“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 won’t go on listening. No celebrity is able to hold his own for half an hour.”
He stopped short and seemed almost quivering with resentment. Infinite disdain was expressed in his countenance.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” he muttered contemptuously and walked on. At that moment Stepan Trofimovitch’s voice rang 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 in the midst of the still persisting disorder. He was greeted by the first rows with looks which were evidently not over-friendly. (Of late, at the club, people almost seemed not to like him, and treated him with much less respect than formerly.) But it was something to the good that he was not hissed. I had had a strange 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. What could that man hope for if Karmazinov was treated like this? He was pale; it was ten years since he had appeared before an audience. From his excitement and from all that I knew so well in him, it was clear to me that he, too, regarded his present appearance on the platform as a turning-point of his fate, or 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 lay before me one of the illegal leaflets that have been distributed here lately, and I asked myself for the hundredth time, ‘Wherein lies its secret?’ ”
The whole hall became instantly still, all looks were turned to him, some with positive alarm. There was no denying, he knew how to secure their interest from the first word. Heads were thrust out from behind the scenes; Liputin and Lyamshin listened greedily. Yulia Mihailovna waved to me again.
“Stop him, whatever happens, stop him,” she whispered in agitation. I could only shrug my shoulders: how could one stop 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; the whole hall was stirred.
“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 simplehearted, most shallow stupidity. C’est la bêtise dans son essence la plus pure, quelque chose comme un simple chimique. If it were expressed ever so little more cleverly, everyone would see at once the poverty of this shallow stupidity. But as it is, everyone is left wondering: no one can believe that it is such elementary stupidity. ‘It’s impossible that there’s nothing more in it,’ everyone says to himself and tries to find the secret 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 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 we shall be reconciled.”
“Down with him!” shouted some.
“Hush, let him speak, let him have his say!” yelled another section. The young teacher was particularly excited; having once brought himself to speak he seemed now unable to be silent.
“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 today 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! The whole difficulty
