Demons

know!' he exclaimed painfully. 'In our country they can take you, put you in a kibitka, and march you off to Siberia for good, or else forget you in some dungeon ...'

And he suddenly burst into hot, hot tears. Tears simply poured out of him. He covered his eyes with his red foulard and sobbed, sobbed for a good five minutes, convulsively. I cringed all over. This was the man who for twenty years had been prophesying to us, our preacher, mentor, patriarch, Kukolnik, holding himself so loftily and majestically over us all, before whom we bowed so wholeheartedly, considering it an honor—and now suddenly he was sobbing, sobbing like a naughty little boy waiting for a birching from the teacher who has just gone to fetch the rod. I felt terribly sorry for him. He obviously believed as much in the 'kibitka' as in the fact that I was sitting beside him, and expected it precisely that morning, that very minute, and all because of Herzen's writings and some sort of poem of his own! Such full, such total ignorance of everyday reality was both moving and somehow disgusting.

He finally stopped weeping, got up from the sofa, and began pacing the room again, continuing our conversation, but glancing out the window every moment and listening towards the entryway. Our conversation continued disjointedly. All my assurances and reassurances were like sand against the wind. He scarcely listened, and yet he needed terribly for me to reassure him, and talked nonstop to that end. I saw that he could no longer do without me, and would not let me go for anything in the world. I stayed, and we sat for something over two hours. In the course of the conversation, he recalled that Blum had taken with him two tracts he had found.

'What tracts!' I was fool enough to get scared. 'Did you really ...'

'Eh, ten copies were passed off on me,' he replied vexedly (he spoke with me now vexedly and haughtily, now terribly plaintively and humbly), 'but I had already taken care of eight, so Blum got hold of only two...'

And he suddenly flushed with indignation.

'Vous me mettez avec ces gens-la!^[cxxv] Do you really suppose I could be in with those scoundrels, with tract-mongers, with my boy Pyotr Stepanovich, avec ces esprits-forts de la lachete!^[cxxvi] Oh, God!'

'Hah, haven't they somehow mixed you up with... Nonsense, though, it can't be!' I observed.

'Savez-vous,' suddenly escaped him, 'I feel at moments que je ferai la- bas quelque esclandre.^[cxxvii] Oh, don't go away, don't leave me alone! Ma carriere est finie aujourd'hui, je le sens.^[cxxviii] I, you know, I will perhaps rush at someone there and bite him, like that sub-lieutenant...'

He gave me a strange look—frightened and at the same time as if wishing to frighten. He was indeed growing more and more vexed at someone and at something as time went by and the 'kibitkas' failed to come; he was even angry. Suddenly Nastasya, who had gone from the kitchen to the entryway for something, brushed against the coat-rack there and knocked it over. Stepan Trofimovich trembled and went dead on the spot; but when the matter was clarified, he all but shrieked at Nastasya and, stamping his feet, chased her back into the kitchen. A minute later he said, looking at me in despair:

'I'm lost! Cher,” he suddenly sat down by me and gazed pitifully, so pitifully, into my eyes, 'cher, it's not Siberia I'm afraid of, I swear to you, oh, je vous jure'^[cxxix] (tears even came to his eyes), 'I am afraid of something else...'

I could tell from his look alone that he wished finally to tell me something extraordinary, meaning something he had refrained from telling me so far.

'I am afraid of disgrace,' he whispered mysteriously.

'What disgrace? But quite the contrary! Believe me, Stepan Trofimovich, it will all be explained this very day and will end in your favor...'

'You're so certain I'll be pardoned?'

'But what is this 'pardoned'! Such words! What is it you've done? I assure you you haven't done anything!'

'Qu 'en savez-vous;^[cxxx] all my life has been... cher... They'll recall everything... and even if they find nothing, so much the worse,' he suddenly added unexpectedly.

'How, so much the worse?'

'Worse.'

'I don't understand.'

'My friend, my friend, so, let it be Siberia, Arkhangelsk, stripping of rights—if I'm lost, I'm lost! But... I'm afraid of something else' (again a whisper, a frightened look, and mysteriousness).

'But of what, of what?'

'Flogging,' he uttered, and gave me a helpless look.

'Who is going to flog you? Where? Why?' I cried out, afraid he was losing his mind.

'Where? Why, there... where it's done.'

'And where is it done?'

'Eh, cher,' he whispered almost into my ear, 'the floor suddenly opens under you, and you're lowered in up to the middle... Everybody knows that.'

'Fables!' I cried, once I understood. 'Old fables! And can it be that you've believed them all along?' I burst out laughing.

'Fables! But they must have started somewhere, these fables; a flogged man doesn't talk. I've pictured it ten thousand times in my imagination!'