriving, as though it were
the meeting-place they had agreed upon. So at least it seemed
to me. The refreshment bar had been placed in a large room,
the last of several opening out of one another. Here Prohoritch
was installed with all the attractions of the club cuisine and with
a tempting display of drinks and dainties. I noticed several
persons whose coats were almost in rags and whose get-up was
altogether suspicious and utterly unsuitable for a ball. They
had evidently been with great pains brought to a state of partial
sobriety which would not last long ; and goodness knows where
they had been brought from, they were not local people. I knew,
of course, that it was part of Yulia Mihailovna's idea that the
ball should be of the most democratic character, and that
" even working people and shopmen should not be excluded if
any one of that class chanced to pay for a ticket." She could
bravely utter such words in her committee with absolute security
that none of the working people of our town, who all lived hi
extreme poverty, would dream of taking a ticket. But in
spite of the democratic sentiments of the committee, I could
hardly believe that such sinister-looking and shabby people
could have been admitted in the regular way. But who could
have admitted them, and with what object ? Lyamshin and
Liputin had already been deprived of their steward's rosettes,

THE END OF THE FfiTE 471

though they were present at the ball, as they were taking part in
the " literary quadrille." But, to my amazement, Liputin's place
was taken by the divinity student, who had caused the greatest
scandal at the matinee by his skirmish with Stepan Trofimovitch ;
and Lyamshin's was taken by Pyotr Stepanovitch himself.
What was to be looked for under the circumstances ?

I tried to listen to the conversation. I was struck by the
wildness of some ideas I heard expressed. It was maintained
in one group, for instance, that Yulia Mihailovna had arranged
Liza's elopement with Stavrogin and had been paid by the latter
for doing so. Even the sum paid was mentioned. It was
asserted that she had arranged the whole fete with a view to
it, and that that was the reason why half the town had not
turned up at the ball, and that Lembke himself was so upset
about it that " his mind had given way," and that, crazy as he
was, " she had got him in tow." There was a great deal of
laughter too, hoarse, wild and significant. Every one was
criticising the ball, too, with great severity, and abusing Yulia
Mihailovna without ceremony. In fact it was disorderly,
incoherent, drunken and excited babble, so it was difficult to
put it together and make anything of it. At the same time
there were simple-hearted people enjoying themselves at the
refreshment-bar ; there were even some ladies of the sort who
are surprised and frightened at nothing, very genial and festive,
chiefly military ladies with their husbands. They made parties
at the little tables, were drinking tea, and were very merry. The
refreshment-bar made a snug refuge for almost half of the
guests. Yet in a little time all this mass of people must stream
into the ballroom. It was horrible to think of it !

Meanwhile the prince had succeeded in arranging three skimpy
quadrilles in the White Hall. The young ladies were dancing,
while their parents were enjoying watching them. But many
of these respectable persons had already begun to think how
they could, after giving their girls a treat, get off in good time
before " the trouble began." Absolutely every one was con-
vinced that it certainly would begin. It would be difficult for
me to describe Yulia Mihailovna' s state of mind. I did not talk
to her though I went close up to her. She did not respond to
the bow I made her on entering ; she did not notice me (really
did not notice). There was a painful look in her face and a
contemptuous and haughty though restless and agitated expres-
sion in her eyes. She controlled herself with evident suffering —

472 THE POSSESSED

for whose sake, with what object ? She certainly ought to
have gone away, still more to have got her husband away, and
she remained ! From her face one could see that her eyes were
" fully opened," and that it was useless for her to expect any-
thing more. She did not even summon Pyotr Stepanovitch
(he seemed to avoid her ; I saw him in the refreshment-room,
he was extremely lively). But she remained at the ball and did
not let Andrey Antonovitch leave her side for a moment. Oh,
up to the very last moment, even that morning she would have
repudiated any hint about his health with genuine indignation.
But now her eyes were to be opened on this subject too. As for
me, I thought from the first glance that Andrey Antonovitch
looked worse than he had done in the morning. He seemed to
be plunged into a sort of oblivion and hardly to know where he
was. Sometimes he looked about him with unexpected severity
— at me, for instance, twice. Once he tried to say something ;
he began loudly and audibly but did not finish the sentence,
throwing a modest old clerk who happened to be near him almost
into a panic. But even this humble section of the assembly
held sullenly and timidly aloof from Yulia Mihailovna and at
the same time turned upon her husband exceedingly strange
glances, open and staring, quite out of keeping with their
habitually submissive demeanour.

" Yes, that struck me, and I suddenly began to guess about
Andrey Antonovitch," Yulia Mihailovna confessed to me after-
wards.

Yes, she was to blame again ! Probably when after my
departure she had settled with Pyotr Stepanovitch that there
should be a ball and that she should be present she must have
gone again to the study where Andrey Antonovitch was sitting,
utterly " shattered " by the matinee ; must again have used all
her fascinations to persuade him to come with her. But what
misery she must have been in now ! And yet she did not go
away. Whether it was pride or simply she lost her head, I do
not know. In spite of her haughtiness, she attempted with
smiles and humiliation to enter into conversation with some
ladies, but they were confused, confined themselves to distrustful
monosyllables, " Yes " and " No," and evidently avoided her.

The only person of undoubted consequence who was present
at the ball was that distinguished general whom I have described
already, the one who after Stavrogin's duel with Gaganov
" opened the door to public impatience " at the marshal's wife's.

THE END OF THE FETE 473

He walked with an air of dignity through the rooms, looked
about, and listened, and tried to appear as though he had come
rather for the sake of observation than for the sake of enjoying
himself. . . . He ended by establishing himself beside Yulia
Mihailovna and not moving a step away from her, evidently
trying to keep up her spirits, and reassure her. He certainly
was a most kind-hearted man, of very high rank, and so old that
even compassion from him was not wounding. But to admit
to herself that this old gossip was venturing to pity her and
almost to protect her, knowing that he was doing her honour
by his presence, was very vexatious. The general stayed by her
and never ceased chattering.

" They say a town can't go on without seven righteous
men . . . seven, I think it is, I am not sure of the number
fixed. ... I don't know how many of these seven, the certified
righteous of the town . . . have the honour of being present at
your ball. Yet in spite of their presence I begin to feel unsafe.
Vous me pardonnez, charmante dame, rCest-ce pas ? I speak
allegorically, but I went into the refreshment-room and I am
glad I escaped alive. . . . Our priceless Prohoritch is not in
his place there, and I believe his bar will be destroyed before
morning. But I am laughing. I am only waiting to see what
the ' literary quadrille ' is going to be like, and then home to
bed. You must excuse a gouty old fellow. I go early to bed, and
I would advise you too to go ' by-by,' as they say aux enfants.
I've come, you know, to have a look at the pretty girls . . .
whom, of course, I could meet nowhere in such profusion as here.
They all live beyond the river and I don't drive out so far.
There's a wife of an officer ... in the chasseurs I believe he is
. . . who is distinctly pretty, distinctly, and . . . she knows
it herself. I've talked to the sly puss ; she is a sprightly one
. . . and the girls too are fresh-looking ; but that's all, there's
nothing but freshness. Still, it's a pleasure to look at them.
There are some rosebuds, but their lips are thick. As a rule
there's an irregularity about female beauty in Russia, and . . .
they are a little like buns. . . . vous me pardonnez, rtest-ce pas ?
. . . with good eyes, however, laughing eyes. . . . These rose-
buds are charming for two years when they are young . . . even
for three . . . then they broaden out and are spoilt for ever
. . . producing in their husbands that deplorable indifference
which does so much to promote the woman movement . . .
that is, if I understand it correctly. . , . H'm ! It's a fine hall ;

474 THE POSSESSED

the rooms are not badly decorated. It might be worse. The
music might be much worse. ... I don't say it ought to have
been. What makes a bad impression is that there are so few
ladies. I say nothing about the dresses. It's bad that that
chap in the grey trousers should dare to dance the cancan so
openly. I can forgive him if he does it in the gaiety of his heart,
and since he is the local chemist. . . . Still, eleven o'clock is a
bit early even for chemists. There were two fellows fighting in
the refreshment-bar and they weren't turned out. At eleven
o'clock people ought to be turned out for fighting, whatever the
standard of manners. . . . Three o'clock is a different matter ;
then one has to make concessions to public opinion — if only this
ball survives till three o'clock. Varvara Petrovna has not kept
her word, though, and hasn't sent flowers. H'm ! She has no
thoughts for flowers, pauvre mere ! And poor Liza ! Have you
heard ? They say it's a mysterious story . . . and Stavrogin
is to the front again. ... H'm ! I would have gone home to
bed ... I can hardly keep my eyes open. But when is this
' literary quadrille ' coming on ? "

At last the " literary quadrille " began. Whenever of late
there had been conversation in the town on the ball it had
invariably turned on this literary quadrille, and as no one could
imagine what it would be like, it aroused extraordinary curiosity.
Nothing could be more unfavourable to its chance of success, and
great was the disappointment.

The side doors of the White Hall were thrown open and several
masked figures appeared. The public surrounded them eagerly.
All the occupants of the refreshment-bar trooped to the last man
into the hall. The masked figures took their places for the dance.
I succeeded in making my way to the front and installed myself
just behind Yulia Mihailovna, Von Lembke, and the general.
At this point Pyotr Stepanovitch, who had kept away till that
time, skipped up to Yulia Mihailovna.

" I've been in the refreshment -room all this time, watching,"
he whispered, with the air of a guilty schoolboy, which he, how-
ever, assumed on purpose to irritate her even more. She turned
crimson with anger.

" You might give up trying to deceive me now at least,
insolent man ! " broke from her almost aloud, so that it was
heard by other people. Pyotr Stepanovitch skipped away
extremely well satisfied with himself.

It would be difficult to imagine a more pitiful, vulgar, dull and

THE END OF THE FifilTE 475

insipid allegory than this " literary quadrille." Nothing could
be imagined less appropriate to our local society. Yet they say
it was Karmazinov's idea. It was Liputin indeed who arranged
it, with the help of the lame teacher who had been at the meeting
at Virginsky's. But Karmazinov had given the idea and had, it
was said, meant to dress up and to take a special and prominent
part in it. The quadrille was made up of six couples of masked
figures, who were not in fancy dress exactly, for their clothes were
like every one else's. Thus, for instance, one short and elderly
gentleman wearing a dress-coat — in fact, dressed like every one
else — wore a venerable grey beard, tied on (and this constituted
his disguise). As he danced he pounded up and down, taking
tiny and rapid steps on the same spot with a stolid expression
of countenance. He gave vent to sounds in a subdued but
husky bass, and this huskiness was meant to suggest one of the
well-known papers. Opposite this figure danced two giants,
X and Z, and these letters were pinned on their coats, but what
the letters meant remained unexplained. " Honest Russian
thought " was represented by a middle-aged gentleman in
spectacles, dress-coat and gloves, and wearing fetters (real
fetters). Under his arm he had a portfolio containing papers
relating to some " case." To convince the sceptical a letter from
abroad testifying to the honesty of " honest Russian thought "
peeped out of his pocket. All this was explained by the stewards,
as the letter which peeped out of his pocket could not be read.
I Honest Russian thought " had his right hand raised and in it
held a glass as though he wanted to propose a toast. In a line
with him on each side tripped a crop-headed nihilist girl ; while
vis-d-vis danced another elderly gentleman in a dress-coat with
a heavy cudgel in his hand. He was meant to represent a
formidable periodical (not a Petersburg one), and seemed to be
saying, " I'll pound you to a jelly." But in spite of his cudgel
he could not bear the spectacles of " honest Russian thought "
fixed upon him and tried to look away, and when he did the
pas de deux, he twisted, turned, and did not know what to do
with himself — so terrible, probably, were the stings of his con-
science ! I don't remember all the absurd tricks they played,
however ; it was all in the same style, so that I felt at last
painfully ashamed. And this same expression, as it were, of
shame was reflected in the whole public, even on the most sullen
figures that had come out of the refreshment-room. For some
time all were silent and gazed with angry perplexity. When a

476 THE POSSESSED

man is ashamed he generally begins to get angry and is disposed
to be cynical. By degrees a murmur arose in the audience.

" What's the meaning of it ? " a man who had come in from
the refreshment-room muttered in one of the groups.

" It's silly."

" It's something literary. It's a criticism of the Voice."

" What's that to me ? "

From another group :

" Asses ! "

" No, they are not asses ; it's we who are the asses."

" Why are you an ass ? "

" I am not an ass."

" Well, if you are not, I am certainly not."

From a third group :

" We ought to give them a good smacking and send them
flying."

" Pull down the hall ! "

From a fourth group :

" I wonder the Lembkes are not ashamed to look on ! "

" Why should they be ashamed ? You are not."

" Yes, I am ashamed, and he is the governor."

" And you are a pig."

" I've never seen such a commonplace ball in my life," a lady
observed viciously, quite close to Yulia Mihailovna, obviously
with the intention of being overheard. She was a stout lady
of forty with rouge on her cheeks, wearing a bright-coloured
silk dress. Almost every one in the town knew her, but no one
received her. She was the widow of a civil councillor, who had
left her a wooden house and a small pension ; but she lived well
and kept horses. Two months previously she had called on
Yulia Mihailovna, but the latter had not received her.

" That might have been foreseen," she added, looking insolently
into Yulia Mihailovna's face.

" If you could foresee it, why did you come ? " Yulia
Mihailovna could not resist saying.

" Because I was too simple," the sprightly lady answered
instantly, up in arms and eager for the fray ; but the general
intervened.

" Chere dame " — he bent over to Yulia Mihailovna — " you'd
really better be going. We are only in their way and they'll
enjoy themselves thoroughly without us. You've done youi
part, you've opened the ball, now leave them in peace. And

THE END OE THE EfiTE 477

kndrey Antonovitch doesn't seem to be feeling quite satis-
factorily. ... To avoid trouble."

But it was too late.

All through the quadrille Andrey Antonovitch gazed at the
lancers with a sort of angry perplexity, and when he heard the
3omments of the audience he began looking about him uneasily,
rhen for the first time he caught sight of some of the persons
flrho had come from the refreshment-room ; there was an expres-
sion of extreme wonder in his face. Suddenly there was a loud
*oar of laughter at a caper that was cut in the quadrille. The
editor of the " menacing periodical, not a Petersburg one," who
yas dancing with the cudgel in his hands, felt utterly unable to
endure the spectacled gaze of " honest Russian thought," and
lot knowing how to escape it, suddenly in the last figure advanced
;o meet him standing on his head, which was meant, by the way,
;o typify the continual turning upside down of common sense
iy the menacing non-Petersburg gazette. As Lyamshin was
ihe only one who could walk standing on his head, he had
mdertaken to represent the editor with the cudgel. Yulia
Mihailovna had had no idea that anyone was going to walk on
lis head. " They concealed that from me, they concealed it,"
ihe repeated to me afterwards in despair and indignation. The
aughter from the crowd was, of course, provoked not by the
t-llegory, which interested no one, but simply by a man's walking
>n his head in a swallow-tail coat. Lembke flew into a rage and
ihook with fury.

" Rascal ! " he cried, pointing to Lyamshin, " take hold of
he scoundrel, turn him over . . . turn his legs . . . his head

. . so that his head's up ... up ! "

Lyamshin jumped on to his feet. The laughter grew louder.

" Turn out all the scoundrels who are laughing ! " Lembke
described suddenly.

There was an angry roar and laughter in the crowd.

" You can't do like that, your Excellency."

" You mustn't abuse the public."

" You are a fool yourself ! " a voice cried suddenly from a
orner.

" Filibusters ! " shouted some one from the other end of the
oom.

Lembke looked round quickly at the shout and turned pale.
L vacant smile came on to his lips, as though he suddenly under-
tood and remembered something.

478 THE POSSESSED

" Gentlemen," said Yulia Mihailovna, addressing the crowcj
which was pressing round them, as she drew her husband away-
" gentlemen, excuse Andrey Antonovitch. Andrey Antonovitch
is unwell . . . excuse . . . forgive him, gentlemen."

I positively heard her say tC forgive him." It all happened
very quickly. But I remember for a fact, that a section of the
public rushed out of the hall immediately after those words ol
Yulia Mihailovna's as though panic-stricken. I remember one
hysterical, tearful feminine shriek :

" Ach, the same thing again ! "

And in the retreat of the guests, which was almost becoming
a crush, another bomb exploded exactly as in the afternoon.

" Fire ! All the riverside quarter is on fire ! "

I don't remember where this terrible cry rose first, whether
it was first raised in the hall, or whether some one ran upstairs
from the entry, but it was followed by such alarm that I can't
attempt to describe it. More than half the guests at the ball came
from the quarter beyond the river, and were owners or occupiers
of wooden houses in that district. They rushed to the windows,
pulled back the curtains in a flash, and tore down the blinds.
The riverside was in flames. The fire, it is true, was only
beginning, but it was in flames in three separate places — and
that was what was alarming.

" Arson ! The Shpigulin men ! " roared the crowd.

I remember some very characteristic exclamations :

" I've had a presentiment in my heart that there'd be arson,
I've had a presentiment of it these last few days ! "

" The Shpigulin men, the Shipgulin men, no one else ! "

" We were all lured here on purpose to set fire to it ! "

This last most amazing exclamation came from a woman ; ii
was an unintentional involuntary shriek of a housewife whose
goods were burning. Every one rushed for the door. I won't
describe the crush in the vestibule over sorting out cloaks,
shawls, and pelisses, the shrieks of the frightened women, th<
weeping of the young ladies. I doubt whether there was any
theft, but it was no wonder that in such disorder some went
away without their wraps because they were unable to find them,
and this grew into a legend with many additions, long preserevd
in the town. Lembke and Yulia Mihailovna were almost
crushed by the crowd at the doors.

" Stop, every one ! Don't let anyone out ! " yelled Lembke,i
stretching out his arms menacingly towards the crowding people,

THE END OF THE FETE 479

" Every one without exception to be strictly searched at
once ! "

A storm of violent oaths rose from the crowd.

" Andrey Antonovitch ! Andrey Antonovitch ! " cried Yulia
Mihailovna in complete despair.

" Arrest her first ! " shouted her husband, pointing his finger
it her threateningly. " Search her first ! The ball was arranged
with a view to the fire. ..."

She screamed and fell into a swoon. (Oh, there was no doubt
Df its being a real one.) The general, the prince, and I rushed
bo her assistance ; there were others, even among the ladies,
who helped us at that difficult moment. We carried the unhappy
woman out of this hell to her carriage, but she only regained
xmsciousness as she reached the house, and her first utterance
;vas about Andrey Antonovitch again. With the destruction of
ill her fancies, the only thing left in her mind was Andrey
Antonovitch. They sent for a doctor. I remained with her for
i whole hour ; the prince did so too. The general, in an access
)f generous feeling (though he had been terribly scared), meant
;o remain all night " by the bedside of the unhappy lady," but
within ten minutes he fell asleep in an arm-chair in the drawing -
'oom while waiting for the doctor, and there we left him.

The chief of the police, who had hurried from the ball to the
ire, had succeeded in getting Andrey Antonovitch out of the
lall after us, and attempted to put him into Yulia Mihailovna's
jarriage, trying all he could to persuade his Excellency " to
seek repose." But I don't know why he did not insist. Andrey
Antonovitch, of course, would not hear of repose, and was set on
joing to the fire ; but that was not a sufficient reason. It
inded in his taking him to the fire in his droshky. He told us
ifterwards that Lembke was gesticulating all the way and
4 shouting orders that it was impossible to obey owing to their
musualness." It was officially reported later on that his
Excellency had at that time been in a delirious condition " owing
io a sudden fright."

There is no need to describe how the ball ended. A few dozen
'owdy fellows, and with them some ladies, remained in the hall.
rhere were no police present. They would not let the orchestra go,
bnd beat the musicians who attempted to leave. By morning they
lad pulled all Prohoritch's stall to pieces, had drunk themselves
senseless, danced the Kamarinsky in its unexpurgated form,
nade the rooms in a shocking mess, and only towards daybreak

480 THE POSSESSED

part of this hopelessly drunken rabble reached the scene of the fire
to make fresh disturbances there. The other part spent the
night in the rooms dead drunk, with disastrous consequences to
the velvet sofas and the floor. Next morning, at the earliest
possibility, they were dragged out. by their legs into the street.
So ended the fete for the benefit of the governesses of our
province.

IV

The fire frightened the inhabitants of the riverside just because
it was evidently a case of arson. It was curious that at the first
cry of " fire " another cry was raised that the Shpigulin men had
done it. It is now well known that three Shpigulin men really
did have a share in setting fire to the town, but that was all ; all
the other factory hands were completely acquitted, not only
officially but also by public opinion. Besides those three rascals
(of whom one has been caught and confessed and the other two
have so far escaped), Fedka the convict undoubtedly had a
hand in the arson. That is all that is known for certain about
the fire till now ; but when it comes to conjectures it's a very
different matter. What had led these three rascals to do it %
Had they been instigated by anyone ? It is very difficult to
answer all these questions even now.

Owing to the strong wind, the fact that the houses at the
riverside were almost all wooden, and that they had been setl
fire to in three places, the fire spread quickly and enveloped the|
whole quarter with extraordinary rapidity. (The fire burnt,
however, only at two ends ; at the third spot it was extinguished
almost as soon as it began to burn — of which later.) But the
Petersburg and Moscow papers exaggerated our calamity. Not
more than a quarter, roughly speaking, of the riverside district
was burnt down ; possibly less indeed. Our fire brigade, though
it was hardly adequate to the size and population of the town,
worked with great promptitude and devotion. But it would
not have been of much avail, even with the zealous co-operation
of the inhabitants, if the wind had not suddenly dropped towards
morning. When an hour after our flight from the ball I made
my way to the riverside, the fire was at its height. A whole
street parallel with the river was in flames. It was as light as
day. I won't describe the fire ; every one in Russia knows what

THE END OF THE FETE 481

it looks like. The bustle and crush was immense in the lanes
adjoining the burning street. The inhabitants, fully expecting
the fire to reach their houses, were hauling out their belongings,
but had not yet left their dwellings, and were waiting meanwhile
sitting on their boxes and feather beds under their windows.
Part of the male population were hard at work ruthlessly chopping
down fences and even whole huts which were near the fire and
on the windward side. None were crying except the children,
who had been waked out of their sleep, though the women who
had dragged out their chattels were lamenting in sing-song
voices. Those who had not finished their task were still silent,
busily carrying out their goods. Sparks and embers were carried
a long way in all directions. People put them out as best they
could. Some helped to put the fire out while others stood about,
admiring it. A great fire at night always has a thrilling and
exhilarating effect. This is what explains the attraction of
fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which
the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an
impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass
of champagne. A real conflagration is a very different matter.
Then the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, together
with the exhilarating effect of a fire at night, produce on the
spectator (though of course not in the householder whose goods
are being burnt) a certain concussion of the brain and, as it
were, a challenge to those destructive instincts which, alas, lie
hidden in every heart, even that of the mildest and most domestic
little clerk. . . . This sinister sensation is almost always
fascinating. " I really don't know whether one can look at a
fire without a certain pleasure." This is word for word what
Stepan Trofimovitch said to me one night on returning home
after he had happened to witness a fire and was still under the
influence of the spectacle. Of course, the very man who enjoys the
spectacle will rush into the fire himself to save a child or an old
woman ; but that is altogether a different matter.

Following in the wake of the crowd of sightseers, I succeeded,
without asking questions, in reaching the chief centre of danger,
where at last I saw Lembke, whom I was seeking at Yulia
Mihailovna's request. His position was strange and extra-
ordinary. He was standing on the ruins of a fence. Thirty
paces to the left of him rose the black skeleton of a two-storied
house which had almost burnt out. It had holes instead of
windows at each story, its roof had fallen in, and the flames

2h

482 THE POSSESSED

were still here and there creeping among the charred beams.
At the farther end of the courtyard, twenty paces away, the
lodge, also a two-storied building, was beginning to burn, and
the firemen were doing then utmost to save it. On the right,
the firemen and the people were trying to save a rather large
wooden building which was not actually burning, though it had
caught fire several times and was inevitably bound to be burnt
in the end. Lembke stood facing the lodge, shouting and
gesticulating. He was giving orders which no one attempted
to carry out. It seemed to me that every one had given him up
as hopeless and left him. Anyway, though every one in the vast
crowd of all classes, among whom there were gentlemen, and even
the cathedral priest, was listening to him with curiosity and
wonder, no one spoke to him or tried to get him away. Lembke,
with a pale face and glittering eyes, was uttering the most
amazing things. To complete the picture, he had lost his hat
and was bareheaded.

" It's all incendiarism ! It's nihilism ! If anything is burn-
ing, it's nihilism ! " I heard almost with horror ; and though
there was nothing to be surprised at, yet actual madness,
when one sees it, always gives one a shock.

" Your Excellency," said a policeman, coming up to him,
" what if you were to try the repose of home ? ... It's dangerous
for your Excellency even to stand here."

This policeman, as I heard afterwards, had been told off by
the chief of police to watch over Andrey Antonovitch, to
do his utmost to get him home, and in case of danger even to
use force — a task evidently beyond the man's power.

" They will wipe away the tears of the people whose houses
have been burnt, but they will burn down the town. It's all
the work of four scoundrels, four and a half ! Arrest the
scoundrel ! He worms himself into the honour of families.
They made use of the governesses to burn down the houses.
It's vile, vile ! Aie, what's he about ? " he shouted, suddenly
noticing a fireman at the top of the burning lodge, under whom
the roof had almost burnt away and round whom the flames
were beginning to flare up. " Pull him down ! Pull him down !
He will fall, he will catch fire, put him out ! . . . What is he
doing there

" He is putting the fire out, your Excellency."

" Not likely. The fire is in the minds of men and not in the
roofs of houses. Pull him down and give it up ! Better give

THE END OF THE FETE 483

t up, much better ! Let it put itself out. Aie, who is crying
low ? An old woman ! It's an old woman shouting. Why
lave they forgotten the old woman ? "

There actually was an old woman crying on the ground floor
)f the burning lodge. She was an old creature of eighty, a
•elation of the shopkeeper who owned the house. But she had
lot been forgotten ; she had gone back to the burning house
tvhile it was still possible, with the insane idea of rescuing her
eather bed from a corner room which was still untouched.
Choking with the smoke and screaming with the heat, for the
room was on fire by the time she reached it, she was still trying
vith her decrepit hands to squeeze her feather bed through a
broken window pane. Lembke rushed to her assistance. Every
me saw him run up to the window, catch hold of one corner of
;he feather bed and try with all his might to pull it out. As ill
uck would have it, a board fell at that moment from the roof
md hit the unhappy governor. It did not kill him, it merely
grazed him on the neck as it fell, but Andrey Antonovitch's
jareer was over, among us at least ; the blow knocked him off his
ieet and he sank on the ground unconscious.

The day dawned at last, gloomy and sullen. The fire was
ibating ; the wind was followed by a sudden calm, and then a
ine drizzling rain fell. I was by that time in another part,
jome distance from where Lembke had fallen, and here I
)ver heard very strange conversations in the crowd. A strange
!act had come to light. On the very outskirts of the quarter,
m a piece of waste land beyond the kitchen gardens, not less
;han fifty paces from any other buildings, there stood a little
wooden house which had only lately been built, and this solitary
louse had been on fire at the very beginning, almost before
my other. Even had it burnt down, it was so far from other
louses that no other building in the town could have caught
ire from it, and, vice versa, if the whole riverside had been burnt
«o the ground, that house might have remained intact, what-
ever the wind had been. It followed that it had caught fire
leparately and independently and therefore not accidentally.
But the chief point was that it was not burnt to the ground, and
it daybreak strange things were discovered within it. The
)wner of this new house, who lived in the neighbourhood, rushed
lp as soon as he saw it in flames and with the help of his neighbours
:>ulled apart a pile of faggots which had been heaped up by the
-ide wall and set fire to. In this way he saved the house. But there

484 THE POSSESSED

were lodgers in the house — the captain, who was well known in
the town, his sister, and their elderly servant, and these three
persons — the captain, his sister, and their servant — had been
murdered and apparently robbed in the night. (It was here that
the chief of police had gone while Lembke was rescuing the
feather bed.)

By morning the news had spread and an immense crowd of
all classes, even the riverside people who had been burnt out,
had nocked to the waste land where the new house stood. It
was difficult to get there, so dense was the crowd. I was told
at once that the captain had been found lying dressed on the
bench with his throat cut, and that he must have been dead drunk
when he was killed, so that he had felt nothing, and he had
" bled like a bull " ; that his sister Marya Timofeyevna had been
" stabbed all over " with a knife and she was lying on the floor
in the doorway, so that probably she had been awake and had
fought and struggled with the murderer. The servant, who had
also probably been awake, had her skull broken. The owner
of the house said that the captain had come to see him the
morning before, and that in his drunken bragging he had shown
him a lot of money, as much as two hundred roubles. The
captain's shabby old green pocket-book was found empty on
the floor, but Marya Timofeyevna' s box had not been touched,
and the silver setting of the ikon had not been removed either ;
the captain's clothes, too, had not been disturbed. It was
evident that the thief had been in a hurry and was a man
familiar with the captain's circumstances, who had come only
for money and knew where it was kept. If the owner of the
house had not run up at that moment the burning faggot stack
would certainly have set fire to the house and " it would have
been difficult to find out from the charred corpses how they
had died."

So the story was told. One other fact was added : that the
person who had taken this house for the Lebyadkins was no
other than Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, the son of
Varvara Petrovna. He had come himself to take it and had
had much ado to persuade the owner to let it, as the latter had
intended to use it as a tavern ; but Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
was ready to give any rent he asked and had paid for six months
in advance.

" The fire wasn't an accident," I heard said in the crowd.

But the majority said nothing. People's faces were sullen,

THE END OF THE FfiTE 485

but I did not see signs of much indignation. People persisted,
however, in gossiping about Stavrogin, saying that the murdered
woman was his wife ; that on the previous day he had " dis-
honourably " abducted a young lady belonging to the best
family in the place, the daughter of Madame Drozdov, and that
a complaint was to be lodged against him in Petersburg ; and
that his wife had been murdered evidently that he might marry
the young lady. Skvoreshniki was not more than a mile and a
half away, and I remember I wondered whether I should not
let them know the position of affairs. I did not notice, however,
that there was anyone egging the crowd on and I don't want
to accuse people falsely, though I did see and recognised at
once in the crowd at the fire two or three of the rowdy lot I
had seen in the refreshment-room. I particularly remember one
thin, tall fellow, a cabinet-maker, as I found out later, with an
emaciated face and a curly head, black as though grimed with
soot. He was not drunk, but in contrast to the gloomy passivity
of the crowd seemed beside himself with excitement. He kept
addressing the people, though I don't remember his words ;
nothing coherent that he said was longer than " I say, lads, what
do you say to this ? Are things to go on like this ? " and so
saying he waved his arms.

CHAPTER III
A ROMANCE ENDED

From the large ballroom of Skvoreshniki (the room in
which the last interview with Varvara Petrovna and Stepan
Trofimovitch had taken place) the fire could be plainly seen.
At daybreak, soon after five in the morning, Liza was standing
at the farthest window on the right looking intently at the fading
glow. She was alone in the room. She was wearing the dress
she had worn the day before at the matinee — a very smart light
green dress covered with lace, but crushed and put on carelessly
and with haste. Suddenly noticing that some of the hooks were
undone in front she flushed, hurriedly set it right, snatched
up from a chair the red shawl she had flung down when she came
in the day before, and put it round her neck. Some locks of
her luxuriant hair had come loose and showed below the shawl
on her right shoulder. Her face looked weary and careworn,
but her eyes glowed under her frowning brows. She went up to
the window again and pressed her burning forehead against the
cold pane. The door opened and Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch
came in.

" I've sent a messenger on horseback," he said. " In ten minutes
we shall hear all about it, meantime the servants say that part
of the riverside quarter has been burnt down, on the right side
of the bridge near the quay. It's been burning since eleven
o'clock ; now the fire is going down."

He did not go near the window, but stood three steps behind
her ; she did not turn towards him.

" It ought to have been light an hour ago by the calendar, and
it's still almost night," she said irritably.

" ' Calendars always tell lies,' " he observed with a polit©
smile, but, a little ashamed, he made haste to add : " It's dull
to live by the calendar, Liza."

And he relapsed into silence, vexed at the ineptitude of the
second sentence. Liza gave a wry smile.

(fee/1 You are in such a melancholy mood that you cannot even
find words to speak to me. But you need not trouble, there's a

486

A ROMANCE ENDED 487

point in what you said. I always live by the calendar. Every
step I take is regulated by the calendar. Does that surprise^
you ? "

She turned quickly from the window and sat down in a low
chair.

" You sit down, too, please. We haven't long to be together
and I want to say anything I like. . . . Why shouldn't you, too,
say anything you like ? "

Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch sat beside her and softly, almost
timidly took her hand.

" What's the meaning of this tone, Liza ? Where has it
suddenly sprung from ? What do you mean by ' we haven't
long to be together ' ? That's the second mysterious phrase
since you waked, half an hour ago."

" You are beginning to reckon up my mysterious phrases ? '
she laughed. " Do you remember I told you I was a dead woman
when I came in yesterday ? That you thought fit to forget.
To forget or not to notice."

" I don't remember, Liza. Why dead ? You must live."

" And is that all ? You've quite lost your flow of words. I've
lived my hour and that's enough. Do you remember Christopher
Ivanovitch ? "

" No I don't," he answered, frowning.

" Christopher Ivanovitch at Lausanne ? He bored you dread-
fully. He always used to open the door and say, ' I've come for
one minute,' and then stay the whole day. I don't want to be
like Christopher Ivanovitch and stay the whole day."

A look of pain came into his face.

" Liza, it grieves me, this unnatural language. This affecta-
tion must hurt you, too. What's it for ? What's the object
of it ? "

His eyes glowed.

" Liza," he cried, " I swear I love you now more than yesterday
when you came to me ! "

" What a strange declaration ! Why bring in yesterday and
to-day and these comparisons ? "

" You won't leave me," he went on, almost with despair ; "we
will go away together, to-day, won't we ? Won't we ? '

" Aie, don't squeeze my hand so painfully ! Where could we
go together to-day ? To ' rise again ' somewhere ? No, we've
made experiments enough . . . and it's too slow for me ; and
I am" not fit for it ; it's too exalted for me. If we are to go,

488 THE POSSESSED

let it be to Moscow, to pay visits and entertain — that's my ideal,
you know ; even in Switzerland I didn't disguise from you what
I was like. As we can't go to Moscow and pay visits since you
are married, it's no use talking of that."
" Liza ! What happened yesterday ! "
" What happened is over ! "
" That's impossible ! That's cruel ? "
" What if it is cruel ? You must bear it if it is cruel."
c You are avenging yourself on me for yesterday's caprice," he
muttered with an angry smile. Liza flushed.
" What a mean thought ! "

" Why then did you bestow on me ... so great a happiness ?
Have I the right to know ? "

" No, you must manage without rights ; don't aggravate the
meanness of your supposition by stupidity. You are not lucky
to-day. By the way, you surely can't be afraid of public opinion
and that you will be blamed for this ' great happiness ' ? If
that's it, for God's sake don't alarm yourself. It's not your
doing at all and you are not responsible to anyone. When I
opened your door yesterday, you didn't even know who was
coming in. It was simply my caprice, as you expressed it just
now, and nothing more ! You can look every one in the face
boldly and triumphantly ! "

" Your words, that laugh, have been making me feel
cold with horror for the last hour. That ' happiness ' of which
you speak frantically is worth . . . everything to me. How
can I lose you now ? I swear I loved you less yesterday.
Why are you taking everything from me to-day ? Do you
know what it has cost me, this new hope ? I've paid for it
with life."

" Your own life or another's ? "
He got up quickly.

" What does that mean ? " he brought out, looking at her
steadily.

" Have you paid for it with your life or with mine ? is what
I mean. Or have you lost all power of understanding ? " cried
Liza, flushing. " Why did you start up so suddenly ? Why do
you stare at me with such a look ? You frighten me ? What
is it you are afraid of all the time ? I noticed some time ago that
you were afraid and you are now, this very minute . . . Good
heavens, how pale you are ! "

" If you know anything, Liza, I swear I don't . . . and I

A ROMANCE ENDED 489

asn't talking of that just now when I said that I had paid for
with life. . . ."

P I don't understand you," she brought out, faltering appre-
msively.

At last a slow brooding smile came on to his lips. He slowly
,t down, put his elbows on his knees, and covered his face with
:s hands.

f A bad dream and delirium. . . . We were talking of two
fferent things."

f I don't know what you were talking about. . . . Do you
ean to say you did not know yesterday that I should leave you
-day, did you know or not ? Don't tell a lie, did you or not ? '
" I did," he said softly.

" Well then, what would you have ? You knew and yet you
cepted ' that moment ' for yourself. Aren't we quits ? "
" Tell me the whole truth," he cried in intense distress.
When you opened my door yesterday, did you know yourself
at it was only for one hour ? "
She looked at him with hatred.

V Really, the most sensible person can ask most amazing
lestions. And why are you so uneasy ? Can it be vanity that
woman should leave you first instead of your leaving her ? Do
>u know, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, since I've been with you
ve discovered that you are very generous to me, and it's
st that I can't endure from you."

He got up from his seat and took a few steps about the room.
'Very well, perhaps it was bound to end so. . . . But how
n it all have happened ? "

I That's a question to worry about ! Especially as you know
e answer yourself perfectly well, and understand it better than
yone on earth, and were counting on it yourself. I am a young
iy, my heart has been trained on the opera, that's how it all
gan, that's the solution."
"No."

I There is nothing in it to fret your vanity. It is all the
solute truth. It began with a fine moment which was too
ich for me to bear. The day before yesterday, when I
nsulted " you before every one and you answered me so
ivalrously, I went home and guessed at once that you were
lining away from me because you were married, and not from
atempt for me which, as a fashionable young lady, I dreaded
)re than anything. I understood that it was for my sake,

490 THE POSSESSED

for me, mad as I was, that you ran away. You see how
appreciate your generosity. Then Pyotr Stepanovitch skippe*
up to me and explained it all to me at once. He revealed to m
that you were dominated by a 'great idea,' before which he am
I were as nothing, but yet that I was a stumbling-block in you
path. He brought himself in, he insisted that we three shoul
work together, and said the most fantastic things about a boa
and about maple- wood oars out of some Russian song. I compL
mented him and told him he was a poet, which he swallowe
as the real thing. And as apart from him I had known Ion
before that I had not the strength to do anything for long,
made up my mind on the spot. Well, that's all and quite enougt
and please let us have no more explanations. We might quarre
Don't be afraid of anyone, I take it all on myself. I am horri
and capricious, I was fascinated by that operatic boat, I am
young lady . . . but you know I did think that you wer
dreadfully in love with me. Don't despise the poor fool, an
don't laugh at the tear that dropped just now. I am awfull
given to crying with self-pity. Come, that's enough, that:
enough. I am no good for anything and you are no good fc
anything ; it's as bad for both of us, so let's comfort ourselvc tl
with that. Anyway, it eases our vanity."

" Dream and delirium," cried Stavrogin, wringing his handi
and pacing about the room. " Liza, poor child, what have yo
done to yourself ? "

" I've burnt myself in a candle, nothing more. Surely yo
are not crying, too ? You should show less feeling and bettc |fei
breeding. . . ."

" Why, why did you come to me ? "

" Don't you understand what a ludicrous position you pu
yourself in in the eyes of the world by asking such questions ?

" Why have you ruined yourself, so grotesquely and so stupidb
and what's to be done now ? "

" And this is Stavrogin, ' the vampire Stavrogin,' as you a|
called by a lady here who is in love with you ! Listen ! I ha\
told you already, I've put all my life into one hour and
am at peace. Do the same with yours . . . though you've n
need to : you have plenty of ' hours ' and ' moments ' of all son
before you."

" As many as you ; I give you my solemn word, not one hoi
more than you ! "

He was still walking up and down and did not see the rap: m

A ROMANCE ENDED 491

penetrating glance she turned upon him, in which there seemed
a dawning hope. But the light died away at the same moment.

" If you knew what it costs me that I can't be sincere at this
moment, Liza, if I could only tell you ..."

" Tell me ? You want to tell me something, to me ? God
save me from your secrets ! " she broke in almost in terror.

He stopped and waited uneasily.

" I ought to confess that ever since those days in Switzerland
I have had a strong feeling that you have something awful, loath-
some, some bloodshed on your conscience . . . and yet something
that would make you look very ridiculous. Beware of telling
me, if it's true : I shall laugh you to scorn. I shall laugh at you
for the rest of your life. . . . Aie, you are turning pale again ?
I won't, I won't, I'll go at once." She jumped up from her chair
with a movement of disgust and contempt.

" Torture me, punish me, vent your spite on me," he cried
in despair. " You have the full right. I knew I did not love
you and yet I ruined you ! Yes, I accepted the moment for my
own ; I had a hope . . . I've had it a long time . . . my last
hope. ... I could not resist the radiance that flooded my heart
when you came in to me yesterday, of yourself, alone, of your
own accord. I suddenly believed. . . . Perhaps I have faith in
it still."

" I will repay such noble frankness by being as frank. I don't
want to be a Sister of Mercy for you. Perhaps I really may
become a nurse unless I happen appropriately to die to-day ;
but if I do I won't be your nurse, though, of course, you need one
as much as any crippled creature. I always fancied that you
would take me to some place where there was a huge wicked
spider, big as a man, and we should spend our lives looking at it
and being afraid of it. That's how our love would spend itself.
Appeal to Dashenka ; she will go with you anywhere you like."

" Can't you help thinking of her even now ? "

" Poor little spaniel ! Give her my greetings. Does she know
that even in Switzerland you had fixed on her for your old age ?
What prudence ! What foresight ! Aie, who's that ? "

At the farther end of the room a door opened a crack ; a head
was thrust in and vanished again hurriedly.

" Is that you, Alexey Yegorytch ? " asked Stavrogin.

" No, it's only I." Pyotr Stepanovitch thrust himself half in
again. " How do you do, Lizaveta Nikolaevna ? Good morning,
anyway. I guessed I should find you both in this room. I have

492 THE POSSESSED

come for one moment literally, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. I wag
anxious to have a couple of words with you at all costs . . ,
absolutely necessary . . . only a few words ! "

Stavrogin moved towards him but turned back to Liza at the
third step.

" If you hear anything directly, Liza, let me tell you I am tc
blame for it ! "

She started and looked at him in dismay ; but he hurriedly
went out.

II

The room from which Pyotr Stepanovitch had peeped in was a
large oval vestibule. Alexey Yegorytch had been sitting there
before Pyotr Stepanovitch came in, but the latter sent him
away. Stavrogin closed the door after him and stood expectant
Pyotr Stepanovitch looked rapidly and searchingly at him."

" Well ? "

" If you know already," said Pyotr Stepanovitch hurriedly,
his e}res looking as though they would dive into Stavrogin' s soul.
" then, of course, we are none of us to blame, above all not you
for it's such a concatenation ... such a coincidence of events
... in brief, you can't be legally implicated and I've rushed here
to tell you so beforehand."

" Have they been burnt ? murdered ? "

" Murdered but not burnt, that's the trouble, but I give
you my word of honour that it's not been my fault, however mucr
you may suspect me, eh ? Do you want the whole truth : you see
the idea really did cross my mind — you hinted it yourself, no1
seriously, but teasing me (for, of course, you would not hint il
seriously), but I couldn't bring myself to it, and wouldn't bring
myself to it for anything, not for a hundred roubles — and what
was there to be gained by it, I mean for me, for me. . . ." (He was
in desperate haste and his talk was like the clacking of a rattle.]
" But what a coincidence of circumstances : I gave that drunken
fool Lebyadkin twro hundred and thirty roubles of my own money
(do you hear, my own money, there wasn't a rouble of yours
and, what's more, you know it yourself) the day before yesterday,
in the evening — do you hear, not yesterday after the matinee,
but the day before yesterday, make a note of it : it's a very
important coincidence for I did not know for certain at that time

A ROMANCE ENDED 493

hether Lizaveta Nikolaevna would come to you or not ; I
ive my own money simply because you distinguished yourself by
iking it into your head to betray your secret to every one. Well,
won't go into that . . . that's your affair . . . your chivalry
. . but I must own I was amazed, it was a knock down blow,
nd forasmuch as I was exceeding weary of these tragic stories —
id let me tell you, I talk seriously though I do use Biblical
nguage — as it was all upsetting my plans in fact, I made up my
ind at any cost, and without your knowledge, to pack the
ebyadkins off to Petersburg, especially as he was set on going
mself . I made one mistake : I gave the money in your name ;
as it a mistake or not ? Perhaps it wasn't a mistake, eh ?
isten now, listen how it has all turned out. . . ."
In the heat of his talk he went close up to Stavrogin and took
)ld of the re vers of his coat (really, it may have been on purpose).
rith a violent movement Stavrogin struck him on the arm.
" Come, what is it . . . give over . . . you'll break my arm
. . what matters is the way things have turned out," he rattled
1, not in the least surprised at the blow. " I forked out the
oney in the evening on condition that his sister and he should
t off early next morning ; I trusted that rascal Liputin with the
b of getting them into the train and seeing them off. But that
?ast Liputin wanted to play his schoolboy pranks on the public
-perhaps you heard ? At the matinee ? Listen, listen : they
)th got drunk, made up verses of which half are Liputin' s ; he
gged Lebyadkin out in a dress-coat, assuring me meanwhile that
I had packed him off that morning, but he kept him shut
>mewhere in a back room, till he thrust him on the platform
j the matinee. But Lebyadkin got drunk quickly and unex-
jctedly. Then came the scandalous scene you know of, and
ten they got him home more dead than alive, and Liputin filched
^ay the two hundred roubles, leaving him only small change,
ut it appears unluckily that already that morning Lebyadkin
id taken that two hundred roubles out of his pocket, boasted
: it and shown it in undesirable quarters. And as that was
ist what Fedka was expecting, and as he had heard some-
ring at Kirillov's (do you remember, your hint ?) he made up
s mind to take advantage of it. That's the whole truth,
am glad, anyway, that Fedka did not find the money, the rascal
as reckoning on a thousand, you know ! He was in a hurry and
ems to have been frightened by the fire himself. . . . Would
)u believe it, that fire came as a thunderbolt for me. Devil

494 THE POSSESSED

only knows what to make of it ! It is taking things into thei
own hands. . . . You see, as I expect so much of you I will hid
nothing from you : I've long been hatching this idea of a fir
because it suits the national and popular taste ; but I wa
keeping it for a critical moment, for that precious time when w
should all rise up and . . . And they suddenly took it into thei
heads to do it, on their own initiative, without orders, now a
the very moment when we ought to be lying low and keepin
quiet ! Such presumption ! . . . The fact is, I've not got t
the bottom of it yet, they talk about two Shpigulin men . .
but if there are any of our fellows in it, if any one of them ha
had a hand in it — so much the worse for him ! You see wha
comes of letting people get ever so little out of hand ! Nc
this democratic rabble, with its quintets, is a poor foundation
what we want is one magnificent, despotic will, like an idol
resting on something fundamental and external. . . . The]
the quintets will cringe into obedience and be obsequiously read;
on occasion. But, anyway, though, they are all crying out no\
that Stavrogin wanted his wife to be burnt and that that's wha
caused the fire in the town, but ..."

" Why, are they all saying that ? "

" Well, not yet, and I must confess I have heard nothing of th<
sort, but what one can do with people, especially when they'v
been burnt out ! Vox populi vox Dei. A stupid rumour is sooi
set going. But you really have nothing to be afraid of. Fron
the legal point of view you are all right, and with your conscienc*
also. For you didn't want it done, did you ? There's no clue
nothing but the coincidence. . . . The only thing is Fedka ma^
remember what you said that night at Kirillov's (and what mad
you say it ?) but that proves nothing and we shall stop Fedka',
mouth. I shall stop it to-day. ..."

" And weren't the bodies burnt at all ? "

" Not a bit ; that ruffian could not manage anything properly
But I am glad, anyway, that you are so calm . . . for though yoi
are not in any way to blame, even in thought, but all the same
. . . And you must admit that all this settles your difficultiej
capitally : you are suddenly free and a widower and can marrj
a charming girl this minute with a lot of money, who is alreadj
yours, into the bargain. See what can be done by crude, simple
coincidence — eh ? "

" Are you threatening me, you fool ? "

" Come, leave off, leave off ! Here you are, calling me a fool

A ROMANCE ENDED 495

id what a tone to use ! You ought to be glad, yet you ... I

shed here on purpose to let you know in good time. . . .

ssides, how could I threaten you ? As if I cared for what I

uld get by threats ! I want you to help from goodwill and

>t from fear. You are the light and the sun. . . . It's I who

a terribly afraid of you, not you of me ! I am not Mavriky

ikolaevitch. . . . And only fancy, as I flew here in a racing

oshky I saw Mavriky Nikolaevitch by the fence at the farthest

rner of your garden ... in his greatcoat, drenched through,

i must have been sitting there all night ! Queer goings on !

ow mad people can be ! "

" Mavriky Nikolaevitch ? Is that true ? "

" Yes, yes. He is sitting by the garden fence. About three

inched paces from here, I think. I made haste to pass him,

it he saw me. Didn't you know ? In that case I am glad I

In't forget to tell you. A man like that is more dangerous

an anyone if he happens to have a revolver about him, and then

e night, the sleet, or natural irritability — for after all he is in a

3e position, ha ha ! What do you think ? Why is he sitting

ere ? "

" He is waiting for Lizaveta Nikolaevna, of course."

" Well ! Why should she go out to him ? And ... in such

in too . . . what a fool ! "

" She is just going out to him ! "

I Eh ! That's a piece of news ! So then . . . But listen, her

sition is completely changed now. What does she want with

tvriky now ? You are free, a widower, and can marry her

•morrow ? She doesn't know yet — leave it to me and I'll

:ange it all for you. Where is she ? We must relieve her

nd too."

" Relieve her mind ? "

I Rather ! Let's go."

I And do you suppose she won't guess what those dead bodies

>an ? " said Stavrogin, screwing up his eyes in a peculiar

f-

I Of course she won't," said Pyotr Stepanovitch with all the
afidence of a perfect simpleton, " for legally . . . Ech, what
nan you are ! What if she did guess ? Women are so clever
shutting their eyes to such things, you don't understand
•men ! Apart from it's being altogether to her interest to
irry you now, because there's no denying she's disgraced
rself ; apart from that, I talked to her of ' the boat ' and I saw

496 THE POSSESSED

that one could affect her by it, so that shows you what the girl i
made of. Don't be uneasy, she will step over those dead bodie
without turning a hair — especially as you are not to blame fo
them ; not in the least, are you ? She will only keep them p
reserve to use them against you when you've been married tw^
or three years. Every woman saves up something of the sop
out of her husband's past when she gets married, but by tha
time . . . what may not happen in a year ? Ha ha ! "

" If you've come in a racing droshky, take her to Mavrikj
Nikolaevitch now. She said just now that she could not endure
me and would leave me, and she certainly will not accept mj
carriage."

" What ! Can she really be leaving ? How can this havJ
come about ? " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, staring stupidrj
at him.

" She's guessed somehow during this night that I don't lovJ
her . . . which she knew all along, indeed."

" But don't you love her ? " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, witl
an expression of extreme surprise. " If so, why did you keel
her when she came to you yesterdaj^, instead of telling her plainli
like an honourable man that you didn't care for her ? That waj
horribly shabby on your part ; and how mean you make mi
look in her eyes ! "

Stavrogin suddenly laughed.

" I am laughing at my monkey," he explained at once.

" Ah ! You saw that I was putting it on ! " cried PyotJ
Stepanovitch, laughing too, with great enjoyment. " I did
it to amuse you ! Only fancy, as soon as you came out to mJ
I guessed from your face that you'd been ' unlucky.' A complete
fiasco, perhaps. Eh ? There ! I'll bet anything," he cried
almost gasping with delight, " that you've been sitting side b}\
side in the drawing-room all night wasting your precious timd
discussing something lofty and elevated . . . There, forgiva
me, forgive me ; it's not my business. I felt sure yesterdajl
that it would all end in foolishness. I brought her to yoi
simply to amuse you, and to show you that you wouldn't hav«
a dull time with me. I shall be of use to you a hundred timed
in that way. I always like pleasing people. If you don't wanll
her now, which was what I was reckoning on when I camel
then . . ."

" So 3^011 brought her simply for my amusement ? '

" Why, what else ? "

A ROMANCE ENDED 497

" Not to make me kill my wife ? "

" Come. You've not killed her ? What a tragic fellow you
re ! "

"It's just the same ; you killed her."

" I didn't kill her ! I tell you I had no hand in it. . . . You
re beginning to make me uneasy, though. ..."

" Go on. You said, ' if you don't want her now, then . . . '

" Then, leave it to me, of course. I can quite easily, marry her
ff to Mavriky Nikolaevitch, though I didn't make him sit down
•y the fence. Don't take that notion into your head. I am
fraid of him, now. You talk about my droshky, but I simply
ashed by. . . . What if he has a revolver ? It's a good thing
brought mine. Here it is." He brought a revolver out of his
•ocket, showed it, and hid it again at once. " I took it as I was
oming such a long way. . . . But I'll arrange all that for you
a a twinkling : her little heart is aching at this moment for
lavriky ; it should be, anyway. . . . And, do you know, I am
eally rather sorry for her ? If I take her to Mavriky she will
>egin about you directly ; she will praise you to him and abuse
dm to his face. You know the heart of woman ! There you
re, laughing again ! I am awfully glad that you are so cheerful
low. Come, let's go. I'll begin with Mavriky right away, and
,bout them . . . those who've been murdered . . . hadn't we
>etter keep quiet now ? She'll hear later on, anyway."

" What will she hear ? Who's been murdered ? What were
rou saying about Mavriky Nikolaevitch ? " said Liza, suddenly
>pening the door.

" Ah ! You've been listening ? "

" What were you saying just now about Mavriky Nikolaevitch?
las he been murdered ? "

" Ah ! Then you didn't hear ? Don't distress yourself,
Mavriky Nikolaevitch is alive and well, and you can satisfy your-
elf of it in an instant, for he is here by the wayside, by the garden
ence . . . and I believe he's been sitting there all night. He is
trenched through in his greatcoat ! He saw me as I drove
>ast."

' That's not true. You said ' murdered.' . . . Who's been
lurdered ? " she insisted with agonising mistrust.

" The only people who have been murdered are my wife, her
rother Lebyadkin, and their servant," Stavrogin brought out
rmly.

Liza trembled and turned terribly pale.

2i

498 THE POSSESSED

" A strange brutal outrage, Lizaveta Nikolaevna. A stupid
case of robbery," Pyotr Stepanovitch rattled off at once.
" Simply robbery, under cover of the fire. The crime was
committed by Fedka the convict, and it was all that fool
Lebyadkin's fault for showing every one his money. ... I
rushed here with the news ... it fell on me like a thunderbolt.
Stavrogin could hardly stand when I told him. We were
deliberating here whether to tell you at once or not ? "

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, is he telling the truth ? " Liza
articulated faintly.

"No; it's false."

" False ! " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, starting. " What do you
mean by that ? "

" Heavens ! I shall go mad ! " cried Liza.

" Do you understand, anyway, that he is mad now ! " Pyotr
Stepanovitch cried at the top of his voice. " After all, his
wife has just been murdered. You see how white he is. . . .
Why, he has been with you the whole night. He hasn't left
your side a minute. How can you suspect him ? "

" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, tell me, as before God, are yon
guilty or not, and I swear I'll believe your word as though it
were God's, and I'll follow you to the end of the earth. Yes, I
will. I'll follow you like a dog."

" Why are you tormenting her, you fantastic creature ? ,f
cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in exasperation. " Lizaveta Niko-
laevna, upon my oath, you can crush me into powder, but he is
not guilty. On the contrary, it has crushed him, and he is raving,
you see that. He is not to blame in any way, not in any way,
not even in thought ! . . . It's all the work of robbers who
will probably be found within a week and flogged. . . . It's
all the work of Fedka the convict, and some Shpigulin men, all
the town is agog with it. That's why I say so too."

" Is that right ? Is that right ? " Liza waited trembling for
her final sentence.

" I did not kill them, and I was against it, but I knew they
were going to be killed and I did not stop the murderers. |
Leave me, Liza," Stavrogin brought out, and he walked into the
drawing-room.

Liza hid her face in her hands and walked out of the housej
Pyotr Stepanovitch was rushing after her, but at once hurri<
backhand went into the drawing-room.

" So that's your line ? That's your line ? So there's nothii

A ROMANCE ENDED 499

fou are afraid of ? " He flew at Stavrogin in an absolute fury,
nuttering incoherently, scarcely able to find words and foaming
it the mouth.

Stavrogin stood in the middle of the room and did not answer
i word. He clutched a lock of his hair in his left hand and
imiled helplessly. Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled him violently by
ihe sleeve.

" Is it all over with you ? So that's the line you are taking ?
You'll inform against all of us, and go to a monastery yourself,
)r to the devil. . . . But I'll do for you, though you are not
tfraid of me ! "

" Ah ! That's you chattering ! " said Stavrogin, noticing him
it last. " Run," he said, coming to himself suddenly, " run
tfter her, order the carriage, don't leave her. . . . Run, run !
rake her home so that no one may know . . . and that she
nayn't go there ... to the bodies ... to the bodies. . . .
?orce her to get into the carriage . . . Alexey Yegorytch !
Uexey Yegorytch ! "

" Stay, don't shout ! By now she is in Mavriky's arms. . . .
^lavriky won't put her into your carriage. . . . Stay ! There's
iomething more important than the carriage ! "

He seized his revolver again. Stavrogin looked at him
gravely.

" Very well, kill me," he said softly, almost conciliatorily.

" Foo. Damn it ! What a maze of false sentiment a man
>an get into ! " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, shaking with rage.
* Yes, really, you ought to be killed ! She ought simply to spit
it you ! Eine sort of ' magic boat,' you are ; you are a broken-
lown, leaky old hulk ! . . . You ought to pull yourself together
f only from spite ! Ech ! Why, what difference would it
nake to you since you ask for a bullet through your brains
yourself ? "

Stavrogin smiled strangely.

" If you were not such a buffoon I might perhaps have said
pes now. ... If you haoSonly a grain of sense . . ."

" I am a buffoon, but I don't want you, my better half, to be
me ! Do you understand me ? "

Stavrogin did understand, though perhaps no one else did.
Shatov, for instance, was astonished when Stavrogin told him
that Pyotr Stepanovitch had enthusiasm.

"Go to the devil now, and to-morrow perhaps I may wring
something out of myself. Come to-morrow."

500 THE POSSESSED

" Yes ? Yes ? "

" How can I tell ! ... Go to hell. Go to hell." And he
walked out of the room.

" Perhaps, after all, it may be for the best," Pyotr Stepanovitch
muttered to himself as he hid the revolver.

Ill

He rushed off to overtake Lizaveta Nikolaevna. She had not
got far away, only a few steps, from the house. She had been
detained by Alexey Yegorytch, who was following a step behind
her, in a tail coat, and without a hat ; his head was bowed
respectfully. He was persistently entreating her to wait for a
carriage ; the old man was alarmed and almost in tears.

" Go along. Your master is asking for tea, and there's no one
to give it to him," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, pushing him away.
He took Liza's arm.

She did not pull her arm away, but she seemed hardly to know
what she was doing ; she was still dazed.

" To begin with, you are going the wrong way," babbled Pyotr
Stepanovitch. " We ought to go this way, and not by the
garden, and, secondly, walking is impossible in any case. It's
over two miles, and you are not properly dressed. If you would
wait a second, I came in a droshky ; the horse is in the yard. I'll
get it instantly, put you in, and get you home so that no one sees
you."

" How kind you are," said Liza graciously.

" Oh, not at all. Any humane man in my position would do
the same. ..."

Liza looked at him, and was surprised.

" Good heavens ! Why I thought it was that old man here
still."

" Listen. I am awfully glad that you take it like this, because
it's all such a frightfully stupid convention, and since it's come to
that, hadn't I better tell the old man to get the carriage at once.
It's only a matter of ten minutes and we'll turn back and wait
in the porch, eh ? "

" I want first . . . where are those murdered people ? v

" Ah ! What next ? That was what I was afraid of . . . .

A ROMANCE ENDED 501

No, we'd better leave those wretched creatures alone ; it's no
use your looking at them."

" I know where they are. I know that house."

" Well ? What if you do know it ? Come ; it's raining,
and there's a fog. (A nice job this sacred duty I've taken upon
myself.) Listen, Lizaveta Nikolaevna ! It's one of two alter-
natives. Either you come with me in the droshky — in that
case wait here, and don't take another step, for if we go another
twenty steps we must be seen by Mavriky Nikolaevitch."

" Mavriky Nikolaevitch ! Where ? Where ? "

" Well, if you want to go with him, I'll take you a little farther,
if you like, and show you where he sits, but I don't care to go
up to him just now. No, thank you."

" He is waiting for me. Good God ! " she suddenly stopped,
and a flush of colour flooded her face.

" Oh ! Come now. If he is an unconventional man ! You
know, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, it's none of my business. I am a
complete outsider, and you know that yourself. But, still, I
wish you well. ... If your ' fairy boat ' has failed you, if it has
turned out to be nothing more than a rotten old hulk, only fit
to be chopped up . . ."

" Ah ! That's fine, that's lovely," cried Liza.

" Lovely, and yet your tears are falling. You must have
spirit. You must be as good as a man in every way. In our
age, when woman . . . Foo, hang it," Pyotr Stepanovitch
was on the point of spitting. " And the chief point is that there
is nothing to regret. It may all turn out for the best. Mavriky
Nikolaevitch is a man. ... In fact, he is a man of feeling
though not talkative, but that's a good thing, too, as long as he
has no conventional notions, of course. ..."

" Lovely, lovely ! " Liza laughed hysterically.

" Well, hang it all . . . Lizaveta Nikolaevna," said Pyotr
Stepanovitch suddenly piqued. " I am simply here on your
account. . . . It's nothing to me. ... I helped you yesterday
when you wanted it yourself. To-day . . . well, you can see
Mavriky Nikolaevitch from here ; there he's sitting ; he doesn't
see us. I say, Lizaveta Nikolaevna, have you ever read ' Polenka
Saxe ' ? "

" What's that ? "

" It's the name of a novel, ' Polenka Saxe.' I read it when I
was a student. ... In it a very wealthy official of some sort,
Saxe, arrested his wife at a summer villa for infidelity. . . .

502 THE POSSESSED

But, hang it ; it's no consequence ! You'll see, Mavriky Nikolae-
vitch will make you an offer before you get home. He doesn't
see us yet."

" Ach ! Don't let him see us ! " Liza cried suddenly, like a
mad creature. " Come away, come away ! To the woods, to
the fields ! "

And she ran back.

" Lizaveta Nikolaevna, this is such cowardice," cried Pyotr
Stepanovitch, running after her. " And why don't you want him
to see you ? On the contrary, you must look him straight in
the face, with pride. ... If it's some feeling about that . . .
some maidenly . . . that's such a prejudice, so out of date. . .
But where are you going ? Where are you going ? Ech ! she
is running ! Better go back to Stavrogin's and take my droshky.
. . . Where are you going ? That's the way to the fields !
There ! She's fallen down ! . . ."

He stopped. Liza was flying along like a bird, not conscious
where she was going, and Pyotr Stepanovitch was already fifty
paces behind her. She stumbled over a mound of earth and
fell down. At the same moment there was the sound of a terrible
shout from behind. It came from Mavriky Nikolaevitch, who
had seen her flight and her fall, and was running to her across
the field. In a flash Pyotr Stepanovitch had retired into
Stavrogin's gateway to make haste and get into his droshky.

Mavriky Nikolaevitch was already standing in terrible alarm
by Liza, who had risen to her feet ; he was bending over her
and holding her hands in both of his. All the incredible surround-
ings of this meeting overwhelmed him, and tears were rolling
down his cheeks. He saw the woman for whom he had such
reverent devotion running madly across the fields, at such an
hour, in such weather, with nothing over her dress, the gay dress
she wore the day before now crumpled and muddy from her
fall. . . . He could not utter a word ; he took off his great-
coat, and with trembling hands put it round her shoulders.
Suddenly he uttered a cry, feeling that she had pressed her hps
to his hand.

" Liza," he cried, " I am no good for anything, but don't
drive me away from you ! "

" Oh, no ! Let us make haste away from here. Don't leave
me ! " and, seizing his hand, she drew him after her. " Mavriky
Nikolaevitch," she suddenly dropped her voice timidly, " I kept
a bold face there all the time, but now I am afraid of death.

A ROMANCE ENDED 503

I shall die soon, very soon, but I am afraid, I am afraid to
die . . ." she whispered, pressing his hand tight.

" Oh, if there were some one," he looked round in despair.
" Some passer-by ! You will get your feet wet, you . . . will
lose your reason ! "

" It's all right ; it's all right," she tried to reassure him.
" That's right. I am not so frightened with you. Hold my
hand, lead me. . . . Where are we going now ? Home ?
No ! I want first to see the people who have been murdered.
His wife has been murdered they say, and he says he killed
her himself. But that's not true, is it ? I want to see for
myself those three who've been killed ... on my account
. . . it's because of them his love for me has grown cold since
last night. ... I shall see and find out everything. Make
haste, make haste, I know the house . . . there's a fire there.
. . . Mavriky Nikolaevitch, my dear one, don't forgive me in
my shame ! Why forgive me ? Why are you crying ? Give
me a blow and kill me here in the field, like a dog ! "

" No one is your judge now," Mavriky Nikolaevitch pro-
nounced firmly. " God forgive you. I least of all can be your
judge."

But it would be strange to describe their conversation. And
meanwhile they walked hand in hand quickly, hurrying as though
they were crazy. They were going straight towards the fire.
Mavriky Nikolaevitch still had hopes of meeting a cart at least,
but no one came that way. A mist of fine, drizzling rain
enveloped the whole country, swallowing up every ray of light,
every gleam of colour, and transforming everything into one
smoky, leaden, indistinguishable mass. It had long been
day fight, yet it seemed as though it were still night. And
suddenly in this cold foggy mist there appeared coming towards
them a strange and absurd figure. Picturing it now I think I
should not have believed my eyes if I had been in Lizaveta
Nikolaevna's place, yet she uttered a cry of joy, and recognised
the approaching figure at once. It was Stepan Trofimovitch.
How he had gone off, how the insane, impracticable idea of his
flight came to be carried out, of that later. I will only mention
that he was in a fever that morning, yet even illness did not
prevent his starting. He was walking resolutely on the damp
ground. It was evident that he had planned the enterprise
to the best of his ability, alone with his inexperience and lack
of practical sense. He wore " travelling dress," that is, a

504 THE POSSESSED

greatcoat with a wide patent-leather belt, fastened with a buckle,
and a pair of new high boots pulled over his trousers. Probably
he had for some time past pictured a traveller as looking like
this, and the belt and the high boots with the shining tops like
a hussar's, in which he could hardly walk, had been ready some
time before. A broad-brimmed hat, a knitted scarf, twisted
close round his neck, a stick in his right hand, and an exceedingly
small but extremely tightly packed bag in his left, completed
his get-up. He had, besides, in the same right hand, an open
umbrella. These three objects — the umbrella, the stick, and the
bag — had been very awkward to carry for the first mile, and
had begun to be heavy by the second.

" Can it really be you ? " cried Liza, looking at him with
distressed wonder, after her first rush of instinctive gladness.

" Lise," cried Stepan Trofimovitch, rushing to her almost
in delirium too. " Chere, chert. . . . Can you be out, too . . .
in such a fog ? You see the glow of fire. Vous etes malheureuse,
n'est-ce pas ? I see, I see. Don't tell me, but don't question me
either. Nous sommes tous malheureux mats il faut les par dormer
tous. Pardonnons, Lise, and let us be free for ever. To be
quit of the world and be completely free. II faut pardonner,
pardonner, et pardonner ! "

" But why are you kneeling down ? "

" Because, taking leave of the world, I want to take leave
of all my past in your person ! " He wept and raised both her
hands to his tear-stained eyes. " I kneel to all that was beautiful
in my fife. I kiss and give thanks ! Now I've torn myself in
half ; left behind a mad visionary who dreamed of soaring to
the sky. Vingt-deux ans, here. A shattered, frozen old man.
A tutor chez ce marchand, s'il existe pourtant ce marchand. . . .
But how drenched you are, Lise ! " he cried, jumping on to his
feet, feeling that his knees too were soaked by the wet earth.
'"And how is it possible . . . you are in such a dress . . .
and on foot, and in these fields ? . . . You are crying ! Vous
etes malheureuse. Bah, I did hear something. . . . But where
have you come from now ? " He asked hurried questions with an
uneasy air, looking in extreme bewilderment at Mavriky Nikolae-
vitch. " Mais savez-vous Vheure qu'il est ? "

" Stepan Trofimovitch, have you heard anything about the
people who've been murdered ? ... Is it true ? Is it true ? '*

" These people ! I saw the glow of their work all night.
They were bound to end in this. . . ." His eyes flashed again.

A ROMANCE ENDED 505

1 1 am fleeing away from madness, from a delirious dream.

am fleeing away to seek for Russia. Existe-t-elle, la Russie ?
lah ! C'est vous, cher capitaine ! I've never doubted that I
hould meet you somewhere on some high adventure. . . .
Sut take my umbrella, and — why must you be on foot ? For
k)d's sake, do at least take my umbrella, for I shall hire a carriage
ome where in any case. I am on foot because Stasie (I mean,
Jastasya) would have shouted for the benefit of the whole street
I she'd found out I was going away. So I slipped away as far
,s possible incognito. I don't know ; in the Voice they write of
here being brigands everywhere, but I thought surely I shouldn't
aeet a brigand the moment I came out on the road. Chere Lise,

thought you said something of some one's being murdered.
)h, mon Dieu ! You are ill ! "

" Come along, come along ! " cried Liza, almost in hysterics,
[rawing Mavriky Nikolaevitch after her again. " Wait a
ainute, Stepan Trofimovitch ! " she came back suddenly to him.
1 Stay, poor darling, let me sign you with the cross. Perhaps,
b would be better to put you under control, but I'd rather make
he sign of the cross over you. You, too, pray for ' poor ' Liza —
ust a little, don't bother too much about it. Mavriky Nikolae-
itch, give that baby back his umbrella. You must give it him.
?hat's right. . . . Come, let us go, let us go ! "

They reached the fatal house at the very moment when the
mge crowd, which had gathered round it, had already heard a
;ood deal of Stavrogin, and of how much it was to his interest
o murder his wife. Yet, I repeat, the immense majority went
>n listening without moving or uttering a word. The only people
srho were excited were bawling drunkards and excitable indi-
iduals of the same sort as the gesticulatory cabinet-maker.
Dvery one knew the latter as a man really of mild disposition,
rat he was liable on occasion to get excited and to fly off at a
angent if anything struck him in a certain way. I did not see
jiza and Mavriky Nikolaevitch arrive. Petrified with amaze-
aent, I first noticed Liza some distance away in the crowd, and
'. did not at once catch sight of Mavriky Nikolaevitch. I fancy
here was a moment when he fell two or three steps behind
ier or was pressed back by the crush. Liza, forcing her way
ihrough the crowd, seeing and noticing nothing round her,
ike one in a delirium, like a patient escaped from a hospital,
ittracted attention only too quickly, of course. There arose a hub-
)ub of loud talking and at last sudden shouts. Some one bawled

506 THE POSSESSED

out, " It's Stavrogin's woman ! " And on the other side, " It's
not enough to murder them, she wants, to look at them ! "
All at once I saw an arm raised above her head from behind and
suddenly brought down upon it. Liza fell to the ground. We
heard a fearful scream from Mavriky Nikolaevitch as he dashed to
her assistance and struck with all his strength the man who stood
between him and Liza. But at that instant the same cabinet-
maker seized him with both arms from behind. For some
minutes nothing could be distinguished in the scrimmage that
followed. I believe Liza got up but was knocked down by
another blow. Suddenly the crowd parted and a small space
was left empty round Liza's prostrate figure, and Mavriky
Nikolaevitch, frantic with grief and covered with blood, was
standing over her, screaming, weeping, and wringing his hands.
I don't remember exactly what followed after ; I only remember
that they began to carry Liza away. I ran after her. She was
still alive and perhaps still conscious. The cabinet-maker
and three other men in the crowd were seized. These three stiU
deny having taken any part in the dastardly deed, stubbornly
maintaining that they have been arrested by mistake. Perhaps
it's the truth. Though the evidence against the cabinet-make?
is clear, he is so irrational that he is still unable to explain what
happened coherently. I too, as a spectator, though at some
distance, had to give evidence at the inquest. I declared that
it had all happened entirely accidentally through the action of
men perhaps moved by ill-feeling, yet scarcely conscious of what
they were doing — drunk and irresponsible. I am of that opinion
to this day.

CHAPTER IV
THE LAST RESOLUTION

hat morning many people saw Pyotr Stepanovitch. All who
,w him remembered that he was in a particularly excited state.
t two o'clock he went to see Gaganov, who had arrived from
le country only the day before, and whose house was full of
sitors hotly discussing the events of the previous day. Pyotr
;epanovitch talked more than anyone and made them listen
• him. He was always considered among us as a " chatterbox

a student with a screw loose," but now he talked of Yulia
ihailovna, and in the general excitement the theme was an
tthralling one. As one who had recently been her intimate
id confidential friend, he disclosed many new and unexpected
stails concerning her ; incidentally (and of course unguardedly)
> repeated some of her own remarks about persons known to
I in the town, and thereby piqued their vanity. He dropped
all in a vague and rambling way, like a man free from guile
iven by his sense of honour to the painful necessity of clearing
) a perfect mountain of misunderstandings, and so simple-
$arted that he hardly knew where to begin and where to leave
f. He let slip in a rather unguarded way, too, that Yulia
ihailovna knew the whole secret of Stavrogin and that she
id been at the bottom of the whole intrigue. She had taken
in in too, for he, Pyotr Stepanovitch, had also been in love
ith this unhappy Liza, yet he had been so hoodwinked that
) had almost taken her to Stavrogin himself in the carriage.
Yes, yes, it's all very well for you to laugh, gentlemen, but if
Jy I'd known, if I'd known how it would end ! " he concluded.
) various excited inquiries about Stavrogin he bluntly replied
at in his opinion the catastrophe to the Lebyadkins was a pure
incidence, and that it was all Lebyadkin's own fault fordis-
aying his money. He explained this particularly well. One of
3 listeners observed that it was no good his " pretending " ; that

had eaten and drunk and almost slept at Yulia Mihailovna's,
t now he was the first to blacken her character, and that

507

308 THE POSSESSED

this was by no means such a fine thing to do as he supposed
But Pyotr Stepanovitch immediately defended himself.

" I ate and drank there not because I had no money, and it's
not my fault that I was invited there. Allow me to judge foi
myself how far I need to be grateful for that."

The general impression was in his favour. " He may be
rather absurd, and of course he is a nonsensical fellow, yet stil
he is not responsible for Yulia Mihailovna's foolishness. Or
the contrary, it appears that he tried to stop her."

About two o'clock the news suddenly came that Stavrogin
about whom there was so much talk, had suddenly left foi
Petersburg by the midday train. This interested people
immensely ; many of them frowned. Pyotr Stepanovitch was
so much struck that I was told he turned quite pale and criec
out strangely, " Why, how could they have let him go ? " He
hurried away from Gaganov's forthwith, yet he was seen in twc
or three other houses.

Towards dusk he succeeded in getting in to see Yulia Mihailovm
though he had the greatest pains to do so, as she had absolutely
refused to see him. I heard of this from the lady herself onlj
three weeks afterwards, just before her departure for Petersburg
She gave me no details, but observed with a shudder that " hdl
had on that occasion astounded her beyond all belief." I imagine
that all he did was to terrify her by threatening to charge hes
with being an accomplice if she " said anything." The necessity
for this intimidation arose from his plans at the moment, o
which she, of course, knew nothing ; and only later, five dayi
afterwards, she guessed why he had been so doubtful of he]
reticence and so afraid of a new outburst of indignation on he:
part.

Between seven and eight o'clock, when it was dark, all the fiv<
members of the quintet met together at Ensign Erkel's lodging,
in a little crooked house at the end of the town. The meeting
had been fixed by Pyotr Stepanovitch himself, but he was unpar
donably late, and the members waited over an hour for him
This Ensign Erkel was that young officer who had sat the who!
evening at Virginsky's with a pencil in his hand and a notebooj
before him. He had not long been in the town ; he lodged aloi
with two old women, sisters, in a secluded by-street and wa
shortly to leave the town ; a meeting at his house was less likerj
to attract notice than anywhere. This strange boy was distin
guished by extreme taciturnity : he was capable of sitting f6

THE LAST RESOLUTION 509

dozen evenings in succession in noisy company, with the most
ctraordinary conversation going on around him, without uttering

word, though he listened with extreme attention, watching
le speakers with his childlike eyes. His face was very pretty
id even had a certain look of cleverness. He did not belong
> the quintet ; it was supposed that he had some special job
I a purely practical character. It is known now that he had
3thing of the sort and probably did not understand his position
mself. It was simply that he was filled with hero-worship
>r Pyotr Stepanovitch, whom he had only lately met. If he
id met a monster of iniquity who had incited him to found a
md of brigands on the pretext of some romantic and socialistic
yject, and as a test had bidden him rob and murder the first
3asant he met, he would certainly have obeyed and done it.
e had an invalid mother to whom he sent half of his scanty
ay — and how she must have kissed that poor little flaxen head,
dw she must have trembled and prayed over it ! I go into these
stails about him because I feel very sorry for him.

" Our fellows " were excited. The events of the previous night
ad made a great impression on them, and I fancy they were in
panic. The simple disorderliness in which they had so zealously
[id systematically taken part had ended in a way they had not
spec ted. The fire in the night, the murder of the Lebyadkins,
le savage brutality of the crowd with Liza, had been a series of
irprises which they had not anticipated in their programme,
hey hotly accused the hand that had guided them of despotism
rid duplicity. In fact, while they were waiting for Pyotr
tepanovitch they worked each other up to such a point that
ley resolved again to ask him for a definite explanation, and if
e evaded again, as he had done before, to dissolve the quintet
nd to found instead a new secret society " for the propaganda
f ideas " and on their own initiative on the basis of democracy
nd equality. Liputin, Shigalov, and the authority on the
easantry supported this plan ; Lyamshin said nothing, though
e looked approving. Virginsky hesitated and wanted to hear
'yotr Stepanovitch first. It was decided to hear Pyotr Stepano-
itch, but still he did not come ; such casualness added fuel to
be flames. Erkel was absolutely silent and did nothing but
rder the tea, which he brought from his landladies in glasses
n a tray, not bringing in the samovar nor allowing the servant
o enter.

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not turn up till half- past eight. With

510 THE POSSESSED

rapid steps he went up to the circular table before the sofa
round which the company were seated ; he kept his cap in his
hand and refused tea. He looked angry, severe, and supercilious.
He must have observed at once from their faces that they were
" mutinous."

" Before I open my mouth, you've got something hidden ;
out with it."

Liputin began " in the name of all," and declared in a voice
quivering with resentment " that if things were going on like
that they might as well blow their brains out." Oh, they were
not at all afraid to blow their brains out, they were quite ready
to, in fact, but only to serve the common cause (a general move
ment of approbation). So he must be more open with them
so that they might always know beforehand, " or else what would
things be coming to ? " (Again a stir and some guttural sounds.)
To behave like this was humiliating and dangerous. " We don't
say so because we are afraid, but if one acts and the rest are only
pawns, then one would blunder and all would be lost." (Exclama
tions. " Yes, yes." General approval.)

" Damn it all, what do you want ? "

" What connection is there between the common cause and
the petty intrigues of Mr. Stavrogin ? " cried Liputin, boiling
over. " Suppose he is in some mysterious relation to the centre,
if that legendary centre really exists at all, it's no concern oi
ours. And meantime a murder has been committed, the police
have been roused ; if they follow the thread they may find
what it starts from."

" If Stavrogin and you are caught, we shall be caught too,"
added the authority on the peasantry.

" And to no good purpose for the common cause," VirginskJ
concluded despondently.

" What nonsense ! The murder is a chance crime ; it wafi|
committed by Fedka for the sake of robbery."

" H'm ! Strange coincidence, though," said Liputin, wrigglingj

" And if you will have it, it's all through you."

" Through us ? "

c' In the first place, you, Liputin, had a share in the intrigtj
yourself ; and the second chief point is, you were ordered to get
Lebyadkin away and given money to do it ; and what did yoi) *
do ? If you'd got him away nothing would have happened."

" But wasn't it you yourself who suggested the idea that it
would be a good thing to set him on to read his verses ? "

THE LAST RESOLUTION 511

" An idea is not a command. The command was to get him
iway."

" Command ! Rather a queer word. . . . On the contrary,
pour orders were to delay sending him off."

" You made a mistake and showed your foolishness and self-
will. The murder was the work of Fedka, and he carried it out
done for the sake of robbery. You heard the gossip and believed
t. You were scared. Stavrogin is not such a fool, and the
jroof of that is he left the town at twelve o'clock after an inter-
view with the vice-governor ; if there were anything in it they
^ould not let him go to Petersburg in broad daylight."

" But we are not making out that Mr. Stavrogin committed
}he murder himself," Liputin rejoined spitefully and uncere-
noniously. " He may have known nothing about it, like me ;
md you know very well that I knew nothing about it, though
[ am mixed up in it like mutton in a hash."

" Whom are you accusing ? " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, looking
it him darkly.

" Those whose interest it is to burn down towns."

" You make matters worse by wriggling out of it. However,
won't you read this and pass it to the others, simply as a fact of
nterest ? "

He pulled out of his pocket Lebyadkin's anonymous letter to
Lembke and handed it to Liputin. The latter read it, was
evidently surprised, and passed it thoughtfully to his neighbour ;
>he letter quickly went the round.

" Is that really Lebyadkin's handwriting ? " observed Shigalov.

"It is," answered Liputin and Tolkatchenko (the authority
hi the peasantry).

" I simply brought it as a fact of interest and because I knew
fou were so sentimental over Lebyadkin," repeated Pyotr
Stepanovitch, taking the letter back. " So it turns out, gentle-
nen, that a stray Fedka relieves us quite by chance of a dangerous
nan. That's what chance does sometimes ! It's instructive,
sn't it ? "

The members exchanged rapid glances.

"And now, gentlemen, it's my turn to ask questions," said
Pyotr Stepanovitch, assuming an air of dignity. " Let me know
what business you had to set fire to the town without permission."

" What's this ! We, we set fire to the town ? That is laying
the blame on others ! " they exclaimed.

" I quite understand that you carried the game too far,"

512 THE POSSESSED

Pyotr Stepanovitch persisted stubbornly, " but it's not a matter
of pett}^ scandals with Yulia Mihailovna. I've brought you here,
gentlemen, to explain to you the greatness of the danger you have
so stupidly incurred, which is a menace to much besides
yourselves."

" Excuse me, we, on the contrary, were intending just now to
point out to you the greatness of the despotism and unfairness
you have shown in taking such a serious and also strange step
without consulting the members," Virginsky, who had been
hitherto silent, protested, almost with indignation.

" And so you deny it ? But I maintain that you set fire to
the town, you and none but you. Gentlemen, don't tell lies ;
I have good evidence. By your rashness you exposed the common
cause to danger. You are only one knot in an endless network
of knots — and your duty is blind obedience to the centre. Yet
three men of you incited the Shpigulin men to set fire to the
town without the least instruction to do so, and the fire has
taken place."

" What three ? What three of us ? "

" The day before yesterday, at three o'clock in the night, you,
Tolkatchenko, were inciting Fomka Zavyalov at the ' Forget-
me-not.' "

" Upon my word ! " cried the latter, jumping up, " I scarcely
said a word to him, and what I did say was without intention,
simply because he had been flogged that morning. And I
dropped it at once ; I saw he was too drunk. If you had not
referred to it I should not have thought of it again. A word could
not set the place on fire."

" You are like a man who should be surprised that a tiny
spark could blow a whole powder magazine into the air."

" I spoke in a whisper in his ear, in a corner ; how could you
have heard of it ? "

Tolkatchenko reflected suddenly.

"I was sitting there under the table. Don't disturb your-
selves, gentlemen ; I know every step you take. You smile
sarcastically, Mr. Liputin ? But I know, for instance, that
you pinched your wife black and blue at midnight, three days
ago, in your bedroom as you were going to bed."

Liputin's mouth fell open and he turned pale. (It was after-
wards found out that he knew of this exploit of Liputin's from
Agafya, Liputin's servant, whom he had paid from the beginning
to spy on him ; this only came out later.)

1

P

i

THE LAST RESOLUTION 513

" May I state a fact ? " said Shigalov, getting up.

" State it."

Shigalov sat down and pulled himself together.

" So far as I understand — and it's impossible not to understand
i — you yourself at first and a second time later, drew with
reat eloquence, but too theoretically, a picture of Russia
Dvered with an endless network of knots. Each of these
3ntres of activity, proselytising and ramifying endlessly, aims
y systematic denunciation to injure the prestige of local autho-
ty, to reduce the villages to confusion, to spread cynicism and
jandals, together with complete disbelief in everything and an
agerness for something better, and finally, by means of fires,
s a pre-eminently national method, to reduce the country at a
Lven moment, if need be, to desperation. Are those your words
rhich I tried to remember accurately ? Is that the programme
ou gave us as the authorised representative of the central
ammittee, which is to this day utterly unknown to us and
Imost like a myth ? "

" It's correct, only you are very tedious."

" Every one has a right to express himself in his own way.
riving us to understand that the separate knots of the general
etwork already covering Russia number by now several hundred,
nd propounding the theory that if every one does his work
accessfully, all Russia at a given moment, at a signal ..."

" Ah, damn it all, I have enough to do without you ! " cried
'yotr Stepanovitch, twisting in his chair.

" Very well, I'll cut it short and I'll end simply by asking if
re've seen the disorderly scenes, we've seen the discontent
f the people, we've seen and taken part in the downfall of local
dministration, and finally, we've seen with our own eyes the
Dwn on fire ? What do you find amiss ? Isn't that your
rogramme ? What can you blame us for ? "

" Acting on your own initiative ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch cried
iriously. " While I am here you ought not to have dared
t> act without my permission. Enough. We are on the eve
: betrayal, and perhaps to-morrow or to-night you'll be seized.

• there. I have authentic information."

At this all were agape with astonishment.

T You will be arrested not only as the instigators of the fire,
at as a quintet. The traitor knows the whole secret of the
etwork. So you see what a mess you've made of it ! ''
; Stavrogin, no doubt," cried Liputin.

2 k

514 THE POSSESSED

" What . . . why Stavrogin ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed
suddenly taken aback. " Hang it all," he cried, pulling himself
together at once, "it's Shatov 1 I believe you all know now
that Shatov in his time was one of the society. I must tell you
that, watching him through persons he does not suspect, I found
out to my amazement that he knows all about the organisation
of the network and . . . everything, in fact. To save himsel
from being charged with having formerly belonged, he will give
information against all. He has been hesitating up till no\i
and I have spared him. Your fire has decided him : he is shaker
and will hesitate no longer. To-morrow we shall be arrestee
as incendiaries and political offenders."

" Is it true ? How does Shatov know ? "

The excitement was indescribable.

" It's all perfectly true. I have no right to reveal the sourc<
from which I learnt it or how I discovered it, but I tell yoi
what I can do for you meanwhile : through one person I cai
act on Shatov so that without his suspecting it he will put of
giving information, but not more than for twenty-four hours."

All were silent.

" We really must send him to the devil ! " Tolkatchenko wai
the first to exclaim.

" It ought to have been done long ago," Lyamshin put h\
malignantly, striking the table with his fist.

" But how is it to be done ? " muttered Liputin.

Pyotr Stepanovitch at once took up the question and unfolde<
his plan. The plan was the following day at nightfall to dra-v
Shatov away to a secluded spot to hand over the secret printinj
press which had been in his keeping and was buried there, an*
there " to settle things." He went into various essential detail
which we will omit here, and explained minutely Shatov's present
ambiguous attitude to the central society, of which the readi
knows already.

" That's all very well," Liputin observed irresolutely, " bu
since it will be another adventure ... of the same sort . . . i
will make too great a sensation."

" No doubt," assented Pyotr Stepanovitch, " but I've provide
against that. We have the means of averting suspicion con ^
pletely."

And with the same minuteness he told them about Kirillo^
of his intention to shoot himself, and of his promise to wait fc
a signal from them and to leave a letter behind him taking d

id

THE LAST RESOLUTION 515

imself anything they dictated to him (all of which the reader
nows already).

" His determination to take his own life — a philosophic, or
s I should call it, insane decision — has become known there"
'yotr Stepanovitch went on to explain. " There not a thread,
ot a grain of dust is overlooked ; everything is turned to the
srvice of the cause. Foreseeing how useful it might be and
itisfying themselves that his intention was quite serious, they
ad offered him the means to come to Russia (he was set for some
sason on dying in Russia), gave him a commission which he
romised to carry out (and he had done so), and had, moreover,
ound him by a promise, as you already know, to commit
jicide only when he was told to. He promised everything.
rou must note that he belongs to the organisation on a par-
cular footing and is anxious to be of service ; more than that

can't tell you. To-morrow, after Shatov's affair, I'll dictate

note to him saying that he is responsible for his death. That
ill seem very plausible : they were friends and travelled
)gether to America, there they quarrelled ; and it will all be
splained in the letter . . . and . . . and perhaps, if it seems
jasible, we might dictate something more to Kirillov — something
bout the manifestoes, for instance, and even perhaps about the
re. But I'll think about that. You needn't worry yourselves,
e has no prejudices ; he'll sign anything."

There were expressions of doubt. It sounded a fantastic story,
lit they had all heard more or less about Kirillov ; Liputin
lore than all.

" He may change his mind and not want to," said Shigalov ;
he is a madman anyway, so he is not much to build upon."

" Don't be uneasy, gentlemen, he will want to," Pyotr Stepano-
itch snapped out. " I am obliged by our agreement to give
im warning the day before, so it must be to-day. I invite
iputin to go with me at once to see him and make certain,
id he will tell you, gentlemen, when he comes back — to-day if
3ed be — whether what I say is true. However," he broke off
iddenly with intense exasperation, as though he suddenly felt
3 was doing people like them too much honour by wasting
me in persuading them, " however, do as you please. If you
Dn't decide to do it, the union is broken up — but solely through
Dur insubordination and treachery. In that case we are all
[dependent from this moment. But under those circumstances,
bsides the unpleasantness of Shatov's betrayal and its conse-

516 THE POSSESSED

quences, you will have brought upon yourselves another little
unpleasantness of which you were definitely warned when the
union was formed. As far as I am concerned, I am not much
afraid of you, gentlemen. . . . Don't imagine that I am so
involved with you. . . . But that's no matter."

" Yes, we decide to do it," Liputin pronounced.

" There's no other way out of it," muttered Tolkatchenko,
" and if only Liputin confirms about Kirillov, then . . .

11 1 am against it ; with all my soul and strength I protest
against such a murderous decision," said Virginsky, standing up.

" But ? " asked Pyotr Stepanovitch. . . .

" But what ? "

" You said but . . . and I am waiting."

" I don't think I did say but ... I only meant to say that
if you decide to do it, then ..."

" Then ? "

Virginsky did not answer.

" I think that one is at liberty to neglect danger to one'*
own life," said Erkel, suddenly opening his mouth, " but if it maj
injure the cause, then I consider one ought not to dare to neglecl
danger to one's life. . . ."

He broke off in confusion, blushing. Absorbed as they al
were in their own ideas, they all looked at him in amazement-
it was such a surprise that he too could speak.

" I am for the cause," Virginsky pronounced suddenly.

Every one got up. It was decided to communicate onc«
more and make final arrangements at midday on the morrow
though without meeting. The place where the printing pres
was hidden was announced and each was assigned his part am
his duty. Liputin and Pyotr Stepanovitch promptly set oi
together to Kirillov.

II

All our fellows believed that Shatov was going to betray them
but they also believed that Pyotr Stepanovitch was playing wit
them like pawns. And yet they knew, too, that in any cai
they would all meet on the spot next day and that Shatov's fal
was sealed. They suddenly felt like flies caught in a web by
huge spider ; they were furious, but they were trembling wit
terror.

THE LAST RESOLUTION 517

Pyotr Stepanovitch, of course, had treated them badly ; it
might all have gone off far more harmoniously and easily if he
had taken the trouble to embellish the facts ever so little. Instead
of putting the facts in a decorous light, as an exploit worthy of
ancient Rome or something of the sort, he simply appealed to
their animal fears and laid stress on the danger to their own skins,
which was simply insulting ; of course there was a struggle for
existence in everything and there was no other principle in
nature, they all knew that, but still . . .

But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no time to trot out the Romans ;
he was completely thrown out of his reckoning. Stavrogin's
flight had astounded and crushed him. It was a he when he
said that Stavrogin had seen the vice-governor ; what worried
Pyotr Stepanovitch was that Stavrogin had gone off without
seeing anyone, even his mother — and it was certainly strange
that he had been allowed to leave without hindrance. (The
authorities were called to account for it afterwards.) Pyotr
Stepanovitch had been making inquiries all day, but so far had
found out nothing, and he had never been so upset. And how
could he, how could he give up Stavrogin all at once like this !
That was why he could not be very tender with the quintet.
Besides, they tied his hands : he had already decided to gallop
after Stavrogin at once ; and meanwhile he was detained by
Shatov ; he had to cement the quintet together once for all,
in case of emergency. " Pity to waste them, they might be of
use." That, I imagine, was his way of reasoning.

As for Shatov, Pyotr Stepanovitch was firmly convinced that
he would betray them. All that he had told the others about
it was a he : he had never seen the document nor heard of it,
but he thought it as certain as that twice two makes four. It
seemed to him that what had happened — the death of Liza, the
death of Marya Timofyevna — would be too much for Shatov,
and that he would make up his mind at once. Who knows ?
perhaps he had grounds for supposing it. It is known, too,
that he hated Shatov personally ; there had at some time been
% quarrel between them, and Pyotr Stepanovitch never forgave
an offence. I am convinced, indeed, that this was his leading
motive.

We have narrow brick pavements in our town, and in some
streets only raised wooden planks instead of a pavement. Pyotr
Stepanovitch walked in the middle of the pavement, taking up
;he whole of it, utterly regardless of Liputin, who had no room

518 THE POSSESSED

to walk beside him and so had to hurry a step behind or run in
the muddy road if he wanted to speak to him. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch suddenly remembered how he had lately splashed through
the mud to keep pace with Stavrogin, who had walked, as he
was doing now, taking up the whole pavement. He recalled
the whole scene, and rage choked him.

But Liputin, too, was choking with resentment. Pyotr
Stepanovitch might treat the others as he liked, but him ! Why,
he knew more than all the rest, was in closer touch with the work
and taking more intimate part in it than anyone, and hitherto
his services had been continual, though indirect. Oh, he knew
that even now Pyotr Stepanovitch might ruin him if it came
to the worst. But he had long hated Pyotr Stepanovitch, and
not because he was a danger but because of his overbearing
manner. Now, when he had to make up his mind to such a
deed, he raged inwardly more than all the rest put together.
Alas ! he knew that next day " like a slave " he would be the
first on the spot and would bring the others, and if he could
somehow have murdered Pyotr Stepanovitch before the morrow,
without ruining himself, of course, he would certainly have
murdered him.

Absorbed in his sensations, he trudged dejectedly after his
tormentor, who seemed to have forgotten his existence, though
he gave him a rude and careless shove with his elbow now and
then. Suddenly Pyotr Stepanovitch halted in one of the prin
cipal thoroughfares and went into a restaurant.

" What are you doing ? " cried Liputin, boiling over. " This
is a restaurant."

" I want a beefsteak."

" Upon my word ! It is always full of people."

" What if it is ? "

" But ... we shall be late. It's ten o'clock already."

" You can't be too late to go there."

" But I shall be late ! They are expecting me back."

" Well, let them ; but it would be stupid of you to go t
them. With all your bobbery I've had no dinner. And thi
later you go to Kirillov's the more sure you are to find him."

Pyotr Stepanovitch went to a room apart. Liputin sat inl| ac
an easy chair on one side, angry and resentful, and watched himf
eating. Half an hour and more passed. Pyotr Stepanovitc
did not hurry himself ; he ate with relish, rang the bell, aske
for a different kind of mustard, then for beer, without saying a

TH-ft L.AST KUSU.LUTTUJN 5IU

word to Liputin. He was pondering deeply. He was capable
of doing two things at once — eating with relish and pondering
deeply. Liputin loathed him so intensely at last that he could
not tear himself away. It was like a nervous obsession. He
counted every morsel of beefsteak that Pyotr Stepanovitch
put into his mouth ; he loathed him for the way he opened it,
for the way he chewed, for the way he smacked his lips over the
fat morsels, he loathed the steak itself. At last things began
to swim before his eyes ; he began to feel slightly giddy ; he
felt hot and cold run down his spine by turns.

" You are doing nothing ; read that," said Pyotr Stepanovitch
suddenly, throwing him a sheet of paper. Liputin went nearer
to the candle. The paper was closely covered with bad hand-
writing, with corrections in every line. By the time he had
mastered it Pyotr Stepanovitch had paid his bill and was ready
to go. When they were on the pavement Liputin handed him
back the paper.

" Keep it ; I'll tell you afterwards. . . . What do you say
to it, though ? "

Liputin shuddered all over.

" In my opinion . . . such a manifesto ... is nothing but
a ridiculous absurdity."

His anger broke out ; he felt as though he were being caught
up and carried along.

" If we decide to distribute such manifestoes," he said, quivering
all over, " we'll make ourselves contemptible by our stupidity
and incompetence."

" H'm ! I think differently," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, walking
on resolutely.

" So do I ; surely it isn't your work ? "

" That's not your business."

" I think too that doggerel, ' A Noble Personality,' is the
most utter trash possible, and it couldn't have been written by
Herzen."

' You are talking nonsense ; it's a good poem."

" I am surprised, too, for instance," said Liputin, still dashing
along with desperate leaps, " that it is suggested that we should
act so as to bring everything to the ground. It's natural in
Europe to wish to destroy everything because there's a prole-
tariat there, but we are only amateurs here and in my opinion
are only showing off."

" I thought you were a Fourierist."

520 THE POSSESSED

" Fourier says something quite different, quite different."

" I know it's nonsense."

" No, Fourier isn't nonsense. . . . Excuse me, I can't believe
that there will be a rising in May."

Liputin positively unbuttoned his coat, he was so hot.

" Well, that's enough ; but now, that I mayn't forget it/1
said Pyotr Stepanovitch, passing with extraordinary coolness
to another subject, " you will have to print this manifesto with
your own hands. We're going to dig up Shatov's printing press,
and you will take it to-morrow. As quickly as possible you
must print as many copies as you can, and then distribute them
all the winter. The means will be provided. You must do
as many copies as possible, for you'll be asked for them from
other places."

" No, excuse me ; I can't undertake such a ... I decline."

" You'll take it all the same. I am acting on the instructions
of the central committee, and you are bound to obey."

" And I consider that our centres abroad have forgotten what
Russia is like and have lost all touch, and that's why they talk
such nonsense. ... I even think that instead of many hundreds
of quintets in Russia, we are the only one that exists, and there
is no network at all," Liputin gasped finally.

" The more contemptible of you, then, to run after the cause
without believing in it . . . and you are running after me now
like a mean little cur."

" No, I'm not. We have a full right to break off and found a
new society."

" Fool ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch boomed at him threateningly
all of a sudden, with flashing eyes.

They stood facing one another for some time. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch turned and pursued his way confidently.

The idea flashed through Liputin's mind, " Turn and go back ;
if I don't turn now I shall never go back." He pondered this
for ten steps, but at the eleventh a new and desperate idea flashed
into his mind : he did not turn and did not go back.

They were approaching Filipov's house, but before reaching
it they turned down a side street, or, to be more accurate, an
inconspicuous path under a fence, so that for some time they had
to walk along a steep slope above a ditch where they could not
keep their footing without holding the fence. At a dark corner
in the slanting fence Pyotr Stepanovitch took out a plank,
leaving a gap, through which he promptly scrambled. Liputin

THE LAST RESOLUTION 521

vas surprised, but he crawled through after him ; then they
•eplaced the plank after them. This was the secret way by which
Fedka used to visit Kirillov.

" Shatov mustn't know that we are here,', Pyotr Stepanovitch
whispered sternly to Liputin.

Ill

Kirillov was sitting on his leather sofa drinking tea, as he
dways was at that hour. He did not get up to meet them, but
5a ve a sort of start and looked at the new-comers anxiously.

" You are not mistaken," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, "it's just
ihat I've come about."

" To-day ? "

" No, no, to-morrow . . . about this time." And he hurriedly
lat down at the table, watching Kirillov' s agitation with some
measiness. But the latter had already regained his composure
tnd looked as usual.

" These people still refuse to believe in you. You are not
rexed at my bringing Liputin ? " .

" To-day I am not vexed ; to-morrow I want to be alone."

" But not before I come, and therefore in my presence."

" I should prefer not in your presence."

" You remember you promised to write and to sign all I
lictated."

" I don't care. And now will you be here long ? "

" I have to see one man and to remain half an hour, so whatever
fou say I shall stay that half-hour."

Kirillov did not speak. Liputin meanwhile sat down on one
ride under the portrait of the bishop. That last desperate idea
gained more and more possession of him. Kirillov scarcely
loticed him. Liputin had heard of Kirillov' s theory before and
ilways laughed at him ; but now he was silent and looked
gloomily round him.

"I've no objection to some tea," said Pyotr Stepanovitch,
noving up. "I've just had some steak and was reckoning on
getting tea with you."

" Drink it. You can have some if you like."

" You used to offer it to me," observed Pyotr Stepanovitch
iourly.

r. jui

522 THE POSSESSED

' That's no matter. Let Liputin have some too."

" No, I . . . can't."

" Don't want to or can't ? " said Pyotr Stepanovitch, turning
quickly to him.

" I am not going to here," Liputin said expressively.

Pyotr Stepanovitch frowned.

' There's a flavour of mysticism about that ; goodness knows
what to make of you people 1 "

No one answered ; there was a full minute of silence.

:' But I know one thing," he added abruptly, " that no super-
stition will prevent any one of us from doing his duty." |fh

" Has Stavrogin gone ? " asked Kirillov.

" Yes."

" He's done well."

Pyotr Stepanovitch' s eyes gleamed, but he restrained himself.

" I don't care what you think as long as every one keeps hi
word."

" I'll keep my word."

" I always knew that you would do your duty like an inde-
pendent and progressive man."

" You are an absurd fellow."

,; That may be ; I am very glad to amuse you. I am always
glad if I can give people pleasure."

' You are very anxious I should shoot myself and are afraid
I might suddenly not ? "

1 Well, you see, it was your own doing — connecting your pla
with our work. Reckoning on your plan we have already don
something, so that you couldn't refuse now because you've le
us in for it."

" You've no claim at all."

"I understand, I understand; you are perfectly free, |s
and we don't come in so long as your free intention is carried
out."

" And am I to take on myself all the nasty things you'v
done % "

:' Listen, Kirillov, are you afraid ? If you want to cry o
say so at once."

" I am not afraid."

" I ask because you are making so many inquiries."

" Are you going soon ? "

" Asking questions again ? "

Kirillov scanned him contemptuously.

lis.

up-

THE LAST RESOLUTION 523

" You see," Pyotr Stepanovitch went on, getting angrier and
angrier, and unable to take the right tone, " you want me to
go away, to be alone, to concentrate yourself, but all that's a
bad sign for you — for you above all. You want to think a
great deal. To my mind you'd better not think. And really
you make me uneasy."

" There's only one thing I hate, that at such a moment I
should have a reptile like you beside me."

" Oh, that doesn't matter. I'll go away at the time and stand
on the steps if you like. If you are so concerned about trifles
when it comes to dying, then . . . it's all a very bad sign. I'll
go out on to the steps and you can imagine I know nothing about
it, and that I am a man infinitely below you."

" No, not infinitely ; you've got abilities, but there's a lot
you don't understand because you are a low man."

" Delighted, delighted. I told you already I am delighted to
provide entertainment ... at such a moment."

" You don't understand anything."

" That is, I . . . well, I listen with respect, anyway."

' You can do nothing ; even now you can't hide your petty
spite, though it's not to your interest to show it. You'll make
me cross, and then I may want another six months."

Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watch.

" I never understood your theory, but I know you didn't invent
jit for our sakes, so I suppose you would carry it out apart from
| us. And I know too that you haven't mastered the idea but
the idea has mastered you, so you won't put it off."

" What ? The idea has mastered me ? "

" Yes."

" And not I mastered the idea ? That's good. You have
.a little sense. Only you tease me and I am proud."

" That's a good thing, that's a good thing. Just what you
need, to be proud."

" Enough. You've drunk your tea ; go away."

:' Damn it all, I suppose I must " — Pyotr Stepanovitch got
up — ■" though it's early. Listen, Kirillov. Shall I find that
man — you know whom I mean — at Myasnitchiha's ? Or has
she too been lying ? "

1 You won't find him, because he is here and not there."

" Here ! Damn it all, where ? "

" Sitting in the kitchen, eating and drinking."

" How dared he ? " cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, flushing angrily.

524 THE POSSESSED

" It was his duty to wait . . . what nonsense ! He has no
passport, no money ! "

" I don't know. He came to say good-bye ; he is dressed
and ready. He is going away and won't come back. He says
you are a scoundrel and he doesn't want to wait for you]
money."

" Ha ha ! He is afraid that I'll . . . But even now I can .
if . . . Where is he, in the kitchen ? "

Kirillov opened a side door into a tiny dark room ; from this
room three steps led straight to the part of the kitchen where
the cook's bed was usually put, behind the partition. Here, in
the corner under the ikons, Fedka was sitting now, at a bare
deal table. Before him stood a pint bottle, a plate of bread, and
some cold beef and potatoes on an earthenware dish. He waai
eating in a leisurely way and was already half drunk, but he
was wearing his sheep-skin coat and was evidently ready for a
journey. A samovar was boiling the other side of the screen,
but it was not for Fedka, who had every night for a week or
more zealously blown it up and got it ready for " Alexey Nilitch,
for he's such a habit of drinking tea at nights." I am strongly
disposed to believe that, as Kirillov had not a cook, he had
cooked the beef and potatoes that morning with his own hands
for Fedka.

" What notion is this ? " cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, whisking
into the room. " Why didn't you wait where you were
ordered ? "

And swinging his fist, he brought it down heavily on the table.

Fedka assumed an air of dignity.

" You wait a bit, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you wait a bit," hej
began, with a swaggering emphasis on each word, " it's your first
duty to understand here that you are on a polite visit to Mr.
Kirillov, Alexey Nilitch, whose boots you might clean any day,
because beside you he is a man of culture and you are only —
foo ! "

And he made a jaunty show of spitting to one side. Haughti-j
ness and determination were evident in his manner, and a certain
very threatening assumption of argumentative calm that sug-
gested an outburst to follow. But Pyotr Stepanovitch had no!
time to realise the danger, and it did not fit in with his precon-
ceived ideas. The incidents and disasters of the day had quite
turned his head. Liputin, at the top of the three steps, stared
inquisitively down from the little dark room.

THE LAST RESOLUTION 525

" Do you or don't you want a trustworthy passport and good
money to go where you've been told ? Yes or no ? "

" D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, you've been deceiving me
from the first, and so you've been a regular scoundrel to me.
For all the world like a filthy human louse — that's how I look
on you. You've promised me a lot of money for shedding
innocent blood and swore it was for Mr. Stavrogin, though it
turns out to be nothing but your want of breeding. I didn't
get a farthing out of it, let alone fifteen hundred, and Mr. Stav-
rogin hit you in the face, which has come to our ears. Now
you are threatening me again and promising me money — what
for, you don't say. And I shouldn't wonder if you are sending
me to Petersburg to plot some revenge in your spite against
Mr. Stavrogin, Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch, reckoning on my
simplicity. And that proves you are the chief murderer. And
do you know what you deserve for the very fact that in the
depravity of your heart you've given up believing in God Him-
self , the true Creator ? You are no better than an idolater and
are on a level with the Tatar and the Mordva. Alexey Nilitch,
who is a philosopher, has expounded the true God, the Creator,
many a time to you, as well as the creation of the world and the
fate that's to come ancT the transformation of every sort of
creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse, but
"you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your
dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like
the veriest evil seducer and so-called atheist. ..."

" Ah, you drunken dog ! He strips the ikons of their setting
and then preaches about God ! "

" D'you see, Pyotr Stepanovitch, I tell you truly that I have
stripped the ikons, but I only took out the pearls ; and how do
you know ? Perhaps my own tear was transformed into a pearl
in the furnace of the Most High to make up for my sufferings,
seeing I am just that very orphan, having no daily refuge. Do
you know from the books that once, in ancient times, a merchant
with just such tearful sighs and prayers stole a pearl from the
halo of the Mother of God, and afterwards, in the face of all
the people, laid the whole price of it at her feet, and the Holy
Mother sheltered him with her mantle before all the people,
so that it was a miracle, and the command was given through
the authorities to write it all down word for word in the Imperial
books. And you let a mouse in, so you insulted the very throne
of God. And if you were not my natural master, whom I dandled

526 THE POSSESSED

in my arms when I was a stripling, I would have done for you
now, without budging from this place ! "

Pyotr Stepanovitch flew into a violent rage.

" Tell me, have you seen Stavrogin to-day ? "

" Don't you dare to question me. Mr. Stavrogin is fairly
amazed at you, and he had no share in it even in wish, let alone
instructions or giving money. You've presumed with me."

" You'll get the money and you'll get another two thousand
in Petersburg, when you get there, in a lump sum, and you'll
get more."

" You are lying, my fine gentleman, and it makes me laugh]
to see how easily you are taken in. Mr. Stavrogin stands at!
the top of the ladder above you, and you yelp at him from below1
like a silly puppy dog, while he thinks it would be doing you
an honour to spit at you."

" But do you know," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch in a ragej
" that I won't let you stir a step from here, you scoundrel,*
and I'll hand you straight over to the police."

Fedka leapt on to his feet and his eyes gleamed with fury.
Pyotr Stepanovitch pulled out his revolver. Then followed a rapid
and revolting scene : before Pyotr Stepanovitch could take aim,
Fedka swung round and in a flash struck him on the cheek with
all his might. Then there was the thud of a second blow, a
third, then a fourth, all on the cheek. Pyotr Stepanovitch
was dazed ; with his eyes starting out of his head, he muttered
something, and suddenly crashed full length to the ground.

" There you are ; take him," shouted Fedka with a triumphant
swagger ; he instantly took up his cap, his bag from under the
bench, and was gone. Pyotr Stepanovitch lay gasping and
unconscious. Liputin even imagined that he had been murdered.
Kirillov ran headlong into the kitchen.

" Water ! " he cried, and ladling some water in an iron dipper
from a bucket, he poured it over the injured man's head. Pyotr
Stepanovitch stirred, raised his head, sat up, and looked blankly
about him.

" Well, how are you ? " asked Kirillov. Pyotr Stepanovitch
looked at him intently, still not recognising him ; but seeing
Liputin peeping in from the kitchen, he smiled his hateful smile
and suddenly got up, picking up his revolver from the floor.

" If you take it into your head to run away to-morrow like
that scoundrel Stavrogin," he cried, pouncing furiously on
Kirillov, pale, stammering, and hardty able to articulate his.

THE LAST RESOLUTION 527

words, " I'll hang you . . . like a fly ... or crush you . . .
if it's at the other end of the world ... do you understand ! "

And he held the revolver straight at Kirillov's head ; but
almost at the same minute, coming completely to himself, he
drew back his hand, thrust the revolver into his pocket, and
without saying another word ran out of the house. Liputin
followed him. They clambered through the same gap and again
walked along the slope holding to the fence. Pyotr Stepanovitch
strode rapidly down the street so that Liputin could scarcely
keep up with him. At the first crossing he suddenly stopped.

" Well ? " He turned to Liputin with a challenge.

Liputin remembered the revolver and was still trembling
all over after the scene he had witnessed ; but the answer seemed
to come of itself irresistibly from his tongue :

" I think ... I think that ..."

" Did you see what Fedka was drinking in the kitchen ? '

" What he was drinking ? He was drinking vodka."

" Well then, let me tell you it's the last time in his life he
will drink vodka. I recommend you to remember that and
reflect on it. And now go to hell : you are not wanted till
to-morrow. But mind now, don't be a fool ! "

Liputin rushed home full speed.

IV

He had long had a passport in readiness made out in a false
name. It seems a wild idea that this prudent little man, the
petty despot of his family, who was, above all things, a sharp
man of business and a capitalist, and who was an official too
(though he was a Fourierist), should long before have conceived
the fantastic project of procuring this passport in case of emer-
gency, that he might escape abroad by means of it if . . . he
did admit the possibility of this if though no doubt he was
never able himself to formulate what this if might mean.

But now it suddenly formulated itself, and in a most unexpected
way. That desperate idea with which he had gone to Kirillov's
after that " fool " he had heard from Pyotr Stepanovitch on
the pavement, had been to abandon everything at dawn next
day and to emigrate abroad. If anyone doubts that such
fantastic incidents occur in everyday Russian life, even now,

528 THE POSSESSED

let him look into the biographies of all the Russian exiles abroad.
Not one of them escaped with more wisdom or real justification.
It has always been the unrestrained domination of phantoms and
nothing more.

Running home, he began by locking himself in, getting out
his travelling bag, and feverishly beginning to pack. His chief
anxiety was the question of money, and how much he could
rescue from the impending ruin — and by what means. He
thought of it as " rescuing," for it seemed to him that he could
not linger an hour, and that by daylight he must be on the high
road. He did not know where to take the train either ; he
vaguely determined to take it at the second or third big stationj
from the town, and to make his way there on foot, if necessary.
In that way, instinctively and mechanically he busied himself
in his packing with a perfect whirl of ideas in his head — and
suddenly stopped short, gave it all up, and with a deep groan
stretched himself on the sofa.

He felt clearly, and suddenly realised that he might escape,
but that he was by now utterly incapable of deciding whether
he ought to make off before or after Shatov' s death ; that he was
simply a lifeless body, a crude inert mass ; that he was being
moved by an awful outside power ; and that, though he had a
passport to go abroad, that though he could run away from
Shatov (otherwise what need was there of such haste ?), yet
he would run away, not from Shatov, not before his murder,
but after it, and that that was determined, signed, and sealed.

In insufferable distress, trembling every instant and wondering
at himself, alternately groaning aloud and numb with terror,
he managed to exist till eleven o'clock next morning locked in
and lying on the sofa ; then came the shock he was awaiting,
and it at once determined him. When he unlocked his door and
went out to his household at eleven o'clock they told him that
the runaway convict and brigand, Fedka, who was a terror toj
every one, who had pillaged churches and only lately been guilty
of murder and arson, who was being pursued and could not be;
captured by our police, had been found at daybreak murdered,
five miles from the town, at a turning off the high road, and that
the whole town was talking of it already. He rushed headlong
out of the house at once to find out further details, and learned,
to begin with, that Fedka, who had been found with his skull
broken, had apparently been robbed and, secondly, that the
police already had strong suspicion and even good grounds for

THE LAST RESOLUTION 529

believing that the murderer was one of the Shpigulin men called
Fomka, the very one who had been his accomplice in murdering
the Lebyadkins and setting fire to their house, and that there
|had been a quarrel between them on the road about a large sum
of money stolen from Lebyadkin, which Fedka was supposed
to have hidden. Liputin ran to Pyotr Stepanovitch's lodgings
and succeeded in learning at the back door, on the sly, that
though Pyotr Stepanovitch had not returned home till about
one o'clock at night, he had slept there quietly all night till
eight o'clock next morning. Of course, there could be no doubt
that there was nothing extraordinary about Fedka's death, and
that such careers usually have such an ending ; but the coincidence
of the fatal words that " it was the last time Fedka would drink
^odka," with the prompt fulfilment of the prediction, was so
•emarkable that Liputin no longer hesitated. The shock had
:>een given ; it was as though a stone had fallen upon him and
jrushed him for ever. Returning home, he thrust his travelling-
>ag under the bed without a word, and in the evening at the
lour fixed he was the first to appear at the appointed spot to
neet Shatov, though it's true he still had his passport in his
Docket.

2l

CHAPTER V
A WANDERER

The catastrophe with Liza and the death of Marya Timofyevna
made an overwhelming impression on Shatov. I have already
mentioned that that morning I met him in passing ; he seemed
to me not himself. He told me among other things that on the •
evening before at nine o'clock (that is, three hours before the
fire had broken out) he had been at Marya Timofyevna' s. He
went in the morning to look at the corpses, but as far as I know
gave no evidence of any sort that morning. Meanwhile, towards
the end of the day there was a perfect tempest in his soul, and . . .
I think I can say with certainty that there was a moment at
dusk when he wanted to get up, go out and tell everything.
What that everything was, no one but he could say. Of course
he would have achieved nothing, and would have simply betrayed
himself. He had no proofs whatever with which to convict
the perpetrators of the crime, and, indeed, he had nothing but
vague conjectures to go upon, though to him they amounted to
complete certainty. But he was ready to ruin himself if he could
only " crush the scoundrels " — his own words. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch had guessed fairly correctly at this impulse in him, and he
knew himself that he was risking a great deal in putting off the
execution of his new awful project till next day. On his side there
was, as usual, great self-confidence and contempt for all these
" wretched creatures " and for Shatov in particular. He had for
years despised Shatov for his "whining idiocy," as he had expressed
it in former days abroad, and he was absolutely confident that
he could deal with such a guileless creature, that is, keep an eye
on him all that day, and put a check on him at the first sign of
danger. Yet what saved " the scoundrels " for a short time was
something quite unexpected which they had not foreseen. . . .

Towards eight o'clock in the evening (at the very time when
the quintet was meeting at Erkel's, and waiting in indignation
and excitement for Pyotr Stepanovitch) Shatov was lying in the
dark on his bed with a headache and a slight chill ; he was
tortured by uncertainty, he was angry, he kept making up his

530

A WANDERER 531

mind, and could not make it up finally, and felt, with a curse,
that it would all lead to nothing. Gradually he sank into a brief
doze and had something like a nightmare. He dreamt that he
was lying on his bed, tied up with cords and unable to stir, and
meantime he heard a terrible banging that echoed all over the
house, a banging on the fence, at the gate, at his door, in Kirillov's
lodge, so that the whole house was shaking, and a far-away
familiar voice that wrung his heart was calling to him piteously.
|He suddenly woke and sat up in bed. To his surprise the banging
at the gate went on, though not nearly so violent as it had
3eemed in his dream. The knocks were repeated and persistent,
ind the strange voice " that wrung his heart " could still be
heard below at the gate, though not piteously but angrily and
mpatiently, alternating with another voice, more restrained and
>rdinary. He jumped up, opened the casement pane and put
ais head out.

" Who's there ? " he called, literally numb with terror.

" If you are Shatov," the answer came harshly and resolutely
rom below, "be so good as to tell me straight out and honestly
whether you agree to let me in or not ? "
"* It was true : he recognised the voice !

K" Marie ! . . . Is it you ? "
" Yes, yes, Marya Shatov, and I assure you I can't keep the
[river a minute longer."

m" This minute . . . I'll get a candle," Shatov cried faintly.
?hen he rushed to look for the matches. The matches, as always
Lappens at such moments, could not be found. He dropped the
andlestick and the candle on the floor and as soon as he heard
he impatient voice from below again, he abandoned the search
nd dashed down the steep stairs to open the gate.

" Be so good as to hold the bag while I settle with this block-
ead," was how Madame Marya Shatov greeted him below, and
ae thrust into his hands a rather light cheap canvas handbag
;udded with brass nails, of Dresden manufacture. She attacked
le driver with exasperation.

" Allow me to tell you, you are asking too much. If you've
een driving me for an extra hour through these filthy streets,
lat's your fault, because it seems you didn't know where
} find this stupid street and imbecile house. Take your thirty
opecks and make up your mind that you'll get nothing

liore."

Ech, lady, you told me yourself Voznesensky Street and this

532 THE POSSESSED

is Bogoyavlensky ; Voznesensky is ever so far away. You've
simply put the horse into a steam."

" Voznesensky, Bogoyavlensky — you ought to know all those
stupid names better than I do, as you are an inhabitant ; besides,
you are unfair, I told you first of all Filipov's house and you
declared you knew it. In any case you can have me up
to-morrow in the local court, but now I beg you to let me alone."

" Here, here's another five kopecks." With eager haste Shatov
pulled a five-kopeck piece out of his pocket and gave it to the
driver.

w Do me a favour, I beg you, don't dare to do that ! " Madame
Shatov flared up, but the driver drove off and Shatov, taking her
hand, drew her through the gate.

" Make haste, Marie, make haste . . . that's no matter,
and . . . you are wet through. Take care, we go up here —
how sorry I am there's no fight — the stairs are steep, hold tight,
hold tight ! Well, this is my room. Excuse my having no light.

. . One minute ! "

He picked up the candlestick but it was a long time before the
matches were found. Madame Shatov stood waiting in the
middle of the room, silent and motionless.

" Thank God, here they are at last ! " he cried joyfully,
lighting up the room. Mary a Shatov took a cursory survey of
his abode.

4 'They told me you lived in a poor way, but I didn't expect
it to be as bad as this," she pronounced with an air of disgust, and
she moved towards the bed.

" Oh, I am tired ! " she sat down on the hard bed, with an
exhausted air. " Please put down the bag and sit down on the
chair yourself. Just as you like though ; you are in the way
standing there. I have come to you for a time, till I can get
work, because I know nothing of this place and I have no money.
But if I shall be in your way I beg you again, be so good as to tell
me so at once, as you are bound to do if you are an honest man.
I could sell something to-morrow and pay for a room at an hotel,
but you must take me to the hotel yourself. . . . Oh, but I
am tired ! "

Shatov was all of a tremor.

" You mustn't, Marie, you mustn't go to an hotel ? An hotel I
What for ? What for ? "

He clasped his hands imploringly. . . .

" Well, if I can get on without the hotel ... I must, any way >

A WANDERER 533

explain the position. Remember, Shatov, that we lived in
Geneva as man and wife for a fortnight and a few days ; it's
three years since we parted, without any particular quarrel
though. But don't imagine that I've come back to renew any
of the foolishness of the past. I've come back to look for work,
and that I've come straight to this town is just because it's
all the same to me. I've not come to say I am sorry for anything ;
please don't imagine anything so stupid as that."

" Oh, Marie ! This is unnecessary, quite unnecessary,"
Shatov muttered vaguely.

" If so, if you are so far developed as to be able to understand
that, I may allow myself to add, that if I've come straight to you
now and am in your lodging, it's partly because I always thought
you were far from being a scoundrel and were perhaps much
better than other . . . blackguards ! "

Her eyes flashed. She must have had to bear a great deal
at the hands of some " blackguards."

" And please believe me, I wasn't laughing at you just now
when I told you you were good. I spoke plainly, without fine
phrases and I can't endure them. But that's all nonsense. I
always hoped you would have sense enough not to pester me. . . .
Enough, I am tired."

And she bent on him a long, harassed and weary gaze. Shatov
stood facing her at the other end of the room, which was five paces
away, and listened to her timidly with a look of new life and
unwonted radiance on his face. This strong, rugged man, all
bristles on the surface, was suddenly all softness and shining
gladness. There was a thrill of extraordinary and unexpected
feeling in his soul. Three years of separation, three years of the
broken marriage had effaced nothing from his heart. And
perhaps every day during those three years he had dreamed
of her, of that beloved being who had once said to him, " I
love you." Knowing Shatov I can say with certainty that he
could never have allowed himself even to dream that a woman
might say to him, " I love you." He was savagely modest and
chaste, he looked on himself as a perfect monster, detested
his own face as well as his character, compared himself to some
freak only fit to be exhibited at fairs. Consequently he valued
honesty above everything and was fanatically devoted to his
convictions ; he was gloomy, proud, easily moved to wrath,
and sparing of words. But here was the one being who had
loved him for a fortnight (that he had never doubted, never !), a

THE POSSESSED

being he had always considered immeasurably above him in
spite of his perfectly sober understanding of her errors ; a being
to whom he could forgive everything, everything (of that there
could be no question ; indeed it was quite the other way, his idea
was that he was entirely to blame) ; this woman, this Marya
Shatov, was in his house, in his presence again ... it was
almost inconceivable ! He was so overcome, there was so
much that was terrible and at the same time so much happiness
in this event that he could not, perhaps would not — perhaps
was afraid to — realise the position. It was a dream. But when
she looked at him with that harassed gaze he suddenly understood
that this woman he loved so dearly was suffering, perhaps had
been wronged. His heart went cold. He looked at her features
with anguish : the first bloom of youth had long faded from
this exhausted face. It's true that she was still good-looking —
in his eyes a beauty, as she had always been. In reality she was
a woman of twenty-five, rather strongly built, above the medium
height (taller than Shatov), with abundant dark brown hair, a pale
oval face, and large dark eyes now glittering with feverish
brilliance. But the fight-hearted, naive and good-natured
energy he had known so well in the past was replaced now by a
sullen irritability and disillusionment, a sort of cynicism which was
not yet habitual to her herself, and which weighed upon her. But,
the chief thing was that she was ill, that he could see clearly.
In spite of the awe in which he stood of her he suddenly went up
to her and took her by both hands.

"Marie . . . you know . . . you are very tired, perhaps, for
God's sake, don't be angry. ... If you'd consent to have some
tea, for instance, eh ? Tea picks one up so, doesn't it ? If you'd
consent ! "

" Why talk about consenting ! Of course I consent, what a
baby you are still. Get me some if you can. How cramped you
are here. How cold it is ! "

" Oh, I'll get some logs for the fire directly, some logs . . .1
I've got logs." Shatov was all astir. " Logs . . . that is
. . . but I'll get tea directly," he waved his hand as though with
desperate determination and snatched up his cap.

" Where are you going ? So you've no tea in the house ? "

" There shall be, there shall be, there shall be, there shall be
everything directly. ... I ..." he took his revolver from the
shelf, "I'll sell this revolver directly ... or pawn it. . . ."

1 What foolishness and what a time that will take ! Take

A WANDERER 535

my money if you've nothing, there's eighty kopecks here, I think ;
that's all I have. This is like a madhouse."

" I don't want your money, I don't want it I'll be here directly,
in one instant. I can manage without the revolver. ..."

And he rushed straight to Kirillov's. This was probably two
hours before the visit of Pyotr Stepanovitch and Liputin to
Kirillov. Though Shatov and Kirillov lived in the same yard
they hardly ever saw each other, and when they met they did not
nod or speak : they had been too long " lying side by side " in
America. . . .

" Kirillov, you always have tea ; have you got tea and a
samovar ? "

Kirillov, who was walking up and down the room, as he was in
the habit of doing all night, stopped and looked intently at his
hurried visitor, though without much surprise.

" I've got tea and sugar and a samovar. But there's no
need of the samovar, the tea is hot. Sit down and simply
drink it."

" Kirillov, we lay side by side in America. . . . My wife has
come to me . . . I . . . give me the tea. ... I shall want the

samovar."

" If your wife is here you want the samovar. But take it
later. I've two. And now take the teapot from the table. It's
hot, boiling hot. Take everything, take the sugar, all of it.
Bread . . . there's plenty of bread ; all of it. There's some veal.
I've a rouble."

" Give it me, friend, I'll pay it back to-morrow ! Ach,
Kirillov ! "

" Is it the same wife who was in Switzerland ? That's a good
thing. And your running in like this, that's a good thing too."

" Kirillov ! " cried Shatov, taking the teapot under his arm and
carrying the bread and sugar in both hands. " Kirillov, if . . .
if you could get rid of your dreadful fancies and give up your
atheistic ravings . . . oh, what a man you'd be, Kirillov ! "

;' One can see you love your wife after Switzerland. It's a
good thing you do — after Switzerland. When you want tea,
come again. You can come all night, I don't sleep at all.
There'll be a samovar. Take the rouble, here it is. Go to your
wife, I'll stay here and think about you and your wife." {£

Marya Shatov was unmistakably pleased at her husband's
haste and fell upon the tea almost greedily, but there was no
need to run for the samovar ; she drank only half a cup and

;

536 THE POSSESSED

swallowed a tiny piece of bread. The veal she refused with
disgust and irritation.

" You are ill, Marie, all this is a sign of illness," Shatov remarked
timidly as he waited upon her.

" Of course I'm ill, please sit down. Where did you get the
tea if you haven't any ? "

Shatov told her about Kirillov briefly. She had heard some-
thing of him.

" I know he is mad ; say no more, please ; there are plenty to
of fools. So you've been in America ? I heard, you wrote."

" Yes, I ... I wrote to you in Paris."

" Enough, please talk of something else. Are you a Slavo
phil in your convictions ? "

" I ... I am not exactly. . . . Since I cannot be a Russian,
I became a Slavophil." He smiled a wry smile with the effort
of one who feels he has made a strained and inappropriate jest.

" Why, aren't you a Russian ? "

" No, I'm not."

" Well, that's all foolishness. Do sit down, I entreat you.
Why are you all over the place ? Do you think I am light-
headed ? Perhaps I shall be. You say there are only you two
in the house."

"Yes. . . . Downstairs . . ."

" And both such clever people. What is there downstairs ?
You said downstairs ? "

" No, nothing."

" Why nothing ? I want to know."

" I only meant to say that now we are only two in the yard,
but that the Lebyadkins used to live downstairs. ..."

" That woman who was murdered last night ? " she started
suddenly. " I heard of it. I heard of it as soon as I arrived.
There was a fire here, wasn't there ? "

" Yes, Marie, yes, and perhaps I am doing a scoundrelly thing
this moment in forgiving the scoundrels. ..." He stood up
suddenly and paced about the room, raising his arms as though
in a frenzy.

But Marie had not quite understood him. She heard his
answers inattentively ; she asked questions but did not listen.

" Fine things are being done among you ! Oh, how con-
temptible it all is ! What scoundrels men all are ! But do
sit down, I beg you, oh, how you exasperate me ! " and she let
her head sink on the pillow, exhausted.

A WANDERER 537

" Marie, I won't. . . . Perhaps you'll lie down, Marie ? "

She made no answer and closed her eyes helplessly. Her pale
iace looked death-like. She fell asleep almost instantly. Shatov
ooked round, snuffed the candle, looked uneasily at her face once
nore, pressed his hands tight in front of him and walked on tiptoe
)ut of the room into the passage. At the top of the stairs he
stood in the corner with his face to the wall and remained so for
3en minutes without sound or movement. He would have
stood there longer, but he suddenly caught the sound of soft
5autious steps below. Some one was coming up the stairs.
i>hatov remembered he had forgotten to fasten the gate.

" Who's there ? " he asked in a whisper. The unknown
risitor went on slowly mounting the stairs without answering.
When he reached the top he stood still ; it was impossible to see
lis face in the dark ; suddenly Shatov heard the cautious
question :

"Ivan Shatov?"

Shatov said who he was, but at once held out his hand to check
lis advance. The latter took his hand, and Shatov shuddered
is though he had touched some terrible reptile.

" Stand here," he whispered quickly. " Don't go in, I can't
•eceive you just now. My wife has come back. I'll fetch the
>andle."

When he returned with the candle he found a young officer
itanding there ; he did not know his name but he had seen him
)efore.

" Erkel," said the lad, introducing himself. " You've seen me
tt Virginsky's."

" I remember ; you sat writing. Listen," said Shatov in
(udden excitement, going up to him frantically, but still talking
n a whisper. " You gave me a sign just now when you took
ny hand. But you know I can treat all these signals with con-
iempt ! I don't acknowledge them. . . . I don't want them. .. .
'. can throw you downstairs this minute, do you know that ? "

" No, I know nothing about that and I don't know what you
ire in such a rage about," the visitor answered without malice
md almost ingenuously. " I have only to give you a message, and
bat's what I've come for, being particularly anxious not to lose
ime. You have a printing press which does not belong to you,
ind of which you are bound to give an account, as you know
yourself. I have received instructions to request you to give it up
)o-morrow at seven o'clock in the evening to Liputin. I have

IB

538 THE POSSESSED

been instructed to tell you also that nothing more will be asked
of you." ti

" Nothing ? " i

M Absolutely nothing. Your request is granted, and you f
are struck off our list. I was instructed to tell you that posi-
lively." i«

" Who instructed you to tell me ? " "i

" Those who told me the sign."

" Have you come from abroad ? "

" I ... I think that's no matter to you."

" Oh, hang it ! Why didn't you come before if you were
told to ? "

" I followed certain instructions and was not alone."

" I understand, I understand that you were not alone. Eh
. . . hang it ! But why didn't Liputin come himself ? "

" So I shall come for you to-morrow at exactly six o'clock in
the evening, and we'll go there on foot. There will be no one
there but us three."

" Will Verhovensky be there ? "

" No, he won't. Verhovensky is leaving the town at eleven
o'clock to-morrow morning."

" Just what I thought ! " Shatov whispered furiously, and
he struck his fist on his hip. " He's run off, the sneak ! "

He sank into agitated reflection. Erkel looked intently at
him and waited in silence.

" But how will you take it ? You can't simply pick it up in
your hands and carry it."

" There will be no need to. You'll simply point out the place
and we'll just make sure that it really is buried there. We only
know whereabouts the place is, we don't know the place itself.
And have you pointed the place out to anyone else yet ? "

Shatov looked at him.

" You, you, a chit of a boy like you, a silly boy like you, you
too have got caught in that net like a sheep ? Yes, that's just the
young blood they want ! Well, go along. E-ech ! that scoundrel's
taken you all in and run away."

Erkel looked at him serenely and calmly but did not seem to jtce
understand.

" Verhovensky, Verhovensky has run away ! " Shatov growled |xke
fiercely.

" But he is still here, he is not gone away. He is not going
till to-morrow," Erkel observed softly and persuasively. 1

m

r
h

m
A

(lire

A WANDERER 539

particularly begged him to be present as a witness ; my instruc-
tions all referred to him (he explained frankly like a young and
nexperienced boy). But I regret to say he did not agree on the

ound of his departure, and he really is in a hurry."

Shatov glanced compassionately at the -simple youth again,
ut suddenly gave a gesture of despair as though he thought

they are not worth pitying."

All right, I'll come," he cut him short. " And now get
way, be off."

So I'll come for you at six o'clock punctually." Erkel
lade a courteous bow and walked deliberately downstairs. |||
Little fool ! " Shatov could not help shouting after him
;om the top.

" What is it ? " responded the lad from the bottom.

" Nothing, you can go."

" I thought you said something."

II

Erkel was a " little fool " who was only lacking in the higher
>rm of reason, the ruling power of the intellect ; but of the
sser, the subordinate reasoning faculties, he had plenty — even

the point of cunning. Fanatically, childishly devoted to
the cause " or rather in reality to Pyotr Verhovensky, he acted

the instructions given to him when at the meeting of the
lintet they had agreed and had distributed the various duties
r the next day. When Pyotr Stepanovitch gave him the job

messenger, he succeeded in talking to him aside for ten
inutes.

A craving for active service was characteristic of this shallow,
^reflecting nature, which was for ever yearning to follow the
id of another man's will, of course for the good of " the com-
on " or " the great " cause. Not that that made any difference,

little fanatics like Erkel can never imagine serving a cause
cept by identifying it with the person who, to their minds, is
e expression of it. The sensitive, affectionate and kind-hearted
'kel was perhaps the most callous of Shatov's would-be
irderers, and, though he had no personal spite against him, he
mid have been present at his murder without the quiverjof
eyelid. He had been instructed, for instance, to have a good

540 THE POSSESSED

look at Shatov's surroundings while carrying out his commis-
sion, and when Shatov, receiving him at the top of the stairs,
blurted out to him, probably unaware in the heat of the moment,
that his wife had come back to him — Erkel had the instinctive
cunning to avoid displaying the slightest curiosity, though the
idea flashed through his mind that the fact of his wife's return
was of great importance for the success of their undertaking.

And so it was in reality ; it was only that fact that saved the
" scoundrels " from Shatov's carrying out his intention, and at
the same time helped them " to get rid of him." To begin with, it
agitated Shatov, threw him out of his regular routine, and
deprived him of his usual clear-sightedness and caution. Any
idea of his own danger would be the last thing to enter his head at
this moment when he was absorbed with such different con?
siderations. On the contrary, he eagerly believed that Pyotj
Verhovensky was running away the next day : it fell in exactly
with his suspicions ! Returning to the room he sat down again
in a corner, leaned his elbows on his knees and hid his face in hia
hands. Bitter thoughts tormented him. . . .

Then he would raise his head again and go on tiptoe to loot
at her. " Good God ! she will be in a fever by to-morrow morn-
ing ; perhaps it's begun already ! She must have caught cold
She is not accustomed to this awful climate, and then a thirds
class carriage, the storm, the rain, and she has such a thin littk
pelisse, no wrap at all. . . . And to leave her like this, U
abandon her in her helplessness ! Her bag, too, her bag — what t
tiny, light thing, all crumpled up, scarcely weighs ten pounds
Poor thing, how worn out she is, how much she's been through |
She is proud, that's why she won't complain. But she is irritable
very irritable. It's illness ; an angel will grow irritable in illnesa
What a dry forehead, it must be hot — how dark she is undei
the eyes, and . . . and yet how beautiful the oval of her face i
and her rich hair, how . . ."

And he made haste to turn away his eyes, to walk away I
though he were frightened at the very idea of seeing in her any
thing but an unhappy, exhausted fellow- creature who needec
help — "how could he think of hopes, oh, how mean, hov
base is man ! " And he would go back to his corner, sit down*
hide his face in his hands and again sink into dreams and remi
niscences . . . and again he was haunted by hopes.

" Oh, I am tired, I am tired," he remembered her exclama
tions, her weak broken voice. " Good God ! Abandon her now

A WANDERER 541

ad she has only eighty kopecks ; she held out her purse, a tiny
id thing ! She's come to look for a job. What does she know
bout jobs ? What do they know about Russia ? Why, they are
ke naughty children, they've nothing but their own fancies
lade up by themselves, and she is angry, poor thing, that
ussia is not like their foreign dreams ! The luckless, innocent
eatures ! . . . It's really cold here, though."
He remembered that she had complained, that he had promised
) heat the stove. " There are logs here, I can fetch them if
lly I don't wake her. But I can do it without waking her.
ut what shall I do about the veal ? When she gets up perhaps
te will be hungry. . . . Well, that will do later : Kirillov doesn't
) to bed all night. What could I cover her with, she is sleeping
) soundly, but she must be cold, ah, she must be cold ! " And once
ore he went to look at her ; her dress had worked up a little
id her right leg was half uncovered to the knee. He suddenly
irned away almost in dismay, took off his warm overcoat, and,
!maining in his wretched old jacket, covered it up, trying not
> look at it.

A great deal of time was spent in lighting the fire, stepping
^out on tiptoe, looking at the sleeping woman, dreaming in
Le corner, then looking at her again. Two or three hours had
issed. During that time Verhovensky and Liputin had been
) Kirillov's. At last he, too, began to doze in the corner. He
3ard her groan ; she waked up and called him ; he jumped
p like a criminal.

" Marie, I was dropping asleep. . . . Ah, what a wretch I
n, Marie ! "

She sat up, looking about her with wonder, seeming not to
icognise where she was, and suddenly leapt up in indignation
id anger.

"I've taken your bed, I fell asleep so tired I didn't know what
was doing ; how dared you not wake me ? How could you
ire imagine I meant to be a burden to you ? "
" How could I wake you, Marie ? "

" You could, you ought to have ! You've no other bed here,

id I've taken yours. You had no business to put me into a false

)sition. Or do you suppose that I've come to take advantage

your charity ? Kindly get into your bed at once and I'll lie

>wn in the corner on some chairs."

I Marie, there aren't chairs enough, and there's nothing to
it on them."

542 THE POSSESSED

" Then simply on the floor. Or you'll have to he on the floor
yourself. I want to He on the floor at once, at once ! "

She stood up, tried to take a step, but suddenly a violent
spasm of pain deprived her of all power and all determination,
and with a loud groan she fell back on the bed. Shatov ran up,
but Marie, hiding her face in the pillow, seized his hand and
gripped and squeezed it with all her might. This lasted a
minute.

" Marie darling, there's a doctor Frenzel living here, a friend
of mine. ... I could run for him."

" Nonsense ! "

" What do you mean by nonsense ? Tell me, Marie, whati
is it hurting you ? For we might try fomentations ... on the!
stomach for instance. ... I can do that without a doctor. . . J
Or else mustard poultices."

" What's this," she asked strangely, raising her head and
looking at him in dismay.

" What's what, Marie ? " said Shatov, not understanding.
"What are you asking about? Good heavens! I am quite j
bewildered, excuse my not understanding."

"Ach, let me alone]; it's not your business to understand.
And it would be too absurd . . ." she said with a bitter smile, j
" Talk to me about something. Walk about the room and talk.,]
Don't stand over me and don't look at me, I particularly askl
you that for the five-hundredth time ! "

Shatov began walking up and down the room, looking at thej
floor, and doing his utmost not to glance at her.

"There's — don't be angry, Marie, I entreat you — there's
some Veal here, and there's tea not far off. . . . You had so
little before."

She made an angry gesture of disgust. Shatov bit his tongue^
in despair.

" Listen, I intend to open a bookbinding business here, oa
rational co-operative principles. Since you five here what doj
you think of it, would it be successful ? "

" Ech, Marie, people don't read books here, and there arJ
none here at all. And are they likely to begin binding them ! "

" Who are they ? "

" The local readers and inhabitants generally, Marie."

" Well, then, speak more clearly. They indeed, and one
doesn't know who they are. You don't know grammar ! "

" It's in the spirit of the language," Shatov muttered.

A WANDERER 543

f Oh, get along with your spirit, you bore me. Why shouldn't
3 local inhabitant or reader have his books bound ? "
" Because reading books and having them bound are two
ferent stages of development, and there's a vast gulf between
3m. To begin with, a man gradually gets used to reading, in the
arse of ages of course, but takes no care of his books and throws
3m about, not thinking them worth attention. But binding
plies respect for books, and implies that not only he has grown
IcToT reading, but that he looks upon it as something of value.
Lat period has not been reached anywhere in Russia yet. In
irope books have been bound for a long while."
| Though that's pedantic, anyway, it's not stupid, and reminds
) of the time three years ago ; you used to be rather clever
metimes three years ago."

She said this as disdainfully as her other capricious
marks.

" Marie, Marie," said Shatov, turning to her, much moved,
3h, Marie ! If you only knew how much has happened in
ose three years ! I heard afterwards that you despised me
r changing my convictions. But what are the men I've
oken with ? The enemies of all true life, out-of-date Liberals
10 are afraid of their own independence, the flunkeys of thought,
e enemies of individuality and freedom, the decrepit advocates
deadness and rottenness ! All they have to offer is senility,
glorious mediocrity of the most bourgeois kind, contemptible
allowness, a jealous equality, equality without individual
gnity, equality as it's understood by flunkeys or by the French
J93i And the worst of it is there are swarms of scoundrels
aong them, swarms of scoundrels ! "
' Yes, there are a lot of scoundrels," she brought out abruptly
th painful effort. She lay stretched out, motionless, as though
raid to move, with her head thrown back on the pillow, rather
one side, staring at the ceiling with exhausted but glowing
es. Her face was pale, her lips were dry and hot.

You recognise it, Marie, you recognise it," cried Shatov.
e tried to shake her head, and suddenly the same spasm came
er her again. Again she hid her face in the pillow, and again
I a full minute she squeezed Shatov's hand till it hurt. He
d run up, beside himself with alarm.
' Marie, Marie ! But it may be very serious, Marie ! "
' Be quiet ... I won't have it, I won't have it," she screamed
nost furiously, turning her face upwards again. " Don't dare

544 THE POSSESSED

to look at me with your sympathy ! Walk about the room
say something, talk. ..."

Shatov began muttering something again, like on<
distraught.

1 What do you do here ? " she asked, interrupting him witl
contemptuous impatience.

" I work in a merchant's office. I could get a fair amouni
of money even here if I cared to, Marie."
" So much the better for you. ..."

" Oh, don't suppose I meant anything, Marie. I said il
without thinking."

" And what do you do besides ? What are you preaching j
You can't exist without preaching, that's your character ! "
" I am preaching God, Marie."

" In whom you don't believe yourself. I never could see the
idea of that."

" Let's leave that, Marie ; we'll talk of that later."
" What sort of person was this Marya Timofyevna here ? '
" We'll talk of that later too, Marie."
" Don't dare to say such things to me ! Is it true that her
death may have been caused by . . . the wickedness ... of
these people ? "

" Not a doubt of it," growled Shatov.
Marie suddenly raised her head and cried out painfully :
" Don't dare speak of that to me again, don't dare to, never,,
never ! "

And she fell back in bed again, overcome by the same con-1
vulsive agony ; it was the third time, but this time her groans
were louder, in fact she screamed.

" Oh, you insufferable man ! Oh, you unbearable man," she]
cried, tossing about recklessly, and pushing away Shatov as he
bent over her.

"Marie, I'll do anything you like .... I'll walk about anch
talk. . . ."

" Surely you must see that it has begun ! "
" What's begun, Marie ? "

" How can I tell ! Do I know anything about it ? . . . I-
curse myself ! Oh, curse it all from the beginning ! ':

" Marie, if you'd tell me what's beginning ... or else I . . fl
if you don't, what am I to make of it ? "

" You are a useless, theoretical babbler. Oh, curse everything
on earth ! "

A WANDERER 545

" Marie, Marie ! " He seriously thought that she was begin-
ning to go mad.

" Surely you must see that I am in the agonies of childbirth,"
she said, sitting up and gazing at him with a terrible, hysterical
vindictiveness that distorted her whole face. " I curse him
before he is born, this child ! "

" Marie," cried Shatov, realising at last what it meant.
" Marie . . . but why didn't you tell me before." He pulled
himself together at once and seized his cap with an air of vigorous
determination.

" How could I tell when I came in here ? Should I have
come to you if I'd known ? I was told it would be another ten
days ! Where are you going ? . . . Where are you going ? You
mustn't dare ! "

" To fetch a midwife ! I'll sell the revolver. We must get
money before anything else now."

" Don't dare to do anything, don't dare to fetch a midwife !
Bring a peasant woman, any old woman, I've eighty kopecks in
my purse. . . . Peasant women have babies without midwives.
. And if I die, so much the better. ..."

' You shall have a midwife and an old woman too. But how
am I to leave you alone, Marie ! "

But reflecting that it was better to leave her alone now in
spite of her desperate state than to leave her without help later, he
paid no attention to her groans, nor her angry exclamations, but
ushed downstairs, hurrying all he could.

Ill

First of all he went to Kirillov. It was by now about one
'clock in the night. Kirillov was standing in the middle of the
room.

Kirillov, my wife is in childbirth."
How do you mean ? "
Childbirth, bearing a child ! "
You . . . are not mistaken ? "

Oh, no, no, she is in agonies ! I want a woman, any old
roman, I must have one at once. . . . Can you get one now ?
rou used to have a lot of old women. ..."

Very sorry that I am no good at childbearing," Kirillov

2m

546 THE POSSESSED

answered thoughtfully ; " that is, not at childbearing, but at
doing anything for childbearing . . . or . . . no, I don't know
how to say it."

" You mean you can't assist at a confinement yourself ? But
that's not what I've come for. An old woman, I want a woman,
a nurse, a servant ! "

' You shall have an old woman, but not directly, perhaps
... If you like I'll come instead. ..."

' Oh, impossible ; I am running to Madame Virginsky, the
midwife, now."

" A horrid woman ! "

" Oh, yes, Kirillov, yes, but she is the best of them all. Yes,
it'll all be without reverence, without gladness, with contempt,
with abuse, with blasphemy in the presence of so great a mystery,
the coming of a new creature ! Oh, she is cursing it already ! "

" If you like I'll . . ."

" No, no, but while I'm running (oh, I'll make Madame Vir- j
ginsky come), will you go to the foot of my staircase and quietly
listen ? But don't venture to go in, you'll frighten her ; don't
go in on any account, you must only listen ... in case anything
dreadful happens. If anything very bad happens, then run in.

" I understand. I've another rouble. Here it is. I meant to
have a fowl to-morrow, but now I don't want to, make haste,
run with all your might. There's a samovar all the night."

Kirillov knew nothing of the present design against Shatov,
nor had he had any idea in the past of the degree of danger thai
threatened him. He only knew that Shatov had some olc
s3ores with " those people," and although he was to some extenl
i ivolved with them himself through instructions he had receivec
from abroad (not that these were of much consequence, however,
for he had never taken any direct share in anything), yet of late
he had given it all up, having left off doing anything especially
for the " cause," and devoted himself entirely to a life of contem-
plation. Although Pyotr Stepanovitch had at the meeting
invited Liputin to go with him to Kirillov' s to make sure that
the latter would take upon himself, at a given moment, the
responsibility for the " Shatov business," yet in his interview
with Kirillov he had said no word about Shatov nor alluded to
him in any way — probably considering it impolitic to do so,
and thinking that Kirillov could not be relied upon. He put off
speaking about it till next day, when it would be all over and
would therefore not matter to Kirillov ; such at least was Pyotr

A WANDERER 547

Stepanovitch's judgment of him. Liputin, too, was struck by the
fact that Shatov was not mentioned in spite of what Pyotr
Stepanovitch had promised, but he was too much agitated to
protest.

Shatov ran like a hurricane to Virginsky's house, cursing the
listance and feeling it endless.

He had to knock a long time at Virginsky's ; every one had been
,sleep a long while. But Shatov did not scruple to bang at the
hutters with all his might. The dog chained up in the yard
Lashed about barking furiously. The dogs caught it up all
long the street, and there was a regular babel of barking.

Why are you knocking and what do you want ? " Shatov
eard at the window at last Virginsky's gentle voice, betraying
one of the resentment appropriate to the " outrage." The
hutter was pushed back a little and the casement was opened.

Who's there, what scoundrel is it ? " shrilled a female voice
rhich betrayed all the resentment appropriate to the " outrage."
t was the old maid, Virginsky's relation.

I am Shatov, my wife has come back to me and she is just
onfined. . . ."
" Well, let her be, get along."

"I've come for Arina Prohorovna ; I won't go without Arina
Tohorovna ! "

She can't attend to every one. Practice at night is a special
ne. Take yourself off to Maksheyev's and don't dare to make
lat din," rattled the exasperated female voice. He could hear
irginsky checking her ; but the old maid pushed him away
ad would not desist.

I am not going away ! " Shatov cried again.
Wait a little, wait a little," Virginsky cried at last, over-
Dwering the lady. " I beg you to wait five minutes, Shatov.
11 wake Arina Prohorovna. Please don't knock and don't shout.
. . Oh, how awful it all is ! "

After five endless minutes, Arina Prohorovna made her
ppearance.

" Has your wife come ? " Shatov heard her voice at the window,
id to his surprise it was not at all ill-tempered, only as usual per-
nptory, but Arina Prohorovna could not speak except in a
(sremptory tone.
1 Yes, my wife, and she is in labour."
' Mary a Ignatyevna ? "
1 Yes, Marya Ignatyevna. Of course it's Marya Ignatyevna."

548 THE POSSESSED

A silence followed. Shatov waited. He heard a whispering
in the house.

" Has she been here long ? " Madame Virginsky asked
again.

" She came this evening at eight o'clock. Please make
haste."

Again he heard whispering, as though they were consulting.

" Listen, you are not making a mistake ? Did she send you for
me herself ? "

" No, she didn't send for you, she wants a peasant woman, so
as not to burden me with expense, but don't be afraid, I'll pay
you."

" Very good, I'll come, whether you pay or not. I always
thought highly of Marya Ignatyevna for the independence of
her sentiments, though perhaps she won't remember me. Have
you got the most necessary things ? "

" I've nothing, but I'll get everything, everything."

" There is something generous even in these people," Shatov
reflected, as he set off to Lyamshin's. " The convictions and
the man are two very different things, very likely I've been very
unfair to them ! . . . We are all to blame, we are all to blame
. . . and if only all were convinced of it ! "

He had not to knock long at Lyamshin's ; the latter, to
Shatov' s surprise, opened his casement at once, jumping out
of bed, barefoot and in his night-clothes at the risk of catching
cold ; and he was hypochondriacal and always anxious about
his health. But there was a special cause for such alertness and
haste : Lyamshin had been in a tremor all the evening, and
had not been able to sleep for excitement after the meeting of
the quintet ; he was haunted by the dread of uninvited and
undesired visitors. The news of Shatov' s giving information tor-
mented him more than anything. . . . And suddenly there was
this terrible loud knocking at the window as though to justify
his fears.

He was so frightened at seeing Shatov that he at once slammed
the casement and jumped back into bed. Shatov begaij
furiously knocking and shouting.

" How dare you knock like that in the middle of the night ?
shouted Lyamshin, in a threatening voice, though he waj
numb with fear, when at least two minutes later he ventured tti
open the casement again, and was at last convinced that Shatot
had come alone.

A WANDERER 549

" Here's your revolver for you ; take it back, give me fifteen
roubles."

" What's the matter, are you drunk ? This is outrageous^ I
shall simply catch cold. Wait a minute, I'll just throw my rug
over me."

" Give me fifteen roubles at once. If you don't give it me, I'll
knock and shout till daybreak ; I'll break your window-frame."

" And I'll shout police and you'll be taken to the lock-up."

" And am I dumb ? Can't I shout ' police ' too ? Which of
us has most reason to be afraid of the police, you or I ? "

" And you can hold such contemptible opinions ! I know
what you are hinting at. . . . Stop, stop, for God's sake don't
go on knocking ! Upon my word, who has money at night ?
What do you want money for, unless you are drunk ? '

" My wife has come back. I've taken ten roubles off the
price, I haven't fired it once ; take the revolver, take it this
minute ! "

Lyamshin mechanically put his hand out of the casement and
took the revolver ; he waited a little, and suddenly thrusting
his head out of the casement, and with a shiver running down
his spine, faltered as though he were beside himself.

" You are lying, your wife hasn't come back to you. . . . It's

. . it's simply that you want to run away."

" You are a fool. Where should I run to ? It's for your Pyotr
Verhovensky to run away, not for me. I've just been to the
midwife, Madame Virginsky, and she consented at once to come
to me. You can ask them. My wife is in agony ; I need the
money ; give it me ! "

A swarm of ideas flared up in Lyamshin' s crafty mind like a
shower of fireworks. It all suddenly took a different colour,
hough still panic prevented him from reflecting.

:< But how . . . you are not living with your wife ? '

" I'll break your skull for questions like that."

' Oh dear, I understand, forgive me, I was struck all of a heap.

. . But I understand, I understand ... is Arina Prohorovna

■eally coming ? You said just now that she had gone ? You

mow, that's not true. You see, you see, you see what lies you

;ell at every step."

"By now, she must be with my wife . . . don't keep me . . . it's
lot my fault you are a fool."

" That's a lie, I am not a fool. Excuse me, I really
ian t . . .

550 THE POSSESSED

And utterly distraught he began shutting the casement again
for the third time, but Shatov gave such a yell that he put
his head out again.

" But this is simply an unprovoked assault ! What do you'
want of me, what is it, what is it, formulate it ? And think, only
think, it's the middle of the night ! "

" I want fifteen roubles, you sheep's-head ! "

" But perhaps I don't care to take back the revolver. You
have no right to force me. You bought the thing and the matter
is settled, and you've no right. ... I can't give you a sum
like that in the night, anyhow. Where am I to get a sum like
that ? "

" You always have money. I've taken ten roubles off thoj
price, but every one knows you are a skinflint."

" Come the day after to-morrow, do you hear, the day after
to-morrow at twelve o'clock, and I'll give you the whole of it,
that will do, won't it 1 "

Shatov knocked furiously at the window-frame for the third
time.

" Give me ten roubles, and to-morrow early the other five."

" No, the day after to-morrow the other five, to-morrow I
swear I shan't have it. You'd better not come, you'd better not
come."

" Give me ten, you scoundrel ! "

" Why are you so abusive. Wait a minute, I must light aj
candle ; you've broken the window. . . . Nobody swears like
that at night. Here you are ! " He held a note to him out of thd
window.

Shatov seized it — it was a note for five roubles.

" On my honour I can't do more, if you were to murder me, I
couldn't ; the day after to-morrow I can give you it all, but now;
I can do nothing."

" I am not going away ! " roared Shatov.

" Very well, take it, here's some more, see, here's some morel
and I won't give more. You can shout at the top of youl
voice, but I won't give more, I won't, whatever happens, I won't!
I won't."

He was in a perfect frenzy, desperate and perspiring. Thl
two notes he had just given him were each for a rouble. Shatol
had seven roubles altogether now.

" Well, damn you, then, I'll come to-morrow. I'll thrash yoia
Lyamshin, if you don't give me the other eight."

A WANDERER 551

" You won't find me at home, you fool ! " Lyamshin reflected
quickly.

" Stay, stay ! " he shouted frantically after Shatov, who was
already running off. " Stay, come back. Tell me please, is it
true what you said that your wife has come back ? "

" Fool ! " cried Shatov, with a gesture of disgust, and ran
home as hard as he could.

IV

I may mention that Arina Prohorovna knew nothing of the
resolutions that had been taken at the meeting the day before.
On returning home overwhelmed and exhausted, Virginsky
had not ventured to tell her of the decision that had been taken,
yet he could not refrain from telling her half — that is, all that
Verhovensky had told them of the certainty of Shatov' s intention
to betray them ; but he added at the same time that he did
not quite believe it. Arina Prohorovna was terribly alarmed.
This was why she decided at once to go when Shatov came to
fetch her, though she was tired out, as she had been hard at work
at a confinement all the night before. She had always been con-
vinced that " a wretched creature like Shatov was capable of
any political baseness," but the arrival of Marya Ignatyevna put
things in a different light. Shatov' s alarm, the despairing tone of
his entreaties, the way he begged for help, clearly showed a com-
plete change of feeling in the traitor : a man who was ready to
betray himself merely for the sake of ruining others would, she
thought, have had a different air and tone. In short, Arina
Prohorovna resolved to look into the matter for herself, with her
own eyes. Virginsky was very glad of her decision, he felt as
though a hundredweight had been lifted off him ! He even
began to feel hopeful : Shatov' s appearance seemed to him
utterly incompatible with Verhovensky's supposition.

Shatov was not mistaken : on getting home he found Arina
Prohorovna already with ' Marie. She had just arrived, had
contemptuously dismissed Kirillov, whom she found hanging
about the foot of the stairs, had hastily introduced herself to
Marie, who had not recognised her as her former acquaintance,
found her in " a very bad way," that is ill-tempered, irritable
and in " a state of cowardly despair," and within five minutes
had completely silenced all her protests.

552 THE POSSESSED

" Why do you keep on that you don't want an expensive
midwife ? " she was saying at the moment when Shatov came in.
" That's perfect nonsense, it's a false idea arising from the ab-
normality of your condition. In the hands of some ordinary old
woman, some peasant midwife, you'd have fifty chances of going
wrong and then you'd have more bother and expense than with a
regular midwife. How do you know I am an expensive mid-
wife ? You can pay afterwards ; I won't charge you much and I
answer for my success ; you won't die in my hands, I've seen
worse cases than yours. And I can send the baby to a foundling
asylum to-morrow, if you like, and then to be brought up in the
country, and that's all it will mean. And meantime you'll grow
strong again, take up some rational work, and in a very short
time you'll repay Shatov for sheltering you and for the expense,
which will not be so great."

" It's not that . . . I've no right to be a burden. . . ."

" Rational feelings and worthy of a citizen, but you can take
my word for it, Shatov will spend scarcely anything, if he is
willing to become ever so little a man of sound ideas instead of
the fantastic person he is. He has only not to do anything
stupid, not to raise an alarm, not to run about the town with his
tongue out. If we don't restrain him he will be knocking up all
the doctors of the town before the morning ; he waked all the
dogs in my street. There's no need of doctors I've said already.
I'll answer for everything. You can hire an old woman if you
like to wait on you, that won't cost much. Though he too can do
something besides the silly things he's been doing. He's got
hands and feet, he can run to the chemist's without offending
your feelings by being too benevolent. As though it were a case
of benevolence ! Hasn't he brought you into this position ?
Didn't he make you break with the family in which you were a
governess, with the egoistic object of marrying you ? We heard
of it, you know . . . though he did run for me like one possessed
and yell so all the street could hear. I won't force myself upon
anyone and have come only for your sake, on the principle that
all of us are bound to hold together ! And I told him so before 1 1
left the house. If you think I am in the way, good-bye, I only I
hope you won't have trouble which might so easily be averted."

And she positively got up from the chair. Marie was so helpless, 1
in such pain, and — the truth must be confessed — so frightened of 1
what was before her that she dared not let her go. But this \
woman was suddenly hateful to her, what she said was not what i

A WANDERER 553

he wanted, there was something quite different in Marie's soul,
^et the prediction that she might possibly die in the hands of an
nexperienced peasant woman overcame her aversion. But she
aade up for it by being more exacting and more ruthless than
ver with Shatov. She ended by forbidding him not only to
Dok at her but even to stand facing her. Her pains became
aore violent. Her curses, her abuse became more and more
antic.

" Ech, we'll send him away, ' ' Arina Prohorovna rapped out. ' ' I
on't know what he looks like, he is simply frightening you ; he
j as white as a corpse ! What is it to you, tell me please, you
bsurd fellow ? What a farce ! "
Shatov made no reply, he made up his mind to say nothing.
" I've seen many a foolish father, half crazy in such cases. But
hey, at any rate ..."

" Be quiet or leave me to die ! Don't say another word ! I
ron't have it, I won't have it ! " screamed Marie.
"It's impossible not to say another word, if you are not out
your mind, as I think you are in your condition. We must talk
f what we want, anyway : tell me, have you anything ready ?
|ou answer, Shatov, she is incapable."
Tell me what's needed ? "

That means you've nothing ready." She reckoned up all that
fas quite necessary, and one must do her the justice to say she only
(skedfor what was absolutely indispensable, the barest necessaries,
lome things Shatov had. Marie took out her key and held it out
p him, for him to look in her bag. As his hands shook he was
pger than he should have been opening the unfamiliar lock.
\ arie flew into a rage, but when Arina Prohorovna rushed up to
a,ke the key from him, she would not allow her on any account
J> look into her bag and with peevish cries and tears insisted that
one should open the bag but Shatov.

Some things he had to fetch from Kirillov's. No sooner had

atov turned to go for them than she began frantically calling

^m back and was only quieted when Shatov had rushed im-

tuously back from the stairs, and explained that he should only

gone a minute to fetch something indispensable and would

back at once.

' Well, my lady, it's hard to please you," laughed Arina

ohorovna, " one minute he must stand with his face to the

all and not dare to look at you, and the next he mustn't be

ne for a minute, or you begin crying. He may begin to imagine

554 THE POSSESSED

something. Come, come, don't be silly, don't blubber, I was
laughing, you know."

" He won't dare to imagine anything."

" Tut, tut, tut, if he didn't love you like a sheep he wouldn't
run about the streets with his tongue out and wouldn't have
roused all the dogs in the town. He broke my window-frame.'l

He found Kirillov still pacing up and down his room so pre-
occupied that he had forgotten the arrival of Shatov's wife, and
heard what he said without understanding him.

" Oh, yes ! " he recollected suddenly, as though tearing himself
with an effort and only for an instant from some absorbing idea,
" yes ... an old woman. ... A wife or an old woman ? Stay
a minute : a wife and an old woman, is that it ? I remember.
I've been, the old woman will come, only not just now. Take
the pillow. Is there anything else ? Yes. . . . Stay, do you
have moments of the eternal harmony, Shatov ? "

" You know, Kirillov, you mustn't go on staying up every
night."

Kirillov came out of his reverie and, strange to say, spoke far
more coherently than he usually did ; it was clear that he had
formulated it long ago and perhaps written it down.

" There are seconds — they come five or six at a time — when
you suddenly feel the presence of the eternal harmony perfectly!
attained. It's something not earthly — I don't mean in the sense
that it's heavenly — but in that sense that man cannot endure it
in his earthly aspect. He must be physically changed or die.
This feeling is clear and unmistakable ; it's as thought you
apprehend all nature and suddenly say, ' Yes, that's right.' God,
when He created the world, said at the end of each day of creation,
' Yes, it's right, it's good.' It . . . it's not being deeply moved,
but simply joy. You don't forgive anything because there is no
more need of forgiveness. It's not that you love — oh, there's
something in it higher than love — what's most awful is that it's
terribly clear and such joy. If it lasted more than five seconds,
the soul could not endure it and must perish. In those five seconds
I live through a lifetime, and I'd give my whole life for them,
because they are worth it. To endure ten seconds one must be

X

A WANDERER 555

physically changed. I think man ought to give up having
children — what's the use of children, what's the use of evolution
when the goal has been attained ? In the gospel it is written
ithat there will be no child-bearing in the resurrection, but that
men will be like the angels of the Lord. That's a hint. Is your
wife bearing a child ? "

" Kirillov, does this often happen ? "

" Once in three days, or once a week."

" Don't you have fits, perhaps ? "

"No."

" Well, you will. Be careful, Kirillov. I've heard that's just
how fits begin. An epileptic described exactly that sensation

(before a fit, word for word as you've done. He mentioned five
seconds, too, and said that more could not be endured. Re-
nember Mahomet's pitcher from which no drop of water was
jpilt while he circled Paradise on his horse. That was a case
)f five seconds too ; that's too much like your eternal harmony,
md Mahomet was an epileptic. Be careful, Kirillov, it's
jpilepsy ! "
" It won't have time," Kirillov smiled gently.

VI

The night was passing. Shatov was sent hither and thither,
abused, called back. Marie was reduced to the most abject terror
or fife. She screamed that she wanted to five, that " she must,
he must," and was afraid to die. " I don't want to, I don't
vant to ! " she repeated. If Arina Prohorovna had not been
Ihere, things would have gone very badly. By degrees she gained
[omplete control of the patient — who began to obey every word,
very order from her like a child. Arina Prohorovna ruled by
ternness not by kindness, but she was first-rate at her work,
t began to get light . . . Arina Prohorovna suddenly imagined
hat Shatov had just run out on to the stairs to say his prayers
,nd began laughing. Marie laughed too, spitefully, malignantly,
» though such laughter relieved her. At last they drove Shatov
-way altogether. A damp, cold morning dawned. He pressed
is face to the wall in the corner just as he had done the evening
efore when Erkel came. He was trembling like a leaf, afraid to
hink, but his mind caught at every thought as it does in dreams.

556 THE POSSESSED

He was continually being carried away by day-dreams, which
snapped off short like a rotten thread. From the room earner
no longer groans but awful animal cries, unendurable, incredible.!
He tried to stop up his ears, but could not, and he fell on his I
knees, repeating unconsciously, " Marie, Marie ! " Then suddenly!
he heard a cry, a new cry, which made Shatov start and jump!
up from his knees, the cry of a baby, a weak discordant cry.
He crossed himself and rushed into the room. Arina Prohorovna f
held in her hands a little red wrinkled creature, screaming, and
moving its little arms and legs, fearfully helpless, and looking as
though it could be blown away by a puff of wind, but screaming
and seeming to assert its full right to live. Marie was lying as
though insensible, but a minute later she opened her eyes, and
bent a strange, strange look on Shatov : it was something quite
new, that look. What it meant exactly he was not able to under-
stand yet, but he had never known such a look on her face before.

"Is it a boy ? Is it a boy ? " she asked Arina Prohorovna
in an exhausted voice.

;' It is a boy," the latter shouted in reply, as she bound up the
child.

When she had bound him up and was about to lay him across
the bed between the two pillows, she gave him to Shatov for a
minute to hold. Marie signed to him on the sly as though afraid
of Arina Prohorovna. He understood at once and brought
the baby to show her.

" How . . . pretty he is," she whispered weakly with a smile.

" Poo, what does he look like," Arina Prohorovna laughed
gaily in triumph, glancing at Shatov's face. " What a funny
face ! "

" You may be merry, Arina Prohorovna. ... It's a great
joy," Shatov faltered with an expression of idiotic bliss, radiant
at the phrase Marie had uttered about the child.

" Where does the great joy come in ? " said Arina Prohorovna
good-humouredly, bustling about, clearing up, and working like
a convict.

" The mysterious coming of a new creature, a great and inex-
plicable mystery ; and what a pity it is, Arina Prohorovna, that
you don't understand it."

Shatov spoke in an incoherent, stupefied and ecstatic way.
Something seemed to be tottering in his head and welling up from
his soul apart from his own will.

" There were two and now there's a third human being, a new

A WANDERER 557

birit, finished and complete, unlike the handiwork of man ;

new thought and a new love . . . it's positively frightening. . . .
Ind there's nothing grander in the world."

;4 Ech, what nonsense he talks ! It's simply a further develop-
ment of the organism, and there's nothing else in it, no mystery,"
slid Arina Prohorovna with genuine and good-humoured laughter.

If you talk like that, every fly is a mystery. But I tell you
/hat : superfluous people ought not to be born. We must first
emould everything so that they won't be superfluous and then
ring them into the world. As it is, we shall have to take him
Jo the Foundling, the day after to-morrow. . . . Though that's
Is it should be."

" I will never let him go to the Foundling," Shatov pronounced
esolutely, staring at the floor.

" You adopt him as your son ? "

" He is my son."

:' Of course he is a Shatov, legally he is a Shatov, and there's
o need for you to pose as a humanitarian. Men can't get on
without fine words. There, there, it's all right, but look here,
ay friends," she added, having finished clearing up at last, " it's
ime for me to go. I'll come again this morning, and again in
he evening if necessary, but now, since everything has gone off
o well, I must run off to my other patients, they've been ex-
acting me long ago. I believe you got an old woman somewhere,
Shatov ; an old woman is all very well, but don't you, her tender
msband, desert her ; sit beside her, you may be of use ; Marya
gnatyevna won't drive you away, I fancy. . . . There, there,
. was only laughing."

At the gate, to which Shatov accompanied her, she added to
lim alone.

' You've given me something to laugh at for the rest of my
ife ; I shan't charge you anything ; I shall laugh at you in my

Ileep ! I have never seen anything funnier than you last night."
She went off very well satisfied. Shatov's appearance and con-
versation made it as clear as day fight that this man " was going in
or being a father and was a ninny." She ran home on purpose
;o tell Virginsky about it, though it was shorter and more direct
)o go to another patient.

" Marie, she told you not to go to sleep for a little time, though,
[ see, it's very hard for you," Shatov began timidly. " I'll sit here
3y the window and take care of you, shall I ? "
And he sat down by the window behind the sofa so that she

558 THE POSSESSED

could not see him. But before a minute had passed she called
him and fretfully asked him to arrange the pillow. He began
arranging it. She looked angrily at the wall.

" That's not right, that's not right. . . . What hands ! "

Shatov did it again.

" Stoop down to me," she said wildly, trying hard not to look
at him.

He started but stooped down.

" More . . . not so . . . nearer," and suddenly her left arm
was impulsively thrown round his neck and he felt her warm
moist kiss on his forehead.

" Marie ! "

Her lips were quivering, she was struggling with herself, but
suddenly she raised herself and said with flashing eyes :

" Nikolay Stavrogin is a scoundrel ! " And she fell back
helplessly with her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically, and
tightly squeezing Shatov' s hand in hers.

From that moment she would not let him leave her ; she
insisted on his sitting by her pillow. She could not talk much
but she kept gazing at him and smiling blissfully. She seemed
suddenly to have become a silly girl. Everything seemed trans-
formed. Shatov cried like a boy, then talked of God knows what,
wildly, crazily, with inspiration, kissed her hands ; she listened
entranced, perhaps not understanding him, but caressingly
ruffling his hair with her weak hand, smoothing it and admiring
it. He talked about Kirillov, of how they would now begin " a
new life " for good, of the existence of God, of the goodness of all
men. . . . She took out the child again to gaze at it rapturously.

" Marie," he cried, as he held the child in his arms, " all the old
madness, shame, and deadness is over, isn't it ? Let us work
hard and begin a new life, the three of us, yes, yes ! . . . Oh,
by the way, what shall we call him, Marie ? "

" What shall we call him ? " she repeated with surprise,
and there was a sudden look of terrible grief in her face.

She clasped her hands, looked reproachfully at Shatov and hid
her face in the pillow.

" Marie, what is it ?" he cried with painful alarm.

" How could you, how could you . . . Oh, you ungrateful
man ! "

" Marie, forgive me, Marie ... I only, asked you what his
name should be. I don't know. ..."

" Ivan, Ivan." She raised her flushed and tear-stained face.

A WANDERER 559

' How could you suppose we should call him by another horrible
lame ? "
" Marie, calm yourself ; oh, what a nervous state you are in ! "
" That's rude again, putting it down to my nerves. I bet that
f I'd said his name was to be that other . . . horrible name, you'd
lave agreed at once and not have noticed it even ! Oh, men, the
nean ungrateful creatures, they are all alike ! "

A minute later, of course, they were reconciled. Shatov
persuaded her to have a nap. She fell asleep but still kept his
land in hers ; she waked up frequently, looked at him, as though
if raid he would go away, and dropped asleep again.

Kirillov sent an old woman " to congratulate them," as well
is some hot tea, some freshly cooked cutlets, and some broth and
^hite bread for Marya Ignatyevna. The patient sipped the broth
jreedily, the old woman undid the baby's wrappings and swaddled
t afresh, Marie made Shatov have a cutlet too.

Time was passing. Shatov, exhausted, fell asleep himself in his
)hair, with his head on Marie's pillow. So they were found by
Irina Prohorovna, who kept her word. She waked them up
*aily, asked Marie some necessary questions, examined the baby,
wad again forbade Shatov to leave her. Then, jesting at the
' happy couple," with a shade of contempt and superciliousness
ihe went away as well satisfied as before.

It was quite dark when Shatov waked up. He made haste to
ight the candle and ran for the old woman ; but he had hardly
begun to go down the stairs when he was struck by the sound
)f the soft, deliberate steps of some one coming up towards him.
Erkel came in.

' Don't come in," whispered Shatov, and impulsively seizing
aim by the hand he drew him back towards the gate. " Wait
aere, I'll come directly, I'd completely forgotten you, completely !
Oh, how you brought it back ! "

He was in such haste that he did not even run in to Kirillov's,
but only called the old woman. Marie was in despair and
indignation that " he could dream of leaving her alone."

1 But," he cried ecstatically, " this is the very last step ! And
then for a new life and we'll never, never think of the old horrors
again ! "

fa He somehow appeased her and promised to be back at nine
o'clock ; he kissed her warmly, kissed the baby and ran down
quickly to Erkel.
They set off together to Stavrogin's park at Skvoreshniki,

562 THE POSSESSED

I went there afterwards on purpose to look at it. How sinister
it must have looked on that chill autumn evening ! It was at
the edge of an old wood belonging to the Crown. Huge ancient
pines stood out as vague sombre blurs in the darkness. It was
so dark that they could hardly see each other two paces off, but
Pyotr Stepanovitch, Liputin, and afterwards Erkel, brought
lanterns with them. At some unrecorded date in the past a rather
absurd-looking grotto had for some reason been built here of
rough unhewn stones. The table and benches in the grotto had
long ago decayed and fallen. Two hundred paces to the right
was the bank of the third pond of the park. These three ponds
stretched one after another for a mile from the house to the
very end of the park. One could scarcely imagine that any
noise, a scream, or even a shot, could reach the inhabitants of
the Stavrogins, deserted house. Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's
departure the previous day and Alexey Yegorytch's absence
left only five or six people in the house, all more or less invalided,
so to speak. In any case it might be assumed with perfect
confidence that if cries or shouts for help were heard by any of
the inhabitants of the isolated house they would only have
excited terror ; no one would have moved from his warm stove
or snug shelf to give assistance.

By twenty past six almost all of them except Erkel, who had
been told off to fetch Shatov, had turned up at the trysting-
place. This time Pyotr Stepanovitch was not late ; he came
with Tolkatchenko. Tolkatchenko looked frowning and anxious ;
all his assumed determination and insolent bravado had vanished.
He scarcely left Pyotr Stepanovitch' s side, and seemed to have
become all at once immensely devoted to him. He was con-
tinually thrusting himself forward to whisper fussily to him, but
the latter scarcely answered him, or muttered something irritably
to get rid of him.

Shigalov and Virginsky had arrived rather before Pyotr
Stepanovitch, and as soon as he came they drew a little apart
in profound and obviously intentional silence. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch raised his lantern and examined them with unceremonious
and insulting minuteness. " They mean to speak," flashed
through his mind.

" Isn't Lyamshin here ? " he asked Virginsky. " Who said
he was ill ? "

" I am here," responded Lyamshin, suddenly coming from
behind a tree. He was in a warm greatcoat and thickly muffled

A BUSY JNJLUHT 563

in a rug, so that it was difficult to make out his face even with a
lantern.

" So Liputin is the only one not here ? "

Liputin too came out of the grotto without speaking. Pyotr
Stepanovitch raised the lantern again.

' Why were you hiding in there ? Why didn't you come
out ? " *

" I imagine we still keep the right of freedom ... of our
actions," Liputin muttered, though probably he hardly knew
what he wanted to express.

" Gentlemen," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, raising his voice for
the first time above a whisper, which produced an effect, " I
think you fully understand that it's useless to go over things
again. Everything was said and fully thrashed out yesterday,
openly and directly. But perhaps — as I see from your faces —
some one wants to make some statement ; in that case I beg you
to make haste. Damn it all ! there's not much time, and Erkel
may bring him in a minute. ..."

" He is sure to bring him," Tolkatchenko put in for some
reason.

" If I am not mistaken, the printing press will be handed over,
to begin with ? " inquired Liputin, though again he seemed
hardly to understand why he asked the question.

" Of course. Why should we lose it ? " said Pyotr Stepanovitch,
lifting the lantern to his face. " But, you see, we all agreed
yesterday that it was not really necessary to take it. He need
only show you the exact spot where it's buried ; we can dig it
up afterwards for ourselves. I know that it's somewhere ten
paces from a corner of this grotto. But, damn it all ! how
could you have forgotten, Liputin ? It was agreed that you
should meet him alone and that we should come out afterwards.
. . .It's strange that you should ask — or didn't you mean what
you said % "

Liputin kept gloomily silent. All were silent. The wind
shook the tops of the pine-trees.

" I trust, however, gentlemen, that every one will do his
duty," Pyotr Stepanovitch rapped out impatiently.

" I know that Shatov's wife has come back and has given
birth to a child," Virginsky said suddenly, excited and gesticu-
lating and scarcely able to speak distinctly. " Knowing what
human nature is, we can be sure that now he won't give informa-
tion . . . because he is happy. ... So I went to every one

564 THE POSSESSED

this morning and found no one at home, so perhaps now nothing
need be done. . . ."

He stopped short with a catch in his breath.

" If you suddenly became happy, Mr. Virginsky," said Pyotr
Stepanovitch, stepping up to him, " would you abandon — not
giving information ; there's no question of that — but any
perilous public action which you had planned before you were
happy and which you regarded as a duty and obligation in spite
of the risk and loss of happiness ? "

" No, I wouldn't abandon it ! I wouldn't on any account ! "
said Virginsky with absurd warmth, twitching all over.

" You would rather be unhappy again than be a scoundrel ? '

' Yes, yes. . . . Quite the contrary. . . .I'd rather be a
complete scoundrel . . . that is no . . . not a scoundrel at all,
but on the contrary completely unhappy rather than a scoundrel."

" Well then, let me tell you that Shatov looks on this betrayal
as a public duty. It's his most cherished conviction, and the
proof of it is that he runs some risk himself ; though, of course,
they will pardon him a great deal for giving information. A man
like that will never give up the idea. No sort of happiness would
overcome him. In another day he'll go back on it, reproach
himself, and will go straight to the police. What's more, I don't
see any happiness in the fact that his wife has come back after
three years' absence to bear him a child of Stavrogin's."

" But no one has seen Shatov' s letter," Shigalov brought out
all at once, emphatically.

" I've seen it," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch. "It exists, and all
this is awfully stupid, gentlemen."

" And I protest ..." Virginsky cried, boiling over suddenly.
" I protest with all my might. ... I want . . . this is what I
want. I suggest that when he arrives we all come out and
question him, and if it's true, we induce him to repent of it ; and-,
if he gives us his word of honour, let him go. In any case we!
must have a trial ; it must be done after trial. We mustn't lie
in wait for him and then fall upon him."

" Risk the cause on his word of honour — that's the acme ofi
stupidity ! Damnation, how stupid it all is now, gentlemen !
And a pretty part you are choosing to play at the moment of
danger ! "

" I protest, I protest ! " Virginsky persisted.

" Don't bawl, anyway ; we shan't hear the signal. Shatov,
gentlemen. . . . (Damnation, how stupid this is now !) I've

1

H

A BUSY NIGHT 565

told you already that Shatov is a Slavophil, that is, one of the
stupidest set of people. . . . But, damn it all, never mind, that's
no matter ! You put me out ! . . . Shatov is an embittered
man, gentlemen, and since he has belonged to the party, anyway,
whether he wanted to or no, I had hoped till the last minute
that he might have been of service to the cause and might have
been made use of as an embittered man. I spared him and was
keeping him in reserve, in spite of most exact instructions. . . .
I've spared him a hundred times more than he deserved ! But
he's ended by betraying us. . . . But, hang it all, I don't care !
You'd better try running away now, any of you ! No one of
you has the right to give up the job ! You can kiss him if you
like, but you haven't the right to stake the cause on his word of
honour ! That's acting like swine and spies in government
pay!"

" Who's a spy in government pay here ? " Liputin filtered
out.

'You, perhaps. You'd better hold your tongue, Liputin;
you talk for the sake of talking, as you always do. All men are
spies, gentlemen, who funk their duty at the moment of danger.
There will always be some fools who'll run in a panic at the last
moment and cry out, ' Aie, forgive me, and I'll give them all
away ! ' But let me tell you, gentlemen, no betrayal would
win you a pardon now. Even if your sentence were mitigated
it would mean Siberia ; and, what's more, there's no escaping
the weapons of the other side — and their weapons are sharper
than the government's."

Pyotr Stepanovitch was furious and said more than he meant
to. With a resolute air Shigalov took three steps towards him.
Since yesterday evening I've thought over the question,"
he began, speaking with his usual pedantry and assurance.
(I believe that if the earth had given way under his feet he would
not have raised his voice nor have varied one tone in his methodical
exposition.) " Thinking the matter over, I've come to the con-
clusion that the projected murder is not merely a waste of precious
time which might be employed in a more suitable and befitting
manner, but presents, moreover, that deplorable deviation from
the normal method which has always been most prejudicial to
the cause and has delayed its triumph for scores of years, under
the guidance of shallow thinkers and pre-eminently of men of
political instead of purely socialistic leanings. I have come here
solely to protest against the projected enterprise, for the general

566 THE POSSESSED

edification, intending then to withdraw at the actual moment,
which you, for some reason I don't understand, speak of as a
moment of danger to you. I am going — not from fear of that
danger nor from a sentimental feeling for Shatov, whom I have
no inclination to kiss, but solely because all this business from
beginning to end is in direct contradiction to my programme.
As for my betraying you and my being in the pay of the govern-
ment, you can set your mind completely at rest. I shall not
betray you."

He turned and walked away.

" Damn it all, he'll meet them and warn Shatov ! " cried
Pyotr Stepanovitch, pulling out his revolver. They heard the
click of the trigger.

" You may be confident," said Shigalov, turning once more,
" that if I meet Shatov on the way I may bow to him, but I
shall not warn him."

" But do you know, you may have to pay for this, Mr.
Fourier ? "

" I beg you to observe that I am not Fourier. If you mix
me up with that mawkish theoretical twaddler you simply prove
thatiyou know nothing of my manuscript, though it has been in
your hands. As for your vengeance, let me tell you that it's a
mistake to cock your pistol : that's absolutely against your
interests at the present moment. But if you threaten to shoot
me to-morrow, or the day after, you'll gain nothing by it but
unnecessary trouble. You may kill me, but sooner or later
you'll come to my system all the same. Good-bye."

At that instant a whistle was heard in the park, two hundred
paces away from the direction of the pond. Liputin at one
answered, whistling also as had been agreed the evening before.
(As he had lost several teeth and distrusted his own powers, he
had this morning bought for a farthing in the market a child's
clay whistle for the purpose.) Erkel had warned Shatov on the
way that they would whistle as a signal, so that the latter felt
no uneasiness.

:c Don't be uneasy, I'll avoid them and they won't notice me
at all," Shigalov declared in an impressive whisper ; and there-j
upon deliberately and without haste he walked home througl:
the dark park.

Everything, to the smallest detail of this terrible affair, j
now fully known. To begin with, Liputin met Erkel and Shatov
at the entrance to the grotto. Shatov did not bow or offe:

Erl

kk

A BUSY NIGHT 567

him his hand, but at once pronounced hurriedly in a loud
voice :

" Well, where have you put the spade, and haven't you
another lantern ? You needn't be afraid, there's absolutely no
one here, and they wouldn't hear at Skvoreshniki now if we
fired a cannon here. This is the place, here this very spot."

And he stamped with his foot ten paces from the end of the
grotto towards the wood. At that moment Tolkatchenko
rushed out from behind a tree and sprang at him from behind,
while Erkel seized him by the elbows. Liputin attacked him
from the front. The three of them at once knocked him down
and pinned him to the ground. At this point Pyotr Stepanovitch
darted up with his revolver. It is said that Shatov had time to
turn his head and was able to see and recognise him. Three
lanterns lighted up the scene. Shatov suddenly uttered a short
and desperate scream. But they did not let him go on screaming.
Pyotr Stepanovitch firmly and accurately put his revolver to
Shatov' s forehead, pressed it to it, and pulled the trigger. The
shot seems not to have been loud ; nothing was heard at
Skvoreshniki, anyway. Shigalov, who was scarcely three paces
away, of course heard it — he heard the shout and the shot, but,
as he testified afterwards, he did not turn nor even stop. Death
was almost instantaneous. Pyotr Stepanovitch was the only
one who preserved all his faculties, but I don't think he was
quite cool. Squatting on his heels, he searched the murdered
man's pockets hastily, though with steady hand. No money
was found (his purse had been left under Marya Ignatyevna's
pillow). Two or three scraps of paper of no importance were
found : a note from his office, the title of some book, and an
old bill from a restaurant abroad which had been preserved,
goodness knows why, for two years in his pocket. Pyotr
Stepanovitch transferred these scraps of paper to his own pocket,
and suddenly noticing that they had all gathered round, were
gazing at the corpse and doing nothing, he began rudely and
angrily abusing them and urging them on. Tolkatchenko and
Erkel recovered themselves, and running to the grotto brought
instantly from it two stones which, they had got ready there that
morning. These stones, which weighed about twenty pounds
each, were securely tied with cord. As they intended to throw
the body in the nearest of the three ponds, they proceeded to tie
the stones to the head and feet respectively. Pyotr Stepanovitch
fastened the stones while Tolkatchenko and Erkel only held and

n

nci

568 THE POSSESSED

passed them . Erkel was foremost, and while Py otr Stepano vitch,
grumbling and swearing, tied the dead man's feet together with
the cord and fastened the stone to them — a rather lengthy
operation — Tolkatchenko stood holding the other stone at arm's-
length, his whole person bending forward, as it were, deferentially,
to be in readiness to hand it without delay. It never once occurred
to him to lay his burden on the ground in the interval. When
at last both stones were tied on and Pyotr Stepanovitch got up
from the ground to scrutinise the faces of his companions, some-
thing strange happened, utterly unexpected and surprising to
almost every one.

As I have said already, all except perhaps Tolkatchenko and
Erkel were standing still doing nothing. Though Virginsky had
rushed up to Shatov with the others he had not seized him or
helped to hold him. Lyamshin had joined the group after the
shot had been fired. Afterwards, while Pyotr Stepanovitch was
busy with the corpse — for perhaps ten minutes — none of them
seemed to have been fully conscious. They grouped themselves
around and seemed to have felt amazement rather than anxiety
or alarm. Liputin stood foremost, close to the corpse. Virginsky
stood behind him, peeping over his shoulder with a peculiar, as
it were unconcerned, curiosity ; he even stood on tiptoe to get
a better view. Lyamshin hid behind Virginsky. He took an
apprehensive peep from time to time and slipped behind him
again at once. When the stones had been tied on and Pyotr
Stepanovitch had risen to his feet, Virginsky began faintly
shuddering all over, clasped his hands, and cried out bitterly at
the top of his voice :

" It's not the right thing, it's not, it's not at all ! " He
would perhaps have added something more to his belated ex-
clamation, but Lyamshin did not let him finish : he suddenly
seized him from behind and squeezed him with all his might,
uttering an unnatural shriek. There are moments of violent
emotion, of terror, for instance, when a man will cry out in a
voice not his own, unlike anything one could have anticipated
from him, and this has sometimes a very terrible effect.
Lyamshin gave vent to a scream more animal than human.
Squeezing Virginsky from behind more and more tightly and
convulsively, he went on shrieking without a pause, his mouth
wide open and his eyes starting out of his head, keeping up a
continual patter with his feet, as though he were beating a drum.
Virginsky was so scared that he too screamed out like a madman,

A BUSY NIGHT 569

and with a ferocity, a vindictiveness that one could never have
expected of Virginsky. He tried to pull himself away from
Lyamshin, scratching and punching him as far as he could with
his arms behind him. Erkel at last helped to pull Lyamshin
away. But when, in his terror, Virginsky had skipped ten paces
away from him, Lyamshin, catching sight of Pyotr Stepano-
vitch, began yelling again and flew at him. Stumbling over the
corpse, he fell upon Pyotr Stepanovitch, pressing his head to
the latter' s chest and gripping him so tightly in his arms that
Pyotr Stepanovitch, Tolkatchenko, and Liputin could all of
them do nothing at the first moment. Pyotr Stepanovitch
shouted, swore, beat him on the head with his fists. At last,
wrenching himself away, he drew his revolver and put it in the
open mouth of Lyamshin, who was still yelling and was by now
tightly held by Tolkatchenko, Erkel, and Liputin. But Lyamshin
went on shrieking in spite of the revolver. At last Erkel,
crushing his silk handkerchief into a ball, deftly thrust it into
his mouth and the shriek ceased. Meantime Tolkatchenko tied
his hands with what was left of the rope.

" It's very strange," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, scrutinising the
madman with uneasy wonder. He was evidently struck. " I
expected something very different from him," he added thought-
fully.

They left Erkel in charge of him for a time. They had to
make haste to get rid of the corpse : there had been so much
noise that some one might have heard. Tolkatchenko and Pyotr
Stepanovitch took up the lanterns and lifted the corpse by the
head, while Liputin and Virginsky took the feet, and so they
carried it away. With the two stones it was a heavy burden,
and the distance was more than two hundred paces. Tolkatchenko
was the strongest of them. He advised them to keep in step,
but no one answered him and they all walked anyhow. Pyotr
Stepanovitch walked on the right and, bending forward, carried
the dead man's head on his shoulder while with the left hand he
supported the stone. As Tolkatchenko walked more than half
the way without thinking of helping him with the stone, Pyotr
Stepanovitch at last shouted at him with an oath. It was a
single, sudden shout. They all went on carrying the body in
silence, and it was only when they reached the pond that
Virginsky, stooping under his burden and seeming to be
exhausted by the weight of it, cried out again in the same loud
and wailing voice :

570 THE POSSESSED

" It's not the right thing, no, no, it's not the right
thing ! "

The place to which they carried the dead man at the extreme
end of the rather large pond, which was the farthest of the three
from the house, was one of the most solitary and unfrequented
spots in the park, especially at this late season of the year. At
that end the pond was overgrown with weeds by the banks.
They put down the lantern, swung the corpse and threw it into
the pond. They heard a muffled and prolonged splash. Pyotr
Stepanovitch raised the lantern and every one followed his
example, peering curiously to see the body sink, but nothing
could be seen : weighted with the two stones, the body sank at
once. The big ripples spread over the surface of the water and
quickly passed away. It was over.

" Now we can separate, gentlemen," said Pyotr Stepanovitch,
addressing them. " You must certainly be feeling that pride of
a free spirit which is inseparable from the fulfilment of a duty
freely undertaken. If you are unhappily at this moment too
much agitated for such feelings, you will certainly feel them
to-morrow, when, in fact, it would be shameful not to feel them.
As for Lyamshin's too disgraceful over-excitement, I am willing
to put it down to delirium, especially as they say he has been
really ill all day. And one instant of free reflection will convince
you, Virginsky, that in the interests of the cause we could not
have trusted to any word of honour, but had to act as we did.
Subsequent events will convince you that he was a traitor.
I am ready to overlook your exclamations. As for danger, there
is no reason to anticipate it. It would occur to no one to suspect
any of us if you'll behave sensibly ; so that it really depends on
yourselves and on the conviction in which I hope you will be
fully confirmed to-morrow. One of the reasons why you have
banded yourselves together into a separate branch of a free
organisation representing certain views was to support each
other in the cause by your energy at any crisis and if need be
to watch over one another. The highest responsibility is laid
upon each of you. You are called upon to bring new life into
the party which has grown decrepit and stinking with stagnation.
Keep that always before your eyes to give you strength. All
that you have to do meanwhile is to bring about the downfall
of everything — both the government and its moral standards.
None will be left but us, who have prepared ourselves before-
hand to take over the government. The intelligent we shall

!

A BUSY NIGHT 571

bring over to our side, and as for the fools we shall mount upon
their shoulders. You must not be shy of that. We've got to
re-educate a generation to make them worthy of freedom. We
shall have many thousands of Shatovs to contend with. We
shall organise to control public opinion ; it's shameful not to
snatch at anything that lies idle and gaping at us. I'm going
at once to Kirillov, and by the morning a document will be in
existence in which he will as he dies take it all on himself by
way of an explanation to the police. Nothing can be more
probable than such a solution. To begin with, he was on bad
terms with Shatov ; they had lived together in America, so
they've had time to quarrel. It was well known that Shatov
had changed his convictions, so there was hostility between them
on that ground and fear of treachery — that is, the most relent-
less hostility. All that will be stated in writing. Finally, it
will be mentioned that Fedka had been lodging with him at
Filipov's, so all this will completely avert all suspicion from you,
because it will throw all those sheep's-heads off the scent. We
shall not meet to-morrow, gentlemen ; I am going into the
country for a very short time, but the day after you will hear
from me. I should advise you to spend to-morrow at home.
Now we will separate, going back by twos by different paths.
You, Tolkatchenko, I'll ask to look after Lyamshin and take
him home. You may have some influence over him ; and above
all make him understand what harm he is doing himself by his
cowardice. Your kinsman Shigalov, Virginsky, I am as un-
willing to distrust as I am you ; he will not betray us. I can
only regret his action. He has not, however, announced that
he will leave the society, so it would be premature to bury him.
Well, make haste, gentlemen. Though they are sheep's-heads,
there's no harm in prudence. . . ."

Virginsky went off with Erkel, who before giving up Lyamshin
to Tolkatchenko brought him to Pyotr Stepanovitch, reporting
to the latter that Lyamshin had come to his senses, was penitent
and begged forgiveness, and indeed had no recollection of what
had happened to him. Pyotr Stepanovitch walked off alone,
going round by the farther side of the pond, skirting the park.
This was the longest way. To his surprise Liputin overtook
him before he got half-way home. •

" Pyotr Stepanovitch ! Pyotr Stepanovitch ! Lyamshin will
give information ! "

" No, he will come to his senses and realise that he will be

572 THE POSSESSED

the first to go to Siberia if he did. No one will betray us now.
Even you won't."

" What about you ? "

" No fear I I'll get you all out of the way the minute you
attempt to turn traitors, and you know that. But you won't
turn traitors. Have you run a mile and a half to tell me that ? "

" Pyotr Stepanovitch, Pyotr Stepanovitch, perhaps we shall
never meet again ! "

" What's put that into your head ? "

" Only tell me one thing."

" Well, what ? Though I want you to take yourself off."

" One question, but answer it truly : are we the only quintet
in the world, or is it true that there are hundreds of others ?
It's a question of the utmost importance to me, Pyotr
Stepanovitch."

" I see that from the frantic state you are in. But do you
know, Liputin, you are more dangerous than Lyamshin ? "

" I know, I know ; but the answer, your answer ! "

" You are a stupid fellow ! I should have thought it could
make no difference to you now whether it's the only quintet or
one of a thousand."

" That means it's the only one ! I was sure of it . . ." cried
Liputin. " I always knew it was the only one, I knew it all
along." And without waiting for any reply he turned|and
quickly vanished into the darkness.

Pyotr Stepanovitch pondered a little.

" No, no one will turn traitor," he concluded with decision,
" but the group must remain a group and obey, or I'll . . .
What a wretched set they are though ! "

II

He first went home, and carefully, without haste, packed his
trunk. At six o'clock in the morning there was a special train
from the town. This early morning express only ran once a
week, and was only a recent experiment. Though Pyotr
Stepanovitch had told the members of the quintet that he was
only going to be away for a short time in the neighbourhood, his
intentions, as appeared later, were in reality very different.
Having finished packing, he settled accounts with his landlady,

A BUSY NIGHT 573

to whom he had previously given notice of his departure, and
drove in a cab to Erkel's lodgings, near the station. And then
just upon one o'clock at night he walked to Kirillov's, approaching
as before by Fedka's secret way.

Pyotr Stepanovitch was in a painful state of mind. Apart
from other extremely grave reasons for dissatisfaction (he was
still unable to learn anything of Stavrogin), he had, it seems —
for I cannot assert it for a fact — received in the course of that
day, probably from Petersburg, secret information of a danger
awaiting him in the immediate future. There are, of course,
many legends in the town relating to this period ; but if any
facts were known, it was only to those immediately concerned.
I can only surmise as my own conjecture that Pyotr Stepanovitch
may well have had affairs going on in other neighbourhoods as
well as in our town, so that he really may have received such a
warning. I am convinced, indeed, in spite of Liputin's cynical
and despairing doubts, that he really had two or three other
quintets ; for instance, in Petersburg and Moscow, and if not
quintets at least colleagues and correspondents, and possibly was
in very curious relations with them. Not more than three days
after his departure an order for his immediate arrest arrived
from Petersburg — whether in connection with what had happened
among us, or elsewhere, I don't know. This order only served
to increase the overwhelming, almost panic terror which
suddenly came upon our local authorities and the society of the
town, till then so persistently frivolous in its attitude, on the
discovery of the mysterious and portentous murder of the student
Shatov — the climax of the long series of senseless actions in
our midst — as well as the extremely mysterious circumstances
that accompanied that murder. But the order came too late :
Pyotr Stepanovitch was already in Petersburg, living under
another name, and, learning what was going on, he made haste
to make his escape abroad. . . . But I am anticipating in a
shocking way.

He went in to Kirillov, looking ill-humoured and quarrelsome.
Apart from the real task before him, he felt, as it were, tempted
to satisfy some personal grudge, to avenge himself on Kirillov
for something. Kirillov seemed pleased to see him ; he had
evidently been expecting him a long time with painful impatience.
His face was paler than usual ; there was a fixed and heavy look
in his black eyes.

" I thought you weren't coming," he brought out drearily

574 THE POSSESSED

from his corner of the sofa, from which he had not, however,
moved to greet him.

Pyotr Stepanovitch stood before him and, before uttering a
word, looked intently at his face.

" Everything is in order, then, and we are not drawing back
from our resolution. Bravo ! " He smiled an offensively
patronising smile. " But, after all," he added with unpleasant
jocosity, " if I am behind my time, it's not for you to complain :
I made you a present of three hours."

" I don't want extra hours as a present from you, and you
can't make me a present . . . you fool ! "

' What ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch was startled, but instantly
controlled himself. " What huffiness ! So we are in a savage
temper ? " he rapped out, still with the same offensive super-
ciliousness. " At such a moment composure is what you need.
The best thing you can do is to consider yourself a Columbus
and me a mouse, and not to take offence at anything I say.
I gave you that advice yesterday."

" I don't want to look upon you as a mouse."

" What's that, a compliment ? But the tea is cold — and that
shows that everything is topsy-turvy. Bah ! But I see some-
thing in the window, on a plate." He went to the window.
:' Oh oh, boiled chicken and rice ! . . . But why haven't you
begun upon it yet ? So we are in such a state of mind that even
chicken ..."

"I've dined, and it's not your business. Hold your tongue ! ':

" Oh, of course ; besides, it's no consequence — though for
me at the moment it is of consequence. Only fancy, I scarcely
had any dinner, and so if, as I suppose, that chicken is not
wanted now . . . eh ? "

" Eat it if you can."

" Thank you, and then I'll have tea."

He instantly settled himself at the other end of the sofa and
fell upon the chicken with extraordinary greediness ; at the
same time he kept a constant watch on his victim. Kirillov
looked at him fixedly with angry aversion, as though unable to
tear himself away.

" I say, though," Pyotr Stepanovitch fired off suddenly, while
he still went on eating, " what about our business ? We are not
crying off, are we ? How about that document ? "

" I've decided in the night that it's nothing to me. I'll write
it. About the manifestoes ? "

A BUSY NIGHT 575

" Yes, about the manifestoes too. But I'll dictate it. Of
course, that's nothing to you. Can you possibly mind what's
in the letter at such a moment ? "

" That's not your business."

" It's not mine, of course. It need only be a few lines, though :
that you and Shatov distributed the manifestoes and with the
help of Fedka, who hid in your lodgings. This last point about
Fedka and your lodgings is very important — the most important
of all, indeed. You see, I am talking to you quite openly."

" Shatov ? Why Shatov ? I won't mention Shatov for
anything."

" What next ! What is it to you ? You can't hurt him
now."

" His wife has come back to him. She has waked up and has
sent to ask me where he is."

" She has sent to ask you where he is ? H'm . . . that's
unfortunate. She may send again ; no one ought to know I am
here."

Pyotr Stepanovitch was uneasy.

" She won't know, she's gone to sleep again. There's a midwife
with her, Arina Virginsky."

" So that's how it was. . . . She won't overhear, I suppose ?
I say, you'd better shut the front door."

" She won't overhear anything. And if Shatov comes 1*11
hide you in another room."

" Shatov won't come ; and you must write that you quarrelled
with him because he turned traitor and informed the police . . .
this evening . . . and caused his death."

" He is dead ! " cried Kirillov, jumping up from the sofa.

" He died at seven o'clock this evening, or rather, at seven
o'clock yesterday evening, and now it's one o'clock."

'* You have killed him ! . . . And I foresaw it yesterday ! "

" No doubt you did ! With this revolver here." (He drew
out his revolver as though to show it, but did not put it back
again and still held it in his right hand as though in readiness.)
"' You are a strange man, though, Kirillov ; you knew yourself
that the stupid fellow was bound to end like this. What was
there to foresee in that ? I made that as plain as possible over
and over again. Shatov was meaning to betray us ; I was
watching him, and it could not be left like that. And you too
had instructions to watch him ; you told me so yourself three
weeks ago. ..."

576 THE POSSESSED

"Hold your tongue ! You've done this because he spat in
your face in Geneva ! "

" For that and for other things too — for many other things ;
not from spite, however. Why do you jump up ? Why look
like that ? Oh oh, so that's it, is it ? "

He jumped up and held out his revolver before him. Kirillov
had suddenly snatched up from the window his revolver, which
had been loaded and put ready since the morning. Pyotr
Stepanovitch took up his position and aimed his weapon at
Kirillov. The latter laughed angrily.

" Confess, you scoundrel, that you brought your revolver
because I might shoot you. . . . But I shan't shoot you . . .
though . . . though ..."

And again he turned his revolver upon Pyotr Stepanovitch, as
it were rehearsing, as though unable to deny himself the pleasure
of imagining how he would shoot him. Pyotr Stepanovitch,
holding his ground, waited for him, waited for him till the last
minute without pulling the trigger, at the risk of being the
first to get a bullet in his head : it might well be expected of
" the maniac." But at last " the maniac " dropped his hand,
gasping and trembling and unable to speak.

" You've played your little game and that's enough." Pyotr
Stepanovitch, too, dropped his weapon. " I knew it was only
a game ; only you ran a risk, let me tell you : I might have
fired."

And he sat down on the sofa with a fair show of composure
and poured himself out some tea, though his hand trembled
a little. Kirillov laid his revolver on the table and began
walking up and down.

" I won't write that I killed Shatov . . . and I won't write
anything now. You won't have a document ! "
" I shan't * "
" No, you won't."

" What meanness and what stupidity ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch \
turned green with resentment. " I foresaw it, though. You've
not taken me by surprise, let me tell you. As you please,
however. If I could make you do it by force, I would. You are j
a scoundrel, though." Pyotr Stepanovitch was more and more 1
carried away and unable to restrain himself. "You asked usj
for money out there and promised us no end of things. . . . ]
I won't go away with nothing, however : I'll see you put the
bullet through your brains first, anyway."

31

it

A BUSY NIGHT 577

" I want you to go away at once." Kirillov stood firmly
before him.

" No, that's impossible." Pyotr Stepanovitch took up his
revolver again. " Now in your spite and cowardice you may
think fit to put it off and to turn traitor to-morrow, so as to get
money again ; they'll pay you for that, of course. Damn it all,
fellows like you are capable of anything ! Only don't trouble
yourself ; I've provided for all contingencies : I am not going
till I've dashed your brains out with this revolver, as I did to
that scoundrel Shatov, if you are afraid to do it yourself and
put off your intention, damn you ! "

" You are set on seeing my blood, too ? "

" I am not acting from spite ; let me tell you, it's nothing
to me. I am doing it to be at ease about the cause. One can't
rely on men ; you see that for yourself. I don't understand
what fancy possesses you to put yourself to death. It wasn't
my idea ; you thought of it yourself before I appeared, and
talked of your intention to the committee abroad before you said
anything to me. And you know, no one has forced it out of
you ; no one of them knew you, but you came to confide in them
yourself, from sentiment alism. And what's to be done if a plan
of action here, which can't be altered now, was founded upon that
with your consent and upon your suggestion ? . . . your sugges-
tion, mind that ! You have put yourself in a position in which
you know too much. If you are an ass and go off to-morrow to
inform the police, that would be rather a disadvantage to us ;
what do you think about it ? Yes, you've bound yourself ;
you've given your word, you've taken money. That you can't
deny. ..."

Pyotr Stepanovitch was much excited, but for some time past
kirillov had not been listening. He paced up and down the
•oom, lost in thought again.

" I am sorry for Shatov," he said, stopping before Pyotr
tepanovitch again.

' Why so ? I am sorry, if that's all, and do you suppose ..."

' Hold your tongue, you scoundrel," roared Kirillov,
uaking an alarming and unmistakable movement ; :' I'll kill
ou."

:< There, there, there ! I told a lie, I admit it ; I am not sorry
<t all. Come, that's enough, that's enough." Pyotr Stepano-
ritch started up apprehensively, putting out his hand.
Kirillov subsided and began walking up and down again.

2o

578 THE POSSESSED

" I won't put it off ; I want to kill myself now : all are scoun-
drels."

" Well, that's an idea ; of course all are scoundrels ; and since
life is a beastly thing for a decent man ..."

" Fool, I am just such a scoundrel as you, as all, not a decent
man. There's never been a decent man anywhere."

" He's guessed the truth at last ! Can you, Kirillov, with!
your sense, have failed to see till now that all men are alike,
that there are none better or worse, only some are stupider than
others, and that if all are scoundrels (which is nonsense, though)
there oughtn't to be any people that are not ? "

" Ah ! Why, you are really in earnest ? ' Kirillov
looked at him with some wonder. " You speak with heat and
simply. . . . Can it be that even fellows like you have
convictions ? "

" Kirillov, I've never been able to understand why you mean
to kill yourself. I only know it's from conviction . . . strong
conviction. But if you feel a yearning to express yourself, so
to say, I am at your service. . . . Only you must think of the
time."

" What time is it ? "

" Oh oh, just two." Pyotr Stepanovitch looked at his watcW
and lighted a cigarette.

" It seems we can come to terms after all," he reflected.

''I've nothing to say to you," muttered Kirillov.

" I remember that something about God comes into it . . J
you explained it to me once — twice, in fact. If you shoow
yourself, you become God ; that's it, isn't it ? "

" Yes, I become God."

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not even smile ; he waited. Kirillo^d
looked at him subtly.

" You are a political imposter and intriguer. You want td
lead me on into philosophy and enthusiasm and to bring about)
a reconciliation so as to disperse my anger, and then, when 1
am reconciled with you, beg from me a note to say I killed
Shatov."

Pyotr Stepanovitch answered with almost natural frankness!

" Well, supposing I am such a scoundrel. But at the lasl
moments does that matter to you, Kirillov ? What are wa
quarrelling about ? Tell me, please. You are one sort of man
and I am another — what of it ? And what's more, we are both
of us . . ."

A BUSY NIGHT 579

" Scoundrels."

" Yes, scoundrels if you like. But you know that that's only
words."

" All my life I wanted it not to be only words. I lived because
I did not want it to be. Even now every day I want it to be
not words."

" Well, every one seeks to be where he is best off. The fish

. . that is, every one seeks his own comfort, that's all. That's
been a commonplace for ages and ages."

" Comfort, do you say ? "

i( Oh, it's not worth while quarrelling over words."

" No, you were right in what you said ; let it be comfort.
God is necessary and so must exist."

" Well, that's all right, then."

" But I know He doesn't and can't."

" That's more likely."

" Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas
can't go on living ? "

" Must shoot himself, you mean ? "

:' Surely you must understand that one might shoot oneself
for that alone ? You don't understand that there may be a man,
one man out of your thousands of millions, one man who won't
bear it and does not want to."

" All I understand is that you seem to be hesitating. . . .
That's very bad."

" Stavrogin, too, is consumed by an idea," Kirillov said
gloomily, pacing up and down the room. He had not noticed
the previous remark.

1 What ? " Pyotr Stepanovitch pricked up his ears. " What
idea ? Did he tell you something himself ? "

" No, I guessed it myself : if Stavrogin has faith, he does not
believe that he has faith. If he hasn't faith, he does not believe
that he hasn't."

' Well, Stavrogin has got something else wiser than that in
lis head," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered peevishly, uneasily
watching the turn the conversation had taken and the pallor of
Kirillov.

:' Damn it all, he won't shoot himself ! " he was thinking.
I always suspected it ; it's a maggot in the brain and nothing
more ; what a rotten lot of people ! "

' You are the last to be with me ; I shouldn't like to part on
)ad terms with you," Kirillov vouchsafed suddenly.

580 THE POSSESSED

Pyotr Stepanovitch did not answer at once. " Damn it all,
what is it now ? " he thought again.

" I assure you, Kirillov, I have nothing against you personally
as a man, and always ..."

' You are a scoundrel and a false intellect. But I am just
the same as you are, and I will shoot myself while you will
remain living."

' You mean to say, I am so abject that I want to go on
living."

He could not make up his mind whether it was judicious to
keep up such a conversation at such a moment or not, and
resolved "to be guided by circumstances." But the tone of
superiority and of contempt for him, which Kirillov had never
disguised, had always irritated him, and now for some reason it
irritated him more than ever — possibly because Kirillov, whoi
was to die within an hour or so (Pyotr Stepanovitch still reckoned
upon this), seemed to him, as it were, already only half a man,
some creature whom he could not allow to be haughty.

" You seem to be boasting to me of your shooting yourself."

" I've always been surprised at every one's going on living,"
said Kirillov, not hearing his remark.

" H'm ! Admitting that's an idea, but . . ."

' You ape, you assent to get the better of me. Hold your
tongue ; you won't understand anything. If there is no God,
then I am God."

" There, I could never understand that point of yours : why
are you God ? "

" If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape*
If not, it's all my will and I am bound to show self-will."

" Self-will ? But why are you bound ? "

" Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in
the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in
his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital
point ? It's like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid
of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himseli
too weak to own it. I want to manifest my self-will. I may
be the only one, but I'll do it."

" Do it by all means."

" I am bound to shoot myself because the highest point ol
my self-will is to kill myself with my own hands."

" But you won't be the only one to kill yourself ; there are
lots of suicides."

A BUSY NIGHT 581

" With good cause. But to do it without any cause at all,
simply for self-will, I am the only one."

" He won't shoot himself," flashed across Pyotr Stepanovitch's
mind again.

" Do you know," he observed irritably, " if I were in your place
I should kill some one else to show my self-will, not myself. You
might be of use. I'll tell you whom, if you are not afraid. Then
you needn't shoot yourself to-day, perhaps. We may come to
terms."

" To kill some one would be the lowest point of self-will, and
you show your whole soul in that. I am not you : I want the
highest point and I'll kill myself."

" He's come to it of himself," Pyotr Stepanovitch muttered
malignantly.

" I am bound to show my unbelief," said Kirillov, walking
about the room. " I have no higher idea than disbelief in God.
I have all the history of mankind on my side. Man has done
nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill him-
self ; that's the whole of universal history up till now. I am
ihe first one in the whole history of mankind who would not
invent God. Let them know it once for all."

" He won't shoot himself," Pyotr Stepanovitch thought
anxiously.

" Let whom know it ? " he said, egging him on. "It's only
you and me here ; you mean Liputin ? "

" Let every one know ; all will know. There is nothing secret
that will not be made known. He said so."

And he pointed with feverish enthusiasm to the image of the
Saviour, before which a lamp was burning. Pyotr Stepanovitch
ost his temper completely.

:' So you still believe in Him, and you've lighted the lamp ;
| to be on the safe side,' I suppose ? "

The other did not speak.

:' Do you know, to my thinking, you believe perhaps more
}horoughly than any priest."

" Believe in whom ? In Him ? Listen." Kirillov stood still,
razing before him with fixed and ecstatic look. " Listen to a
reat idea : there was a day on earth, and in the midst of the
arth there stood three crosses. One on the Cross had such
aith that he said to another, ' To-day thou shalt be with me
n Paradise.' The day ended ; both died and passed away
nd found neither Paradise nor resurrection. His words did

582 THE POSSESSED

not come true. Listen : that Man was the loftiest of all on
earth, He was that which gave meaning to life. The whole
planet, with everything on it, is mere madness without that!
Man. There has never been any like Him before or since, never,
up to a miracle. For that is the miracle, that there never was,
or never will be another like Him. And if that is so, if the
laws of nature did not spare even Him, have not spared even
their miracle and made even Him live in a lie and die for a lie,
then all the planet is a lie and rests on a lie and on mockery. So
then, the very laws of the planet are a lie and the vaudeville of
devils. What is there to live for ? Answer, if you are a man."

" That's a different matter. It seems to me you've mixed upl
two different causes, and that's a very unsafe thing to do. But
excuse me, if you are God ? If the lie were ended and if you
realised that all the falsity comes from the belief in that former
God ? "

" So at last you understand ! " cried Kirillov rapturously J
" So it can be understood if even a fellow like you understands.
Do you understand now that the salvation for all consists in
proving this idea to every one ? Who will prove it ? I ! I
can't understand how an atheist could know that there is no)
God and not kill himself on the spot. To recognise that there
is no God and not to recognise at the same instant that one isv
God oneself is an absurdity, else one would certainly kill oneself J
If you recognise it you are sovereign, and then you won't kill
yourself but will live in the greatest glory. But one, the first,!
must kill himself, for else who will begin and prove it ? So 1$
must certainly kill myself, to begin and prove it. Now I am-
only a god against my will and I am unhappy, because I an!
bound to assert my will. All are unhappy because all are afraid!;
to express their will. Man has hitherto been so unhappy an<l
so poor because he has been afraid to assert his will in the highest
point and has shown his self-will only in little things, like al
schoolboy. I am awfully unhappy, for I'm awfully afraid!
Terror is the curse of man. . . . But I will assert my will, I am
bound to believe that I don't believe. I will begin and will
make an end of it and open the door, and will save. That's thJ
only thing that will save mankind and will re-create the 3iexll
generation physically ; for with his present physical nature man.;
can't get on without his former God, I believe. For three yearw
I've been seeking for the attribute of my godhead and I've*
found it ; the attribute of my godhead is self-will ! That's all

A DUOI 1MUI11 ooo

I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my
new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible. I am killing
myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom."

His face was unnaturally pale, and there was a terribly heavy
look in his eyes. He was like a man in delirium. Pyotr
Stepanovitch thought he would drop on to the floor.

" Give me the pen ! " Kirillov cried suddenly, quite unex-
pectedly, in a positive frenzy. " Dictate ; I'll sign anything.
I'll sign that I killed Shatov even. Dictate while it amuses me.
I am not afraid of what the haughty slaves will think ! You
will see for yourself that all that is secret shall be made manifest !
And you will be crushed. ... I believe, I believe ! "

Pyotr Stepanovitch jumped up from his seat and instantly
handed him an inkstand and paper, and began dictating, seizing
the moment, quivering with anxiety.

" I, Alexey Kirillov, declare . . ."

:' Stay ; I won't ! To whom am I declaring it ? '

Kirillov was shaking as though he were in a fever. This
declaration and the sudden strange idea of it seemed to absorb
him entirely, as though it were a means of escape by which his
tortured spirit strove for a moment's relief.

" To whom am I declaring it ? I want to know to whom ? '

"To no one, every one, the first person who reads it. Why
define it ? The whole world ! "

" The whole world ! Bravo ! And I won't have any
repentance. I don't want penitence and I don't want it for the
police ! "

" No, of course, there's no need of it, damn the police ! Write,
if you are in earnest ! " Pyotr Stepanovitch cried hysterically.

" Stay ! I want to put at the top a face with the tongue out."

' Ech, what nonsense," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch crossly,
" you can express all that without the drawing, by — the tone."

" By the tone % That's true. Yes, by the tone, by the tone
of it. Dictate, the tone."

" I, Alexey Kirillov," Pyotr Stepanovitch dictated firmly and
peremptorily, bending over Kirillov' s shoulder and following
every letter which the latter formed with a hand trembling with
excitement, " I, Kirillov, declare that to-day, the — th October,
at about eight o'clock in the evening, I killed the student Shatov
in the park for turning traitor and giving information of the
manifestoes and of Fedka, who has been lodging with us for ten
days in Filipov's house. I am shooting myself to-day with my

584 THE POSSESSED

revolver, not because I repent and am afraid of you, but because
when I was abroad I made up my mind to put an end to my
life."

" Is that all ? " cried Kirillov with surprise and indignation.

" Not another word," cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, waving his
hand, attempting to snatch the document from him.

" Stay." Kirillov put his hand firmly on the paper. " Stay,
it's nonsense ! I want to say with whom I killed him. Why
Fedka ? And what about the fire ? I want it all and I want to
be abusive in tone, too, in tone ! "

" Enough, Kirillov, I assure you it's enough," cried Pyotr
Stepanovitch almost imploringly, trembling lest he should tear
up the paper ; " that they may believe you, you must say it
as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You
must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalise
them. They'll tell a story better than ours, and of course they'll
believe themselves more than they would us ; and you know,
it's better than anything — better than anything ! Let me have
it, it's splendid as it is ; give it to me, give it to me ! ':

And he kept trying to snatch the paper. Kirillov listened
open-eyed and appeared to be trying to reflect, but he seemed
beyond understanding now.

" Damn it all," Pyotr Stepanovitch cried all at once, ill-
humouredly, " he hasn't signed it ! Why are you staring like
that ? Sign ! "

" I want to abuse them," muttered Kirillov. He took the
pen, however, and signed. " I want to abuse them."

" Write ' Vive la republique,' and that will be enough."

" Bravo ! " Kirillov almost bellowed with delight. ' Vive la
republique democratique sociale et universelle ou la mort ! ' No,
no, that's not it. ' Liberie, egalite, fraternite oil la mort.' There,
that's better, that's better." He wrote it gleefully under his
signature.

" Enough, enough," repeated Pyotr Stepanovitch.

" Stay, a little more. I'll sign it again in French, you know.
' De Kirilloff, gentilhomme russe et citoyen du monde.' Ha ha ! "
He went off in a peal of laughter. " No, no, no ; stay. I've
found something better than all. Eureka ! ' Gentilhomme,
seminariste russe et citoyen du monde civilise ! ' That's better
than any. . . ." He jumped up from the sofa and suddenly,
with a rapid gesture, snatched up the revolver from the window,
ran with it into the next room, and closed the door behind him.

A i5U»l JN1UJ1T D8D

Pyotr Stepanovitch stood for a moment, pondering and gazing
at the door.

"If he does it at once, perhaps he'll do it, but if he begins
thinking, nothing will come of it."

Meanwhile he took up the paper, sat down, and looked at it
again. The wording of the document pleased him again.

" What's needed for the moment ? What's wanted is to throw
them all off the scent and keep them busy for a time. The park ?
There's no park in the town and they'll guess its Skvoreshniki
of themselves. But while they are arriving at that, time will
be passing ; then the search will take time too ; then when
they find the body it will prove that the story is true, and it will
follow that's it all true, that it's true about Fedka too. And
Fedka explains the fire, the Lebyadkins ; so that it was all
being hatched here, at Filipov's, while they overlooked it and
saw nothing — that will quite turn their heads ! They will never
think of the quintet ; Shatov and Kirillov and Fedka and
Lebyadkin, and why they killed each other — that will be another
question for them. Oh, damn it all, I don't hear the
shot ! "

Though he had been reading and admiring the wording of it,
he had been listening anxiously all the time, and he suddenly
flew into a rage. He looked anxiously at his watch ; it was
getting late and it was fully ten minutes since Kirillov had gone
out. . . . Snatching up the candle, he went to the door of the
room where Kirillov had shut himself up. He was just at the
door when the thought struck him that the candle had burnt
out, that it would not last another twenty minutes, and that
there was no other in the room. He took hold of the handle
and listened warily ; he did not hear the slightest sound. He
suddenly opened the door and lifted up the candle : something
uttered a roar and rushed at him. He slammed the door with
all his might and pressed his weight against it ; but all sounds
died away and again there was deathlike stillness.

He stood for a long while irresolute, with the candle in his
hand. He had been able to see very little in the second he held
the door open, but he had caught a glimpse of the face of Kirillov
standing at the other end of the room by the window, and the
savage fury with which the latter had rushed upon him. Pyotr
ptepanovitch started, rapidly set the candle on the table, made
ready his revolver, and retreated on tiptoe to the farthest corner
of the room, so that if Kirillov opened the door and rushed up

586 THE POSSESSED

to the table with the revolver he would still have time to be the
first to aim and fire.

Pyotr Stepanovitch had by now lost all faith in the suicide.!
" He was standing in the middle of the room, thinking," flashed
like a whirlwind through Pyotr Stepanovitch' s mind, " and the
room was dark and horrible too. . . . He roared and rushed
at me. There are two possibilities : either I interrupted him!
at the very second when he was pulling the trigger or ... or
he was standing planning how to kill me. Yes, that's it, he was'
planning it. . . . He knows I won't go away without killing him;
if he funks it himself — so that he would have to kill me first to:
prevent my killing him. . . . And again, again there is silence.
I am really frightened : he may open the door all of a sudden. . . .
The nuisance of it is that he believes in God like any priest. . . .;
He won't shoot himself for anything ! There are lots of these!
people nowadays ' who've come to it of themselves.' A rotten
lot ! Oh, damn it, the candle, the candle ! It'll go out within]
a quarter of an hour for certain. ... I must put a stop to it ;
come what may, I must put a stop to it. . . . Now I can kill
him. . . . With that document here no one would think of myj
killing him. I can put him in such an attitude on the floor j
with an unloaded revolver in his hand that they'd be certain]
he'd done it himself. . . . Ach, damn it ! how is one to kill
him ? If I open the door he'll rush out again and shoot me
first. Damn it all, he'll be sure to miss ! "

He was in agonies, trembling at the necessity of action ancl
his own indecision. At last he took up the candle and again ;
approached the door with the revolver held up in readiness L
he put his left hand, in which he held the candle, on the doorJ
handle. But he managed awkwardly : the handle clankedf
there was a rattle and a creak. " He will fire straightway,"]
flashed through Pyotr Stepanovitch 's mind. With his foot he
flung the door open violently, raised the candle, and held out
the revolver ; but no shot nor cry came from within. . . .
There was no one in the room.

He started. The room led nowhere. There was no exit!
no means of escape from it. He lifted the candle higher and
looked about him more attentively : there was certainly no onel
He called Kirillov's name in a low voice, then again louder ;
no one answered.

" Can he have got out by the window ? ' The casement in
one window was, in fact, open. "Absurd ! He couldn't have

A BUSY NIGHT 587

got away through the casement." Pyotr Stepanovitch crossed
the room and went up to the window. " He couldn't possibly."
All at once he turned round quickly and was aghast at something
extraordinary.

Against the wall facing the windows on the right of the door
stood a cupboard. On the right side of this cupboard, in the
corner formed by the cupboard and the wall, stood Kirillov,
and he was standing in a very strange way ; motionless, perfectly
erect, with his arms held stiffly at his sides, his head raised and
pressed tightly back against the wall in the very corner, he seemed
to be trying to conceal and efface himself. Everything seemed
to show that he was hiding, yet somehow it was not easy to believe
it. Pyotr Stepanovitch was standing a little sideways to the
corner, and could only see the projecting parts of the figure.
He could not bring himself to move to the left to get a full view
of Kirillov and solve the mystery. His heart began beating
violently, and he felt a sudden rush of blind fury : he started
from where he stood, and, shouting and stamping with his feet,
he rushed to the horrible place.

But when he reached Kirillov he stopped short again, still
more overcome, horror-stricken. What struck him most was
that, in spite of his shout and his furious rush, the figure did
not stir, did not move in a single limb — as though it were of stone
or of wax. The pallor of the face was unnatural, the black eyes
were quite unmoving and were staring away at a point in the
distance. Pyotr Stepanovitch lowered the candle and raised
it again, lighting up the figure from all points of view and scruti-
nising it. He suddenly noticed that, although Kirillov was
looking straight before him, he could see him and was perhaps
watching him out of the corner of his eye. Then the idea occurred
to him to hold the candle right up to the wretch's face, to scorch
him and see what he would do. He suddenly fancied that
Kirillov' s chin twitched and that something like a mocking
smile passed over his lips — as though he had guessed Pyotr
Stepanovitch' s thought. He shuddered and, beside himself,
clutched violently at Kirillov' s shoulder.

Then something happened so hideous and so soon over that
Pyotr Stepanovitch could never afterwards recover a coherent
impression of it. He had hardly touched Kirillov when the latter
bent down quickly and with his head knocked the candle
out of Pyotr Stepanovitch' s hand ; the candlestick fell with a
clang on the ground and the candle went out. At the same

588 THE POSSESSED

moment he was conscious of a fearful pain in the little finger
of his left hand. He cried out, and all that he could remember
was that, beside himself, he hit out with all his might and struck
three blows with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had
bent down to him and had bitten his finger. At last he tore
away his finger and rushed headlong to get out of the house,
feeling his way in the dark. He was pursued by terrible shouts
from the room.

" Directly, directly, directly, directly." Ten times. But
he still ran on, and was running into the porch when he suddenly
heard a loud shot. Then he stopped short in the dark porch
and stood deliberating for five minutes ; at last he made his
way back into the house. But he had to get the candle. He
had only to feel on the floor on the right of the cupboard for the
candlestick ; but how was he to light the candle ? There
suddenly came into his mind a vague recollection : he recalled
that when he had run into the kitchen the day before to attack
Fedka he had noticed in passing a large red box of matches in
a corner on a shelf. Feeling with his hands, he made his way
to the door on the left leading to the kitchen, found it, crossed
the passage, and went down the steps. On the shelf, on the
very spot where he had just recalled seeing it, he felt in the
dark a full unopened box of matches. He hurriedly went up
the steps again without striking a light, and it was only when
he was near the cupboard, at the spot where he had struck
Kirillov with the revolver and been bitten by him, that he
remembered his bitten finger, and at the same instant was
conscious that it was unbearably painful. Clenching his teeth,
he managed somehow to light the candle-end, set it in the candle-
stick again, and looked about him : near the open casement,
with his feet towards the right-hand corner, lay the dead body
of Kirillov. The shot had been fired at the right temple and
the bullet had come out at the top on the left, shattering the
skull. There were splashes of blood and brains. The revolver
was still in the suicide's hand on the floor. Death must
have been instantaneous. After a careful look round, Pyotr
Stepanovitch got up and went out on tiptoe, closed the door,
left the candle on the table in the outer room, thought a moment,
and resolved not to put it out, reflecting that it could not possibly
set fire to anything. Looking once more at the document left
on the table, he smiled mechanically and then went out of the
house, still for some reason walking on tiptoe. He crept through

A BUSY NIGHT 589

Fedka's hole again and carefully replaced the posts after
him.

Ill

Precisely at ten minutes to six Pyotr Stepanovitch and Erkel
were walking up and down the platform at the railway-station
beside a rather long train. Pyotr Stepanovitch was setting off
and Erkel was saying good-bye to him. The luggage was in,
and his bag was in the seat he had taken in a second-class carriage.
The first bell had rung already ; they were waiting for the
second. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked about him, openly watching
the passengers as they got into the train. But he did not meet
anyone he knew well ; only twice he nodded to acquaintances —
a merchant whom he knew slightly, and then a young village
priest who was going to his parish two stations away. Erkel
evidently wanted to speak of something of importance in the
last moments, though possibly he did not himself know exactly
of what, but he could not bring himself to begin ! He kept
fancying that Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed anxious to get rid of
him and was impatient for the last bell.

' You look at every one so openly," he observed with some
timidity, as though he would have warned him.

' Why not ? It would not do for me to conceal myself at
present. It's too soon. Don't be uneasy. All I am afraid of
is that the devil might send Liputin this way ; he might scent
me out and race off here."

' Pyotr Stepanovitch, they are not to be trusted," Erkel
brought out resolutely.

" Liputin ? "

" None of them, Pyotr Stepanovitch."

" Nonsense ! they are all bound by w .at happened yesterday.
There isn't one who would turn traitor. People won't go to
certain destruction unless they've lost their reason."

' Pyotr Stepanovitch, but they will lose their reason."

Evidently that idea had already occurred to Pyotr Stepano-
vitch too, and so Erkel' s observation irritated him the more.

' You are not in a funk too, are you, Erkel ? I rely on you
more than on any of them. I've seen now what each of them
is worth. Tell them to-day all I've told you. I leave them
in your charge. Go round to each of them this morning. Read

590 THE POSSESSED

them my written instructions to-morrow, or the day after, when
you are all together and they are capable of listening again . . .
and believe me, they will be by to-morrow, for they'll be in an
awful funk, and that will make them as soft as wax. . . . The
great thing is that you shouldn't be downhearted."

" Ach, Pyotr Stepanovitch, it would be better if you weren't
going away."

" But I am only going for a few days ; I shall be back in no
time."

" Pyotr Stepanovitch," Erkel brought out warily but reso-
lutely, " what if you were going to Petersburg ? Of course,
I understand that you are only doing what's necessary for the
cause."

" I expected as much from you, Erkel. If you have guessed
that I am going to Petersburg you can realise that I couldn't
tell them yesterday, at that moment, that I was going so far
for fear of frightening them. You saw for yourself what a state
they were in. But you understand that I am going for the cause,
for work of the first importance, for the common cause, and not
to save my skin, as Liputin imagines."

" Pyotr Stepanovitch, what if you were going abroad ? I
should understand ... I should understand that you must be
careful of yourself because you are everything and we are nothing.
I shall understand, Pyotr Stepanovitch."
The poor boy's voice actually quivered.

" Thank you, Erkel. . . . Aie, you've touched my bad finger."
(Erkel had pressed his hand awkwardly ; the bad finger was
discreetly bound up in black silk.) " But I tell you positively
again that I am going to Petersburg only to sniff round, and
perhaps shall only be there for twenty-four hours and then back
here again at once. When I come back I shall stay at Gaganov's
country place for the sake of appearances. If there is any notion
of danger, I should be the first to take the lead and share it.
If I stay longer in Petersburg I'll let you know at once ... in
the way we've arranged, and you'll tell them."
The second bell rang.

" Ah, then there's only five minutes before the train starts.
I don't want the group here to break up, you know. I am not
afraid ; don't be anxious about me. I have plenty of such
centres, and it's not much consequence ; but there's no harm in
having as many centres as possible. But I am quite at ease
about you, though I am leaving you almost alone with those

A BUSY NIGHT 591

idiots. Don't be uneasy ; they won't turn traitor, they won't
have the pluck. . . . Ha ha, you going to-day too ? " he cried
suddenly in a quite different, cheerful voice to a very young man,
who came up gaily to greet him. " I didn't know you were
going by the express too. Where are you off to ... to your
mother's ? "

The mother of the young man was a very wealthy landowner
in a neighbouring province, and the young man was a distant
relation of Yulia Mihailovna's and had been staying about a
fortnight in our town.

."No, lam going farther, to R . I've eight hours to live

through in the train. Off to Petersburg ? " laughed the young
man.

' What makes you suppose I must be going to Petersburg ? "
said Pyotr Stepanovitch, laughing even more openly.

The young man shook his gloved finger at him.
' Well, you've guessed right," Pyotr Stepanovitch whispered
to him mysteriously. " I am going with letters from Yulia
Mihailovna and have to call on three or four personages, as
you can imagine — bother them all, to speak candidly. It's
a beastly job ! "

;' But why is she in such a panic ? Tell me," the young man
whispered too. " She wouldn't see even me yesterday. I don't
think she has anything to fear for her husband, quite the con-
trary ; he fell down so creditably at the fire — ready to sacrifice
his life, so to speak."

' Well, there it is," laughed Pyotr Stepanovitch. " You see,
she is afraid that people may have written from here already . . .
that is, some gentlemen. . . . The fact is, Stavrogin is at the
bottom of it, or rather Prince K. . . . Ech, it's a long story ;
I'll tell you something about it on the journey if you like — as
far as my chivalrous feelings will allow me, at least. . . . This
is my relation, Lieutenant Erkel, who lives down here."

The young man, who had been stealthily glancing at Erkel,
touched his hat ; Erkel made a bow.

But I say, Verhovensky, eight hours in the train is an awful
ordeal. Berestov, the colonel, an awfully funny fellow, is
travelling with me in the first class. He is a neighbour of ours
in the country, and his wife is a Garin (nee de Garine), and you
know he is a very decent fellow. He's got ideas too. He's only
been here a couple of days. He's passionately fond of whist ;
couldn't we get up a game, eh ? I've already fixed on a fourth —

592 THE POSSESSED

Pripuhlov, our merchant from T with a beard, a millionaire —

I mean it, a real millionaire ; you can take my word for it. . . .
I'll introduce you ; he is a very interesting money-bag. We
shall have a laugh."

" I shall be delighted, and I am awfully fond of cards in the
train, but I am going second class."

" Nonsense, that's no matter. Get in with us. I'll tell them
directly to move you to the first class. The chief guard would
do anything I tell him. What have you got ? . . . a bag ? a rug ? "

" First-rate. Come along ! "

Pyotr Stepanovitch took his bag, his rug, and his book, and
at once and with alacrity transferred himself to the first class.
Erkel helped him. The third bell rang.

' Well, Erkel." Hurriedly, and with a preoccupied air, Pyotr
Stepanovitch held out his hand from the window for the last
time. " You see, I am sitting down to cards with them."

1 Why explain, Pyotr Stepanovitch ? I understand, I
understand it all ! "

" Well, au re voir," Pyotr Stepanovitch turned away suddenly
on his name being called by the young man, who wanted to
introduce him to his partners. And Erkel saw nothing more of
Pyotr Stepanovitch.

He returned home very sad. Not that he was alarmed at
Pyotr Stepanovitch' s leaving them so suddenly, but ... he
had turned away from him so quickly when that young swell had
called to him and ... he might have said something different
to him, not " Au re voir," or ... or at least have pressed
his hand more warmly. That last was bitterest of all. Some-
thing else was beginning to gnaw in his poor little heart, some-
thing which he could not understand himself yet, something
connected with the evening before.

CHAPTER VII
STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING

am persuaded that Stepan Trofimovitch was terribly frightened
s he felt the time fixed for his insane enterprise drawing near.

am convinced that he suffered dreadfully from terror, especially
n the night before he started — that awful night. Nastasya
aentioned afterwards that he had gone to bed late and fallen
sleep. But that proves nothing ; men sentenced to death sleep
'ery soundly, they say, even the night before their execution,
though he set off by daylight, when a nervous man is always a
ittle more confident (and the major, Virginsky's relative, used
o give up believing in God every morning when the night was
ver), yet I am convinced he could never, without horror, have
magined himself alone on the high road in such a position.
$o doubt a certain desperation in his f eelings softened at first
he terrible sensation of sudden solitude in which he at once
ound himself as soon as he had left Nastasya, and the corner in
vhich he had been warm and snug for twenty years. But it made
10 difference ; even with the clearest recognition of all the horrors
iwaiting him he would have gone out to the high road and
valked along it ! There was something proud in the undertaking
vhich allured him in spite of everything. Oh, he might have
Lccepted Varvara Petrovna's luxurious provision and have
•emained living on her charity, " comme un humble dependent."
But he had not accepted her charity and was not remaining !
\.nd here he was leaving her of himself, and holding aloft the
' standard of a great idea, and going to die for it on the open
:oad." That is how he must have been feeling ; that's how his
action must have appeared to him.

Another question presented itself to me more than once.
Why did he run away, that is, literally run away on foot, rather
;han simply drive away ? I put it down at first to the im-
practicability of fifty years and the fantastic bent of his mind
mder the influence of strong emotion. I imagined that the
thought of posting tickets and horses (even if they had bells)
ivould have seemed too simple and prosaic to him ; a pilgrimage,

593 2P

594 THE POSSESSED

on the other hand, even under an umbrella, was ever so muck
more picturesque and in character with love and resentments
But now that everything is over, I am inclined to think that it
all came about in a much simpler way. To begin with, he wa|
afraid to hire horses because Varvara Petrovna might have]
heard of it and prevented him from going by force ; which shd
certainly would have done, and he certainly would have given
in, and then farewell to the great idea for ever. Besides, to take
tickets for anywhere he must have known at least where he
was going. But to think about that was the greatest agony to)
him at that moment ; he was utterly unable to fix upon a place.
For if he had to fix on any particular town his enterprise would
at once have seemed in his own eyes absurd and impossible ; he*
felt that very strongly. What should he do in that particular
town rather than in any other ? Look out for ce marchand ?
But what marchand ? At that point his second and most terrible
question cropped up. In reality there was nothing he dreaded
more than ce marchand, whom he had rushed off to seek sd
recklessly, though, of course, he was terribly afraid of finding)
him. No, better simply the high road, better simply to set oft]
for it, and walk along it and to think of nothing so long as hej
could put off thinking. The high road is something very very^
long, of which one cannot see the end — like human life, like
human dreams. There is an idea in the open road, but whatl
sort of idea is there in travelling with posting tickets ? Posting!
tickets mean an end to ideas. Vive la grande route and then as
God wills.

After the sudden and unexpected interview with Liza which
I have described, he rushed on, more lost in forgetfulness than
ever. The high road passed half a mile from Skvoreshniki and,
strange to say, he was not at first aware that he was on it.
Logical reasoning or even distinct consciousness was unbearable
to him at this moment. A fine rain kept drizzling, ceasing, and
drizzling again ; but he did not even notice the rain. He did,
not even notice either how he threw his bag over his shoulder,
nor how much more comfortably he walked with it so. He must,
have walked like that for nearly a mile or so when he suddenly
stood still and looked round. The old road, black, marked with]
wheel-ruts and planted with willows on each side, ran before
him like an endless thread ; on the right hand were bare plains
from which the harvest had long ago been carried ; on the leftl
there were bushes and in the distance beyond them a copse,

Ai

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 595

^.nd far, far away a scarcely perceptible line of the railway,
'unning aslant, and on it the smoke of a train, but no sound was
leard. Stepan Trofimovitch felt a little timid, but only for a
noment. He heaved a vague sigh, put down his bag beside a
svillow, and sat down to rest. As he moved to sit down he was
jonscious of being chilly and wrapped himself in his rug ;
loticing at the same time that it was raining, he put up his
imbrella. He sat like that for some time, moving his lips from
)ime to time and firmly grasping the umbrella handle. Images
}f all sorts passed in feverish procession before him, rapidly
succeeding one another in his mind.

" Lise, Lise," he thought, " and with her ce Maurice. . . .
Strange people. . . . But what was the strange fire, and what
were they talking about, and who were murdered ? I fancy
Nastasya has not found out yet and is still waiting for me with
my coffee . . . cards ? Did I really lose men at cards ? H'm !
Among us in Russia in the times of serfdom, so called. . . . My
God, yes— Fedka ! "

He started all over with terror and looked about him.
" What if that Fedka is in hiding somewhere behind the bushes ?
They say he has a regular band of robbers here on the high road.
Oh, mercy, I ... I'll tell him the whole truth then, that I
was to blame . . . and that I've been miserable about him for
ten years. More miserable than he was as a soldier, and . . .
I'll give him my purse. H'm ! J'ai en tout quarante roubles ;
il prendra les roubles et il me tuera tout de meme."

In his panic he for some reason shut up the umbrella and laid
it down beside him. A cart came into sight on the high road
in the distance coming from the town.

" Grace a Dieu, that's a cart and it's coming at a walking
pace ; that can't be dangerous. The wretched little horses
here ... I always said that breed ... It was Pyotr Ilyitch
though, he talked at the club about horse-breeding and I
trumped him, etpuis . . . but what's that behind ? . . . I believe
there's a woman in the cart. A peasant and a woman, cela
commence a etre rassurant. The woman behind and the man in
front — c'est tres rassurant. There's a cow behind the cart tied
by the horns, c'est rassurant au plus haut degri."

The cart reached him ; it was a fairly solid peasant cart.
The woman was sitting on a tightly stuffed sack and the man
on the front of the cart with his legs hanging over towards
Stepan Trofimovitch. A red cow was, in fact, shambling behind,

596 THE POSSESSED

tied by the horns to the cart. The man and the woman gaze
open-eyed at Stepan Trofimovitch, and Stepan Trofimovitcll
gazed back at them with equal wonder, but after he had let then!
pass twenty paces, he got up hurriedly all of a sudden ana
walked after them. In the proximity of the cart it was natural']
that he should feel safer, but when he had overtaken it he became^
oblivious of everything again and sank back into his disconnected!
thoughts and fancies. He stepped along with no suspicion,?
of course, that for the two peasants he was at that instant the;
most mysterious and interesting object that one could meet oil
the high road.

" What sort may you be, pray, if it's not uncivil to ask ? 1
the woman could not resist asking at last when Stepan Trofimo-
vitch glanced absent-mindedly at her. She was a woman ofj
about seven and twenty, sturdily built, with black eyebrows,]
rosy cheeks, and a friendly smile on her red lips, between which!
gleamed white even teeth.

'You . . . you are addressing me?' muttered StepanJ
Trofimovitch with mournful wonder.

" A merchant, for sure," the peasant observed confidently T
He was a well-grown man of forty with a broad and intelligent^
face, framed in a reddish beard.

" No, I am not exactly a merchant, I . . . I . . . moi c'esi
autre chose." Stepan Trofimovitch parried the question somen
how, and to be on the safe side he dropped back a little from thej
cart, so that he was walking on a level with the cow.

" Must be a gentleman," the man decided, hearing words noti
Russian, and he gave a tug at the horse.

" That's what set us wondering. You are out for a walla
seemingly ? " the woman asked inquisitively again.

" You . . . you ask me ? "

" Foreigners come from other parts sometimes by the train ;j
your boots don't seem to be from hereabouts. . . ."

" They are army boots," the man put in complacently ana
significantly.

" No, I am not precisely in the army, I . . ."

" What an inquisitive woman ! " Stepan Trofimovitch musedj
with vexation. " And how they stare at me . . . mais enfinl
In fact, it's strange that I feel, as it were, conscience-strickeri
before them, and yet I've done them no harm."

The woman was whispering to the man.

" If it's no offence, we'd give you a lift-if so be it's agreeable. 'i

STE-TAJS TKUJblMUVlTCM'S LAST WAJNJDEKIJNG 597

Stepan Trofimovitch suddenly roused himself.

" Yes, yes, my friends, I accept it with pleasure, for I'm very
tired ; but how am I to get in ? "

" How wonderful it is," he thought to himself, " that I've
been walking so long beside that cow and it never entered my
head to ask them for a lift. This ' real life ' has something very
original about it."

But the peasant had not, however, pulled up the horse.

' But where are you bound for ? ' he asked with some
mistrustfulness .

Stepan Trofimovitch did not understand him at once.

" To Hatovo, I suppose ? "

" Hatov ? No, not to Hatov's exactly ? . . . And I don't
know him though I've heard of him."

" The village of Hatovo, the village, seven miles from here."

" A village ? C'est charmant, to be sure I've heard of it. . . ."

Stepan Trofimovitch was still walking, they had not yet
taken him into the cart. A guess that was a stroke of genius
flashed through his mind.

' You think perhaps that I am . . . I've got a passport and
I am a professor, that is, if you like, a teacher . . . but a head
teacher. I am a head teacher. Oui, c'est comme ca quCon
peut traduire. I should be very glad of a lift and I'll buy
you . . . I'll buy you a quart of vodka for it."

" It'll be half a rouble, sir ; it's a bad road."

;' Or it wouldn't be fair to ourselves," put in the woman.

" Half a rouble ? Very good then, half a rouble. C'est encore
mieux ; f ai en tout quarante roubles mais . . ."

The peasant stopped the horse and by their united efforts
Stepan Trofimovitch was dragged into the cart, and seated on
the sack by the woman. He was still pursued by the same
whirl of ideas. Sometimes he was aware himself that he was
terribly absent-minded, and that he was not thinking of what he
ought to be thinking of and wondered at it. This consciousness
of abnormal weakness of mind became at moments very painful
and even humiliating to him.

' How . . . how is this you've got a cow behind ? " he
suddenly asked the woman.

' What do you mean, sir, as though you'd never seen one,"
laughed the woman.

' We bought it in the town," the peasant put in. " Our
cattle died last spring . . . the plague. AH the beasts have died

598 THE POSSESSED

round us, all of them. There aren't half of them left, it's heart-;
breaking."

And again he lashed the horse, which had got stuck in a rut.

" Yes, that does happen among you in Russia ... in
general we Russians . . . Well, yes, it happens," Stepan
Trofimovitch broke off.

" If you are a teacher, what are you going to Hatovo for ?j
Maybe you are going on farther."

" I . . . I'm not going farther precisely. . . . C" est-d-dire^
I'm going to a merchant's."

" To Spasov, I suppose ? "

" Yes, yes, to Spasov. But that's no matter."

" If you are going to Spasov and on foot, it will take you a
week in your boots," laughed the woman.

" I dare say, I dare say, no matter, mes amis, no matter."1
Stepan Trofimovitch cut her short impatiently.

" Awfully inquisitive people ; but the woman speaks better
than he does, and I notice that since February 19,* their;
language has altered a little, and . . . and what business is it
of mine whether I'm going to Spasov or not ? Besides, I'll]
pay them, so why do they pester me."

" If you are going to Spasov, you must take the steamer," the J
peasant persisted.

" That's true indeed," the woman put in with animation,
" for if you drive along the bank it's twenty-five miles out oij
the way."

" Thirty-five."

" You'll just catch the steamer at Ustyevo at two o'clock to
morrow," the woman decided finally. But Stepan Trofimovitch
was obstinately silent. His questioners, too, sank into silence.
The peasant tugged at his horse at rare intervals ; the peasant
woman exchanged brief remarks with him. Stepan Trofimovitch
fell into a doze. He was tremendously surprised when the
woman, laughing, gave him a poke and he found himself in a
rather large village at the door of a cottage with three windows.

" You've had a nap, sir ? "

" What is it ? Where am I ? Ah, yes ! Well . . . never
mind," sighed Stepan Trofimovitch, and he got out of the cart.

He looked about him mournfully ; the village scene seeme
strange to him and somehow terribly remote.

* February 19, 1861, the day of the Emancipation of the Serfs, is meant. —
Translator's note.

' \^ JL. J- J-T JL V^ f

" And the half -rouble, I was forgetting it ! " he said to the
feasant, turning to him with an excessively hurried gesture ;
le was evidently by now afraid to part from them.

" We'll settle indoors, walk in," the peasant invited him.

" It's comfortable inside," the woman said reassuringly.

Stepan Trofimovitch mounted the shaky steps. " How can

t be ? " he murmured in profound and apprehensive perplexity.

le went into the cottage, however. " Elle Va voulu" he felt a

stab at his heart and again he became oblivious of everything,

ven of the fact that he had gone into the cottage.

It was a light and fairly clean peasant's cottage, with three
windows and two rooms ; not exactly an inn, but a cottage at
Rrhich people who knew the place were accustomed to stop on
iheir way through the village. Stepan Trofimovitch, quite
unembarrassed, went to the foremost corner ; forgot to greet
my one, sat down and sank into thought. Meanwhile a sensation
:>f warmth, extremely agreeable after three hours of travelling
in the damp, was suddenly diffused throughout his person. Even
the slight shivers that spasmodically ran down his spine — such as
always occur in particularly nervous people when they are
'everish and have suddenly come into a warm room from the
cold — became all at once strangely agreeable. He raised his head
and the delicious fragrance of the hot pancakes with which the
woman of the house was busy at the stove tickled his nostrils.
With a childlike smile he leaned towards the woman and suddenly
said :

" What's that ? Are they pancakes ? Mais . . . c'est char-
mant"

' Would you like some, sir ? " the woman politely offered
him at once.

" I should like some, I certainly should, and . . . may I
ask you for some tea too," said Stepan Trofimovitch, reviving.

" Get the samovar ? With the greatest pleasure."

On a large plate with a big blue pattern on it were served
the pancakes — regular peasant pancakes, thin, made half of
wheat, covered with fresh hot butter, most delicious pancakes.
Stepan Trofimovitch tasted them with relish.

" How rich they are and how good ! And if one could only
have un doigt d'eau de vie."

r,i It's a drop of vodka you would like, sir, isn't it ? "

" Just so, just so, a little, un tout petit Hen"

" Five farthings' worth, I suppose ? "

" Five, yes, five, five, five, un tout petit rien," Stepan Trofim
vitch assented with a blissful smile.

Ask a peasant to do anything for you, and if he can, and wi
he will serve you with care and friendliness ; but ask hini
to fetch you vodka — and his habitual serenity and friendliness!
will pass at once into a sort of joyful haste and alacrity ; hi
will be as keen in your interest as though you were one of hil
family. The peasant who fetches vodka — even though you
are going to drink it and not he and he knows that beforehand-4
seems, as it were, to be enjoying part of your future gratification!
Within three minutes (the tavern was only two paces away)j
a bottle and a large greenish wineglass were set on the tablJ
before Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Is that all for me ! " He was extremely surprised. " I'vi
always had vodka but I never knew you could get so much foij
five farthings."

He filled the wineglass, got up and with a certain solemnity
crossed the room to the other corner where his fellow-travellerl
the black-browed peasant woman, who had shared the sack witll
him and bothered him with her questions, had ensconced herself!
The woman was taken aback, and began to decline, but aften
having said all that was prescribed by politeness, she stood ud
and drank it decorously in three sips, as women do, and, with al
expression of intense suffering on her face, gave back the wineJ
glass and bowed to Stepan Trofimovitch. He returned thq
bow with dignity and returned to the table with an expressio
of positive pride on his countenance.

All this was done on the inspiration of the moment : a second be
fore he had no idea that he would go and treat the peasant woman.

" I know how to get on with peasants to perfection, to per
fection, and I've always told them so," he thought complacently
pouring out the rest of the vodka ; though there was less than
glass left, it warmed and revived him, and even went a little
his head.

" Je suis malade tout a fait, mais ce rtest pas trop mauvai
d'etre malade."

" Would you care to purchase ? " a gentle feminine roic
asked close by him.

He raised his eyes and to his surprise saw a lady — une dam
et elle en avait Vair, somewhat over thirty, very modest i
appearance, dressed not like a peasant, in a dark gown with a
grey shawl on her shoulders. There was something very kindljl

in her face which attracted Stepan Trofimovitch immediately.
She had only just come back to the cottage, where her things had
been left on a bench close by the place where Stepan Trofimovitch
had seated himself. Among them was a portfolio, at which he
remembered he had looked with curiosity on going in, and a
pack, not very large, of American leather. From this pack she
took out two nicely bound books with a cross engraved on the
cover, and offered them to Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Et . . . mats je croisque c'est VEvangile . . . with the greatest
pleasure. . . . Ah, now I understand. . . . Vous etes ce qu'on
appelle a gospel- woman ; I've read more than once. . . . Half a
rouble ? "

" Thirty-five kopecks," answered the gospel- woman.

" With the greatest pleasure. Je n'ai rien contre VEvangile, and
I've been wanting to re-read it for a long time. . . ."

The idea occurred to him at the moment that he had not read
the gospel for thirty years at least, and at most had recalled
some passages of it, seven years before, when reading Renan's
" Vie de Jesus." As he had no small change he pulled out his
four ten-rouble notes — all that he had. The woman of the house
undertook to get change, and only then he noticed, looking
round, that a good many people had come into the cottage, and
that they had all been watching him for some time past, and
seemed to be talking about him. They were talking too of the
fire in the town, especially the owner of the cart who had only
just returned from the town with the cow. They talked of
arson, of the Shpigulin men.

" He said nothing to me about the fire when he brought me
along, although he talked of everything," struck Stepan Trofimo-
vitch for some reason.

" Master, Stepan Trofimovitch, sir, is it you I see ? Well, I
never should have thought it ! . . . Don't you know me ? "
exclaimed a middle-aged man who looked like an old-fashioned
house-serf, wearing no beard and dressed in an overcoat with a
wide turn-down collar. Stepan Trofimovitch was alarmed at
hearing his own name.

" Excuse me," he muttered, " I don't quite remember you."
You don't remember me. I am Anisim, Anisim Ivanov.
I used to be in the service of the late Mr. Gaganov, and many's
the time I've seen you, sir, with Varvara Petrovna at the late
Avdotya Sergyevna's. I used to go to you with books from
her, and twice I brought you Petersburg sweets from her. . . ."

" Why. yes. I remember you. Anisim," said Stepan Trofimo-
vitch. smiling. " Do you live here !

" I live near Spasov. close to the V Monastery, in the

service of Marfa Sergyevna. Avdotya Sergyevna's sister. Perhaps
your honour remembers her : she broke her leg f ailing out of her
carriage on her way to a ball. Now her honour lives near the
monastery, and I am in her service. And now as your honour
sees, I am on my way to the town to see my kinsfolk."

** Quite so. quite s>

" I felt so pleased when I saw you. you used to be so kind to
me." Anisini smiled delightedly. " But where are you travelling
to. sir. all by yourself as it seems. . . . You've never been a
journey alone. I fancy ]

v:epan Trofimovitch looked at him in alarm.

" You are going, maybe, to our parts, to Spasov .
Ye-. I am going to Spasov. II me sembie que tout le monde
-

1 You don't say it's to Fyodor Matveyevitchs ? They will
be pleased to see you. He had such a respect for you in old
days : he often speaks of you now."

" Yes. yes. to Fyodor Matveyevitch's."

* To be sure, to be sure. The peasants here are wondering ;
they make out they met you, sir, walking on the high road.
They are a foolish lot."

* I . . . I . . . Yes. you know. Anisim. I made a wager, you
know, like an Englishman, that I would go on foot and I . . ."

The perspiration came out on his forehead.
" To be sure, to be sure." Anisim listened with merciless
curiosity. But Stepan Trofimovitch could bear it no longer.
He was so disconcerted that he was on the point of getting up
and going out of the cottage. But the samovar was brought in,
and at the same moment the gospel-woman, who had been out
of the room, returned. With the air of a man clutching at a
straw he turned to her and offered her tea. Anisim submitted
and walked away.

The peasants certainly had begun to feel perplexed : " What
sort of person is he ! He was found walking on the high road,
he says he is a teacher, he is dressed like a foreigner, and has no
more sense than a little child : he answers queerly as though he
had run away from some one. and he's got money ! " An idea
was beginning to gain ground that information must be given
to the authorities, u especially as things weren't quite right in

ST.ti.FAJN TKUFlMUVlTUri » JLAST WAJNJLUJi.KJ.lW W6

the town." But Anisim set all that right in a minute. Going
into the passage he explained to every one who cared to listen
that Stepan Trofimovitch was not exactly a teacher but " a
very learned man and busy with very learned studies, and was
a landowner of the district himself, and had been living for
twenty-two years with her excellency, the general's widow,
the stout Madame Stavrogin, and was by way of being the most
important person in her house, and was held in the greatest
respect by every one in the town. He used to lose by fifties and
hundreds in an evening at the club of the nobility, and in rank
he was a councillor, which was equal to a lieutenant-colonel in the
army, which was next door to being a colonel. As for his having
money, he had so much from the stout Madame Stavrogin that
there was no reckoning it " — and so on and so on.

" Mais c'est une dame et tres comme il faut," thought Stepan
Trofimovitch, as he recovered from Anisim's attack, gazing with
agreeable curiosity at his neighbour, the gospel pedlar, who was,
however, drinking the tea from a saucer and nibbling at a piece
of sugar. " Ce petit morceau de sucre, ce n'est rien. . . . There
is something noble and independent about her, and at the same
time — gentle. Le comme ilfaut tout pur, but rather in a different
style."

He soon learned from her that her name was Sofya Matveyevna

Ulitin and she lived at K , that she had a sister there, a widow ;

that she was a widow too, and that her husband, who was a
sub-lieutenant risen from the ranks, had been killed at Sevastopol.

" But you are still so young, vous n'avez pas trente ans."

" Thirty -four," said Sofya Matveyevna, smiling.

" What, you understand French ? "

" A little. I lived for four years after that in a gentleman's
family, and there I picked it up from the children."

She told him that being left a widow at eighteen she was for
some time in Sevastopol as a nurse, and had afterwards lived in
various places, and now she travelled about selling the gospel.

" Mais, mon Dieu, wasn't it you who had a strange adventure
in our town, a very strange adventure ? "

She flushed ; it turned out that it had been she.

;' Ces vauriens, ces malheureux," he began in a voice quivering
with indignation ; miserable and hateful recollections stirred
painfully in his heart. For a minute he seemed to sink into
oblivion.

" Bah, but she's gone away again," he thought, with a start,

604 THE POSSESSED

noticing that she was not by his side. " She keeps going out
and is busy about something ; I notice that she seems upset
too. . . . Bah, je deviens ego'iste ! "

He raised his eyes and saw Anisim again, but this time in the
most menacing surroundings. The whole cottage was full of
peasants, and it was evidently Anisim who had brought them
all in. Among them were the master of the house, and the
peasant with the cow, two other peasants (they turned out to
be cab- drivers), another little man, half drunk, dressed like a
peasant but clean-shaven, who seemed like a townsman ruined
by drink and talked more than any of them. And they were all
discussing him, Stepan Trofimovitch. The peasant with the
cow insisted on his point that to go round by the lake would
be thirty-five miles out of the way, and that he certainly must go
by steamer. The half-drunken man and the man of the house
warmly retorted :

" Seeing that, though of course it will be nearer for his honour
on the steamer over the lake ; that's true enough, but maybe
according to present arrangements the steamer doesn't go there,
brother."

" It does go, it does, it will go for another week," cried Anisim,
more excited than any of them.

" That's true enough, but it doesn't arrive punctually, seeing
it's late in the season, and sometimes it'll stay three days together
at Ustyevo."

" It'll be there to-morrow at two o'clock punctually. You'll be
at Spasov punctually by the evening," cried Anisim, eager to do
his best for Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Mais qu'est-ce qu'il a, cet homme" thought Stepan Trofimo-
vitch, trembling and waiting in terror for what was in store for
him.

The cab- drivers, too, came forward and began bargaining with
him ; they asked three roubles to Ustyevo. The others shouted
that that was not too much, that that was the fare, and that
they had been driving from here to Ustyevo all the summer for
that fare.

" But . . . it's nice here too. . . . And I don't want . . ."
Stepan Trofimovitch mumbled in protest.

" Nice it is, sir, you are right there, it's wonderfully nice at
Spasov now and Fyodor Matveyevitch will be so pleased to see
you."

" Mon Dieu, mes amis, all this is such a surprise to me,"

STEPAN TROEIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 605

At last Sofya Matveyevna came back. But she sat down on the
bench looking dejected and mournful.

" I can't get to Spasov ! " she said to the woman of the
cottage.

" Why, you are bound to Spasov, too, then ? " cried Stepan
Trofimovitch, starting.

It appeared that a lady had the day before told her to wait
at Hatovo and had promised to take her to Spasov, and now this
lady had not turned up after all.

" What am I to do now ? " repeated Sofya Matveyevna.

" Mais, ma chere et nouvelle amie, I can take you just as well
as the lady to that village, whatever it is, to which I've hired
horses, and to-morrow — well, to-morrow, we'll go on together to
Spasov."

" Why, are you going to Spasov too ? "

" Mais que faire, et je suis enchante ! I shall take you with
the greatest pleasure ; you see they want to take me, I've
engaged them already. Which of you did I engage ? " Stepan
Trofimovitch suddenly felt an intense desire to go to Spasov.

Within a quarter of an hour they were getting into a covered
trap, he very lively and quite satisfied, she with her pack beside
him, with a grateful smile on her face. Anisim helped them in.

" A good journey to you, sir," said he, bustling officiously
round the trap, " it has been a treat to see you."

" Good-bye, good-bye, my friend, good-bye."

" You'll see Fyodor Matveyevitch, sir . . ."

" Yes, my friend, yes . . . Fyodor Petrovitch . . . only
good-bye."

II

" You see, my friend . . . you'll allow me to call myself your
friend, rCest-ce pas ? " Stepan Trofimovitch began hurriedly as
soon as the trap started. " You see I . . . J'aime le peuple,
c'est indispensable, mais il me semble que je ne Vavais jamais vu de
pres. Stasie . . . cela va sans dire qu'elle est aussi du peuple,
mais le vrai peuple, that is, the real ones, who are on the high road,
it seems to me they care for nothing, but where exactly I am
going . . . But let bygones be bygones. I fancy I am talking at
random, but I believe it's from being flustered."

606 THE POSSESSED

" You don't seem quite well." Sofya Matveyevna watched
him keenly though respectfully.

" No, no, I must only wrap myself up, besides there's a fresh
wind, very fresh in fact, but ... let us forget that. That's
not what I really meant to say. Chere et incomparable amie, I
feel that I am almost happy, and it's your doing. Happiness is
not good for me for it makes me rush to forgive all my enemies at
once. . . ."

" Why, that's a very good thing, sir."

" Not always, chere innocente. L' 'Evangile . . . voyez-vous,
desormais nous precherons ensemble and I will gladly sell your
beautiful little books. Yes, I feel that that perhaps is an idea,
quelque chose de tres nouveau dans ce genre. The peasants are
religious, c'est admis, but they don't yet know the gospel. I will
expound it to them. . . . By verbal explanation one might
correct the mistakes in that remarkable book, which I am of
course prepared to treat with the utmost respect. I will be of
service even on the high road. I've always been of use, I always
told them so et a cette chere ingrate. . . . Oh, we will forgive,
we will forgive, first of all we will forgive all and always. . . .
We will hope that we too shall be forgiven. Yes, for all, every
one of us, have wronged one another, all are guilty ! "

" That's a very good saying, I think, sir."

" Yes, yes. ... I feel that I am speaking well. I shall speak
to them very well, but what was the chief thing I meant to say ?
I keep losing the thread and forgetting. . . . Will you allow me
to remain with you ? I feel that the look in your eyes and . . .
I am surprised in fact at your manners. You are simple-hearted,
you call me ' sir,' and turn your cup upside down on your saucer
. . . and that horrid lump of sugar ; but there's something charming
about you, and I see from your features . . . Oh, don't blush and
don't be afraid of me as a man. Chere et incomparable, pour moi
une femme c'est tout. I can't live without a woman, but only at
her side, only at her side. ... I am awfully muddled, awfully. I
can't remember what I meant to say. Oh, blessed is he to whom
God always sends a woman and . . . and I fancy, indeed, that I
am in a sort of ecstasy. There's a lofty idea in the open road
too ! That's what I meant to say, that's it — about the idea.
Now I've remembered it, but I kept losing it before. And why
have they taken us farther. It was nice there too, but here —
cela devient trop froid. A propos, fai en tout quarante roubles et
voila cet argent, take it, take it, I can't take care of it, I shall lose

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 607

it or it will be taken away from me. ... I seem to be sleepy,
I've a giddiness in my head. Yes, I am giddy, I am giddy, I am
giddy. Oh, how kind you are, what's that you are wrapping me
up in ? "

" You are certainly in a regular fever and I've covered you with
my rug ; only about the money, I'd rather."

" Oh, for God's sake, tCen parlons plus parce que cela me fait
trial. Oh, how kind you are ! "

He ceased speaking, and with strange suddenness dropped into
a feverish shivery sleep. The road by which they drove the
twelve miles was not a smooth one, and their carriage jolted
cruelly. Stepan Trofimovitch woke up frequently, quickly raised
his head from the little pillow which Sofya Matveyevna had
slipped under it, clutched her by the hand and asked "Are you
here ? " as though he were afraid she had left him. He told her,
too, that he had dreamed of gaping jaws full of teeth, and that he
had very much disliked it. Sofya Matveyevna was in great
anxiety about him.

They were driven straight up to a large cottage with a
frontage of four windows and other rooms in the yard. Stepan
Trofimovitch waked up, hurriedly went in and walked straight
into the second room, which was the largest and best in the house.
An expression of fussiness came into his sleepy face. He spoke
at once to the landlady, a tall, thick- set woman of forty with
very dark hair and a slight moustache, and explained that he
required the whole room for himself, and that the door was to be
shut and no one else was to be admitted, " parce que nous avons &
parler. Oui, fai beaucoup a vous dire, chere amie. I'll pay you,
I'll pay you," he said with a wave of dismissal to the landlady.

Though he was in a hurry, he seemed to articulate with difficulty.
The landlady listened grimly, and was silent in token of consent,
but there was a feeling of something menacing about her silence.
He did not notice this, and hurriedly (he was in a terrible hurry)
insisted on her going away and bringing them their dinner as
quickly as possible, without a moment's delay.

At that point the moustached woman could contain herself no
longer.

" This is not an inn, sir ; we don't provide dinners for travellers.
We can boil you some crayfish or set the samovar, but we've
nothing more. There won't be fresh fish till to-morrow."

But Stepan Trofimovitch waved his hands, repeating with
wrathful impatience ; " I'll pay, only make haste, make haste."

608 THE POSSESSED

They settled on fish, soup, and roast fowl ; the landlady declared
that fowl was not to be procured in the whole village ; she
agreed, however, to go in search of one, but with the air of doing
him an immense favour.

As soon as she had gone Stepan Trofimovitch instantly sat
down on the sofa and made Sofya Matveyevna sit down beside
him. There were several arm-chairs as well as a sofa in the room,
but they were of a most uninviting appearance. The room was
rather a large one, with a corner, in which there was a bed,
partitioned off. It was covered with old and tattered yellow
paper, and had horrible lithographs of mythological subjects on
the walls ; in the corner facing the door there was a long row
of painted ikons and several sets of brass ones. The whole room
with its strangely ill-assorted furniture was an unattractive
mixture of the town element and of peasant traditions. But he
did not even glance at it all, nor look out of the window at the
vast lake, the edge of which was only seventy feet from the
cottage.

" At last we are by ourselves and we will admit no one ! I
want to tell you everything, everything from the very beginning."

Sofya Matveyevna checked him with great uneasiness.

" Are you aware, Stepan Trofimovitch ? . . ."

" Comment, vous savez deja mon nom ? " He smiled with delight.

" I heard it this morning from Anisim Ivanovitch when you
were talking to him. But I venture to tell you for my part . . ."

And she whispered hurriedly to him, looking nervously at the
closed door for fear anyone should overhear — that here in
this village, it was dreadful. That though all the peasants
were fishermen, they made their living chiefly by charging
travellers every summer whatever they thought fit. The village
was not on the high road but an out-of-the-way one, and people
only called there because the steamers stopped there, and that
when the steamer did not call — and if the weather was in the
least unfavourable, it would not — then numbers of travellers
would be waiting there for several days, and all the cottages in
the village would be occupied, and that was just the villagers'
opportunity, for they charged three times its value for everything ;
and their landlord here was proud and stuck up because he was,
for these parts, very rich ; he had a net which had cost a thousand
roubles.

Stepan Trofimovitch looked almost reproachfully at Sofya
Matveyevna 's extremely excited face, and several times he made

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 609

a motion to stop her. But she persisted and said all she had to
say : she said she had been there before already in the summer
" with a very genteel lady from the town," and stayed there
too for two whole days till the steamer came, and what they
had to put up with did not bear thinking of. ;" Here, Stepan
Trofimovitch, you've been pleased to ask for this room for your-
self alone. ... I only speak to warn you. ... In the other
room there are travellers already. An elderly man and a young
man and a lady with children, and by to-morrow before two
o'clock the whole house will be filled up, for since the steamer
hasn't been here for two days it will be sure to come to-morrow.
So for a room apart and for ordering dinner, and for putting out
the other travellers, they'll charge you a price unheard of even
in the capital. . . ."

But he was in distress, in real distress. " Assez, mon enfant,
I beseech you, nous avons notre argent — et apres, le bon Dieu.
And I am surprised that, with the loftiness of your ideas, you
. . . Assez, assez, vous me tourmentez" he articulated hysterically,
? we have all our future before us, and you . . . you fill me with
alarm for the future."

He proceeded at once to unfold his whole story with such
haste that at first it was difficult to understand him. It went
on for a long time. The soup was served, the fowl was brought
in, followed at last by the samovar, and still he talked on. He
told it somewhat strangely and hysterically, and indeed he was
ill. It was a sudden, extreme effort of his intellectual faculties,
which was bound in his overstrained condition, of course — Sofya
Matveyevna foresaw it with distress all the time he was talking —
to result immediately afterwards in extreme exhaustion. He
began his story almost with his childhood, when, " with fresh
heart, he ran about the meadows ; it was an hour before he
reached his two marriages and his life in Berlin. I dare not
laugh, however. It really was for him a matter of the utmost im-
portance, and to adopt the modern jargon, almost a question of
struggling for existence." He saw before him the woman whom
he had already elected to share his new life, and was in haste to
consecrate her, so to speak. His genius must not be hidden
from her. . . . Perhaps he had formed a very exaggerated
estimate of Sofya Matveyevna, but he had already chosen her.
He could not exist without a woman. He saw clearly from her
face that she hardly understood him, and could not grasp even
the most essential part. " Ce n'est rien, nous aitendrons, and

2q

610 THE POSSESSED

meanwhile she can feel it intuitively. . . . My friend, I need
nothing but your heart ! " he exclaimed, interrupting his narra-
tive, " and that sweet enchanting look with which you are
gazing at me now. Oh, don't blush ! I've told you already . . ."
The poor woman who had fallen into his hands found much
that was obscure, especially when his autobiography almost
passed into a complete dissertation on the fact that no one had j
been ever able to understand Stepan Trofimovitch, and that
" men of genius are wasted in Russia." It was all " so very in-
tellectual," she reported afterwards dejectedly. She listened
in evident misery, rather round-eyed. When Stepan Trofimo-
vitch fell into a humorous vein and threw off witty sarcasms at
the expense of our advanced and governing classes, she
twice made grievous efforts to laugh in response to his laughter,
but the result was worse than tears, so that Stepan Trofimovitch
was at last embarrassed by it himself and attacked " the nihilists
and modern people " with all the greater wrath and zest. At
this point he simply alarmed her, and it was not until he began
upon the romance of his life that she felt some slight relief,
though that too was deceptive. A woman is always a woman
even if she is a nun. She smiled, shook her head and then
blushed crimson and dropped her eyes, which roused Stepan
Trofimovitch to absolute ecstasy and inspiration so much that
he began fibbing freely. Varvara Petrovna appeared in his story
as an enchanting brunette ( who had been the rage of Petersburg
and many European capitals) and her husband " had been
struck down on the field of Sevastopol " simply because he had
felt unworthy of her love, and had yielded her to his rival, that is,
Stepan Trofimovitch. ..." Don't be shocked, my gentle one,
my Christian," he exclaimed to Sofya Matveyevna, almost
believing himself in all that he was telling, " it was something so
lofty, so subtle, that we never spoke of it to one another all our
lives." As the story went on, the cause of this position of
affairs appeared to be a blonde lady (if not Darya Pavlovna I
don't know of whom Stepan Trofimovitch could have been
thinking), this blonde owed everything to the brunette, and had
grown up in her house, being a distant relation. The brunette
observing at last the love of the blonde girl to Stepan Trofimovitch,
kept her feelings locked up in her heart. The blonde girl, noticing
on her part the love of the brunette to Stepan Trofimovitch, also
locked her feelings in her own heart. And all three, pining with
mutual magnanimity, kept silent in this way for twenty years,

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 611

locking their feelings in their hearts. " Oh, what a passion that
was, what a passion that was ! " he exclaimed with a stifled sob
of genuine ecstasy. " I saw the full blooming of her beauty " (of
the brunette's, that is), " I saw daily with an ache in my heart
how she passed by me as though ashamed she was so fair " (once
he said " ashamed she was so fat "). At last he had run away,
casting off all this feverish dream of twenty years — vingt ans —
and now here he was on the high road. . . .

Then in a sort of delirium be began explaining to Sofya
Matveyevna the significance of their meeting that day, " sc
chance an encounter and so fateful for all eternity." Sofya
Matveyevna got up from the sofa in terrible confusion at last.
He had positively made an attempt to drop on his knees before
her, which made her cry. It was beginning to get dark. They
had been for some hours shut up in the room. . . .

" No, you'd better let me go into the other room," she faltered,
" or else there's no knowing what people may think. . . ."

She tore herself away at last ; he let her go, promising her to
go to bed at once. As they parted he complained that he had a
bad headache. Sofya Matveyevna had on entering the cottage
left her bag and things in the first room, meaning to spend the
night with the people of the house ; but she got no rest.

In the night Stepan Trofimovitch was attacked by the malady
with which I and all his friends were so familiar — the summer
cholera, which was always the outcome of any nervous strain or
moral shock with him. Poor Sofya Matveyevna did not sleep
all night. As in waiting on the invalid she was obliged pretty
often to go in and out of the cottage through the landlady's room,
the latter, as well as the travellers who were sleeping there,
grumbled and even began swearing when towards morning she
set about preparing the samovar. Stepan Trofimovitch was
half unconscious all through the attack ; at times he had a vision
of the samovar being set, of some one giving him something to
drink (raspberry tea), and putting something warm to his stomach
and his chest. But he felt almost every instant that she was
here, beside him ; that it was she going out and coming in, lifting
him off the bed and settling him in it again. Towards three
o'clock in the morning he began to be easier ; he sat up, put his
legs out of bed and thinking of nothing he fell on the floor at
her feet. This was a very different matter from the kneeling
of the evening ; he simply bowed down at her feet and kissed
the hem of her dress.

612 THE POSSESSED

" Don't, sir, I am not worth it," she faltered, trying to get
him back on to the bed.

" My saviour," he cried, clasping his hands reverently before
her. " Vous etes noble comme une marquise ! I — I am a
wretch. Oh, I've been dishonest all my life. . . ."

" Calm yourself ! " Sofya Matveyevna implored him.

" It was all lies that I told you this evening — to glorify myself,
to make it splendid, from pure wantonness — all, all, every word,
oh, I am a wretch, I am a wretch ! "

The first attack was succeeded in this way by a second — an
attack of hysterical remorse. I have mentioned these attacks
already when I described his letters to Varvara Petrovna. He I
suddenly recalled Lise and their meeting the previous morning. I
" It was so awful, and there must have been some disaster and I
I didn't ask, didn't find out ! I thought only of myself. Oh, I
what's the matter with her ? Do you know what's the matter ]
with her ? " he besought Sofya Matveyevna.

Then he swore that " he would never change," that he would I
go back to her (that is, Varvara Petrovna). " We " (that is, he I
and Sofya Matveyevna) " will go to her steps every day when I
she is getting into her carriage for her morning drive, and we I
will watch her in secret. . . . Oh, I wish her to smite me on the I
other cheek ; it's a joy to wish it ! I shall turn her my other I
cheek comme dans voire livre I Only now for the first time I I
understand what is meant by . . . turning the other cheek. I
I never understood before ! "

The two days that followed were among the most terrible in I
Sofya Matveyevna' s life ; she remembers them with a shudder
to this day. Stepan Trofimovitch became so seriously ill that I
he could not go on board the steamer, which on this occasion I
arrived punctually at two o'clock in the afternoon. She could I
not bring herself to leave him alone, so she did not leave for I
Spasov either. From her account he was positively delighted I
at the steamer's going without him.

"Well, that's a good thing, that's capital!" he muttered I
in his bed. "I've been afraid all the time that we should go.
Here it's so nice, better than anywhere. . . . You won't leave I
me ? Oh, you have not left me!"

It was by no means so nice " here " however. He did not I
care to hear of her difficulties ; his head was full of fancies and I
nothing else. He looked upon his illness as something transitory,
a trifling ailment, and did not think about it at all ; he thought I

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 613

of nothing but how they would go and sell " these books." He
asked her to read him the gospel.

" I haven't read it for a long time ... in the original.
Some one may ask me about it and I shall make a mistake ; I
ought to prepare myself after all."

She sat down beside him and opened the book.

" You read beautifully," he interrupted her after the first
line. " I see, I see I was not mistaken," he added obscurely but
ecstatically. He was, in fact, in a continual state of enthusiasm
She read the Sermon on the Mount.

" Assez, assez, mon enfant, enough. . . . Don't you think that
that is enough ? "

And he closed his eyes helplessly. He was very weak, but
had not yet lost consciousness. Sofya Matveyevna was getting
up, thinking that he wanted to sleep. But he stopped her.

" My friend, I've been telling lies all my life. Even when I
told the truth I never spoke for the sake of the truth, but always
for my own sake. I knew it before, but I only see it now. . . .
Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my
friendship all my life ? And all, all ! Savez-vous . . . perhaps I
am telling lies now ; no doubt I am telling lies now. The worst
of it is that I believe myself when I am lying. The hardest thing
in life is to live without telling lies . . . and without believing
in one's lies. Yes, yes, that's just it. . . . But wait a bit, that
can all come afterwards. . . . We'll be together, together," he
added enthusiastically.

" Stepan Trofimovitch," Sofya Matveyevna asked timidly,
" hadn't I better send to the town for the doctor ? "

He was tremendously taken aback.

" What for ? Est-ce que je suis si malade ? Mais rien de
serieux. What need have we of outsiders ? They may find,
besides — and what will happen then ? No, no, no outsiders and
we'll be together."

" Do you know," he said after a pause, " read me something
more, just the first thing you come across."

Sofya Matveyevna opened the Testament and began reading.

" Wherever it opens, wherever it happens to open," he
repeated.

" ' And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans . . .' '

" What's that ? What is it ? Where is that from ? "

"It's from the Revelation."

" Oh, je rrCen souviens, oui, V Apocalypse. Lisez, lisez, I am

614 THE POSSESSED

trying our future fortunes by the book. I want to know what
has turned up. Read on from there. ..."

" ' And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write :
These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the
beginning of the creation of God ;

" ' I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot ;
I would thou wert cold or hot.

" ' So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor
hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

' ' Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased with goods,
and have need of nothing : and thou knowest not that thou art
wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.' "

" That too . . . and that's in your book too ! " he exclaimed,
with flashing eyes and raising his head from the pillow. " I
never knew that grand passage ! You hear, better be cold,
better be cold than lukewarm, than only lukewarm. Oh, I'll
prove it ! Only don't leave me, don't leave me alone ! We'll
prove it, we'll prove it ! "

" I won't leave you, Stepan Trofimovitch. I'll never leave
you ! " She took his hand, pressed it in both of hers, and laid
it against her heart, looking at him with tears in her eyes. ("I
felt very sorry for him at that moment," she said, describing it
afterwards.)

His lips twitched convulsively.

" But, Stepan Trofimovitch, what are we to do though ?
Oughtn't we to let some of your friends know, or perhaps your
relations ? "

But at that he was so dismayed that she was very sorry that
she had spoken of it again. Trembling and shaking, he besought
her to fetch no one, not to do anything. He kept insisting, " No
one, no one ! We'll be alone, by ourselves, alone, nous partirons
ensemble."

Another difficulty was that the people of the house too began i
to be uneasy ; they grumbled, and kept pestering Sofya
Matveyevna. She paid them and managed to let them see her
money. This softened them for the time, but the man insisted
on seeing Stepan Trofimovitch's " papers." The invalid pointed
with a supercilious smile to his little bag. Sofya Matveyevna j
found in it the certificate of his having resigned his post at thej
university, or something of the kind, which had served him as
a passport all his life. The man persisted, and said that " he|
must be taken somewhere, because their house wasn't a hospital,

SJLUJb'AJN TJ1UJI1MUV1TU11S .L.AS1 W AJN JJ JU±UlN<jr 010

and if he were to die there might be a bother. We should have
no end of trouble." Sofya Matveyevna tried to speak to him
of the doctor, but it appeared that sending to the town would
cost so much that she had to give up all idea of the doctor. She
returned in distress to her invalid. Stepan Trofimovitch was
getting weaker and weaker.

" Now read me another passage. . . . About the pigs," he
said suddenly.

" What ? " asked Sofya Matveyevna, very much alarmed.

" About the pigs . . . that's there too . . . ces cochons. I
remember the devils entered into swine and they all were
drowned. You must read me that ; I'll tell you why afterwards.
I want to remember it word for word. I want it word for
word."

Sofya Matveyevna knew the gospel well and at once found
the passage in St. Luke which I have chosen as the motto of my
record. I quote it here again :

" ' And there was there one herd of many swine feeding on the
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.' "

" My friend," said Stepan Trofimovitch in great excitement
" savez-vous, that wonderful and . . . extraordinary passage
has been a stumbling-block to me all my life . . . dans ce lime
.... so much so that I remembered those verses from child-
hood. Now an idea has occurred to me ; une comparaison.
A great number of ideas keep coming into my mind now. You
see, that's exactly like our Russia, those devils that come out
of the sick man and enter into the swine. They are all the sores,
all the foul contagions, all the impurities, all the devils great and
small that have multiplied in that great invalid, our beloved
Russia, in the course of ages and ages. Out, cette Russie que
faimais toujour s. But a great idea and a great Will will encompass
it from on high, as with that lunatic possessed of devils . . . and

616 THE POSSESSED

all those devils will come forth, all the impurity, all the rotten- 1
ness that was putrefying on the surface . . . and they will beg
of themselves to enter into swine ; and indeed maybe they have j
entered into them already ! They are we, we and those . . . 1
and Petrusha and les autres avec lux . . . and I perhaps at the
head of them, and we shall cast ourselves down, possessed and I
raving, from the rocks into the sea, and we shall all be drowned — J
and a good thing too, for that is all we are fit for. But the sick I
man will be healed and ' will sit at the feet of Jesus,' and all I
will look upon him with astonishment. . . . My dear, vous I
comprendrez apres, but now it excites me very much. . . . Vous I
comprendrez apres. Nous comprendrons ensemble."

He sank into delirium and at last lost consciousness. So it
went on all the following day. Sofya Matveyevna sat beside I
him, crying. She scarcely slept at all for three nights, and
avoided seeing the people of the house, who were, she felt,
beginning to take some steps. Deliverance only came on the \
third day. In the morning Stepan Trofimovitch returned to I
consciousness, recognised her, and held out his hand to her. She
crossed herself hopefully. He wanted to look out of the window.
" Tiens, un lac!" he said. "Good heavens, I had not seen it
before ! . . ." At that moment there was the rumble of a
carriage at the cottage door and a great hubbub in the house
followed.

Ill

It was Varvara Petrovna herself. She had arrived, with Darya
Pavlovna, in a closed carriage drawn by four horses, with two
footmen. The marvel had happened in the simplest way :
Anisim, dying of curiosity, went to Varvara Petrovna's the day
after he reached the town and gossiped to the servants, telling
them he had met Stepan Trofimovitch alone in a village, that
the latter had been seen by peasants walking by himself on the
high road, and that he had set off for Spasov by way of Ustyevo
accompanied by Sofya Matveyevna. As Varvara Petrovna was,
for her part, in terrible anxiety and had done everything she
could to find her fugitive friend, she was at once told about
Anisim. When she had heard his story, especially the details
of the departure for Ustyevo in a cart in the company of some

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 617

Sofya Matveyevna, she instantly got ready and set off post-haste
for Ustyevo herself.

Her stern and peremptory voice resounded through the cottage ;
even the landlord and his wife were intimidated. She had only
stopped to question them and make inquiries, being persuaded
that Stepan Trofimovitch must have reached Spasov long before.
Learning that he was still here and ill, she entered the cottage in
great agitation.

' Well, where is he ? Ah, that's you ! " she cried, seeing
Sofya Matvej^evna, who appeared at that very instant in the
doorway of the next room. " I can guess from your shameless
face that it's you. Go away, you vile hussy ! Don't let me
find a trace of her in the house ! Turn her out, or else, my girl,
I'll get you locked up for good. Keep her safe for a time in
another house. She's been in prison once already in the town ;
she can go back there again. And you, my good man, don't
dare to let anyone in while I am here, I beg of you. I am
Madame Stavrogin, and I'll take the whole house. As for you,
my dear, you'll have to give me a full account of it all."

The familiar sounds overwhelmed Stepan Trofimovitch. He
began to tremble. But she had already stepped behind the
screen. With flashing eyes she drew up a chair with her foot,
and, sinking back in it, she shouted to Dasha :

" Go away for a time ! Stay in the other room. Why
are you so inquisitive ? And shut the door properly after
you."

For some time she gazed in silence with a sort of predatory
look into his frightened face.

" Well, how are you getting on, Stepan Trofimovitch ? So
you've been enjoying yourself ? " broke from her with ferocious
irony.

;' Chere," Stepan Trofimovitch faltered, not knowing what he
was saying, "I've learnt to know real life in Russia . . . et je
precherai VEvangile."

" Oh, shameless, ungrateful man ! " she wailed suddenly,
clasping her hands. ' ' As though you had not disgraced me enough,
you've taken up with . . . oh, you shameless old reprobate ! "

" Chere . . ."

His voice failed him and he could not articulate a syllable
but simply gazed with eyes wide with horror.

" Who is she ? "

" Cest un ange ; c'etait plus qu'un ange pour moi. She's been

618 THE POSSESSED

all night . . . Oh, don't shout, don't frighten her, chere,
chere . . ."

With a loud noise, Varvara Petrovna pushed back her chair,
uttering a loud cry of alarm.

" Water, water ! "

Though he returned to consciousness, she was still shaking
with terror, and, with pale cheeks, looked at his distorted face.
It was only then, for the first time, that she guessed the serious-
ness of his illness.

" Darya," she whispered suddenly to Darya Pavlovna, " send
at once for the doctor, for Salzfish ; let Yegorytch go at once.
Let him hire horses here and get another carriage from the town.
He must be here by night."

Dasha flew to do her bidding. Stepan Trofimovitch still
gazed at her with the same wide-open, frightened eyes ; his
blanched lips quivered.

" Wait a bit, Stepan Trofimovitch, wait a bit, my dear ! "
she said, coaxing him like a child. " There, there, wait a bit !
Darya will come back and . . . My goodness, the landlady,
the landlady, you come, anyway, my good woman ! "

In her impatience she ran herself to the landlady.

" Fetch that woman back at once, this minute. Bring her
back, bring her back ! "

Fortunately Sofya Matveyevna had not yet had time to get
away and was only just going out of the gate with her pack and
her bag. She was brought back. She was so panic-stricken that
she was trembling in every limb. Varvara Petrovna pounced on
her like a hawk on a chicken, seized her by the hand and dragged
her impulsively to Stepan Trofimovitch.

" Here, here she is, then. I've not eaten her. You thought
I'd eaten her."

Stepan Trofimovitch clutched Varvara Petrovna's hand, raised
it to his eyes, and burst into tears, sobbing violently and
convulsively.

" There, calm yourself, there, there, my dear, there, poor dear
man ! Ach, mercy on us ! Calm yourself, will you ? " she
shouted frantically. Ci Oh, you bane of my life ! "

" My dear," Stepan Trofimovitch murmured at last, addressing
Sofya Matveyevna, " stay out there, my dear, I want to say
something here. . . ."

Sofya Matveyevna hurried out at once.

" Cherie . . . cherie . . ."he gasped.

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WANDERING 619

" Don't talk for a bit, Stepan Trofimovitch, wait a little till
you've rested. Here's some water. Do wait, will you ! "

She sat down on the chair again. Stepan Trofimovitch held
her hand tight. For a long while she would not allow him
to speak. He raised her hand to his lips and fell to kissing
it. She set her teeth and looked away into the corner of the
room.

" Je vous aimais" broke from him at last. She had never
heard such words from him, uttered in such a voice.

" H'm ! " she growled in response.

" Je vous aimais toute ma vie . . . vingt ans ! "

She remained silent for two or three minutes.

" And when you were getting yourself up for Dasha you
sprinkled yourself with scent," she said suddenly, in a terrible
whisper.

Stepan Trofimovitch was dumbfoundered.

" You put on a new tie , . ."

Again silence for two minutes.

" Do you remember the cigar ? "

" My friend," he faltered, overcome with horror.

" That cigar at the window in the evening . . . the moon was
shining . . . after the arbour ... at Skvoreshniki ? Do you
remember, do you remember ? " She jumped up from her place,
seized his pillow by the corners and shook it with his head on it.
"Do you remember, you worthless, worthless, ignoble, cowardly,
worthless man, always worthless ! " she hissed in her furious
whisper, restraining herself from speaking loudly. At last she
left him and sank on the chair, covering her face with her hands.
" Enough ! " she snapped out, drawing herself up. " Twenty
years have passed, there's no calling them back. I am a fool
too."

" Je vous aimais." He clasped his hands again.

" Why do you keep on with your aimais and aimais ?
Enough ! " she cried, leaping up again. " And if you don't go
to sleep at once I'll . . . You need rest ; go to sleep, go to sleep
at once, shut your eyes. Ach, mercy on us, perhaps he wants
some lunch ! What do you eat ? What does he eat ? Ach,
mercy on us ! Where is that woman ? Where is she ? "

There was a general bustle again. But Stepan Trofimovitch
faltered in a weak voice that he really would like to go to sleep
une heure, and then un bouillon, un the . . . enfin il est si heureux.
He lay back and really did seem to go to sleep (he probably

620 THE POSSESSED

pretended to). Varvara Petrovna waited a little, and stole out
on tiptoe from behind the partition.

She settled herself in the landlady's room, turned out the
landlady and her husband, and told Dasha to bring her that
woman. There followed an examination in earnest.

" Tell me all about it, my good girl. Sit down beside me ;
that's right. Well ? "

" I met Stepan Trofimovitch ..."

" Stay, hold your tongue ! I warn you that if you tell lies or
conceal anything, I'll ferret it out. Well ? "

" Stepan Trofimovitch and I ... as soon as I came to
Hatovo . . ." Sofya Matveyevna began almost breathlessly.

" Stay, hold your tongue, wait a bit ! Why do you gabble
like that ? To begin with, what sort of creature are you ? "

Sofya Matveyevna told her after a fashion, giving a very brief
account of herself, however, beginning with Sevastopol. Varvara
Petrovna listened in silence, sitting up erect in her chair, looking
sternly straight into the speaker's eyes.

" Why are you so frightened ? Why do you look at the
ground ? I like people who look me straight in the face and hold
their own with me. Go on."

She told of their meeting, of her books, of how Stepan
Trofimovitch had regaled the peasant woman with vodka . . .

" That's right, that's right, don't leave out the slightest
detail," Varvara Petrovna encouraged her.

At last she described how they had set off, and how Stepan
Trofimovitch had gone on talking, " really ill by that time," and
here had given an account of his life from the very beginning,
talking for some hours.

" Tell me about his life."

Sofya Matveyevna suddenly stopped and was completely
nonplussed.

" I can't tell you anything about that, madam," she brought
out, almost crying ; " besides, I could hardly understand a word
of it."

" Nonsense ! You must have understood something."

" He told a long time about a distinguished lady with black
hair." Sofya Matveyevna flushed terribly though she noticed
Varvara Petrovna's fair hair and her complete dissimilarity
with the " brunette " of the story.

" Black-haired ? What exactly ? Come, speak ! "

" How this grand lady was deeply in love with his honour

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WAJNDEK1JNG 621

all her life long and for twenty years, but never dared to speak,
and was shamefaced before him because she was a very stout
lady. . . ."

" The fool ! " Varvara Petrovna rapped out thoughtfully but
resolutely.

Sofya Matveyevna was in tears by now.

" I don't know how to tell any of it properly, madam, because
I was in a great fright over his honour ; and I couldn't understand,
as he is such an intellectual gentleman."

" It's not for a goose like you to judge of his intellect. Did
he offer you his hand ? "

The speaker trembled.

" Did he fall in love with you ? Speak ! Did he offer you
his hand ? " Varvara Petrovna shouted peremptorily.

" That was pretty much how it was," she murmured tear-
fully. " But I took it all to mean nothing, because of his illness,"
she added firmly, raising her eyes.

" What is your name ? "

" Sofya Matveyevna, madam,"

" Well, then, let me tell you, Sofya Matveyevna, that he is a
wretched and worthless little man. . . . Good Lord ! Do you
look upon me as a wicked woman ? "

Sofya Matveyevna gazed open-eyed.

" A wicked woman, a tyrant ? Who has ruined his life ? '

" How can that be when you are crying yourself, madam ? "

Varvara Petrovna actually had tears in her eyes.

" Well, sit down, sit down, don't be frightened. Look me
straight in the face again. Why are you blushing ? Dasha,
come here. Look at her. What do you think of her ? Her
heart is pure. ..."

And to the amazement and perhaps still greater alarm of
Sofya Matveyevna, she suddenly patted her on the cheek.

" It's only a pity she is a fool. Too great a fool for her age.
That's all right, my dear, I'll look after you. I see that it's all
nonsense. Stay near here for the time. A room shall be taken
for you and you shall have food and everything else from me
. . . till I ask for you."

Sofya Matveyevna stammered in alarm that she must hurry on.

" You've no need to hurry. I'll buy all your books, and mean-
time you stay here. Hold your tongue ; don't make excuses.
If I hadn't come you would have stayed with him all the same,
wouldn't you ? "

622 THE POSSESSED

" I wouldn't have left him on any account," Sofya Matveyevna
brought out softly and firmly, wiping her tears.

It was late at night when Doctor Salzfish was brought. He
was a very respectable old man and a practitioner of fairly wide
experience who had recently lost his post in the service in con-
sequence of some quarrel on a point of honour with his superiors.
Varvara Petrovna instantly and actively took him under her
protection. He examined the patient attentively, questioned
him, and cautiously pronounced to Varvara Petrovna that "the
sufferer's " condition was highly dubious in consequence of
complications, and that they must be prepared " even for the
worst." Varvara Petrovna, who had during twenty years got
accustomed to expecting nothing serious or decisive to come from
Stepan Trofimovitch, was deeply moved and even turned pale.

" Is there really no hope ? "

" Can there ever be said to be absolutely no hope ? But . . ."

She did not go to bed all night, and felt that the morning
would never come. As soon as the patient opened his eyes and
returned to consciousness (he was conscious all the time, how-
ever, though he was growing weaker every hour), she went up
to him with a very resolute air.

" Stepan Trofimovitch, one must be prepared for anything.
I've sent for a priest. You must do what is right. . . ."

Knowing his convictions, she was terribly afraid of his refusing.
He looked at her with surprise.

" Nonsense, nonsense ! " she vociferated, thinking he was
already refusing. " This is no time for whims. You have
played the fool enough."

" But ... am I really so ill, then ? "

He agreed thoughtfully. And indeed I was much surprised
to learn from Varvara Petrovna afterwards that he showed no
fear of death at all. Possibly it was that he simply did not
believe it, and still looked upon his illness as a trifling one.

He confessed and took the sacrament very readily. Every
one, Sofya Matveyevna, and even the servants, came to con-
gratulate him on taking the sacrament. They were all moved
to tears looking at his sunken and exhausted face and his blanched
and quivering lips.

" Oui, mes amis, and I only wonder that you . . . take so
much trouble. I shall most likely get up to-morrow, and we
will . . . set off. . . . Toute cette ceremonie . . . for which, of
course, I feel every proper respect . . . was ..."

STEPAN TROFIMO VETCH'S LAST WANDEKIJNG 623

" I beg you, father, to remain with the invalid," said Varvara
Petrovna hurriedly, stopping the priest, who had already taken
|off his vestments. " As soon as tea has been handed, I beg you
to begin to speak of religion, to support his faith."

The priest spoke ; every one was standing or sitting round the
sick-bed.

" In our sinful days," the priest began smoothly, with a cup
of tea in his hand, " faith in the Most High is the sole refuge of
the race of man in all the trials and tribulations of life, as well
as its hope for that eternal bliss promised to the righteous."

Stepan Trofimovitch seemed to revive, a subtle smile strayed
on his lips.

" Mon pire, je vous remercie et vous Ues bien bon, mais . . ."

" No mais about it, no mais at all ! " exclaimed Varvara
Petrovna, bounding up from her chair. "Father," she said,
addressing the priest, "he is a man who . . . he is a man who . . .
You will have to confess him again in another hour ! That's the
sort of man he is."

Stepan Trofimovitch smiled faintly.

" My friends," he said, " God is necessary to me, if only
because He is the only being whom one can love eternally."

Whether he was really converted, or whether the stately
ceremony of the administration of the sacrament had impressed
him and stirred the artistic responsiveness of his temperament
or not, he firmly and, I am told, with great feeling uttered some
words which were in flat contradiction with many of his former
convictions.

" My immortality is necessary if only because God will not
be guilty of injustice and extinguish altogether the flame of
love for Him once kindled in my heart. And what is more
precious than love ? Love is higher than existence, love is the
crown of existence ; and how is it possible that existence should
not be under its dominance ? If I have once loved Him and
rejoiced in my love, is it possible that He should extinguish me
and my joy and bring me to nothingness again ? If there is a
God, then I am immortal. Voila ma profession defoi."

" There is a God, Stepan Trofimovitch, I assure you there is,"
Varvara Petrovna implored him. " Give it up, drop all your
foolishness for once in your life ! " (I think she had not quite
understood his profession de foi.)

" My friend," he said, growing more and more animated,
though his voice broke frequently, " as soon as I understood

624 THE POSSESSED

. . . that turning of the cheek, I . . . understood something
else as well. J'ai menti toute ma vie, all my life, all ! I should
like . . . but that will do to-morrow. . . . To-morrow we will
all set out."

Varvara Petrovna burst into tears. He was looking about for
some one.

" Here she is, she is here ! " She seized Sofya Matveyevna by
the hand and led her to him. He smiled tenderly.

" Oh, I should dearly like to live again ! " he exclaimed with
an extraordinary rush of energy. " Every minute, every instant
of life ought to be a blessing to man . . . they ought to be, they
certainly ought to be ! It's the duty of man to make it so ;
that's the law of his nature, which always exists even if hidden.
. . . Oh, I wish I could see Petrusha . . . and all of them . . .
Shatov . . ."

I may remark that as yet no one had heard of Shatov's fate —
not Varvara Petrovna nor Darya Pavlovna, nor even Salzfish,
who was the last to come from the town.

Stepan Trofimovitch became more and more excited, feverishly
so, beyond his strength.

" The mere fact of the ever present idea that there exists
something infinitely more just and more happy than I am fills
me through and through with tender ecstasy — and glorifies me —
oh, whoever I may be, whatever I have done ! What is far more
essential for man than personal happiness is to know and to
believe at every instant that there is somewhere a perfect and
serene happiness for all men and for everything. . . . The one
essential condition of human existence is that man should always
be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men
are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living and
will die of despair. The Infinite and the Eternal are as essential
for man as the little planet on which he dwells. My friends, all,
all : hail to the Great Idea ! The Eternal, Infinite Idea ! It is
essential to every man, whoever he may be, to bow down before
what is the Great Idea. Even the stupidest man needs some-
thing great. Petrusha . . . oh, how I want to see them all
again ! They don't know, they don't know that that same
Eternal, Grand Idea lies in them all ! "

Doctor Salzfish was not present at the ceremony. Coming
in suddenly, he was horrified, and cleared the room, insisting
that the patient must not be excited.

Stepan Trofimovitch died three days later, but by that time

STEPAN TROFIMOVITCH'S LAST WAJN.DEK1JNU t>25

le was completely unconscious. He quietly went out like a
andle that is burnt down. After having the funeral service
performed, Varvara Petrovna took the body of her poor friend
bo Skvoreshniki. His grave is in the precincts of the church
land is already covered with a marble slab. The inscription and
the railing will be added in the spring.

Varvara Petrovna's absence from town had lasted eight days.
Sof ya Matveyevna arrived in the carriage with her and seems to
have settled with her for good. I may mention that as soon as
Stepan Trofimovitch lost consciousness (the morning that he
received the sacrament) Varvara Petrovna promptly asked
Sofya Matveyevna to leave the cottage again, and waited on the
invalid herself unassisted to the end, but she sent for her at
once when he had breathed his last. Sofya Matveyevna was
terribly alarmed by Varvara Petrovna's proposition, or rather
command, that she should settle for good at Skvoreshniki, but
the latter refused to listen to her protests.

" That's all nonsense ! I will go with you to sell the gospel.
I have no one in the world now."

" You have a son, however," Salzfish observed.

" I have no son ! " Varvara Petrovna snapped out — and it was
like a prophecy.

2R

CHAPTER VIII

CONCLUSION

All the crimes and villainies that had been perpetrated wer J
discovered with extraordinary rapidity, much more quickly!
than Pyotr Stepanovitch had expected. To 'begin with, the*
luckless Marya Ignatyevna waked up before daybreak on th^
night of her husband's murder, missed him and flew into iiil
describable agitation, not seeing him beside her. The woman who]
had been hired by Arina Prohorovna, and was there for thf :
night, could not succeed in calming her, and as soon as it wa I
daylight ran to fetch Arina Prohorovna herself, assuring the!
invalid that the latter knew where her husband was, and when]
he would be back. Meantime Arina Prohorovna was in some]
anxiety too ; she had already heard from her husband of the]
deed perpetrated that night at Skvoreshniki. He had returned
home about eleven o'clock in a terrible state of mind and body ;
wringing his hands, he flung himself face downwards on his bed
and shaking with convulsive sobs kept repeating, " It's not right,
it's not right, it's not right at all ! " He ended, of course, by
confessing it all to Arina Prohorovna — but to no one else in the
house. She left him on his bed, sternly impressing upon him
that " if he must blubber he must do it in his pillow so as not tc
be overheard, and that he would be a fool if he showed any trace
of it next day." She felt somewhat anxious, however, and begar
at once to clear things up in case of emergency : she succeeded
in hiding or completely destroying all suspicious papers, books,
manifestoes perhaps. At the same time she reflected that she,
her sister, her aunt, her sister-in-law the student, and perhaps
even her long-eared brother had really nothing much to be
afraid of. When the nurse ran to her in the morning she went
without a second thought to Marya Ignatyevna's. She was
desperately anxious, moreover, to find out whether what he
husband had told her that night in a terrified and frantic whispe
that was almost like delirium, was true — that is, whether Py
Stepanovitch had been right in his reckoning that Kiri
would sacrifice himself for the general benefit.

But she arrived at Marya Ignatyevna's too late : wher
latter had sent off the woman and was left alone, she was u

626

CONCLUSION 627

.o bear the suspense ; she got out of bed, and throwing round her
bhe first garment she could find, something very light and un-
suitable for the weather, I believe, she ran down to Kirillov's
lodge herself, thinking that he perhaps would be better able
than anyone to tell her something about her husband. The
terrible effect on her of what she saw there may well be imagined.
It is remarkable that she did not read Kirillov's last letter, which
lay conspicuously on the table, overlooking it, of course, in her
fright. She ran back to her room, snatched up her baby, and
went with it out of the house into the street. It was a damp
morning, there was a fog. She met no passers-by in such an
out-of-the-way street. She ran on breathless through the wet,
cold mud, and at last began knocking at the doors of the houses.
In the first house no one came to the door, in the second they
were so long in coming that she gave it up impatiently and
began knocking at a third door. This was the house of a
merchant called Titov. Here she wailed and kept declaring
incoherently that her husband was murdered, causing a great
flutter in the house. Something was known about Shatov and
his story in the Titov household ; they were horror-stricken
that she should be running about the streets in such attire
and in such cold with the baby scarcely covered in her arms,
when, according to her story, she had only been confined the day
before. They thought at first that she was delirious, especially as
they could not make out whether it was Kirillov who was murdered
or her husband. Seeing that they did not believe her she would
have run on farther, but they kept her by force, and I am told
she screamed and struggled terribly. They went to Filipov's,
and within two hours Kirillov's suicide and the letter he had
left were known to the whole town. The police came to question
Marya Ignatyevna, who was still conscious, and it appeared at
once that she had not read Kirillov's letter, and they could not
find out from her what had led her to conclude that her husband
had been murdered. She only screamed that if Kirillov was
murdered, then her husband was murdered, they were together.
1 Towards midday she sank into a state of unconsciousness from
which she never recovered, and she died three days later. The
'aby had caught cold and died before her.
Arina Prohorovna not finding Marya Ignatyevna and the
by, and guessing something was wrong, was about to run
ne, but she checked herself at the gate and sent the nurse to
lire of the gentleman at the lodge whether Marya Ignatyevna

628 THE POSSESSED

was not there and whether he knew anything about her.
The woman came back screaming frantically. Persuading her
not to scream and not to tell anyone by the time-honoured
argument that " she would get into trouble," she stole out of
the yard.

It goes without saying that she was questioned the same
morning as having acted as midwife to Marya Ignatyevna ;
but they did not get much out of her. She gave a very cool
and sensible account of all she had herself heard and seen at
Shatov's, but as to what had happened she declared that she
knew nothing, and could not understand it.

It may well be imagined what an uproar there was in the
town. A new " sensation," another murder ! But there was
another element in this case : it was clear that a secret society
of murderers, incendiaries, and revolutionists did exist, did
actually exist. Liza's terrible death, the murder of Stavrogin's
wife, Stavrogin himself, the fire, the ball for the benefit of the
governesses, the laxity of manners and morals in Yulia Mihail-
ovna's circle. . . . Even in the disappearance of Stepan
Trofimovitch people insisted on scenting a mystery. All sorts
of things were whispered about Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch. By
the end of the day people knew of Pyotr Stepanovitch's absence
too, and, strange to say, less was said of him than of anyone.
What was talked of most all that day was " the senator."
There was a crowd almost all day at Filipov's house. The
police certainly were led astray by Kirillov's letter. They
believed that Kirillov had murdered Shatov and had himself
committed suicide. Yet, though the authorities were thrown
into perplexity, they were not altogether hoodwinked. The
word " park," for instance, so vaguely inserted in Kirillov's
letter, did not puzzle anyone as Pyotr Stepanovitch had expected
it would. The police at once made a rush for Skvoreshniki,
not simply because it was the only park in the neighbourhood,
but also led thither by a sort of instinct because all the horrors
of the last few days were connected directly or indirectly with
Skvoreshniki. That at least is my theory* (I may remark that
Varvara Petrovna had driven off early that morning in chase of
Stepan Trofimovitch, and knew nothing of what had happened
in the town.)

The body was found in the pond that evening. What led
to the discovery of it was the finding of Shatov's cap at the
scene of the murder, where it had been with extraordinary care-

CONCLUSION 629

lessness overlooked by the murderers. The appearance of the
body, the medical examination and certain deductions from it
roused immediate suspicions that Kirillov must have had
accomplices. It became evident that a secret society really did
exist of which Shatov and Kirillov were members and which was
connected with the manifestoes. Who were these accomplices ?
No one even thought of any member of the quintet that day.
It was ascertained that Kirillov had lived like a hermit, and in
so complete a seclusion that it had been possible, as stated in the
letter, for Fedka to lodge with him for so many days, even while
an active search was being made for him. The chief thing that
worried every one was the impossibility of discovering a connect-
ing-link in this chaos.

There is no saying what conclusions and what disconnected
theories our panic-stricken townspeople would have reached,
if the whole mystery had not been suddenly solved next day,
thanks to Lyamshin.

He broke down. He behaved as even Pyotr Stepanovitch
had towards the end begun to fear he would. Left in charge
of Tolkatchenko, and afterwards of Erkel, he spent all the
following day lying in his bed with his face turned to the wall,
apparently calm, not uttering a word, and scarcely answering
when he was spoken to. This is how it was that he heard
nothing all day of what was happening in the town. But
Tolkatchenko, who was very well informed about everything,
took into his head by the evening to throw up the task of watch-
ing Lyamshin which Pyotr Stepanovitch had laid upon him,
and left the town, that is, to put it plainly, made his escape ;
the fact is, they lost their heads as Erkel had predicted they
would. I may mention, by the way, that Liputin had dis-
appeared the same day before twelve o'clock. But things fell
out so that his disappearance did not become known to the
authorities till the evening of the following day, when the police
went to question his family, who were panic-stricken at his
absence but kept quiet from fear of consequences. But to
return to Lyamshin : as soon as he was left alone (Erkel had
gone home earlier, relying on Tolkatchenko) he ran out of his
house, and, of course, very soon learned the position of affairs.
Without even returning home he too tried to run away without
knowing where he was going. But the night was so dark and
to escape was so terrible and difficult, that after going through
two or three streets, he returned home and locked himself up

630 THE POSSESSED

for the whole night. I believe that towards morning he
attempted to commit suicide but did not succeed. He re-
mained locked up till midday — and then suddenly he ran to the
authorities. He is said to have crawled on his knees, to have
sobbed and shrieked, to have kissed the floor crying out that
he was not worthy to kiss the boots of the officials , standing
before him. They soothed him, were positively affable to him.
His examination lasted, I am told, for three hours. He con-
fessed everything, everything, told every detail, everything he
knew, every point, anticipating their questions, hurried to make
a clean breast of it all, volunteering unnecessary informa-
tion without being asked. It turned out that he knew enough,
and presented things in a fairly true light : the tragedy of
Shatov and Kirillov, the fire, the death of the Lebyadkins, and
the rest of it were relegated to the background. Pyotr Stepano-
vitch, the secret society, the organisation, and the network were
put in the first place. When asked what was the object of so
many murders and scandals and dastardly outrages, he
answered with feverish haste that " it was with the idea of
systematically undermining the foundations, systematically
destroying society and all principles ; with the idea of nonplussing
every one and making hay of everything, and then, when society
was tottering, sick and out of joint, cynical and sceptical though
filled with an intense eagerness for self-preservation and for some
guiding idea, suddenly to seize it in their hands, raising the
standard of revolt and relying on a complete network of
quintets, which were actively, meanwhile, gathering recruits and
seeking out the weak spots which could be attacked." In con-
clusion, he said that here in our town Pyotr Stepanovitch had
organised only the first experiment in such systematic disorder,
so to speak as a programme for further activity, and for all
the quintets — and that this was his own (Lyamshin's) idea, his
own theory, " and that he hoped they would remember it and
bear in mind how openly and properly he had given his informa-
tion, and therefore might be of use hereafter." Being asked
definitely how many quintets there were, he answered that there
were immense numbers of them, that all Hussia was overspread
with a network, and although he brought forward no proofs, I
believe his answer was perfectly sincere. He produced only
the programme of the society, printed abroad, and the plan for
developing a system of future activity roughly sketched in Pyotr
Stepanovitch 's own handwriting. It appeared that Lyamshin

CONCLUSION 631

had quoted the phrase about " undermining the foundations,"
word for word from this document, not omitting a single stop
or comma, though he had declared that it was all his own theory.
Of Yulia Mihailovna he very funnily and quite without provoca-
tion volunteered the remark, that " she was innocent and
had been made a fool of.'' But, strange to say, he exone-
rated Nikolay Stavrogin from all share in the secret society,
from any collaboration with Pyotr Stepanovitch. (Lyamshin
had no conception of the secret and very absurd hopes that
Pyotr Stepanovitch was resting on Stavrogin.) According to
his story Nikolay Stavrogin had nothing whatever to do with
the death of the Lebyadkins, which had been planned by Pyotr
Stepanovitch alone and with the subtle aim of implicating the
former in the crime, and therefore making him dependent on
Pyotr Stepanovitch ; but instead of the gratitude on which
Pyotr Stepanovitch had reckoned with shallow confidence, he
had roused nothing but indignation and even despair in " the
generous heart of Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch." He wound up by
a hint, evidently intentional, volunteered hastily, that Stavrogin
was perhaps a very important personage, but that there was
some secret about that, that he had been living among us, so to
say, incognito, that he had some commission, and that very
possibly he would come back to us again from Petersburg.
(Lyamshin was convinced that Stavrogin had gone to Peters-
burg), but in quite a different capacity and in different surround-
ings, in the suite of persons of whom perhaps we should soon
hear, and that all this he had heard from Pyotr Stepanovitch,
" Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's secret enemy."

Here I will note that two months later, Lyamshin admitted
that he had exonerated Stavrogin on purpose, hoping that he
would protect him and would obtain for him a mitigation in
the second degree of his sentence, and that he would provide
him with money and letters of introduction in Siberia. From
this confession it is evident that he had an extraordinarily
exaggerated conception of Stavrogin' s powers.

On the same day, of course, the police arrested Virginsky and
in their zeal took his whole family too. (Arina Prohorovna, her
sister, aunt, and even the girl student were released long ago ;
they say that Shigalov too will be set free very shortly because
he cannot be classed with any of the other prisoners. But all
that is so far only gossip.) Virginsky at once pleaded guilty.
He was lying ill with fever when he was arrested. T am told

032 THE POSSESSED

that he seemed almost relieved ; "it was a load off his heart,"
he is reported to have said. It is rumoured that he is giving
his evidence without reservation, but with a certain dignity,
and has not given up any of his 'k bright hopes," though at the
same time he curses the political method (as opposed to the
Socialist one), in which he had been unwittingly and heedlessly
carried 'u by the vortex of combined circumstances." His
conduct at the time of the murder has been put in a favourable
light, and I imagine that he too may reckon on some mitigation
of his sentence. That at least is what is asserted in the town.

But I doubt whether there is any hope for mercy in Erkel's
case. Ever since his arrest he has been obstinately silent, or
has misrepresented the facts as far as he could. Not one word
of regret has been wrung from him so far. Yet even the sternest
of the judges trying him has been moved to some compassion
by his youth, by his helplessness, by the unmistakable evidence
that he is nothing but a fanatical victim of a political impostor,
and, most of all, by his conduct to his mother, to whom, as it
appears, he used to send almost the half of his small salary.
His mother is now in the town ; she is a delicate and ailing
woman, aged beyond her years ; she weeps and positively grovels
on the ground imploring mercy for her son. Whatever may
happen, many among us feel sorry for Erkel.

Liputin was arrested in Petersburg, where he had been living for
a fortnight. His conduct there sounds almost incredible and is
difficult to explain. He is said to have had a passport in a forged
name and quite a large sum of money upon him, and had every
possibility of escaping abroad, yet instead of going he remained
in Petersburg. He spent some time hunting for Stavrogin and
Pyotr Stepanovitch. Suddenly he took to drinking and gave
himself up to a debauchery that exceeded all bounds, like a
man who had lost all reason and understanding of his position.
He was arrested in Petersburg drunk in a brothel. There is
a rumour that he has not by any means lost heart, that he tells
lies in his evidence and is preparing for the approaching trial
hopefully (?) and, as it were, triumphantly. He even intends
to make a speech at the trial. Tolkatchenko, who was arrested
in tne neighbourhood ten days after his flight, behaves with
incomparably more decorum ; he does not shuffle or tell lies,
he tells all he knows, does not justify himself, blames himself with
all modesty, though he, too, has a weakness for rhetoric ; he tells
readily what he knows, and when knowledge of the peasantry

CONCLUSION 633

and the revolutionary (?) elements among them is touched upon,
he positively attitudinises and is eager to produce an effect. He,
too, is meaning, I am told, to make a speech at the trial. Neither
he nor Liputin seem very much afraid, curious as it seems.

I repeat that the case is not yet over. Now, three months
afterwards, local society has had time to rest, has recovered, has
got over it, has an opinion of its own, so much so that some
people positively look upon Pyotr Stepanovitch as a genius or
at least as possessed of " some characteristics of a genius."
"Organisation!" they say at the club, holding up a linger.
But all this is very innocent and there are not many people
who talk like that. Others, on the other hand, do not deny his
acuteness, but point out that he was utterly ignorant of real
life, that he was terribly theoretical, grotesquely and stupidly
one-sided, and consequently shallow in the extreme. As for
his moral qualities all are agreed ; about that there are no two
opinions.

I do not know whom to mention next so as not to forget
anyone. Mavriky Nikolaevitch has gone away for good, I don't
know where. Old Madame Drozdov has sunk into dotage. . . .
I have still one very gloomy story to tell, however. I will confine
myself to the bare facts.

On her return from Ustyevo, Varvara Petrovna stayed at her
town house. All the accumulated news broke upon her at once
and gave her a terrible shock. She shut herself up alone. It
was evening ; every one was tired and went to bed early.

In the morning a maid with a mysterious air handed a note
to Darya Pavlovna. The note had, so she said, arrived the
evening before, but late, when all had gone to bed, so that she
had not ventured to wake her. It had not come by post, but
had been put in Alexey Yegorytch's hand in Skvoreshniki by
some unknown person. And Alexey Yegorytch had immediately
set off and put it into her hands himself and had then returned
to Skvoreshniki.

For a long while Darya Pavlovna gazed at the letter with
a beating heart, and dared not open it. She knew from whom
it came : the writer was Nikolay Stavrogin. She read what
was written on the envelope : "To Alexey Yegorytch, to be
given secretly to Darya Pavlovna."

Here is the letter word for word, without the slightest correction
of the defects in style of a Russian aristocrat who had never
mastered the Russian grammar in spite of his European education.

634 THE POSSESSED

" Dear Darya Pavlovna, — At one time you expressed a wish
to be my nurse and made me promise to send for you when
I wanted you. I am going away in two days and shall not come
back. Will you go with me ?

" Last year, like Herzen, I was naturalised as a citizen of the
canton of Uri, and that nobody knows. There I've already
bought a little house. I've still twelve thousand roubles left ;
we'll go and live there for ever. I don't want to go anywhere
else ever.

" It's a very dull place, a narrow valley, the mountains
restrict both vision and thought. It's very gloomy. I chose
the place because there was a little house to be sold. If you
don't like it I'll sell it and buy another in some other place.

" I am not well, but I hope to get rid of hallucinations in that
air. It's physical, and as for the moral you know everything ;
but do you know all ?

" I've told you a great deal of my life, but not all. Even to
you ! Not all. By the way, I repeat that in my conscience
I feel myself responsible for my wife's death. I haven't seen
you since then, that's why I repeat it. I feel guilty about
Lizaveta Nikolaevna too ; but you know about that ; you fore-
told almost all that.

" Better not come to me. My asking you to is a horrible
meanness. And why should you bury your life with me ? You
are dear to me, and when I was miserable it was good to be
beside you ; only with you I could speak of myself aloud.
But that proves nothing. You defined it yourself, ' a nurse ' —
it's your own expression ; why sacrifice so much ? Grasp this,
too, that I have no pity for you since I ask you, and no respect
for you since I reckon on you. And yet I ask you and I reckon
on you. In any case I need your answer for I must set off very
soon. In that case I shall go alone.

" I expect nothing of Uri ; I am simply going. I have not
chosen a gloomy place on purpose. I have no ties in Russia —
everything is as alien to me there as everywhere. It's true that
I dislike living there more than anywhere ; but I can't hate
anything even there !

"I've tried my strength everywhere. You advised me to do
this ' that I might learn to know niyself .' As long as I was
experimenting for myself and for others it seemed infinite, as it
has all my life. Before your eyes I endured a blow from your
brother ; I acknowledged my marriage in public. But to what

CONCLUSION 635

to apply my strength, that is what I've never seen, and do not
see now in spite of all your praises in Switzerland, which I
believed in. I am still capable, as I always was, of desiring
to do something good, and of feeling pleasure from it ; at the
same time I desire evil and feel pleasure from that too. But
both feelings are always too petty, and are never very strong.
My desires are too weak ; they are not enough to guide me. On a
log one may cross a river but not on a chip. I say this that
you may not believe that I am going to Uri with hopes of any
sort.

" As always I blame no one. I've tried the depths of de-
bauchery and wasted my strength over it. But I don't like
vice and I didn't want it. You have been watching me of late.
Do you know that I looked upon our iconoclasts with spite,
from envy of their hopes ? But you had no need to be afraid.
I could not have been one of them for I never shared anything
with them. And to do it for fun, from spite I could not either,
not because I am afraid of the ridiculous — I cannot be afraid of
the ridiculous — but because I have, after all, the habits of a
gentleman and it disgusted me. But if I had felt more spite
and envy of them I might perhaps have joined them. You can
judge how hard it has been for me, and how I've struggled
from one thing to another.

" Dear friend ! Great and tender heart which I divined !
Perhaps you dream of giving me so much love and lavishing on
me so much that is beautiful from your beautiful soul, that you
hope to set up some aim for me at last by it ? No, it's better
for you to be more cautious, my love will be as petty as I am
myself and you will be unhappy. Your brother told me that
the man who loses connection with his country loses his gods,
that is, all his aims. One may argue about everything endlessly,
but from me nothing has come but negation, with no greatness
of soul, no force. Even negation has not come from me. Every-
thing has always been petty and spiritless. Kirillov, in the
greatness of his soul, could not compromise with an idea, and
shot himself ; but I see, of course, that he was great-souled
because he had lost his reason. I can never lose my reason,
and I can never believe in an idea to such a degree as he did.
I cannot even be interested in an idea to such a degree. I can
never, never shoot myself.

" I know I ought to kill myself, to brush myself off the earth
like a nasty insect ; but I am afraid of suicide, for I am afraid

636 THE POSSESSED

of showing greatness of soul. I know that it will be another
sham again — the last deception in an endless series of deceptions.
What good is there in deceiving oneself ? Simply to play at
greatness of soul ? Indignation and shame I can never feel,
therefore not despair.

" Forgive me for writing so much. I wrote without noticing.
A hundred pages would be too little and ten lines would be
enough. Ten lines would be enough to ask you to be a nurse.
Since I left Skvoreshniki I've been living at the sixth station on
the line, at the stationmaster's. I got to know him in the time
of debauchery five years ago in Petersburg. No one knows I
am living there. Write to him. I enclose the address.

"NlKOLAY STAVROGIN."

Darya Pavlovna went at once and showed the letter to Varvara
Petrovna. She read it and asked Dasha to go out of the room
so that she might read it again alone ; but she called her back
very quickly.

" Are you going ? " she asked almost timidly.

" I am going," answered Dasha.

" Get ready ! We'll go together."

Dasha looked at her inquiringly.

" What is there left for me to do here ? What difficulty will
it make ? I'll be naturalised in Uri, too, and live in the
valley. . . . Don't be uneasy, I won't be in the way."

They began packing quickly to be in time to catch the midday
train. But in less than half an hour's time Alexey Yegorytch
arrived from Skvoreshniki. He announced that Nikolay
Vsyevolodovitch had suddenly arrived that morning by the
early train, and was now at Skvoreshniki but " in such a state
that his honour did not answer any questions, walked through
all the rooms and shut himself up in his own wing. ..."

" Though I received no orders I thought it best to come and
inform you," Alexey Yegorytch concluded with a very signifi-
cant expression.

Varvara Petrovna looked at him searchingly and did not
question him. The carriage was got ready instantly. Varvara
Petrovna set off with Dasha. They say that she kept crossing
herself on the journey.

In Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's wing of the house all the doors
were open and he was nowhere to be seen.

" Wouldn't he be upstairs ? " Fomushka ventured.

CONCLUSION 637

It was remarkable that several servants followed Varvara
Petrovna while the others all stood waiting in the drawing-room.
They would never have dared to commit such a breach of
etiquette before. Varvara Petrovna saw it and said nothing.

They went upstairs. There there were three rooms ; but
they found no one there.

" Wouldn't his honour have gone up there ? " some one
suggested, pointing to the door of the loft. And in fact, the
door of the loft which was always closed had been opened and
was standing ajar. The loft was right under the roof and was
reached by a long, very steep and narrow wooden ladder. There
was a sort of little room up there too.

" I am not going up there. Why should he go up there ? "
said Varvara Petrovna, turning terribly pale as she looked at the
servants. They gazed back at her and said nothing. Dasha
was trembling.

Varvara Petrovna rushed up the ladder ; Dasha followed,
but she had hardly entered the loft when she uttered a scream
and fell senseless.

The citizen of the canton of Uri was hanging there behind the
door. On the table lay a piece of paper with the words in
pencil : " No one is to blame, I did it myself." Beside it on the
table lay a hammer, a piece of soap, and a large nail — obviously
an extra one in case of need. The strong silk cord upon which
Nikolay Veyevolodovitch had hanged himself had evidently
been chosen and prepared beforehand and was thickly smeared
with soap. Everything proved that there had been premedita-
tion and consciousness up to the last moment.

At the inquest our doctors absolutely and emphatically
rejected all idea of insanity.

THE END

PRINTED AT

THE BALLANTYNE PRESS

LONDON

3 1197 00063 9150

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