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 understanding … 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?”
“That’s just it; you always cut the ground from under one’s feet with your logic, damn it. … Well, here goes … this ‘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.”
“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 sublieutenant, to be sure, and somebody else and someone else here … and Shatov perhaps and someone 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 for a fact, but of the manifestoes I really know nothing.”
“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 pocketbook 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 ‘Reflections’ here, and in fact I can do nothing; print it abroad.
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.”
“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 sublieutenant 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.
