“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 tomorrow at her fête. I’ve not come to make a request but to ask for my rights. …”
“At the fête? There’ll be no fête. I won’t allow your fête. 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.”
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 fête tomorrow. 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 today? 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 responsibility but showed no contrition.
“Vous ne faites que des bêtises,” 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 misunderstanding.”
“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 someone 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 almost more than one could bear. It was probably the first moment since the previous day that he had full, vivid consciousness 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 accompanied her. But at this point I should like to tell my story in as much detail as possible.
III
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 Trofimovitch 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 misdemeanour 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
