and our whole society, without understanding her subtle and farsighted political goals; or was angry at his dumb and senseless jealousy of Pyotr Stepanovich—in any case, she decided not to relent even now, despite the hour of the clock and the unprecedented agitation of Andrei Antonovich. Pacing, beside himself, up and down and in all directions over the carpets of her boudoir, he laid before her everything, everything, quite disconnectedly, it's true, but still everything that was seething inside him, for—'it has gone beyond all limits.' He began by saying that everyone was laughing at him and 'leading him by the nose.' 'I spit on the phrase,' he shrieked at once, catching her smile, 'let it be 'by the nose,' but it's true! ... No, madam, the moment has come; let me tell you that this is no time for laughter and women's coquetries. We are not in a mincing lady's boudoir; we are, as it were, two abstract beings in a balloon, who have met in order to speak out the truth.' (He was muddled, of course, and unable to find the right forms for his—incidentally correct—thoughts.) 'It is you, madam, who took me out of my former state, I accepted this post only for you, for your ambition... You smile sarcastically? Don't be triumphant, don't be hasty. Let me tell you, madam, let me tell you that I could, that I would be able to manage this post, and not just this one post but ten such posts, because I do have the ability; but with you, madam, in your presence—it's impossible for me to manage; because in your presence I do not have the ability. Two centers cannot exist, and you have set up two—one is mine, the other is in your boudoir— two centers of power, madam, but I will not allow it, I will not!! In the service, as in marriage, there is one center, and two are impossible... How have you repaid me?' he proceeded to exclaim. 'Our marriage has consisted of nothing but you proving to me all the time, every hour, that I am worthless, stupid, and even mean, and I have been obliged, every hour and humiliatingly, to prove to you that I am not worthless, not at all stupid, and that I astound everyone with my nobility—now, is that not humiliating on both sides?' Here he began quickly and rapidly stamping the carpet with both feet, so that Yulia Mikhailovna was obliged to rise with stern dignity. He soon calmed down, but then passed over to sentimentality and started sobbing (yes, sobbing), beating himself on the breast for almost a whole five minutes, getting more and more beside himself from Yulia Mikhailovna's most profound silence. Finally, he committed the ultimate blunder and let slip that he was jealous of Pyotr Stepanovich. Realizing that this was foolish beyond all measure, he became ferociously furious and shouted that 'he would not allow the denial of God'; that he would break up her 'shameless salon of faithlessness'; that the burgomaster was even obliged to believe in God, 'and so his wife is, too'; that he would not suffer any young men; that 'you, madam, you, from your own dignity, ought to have cared for your husband and to have stood up for his intelligence, even if he was a man of poor abilities (and I am by no means of poor abilities!), whereas you are the reason why everyone here despises me, it is you who have put them up to it! ...' He shouted that he would abolish the woman question, that he would smoke out that little spirit, that he would forbid this absurd subscription fete for the governesses (devil take them!) and break it up first thing tomorrow; that first thing tomorrow he would chase any governess he met out of the province 'with a Cossack, ma'am!' 'On purpose, on purpose!' he kept shrieking. 'Do you know, do you know,' he shouted, 'that it is your scoundrels who are inciting the men at the factory, and that I am informed of it? Do you know that tracts are being distributed on purpose, on pur-pose, ma'am! Do you know that I am informed of the names of four of these scoundrels, and that I am losing my mind, losing it finally, finally!!! ...' But here Yulia Mikhailovna suddenly broke her silence and sternly declared that she had long known about criminal designs, and that it was all foolishness, he was taking it too seriously, and with regard to pranksters, she knew not only those four, but all of them (she lied); and that she had no intention of losing her mind from all that, but, on the contrary, trusted in her mind more than ever, and hoped to lead everything to a harmonious ending: to encourage the youth, to bring them to reason, to prove to them suddenly and unexpectedly that their designs were known, and then show them to new goals for a reasonable and brighter activity. Oh, what came over Andrei Antonovich in that moment! On learning that Pyotr Stepanovich had hoodwinked him again and made fun of him so crudely, that he had revealed much more and much earlier to her than to him, and, finally, that Pyotr Stepanovich was himself perhaps the chief instigator of all the criminal designs—he flew into a frenzy. 'Know, witless but venomous woman,' he exclaimed, suddenly bursting all bonds, 'know that I shall arrest your unworthy lover at once, put him in fetters, and dispatch him to the fortress, or—or I myself, right now, in your eyes, will jump out the window!' At this tirade, Yulia Mikhailovna, green with spite, immediately burst into laughter, long, resounding, with little peals and gales, exactly as in the French theater when a Parisian actress, invited for a hundred thousand to play coquettes, laughs in her husband's face for daring to be jealous of her. Von Lembke rushed for the window, but suddenly stopped as if rooted to the spot, folded his arms across his chest, and, pale as a corpse, gave the laughing woman an ominous look. 'Do you know, do you know, Yulia...' he said in a suffocating, imploring voice, 'do you know that I, too, can do something?' But at the new, still stronger outburst of laughter that followed his last words, he clenched his teeth, moaned, and suddenly rushed—not for the window—but at his spouse, raising his fist over her! He did not bring it down—no, three times no; but instead he perished right there on the spot. Not feeling the legs under him, he ran to his study, threw himself just as he was, fully clothed, facedown on the prepared bed, wrapped himself convulsively, head and all, in the sheet, and lay that way for about two hours—not sleeping, not thinking, with a lead weight on his heart, and dull, unmoving despair in his soul. Every once in a while he shuddered all over with a tormenting, feverish shiver. All sorts of unconnected things recalled themselves to him, which did not go with anything: now he thought, for example, of an old wall clock he had had in Petersburg about fifteen years ago, which had lost its minute hand; now of the jolly official Millebois and of how the two of them had once caught a sparrow in Alexandrovsky Park, and only then recalled, laughing for the whole park to hear, that one of them was already a collegiate assessor. I think he fell asleep at around seven in the morning, not realizing it himself, and slept delightedly, with lovely dreams. Awakening at ten o'clock, he suddenly jumped wildly out of bed, remembered everything all at once, and gave himself a hearty smack on the head with his palm: no breakfast, no Blum, no police chief, no official come to remind him that the members of the ——--- committee were expecting his chairmanship that morning—he received none of them, he listened to nothing, nor did he wish to understand, but raced like a lunatic to Yulia Mikhailovna's half. There Sofia Antropovna, a little old lady of gentle birth who had long been living with Yulia Mikhailovna, explained to him that his wife had set out at ten o'clock, with a large company, in three carriages, for Varvara Petrovna Stavrogin's, at Skvoreshniki, to look over the site for the future fete, the second one, planned for two weeks later, and that this had already been arranged three days ago with Varvara Petrovna herself. Stunned by the news, Andrei Antonovich went back to his study and impetuously ordered horses. He was even hardly able to wait. His soul yearned after Yulia Mikhailovna—only to look at her, to be near her for five minutes; perhaps she would look at him, notice him, smile as she used to, forgive—ohh! 'But what's with those horses?' Mechanically, he opened a thick book that was lying on the table (he sometimes did divinations this way, by a book, opening it at random and reading on the right-hand page, three lines from the top). It came out: 'Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles'[cxxxvii]—Voltaire, Candide. ' He spat and ran to get into the carriage: 'To Skvoreshniki!' The coachman told afterwards how the master kept urging him on all the way, but as soon as they began to approach the main house, he suddenly gave the order to turn around and drive back to town: 'Faster, please, faster.' Before they reached the walls of the town, 'he ordered me to stop again, got out of the carriage, and went across the road into a field; from some sort of weakness, I thought; but he stopped and began examining little flowers, and stood that way for some while, really strangely, so as I felt thoroughly doubtful.' Thus the coachman testified. I recall the weather that morning: it was a cold, clear, but windy September day; spread before Andrei Antonovich, who had left the road, lay a stern landscape of bare fields from which the bread had been harvested long before; the howling wind swayed some pitiful remnants of dying yellow flowers... Did he wish to compare himself and his lot with stunted flowers beaten down by autumn and the frost? I don't think so. I even think it was certainly not so, and that he did not remember anything at all about the little flowers, despite the testimony of the coachman and the officer from the first precinct, who drove up at that moment in the police chief's droshky, and later affirmed that he had indeed found the front office with a bunch of yellow flowers in his hand. This police officer—an ecstatically administrative person, Vassily Ivanovich Filibusterov—was still a newcomer to our town, but had already distinguished himself and been noised abroad for his boundless zeal, a certain swoop in all his ways along the executive line, and an innate unsobriety. Leaping from the droshky, and not hesitating in the least at the sight of the front office's occupation, looking crazy but convinced, he fired off the report that 'there's unrest in town.'
'Eh? What?' Andrei Antonovich turned to him with a stern face, but without the least surprise or any recollection of the carriage or the coachman, as if he were in his own study.
'Officer of the first precinct Filibusterov, Your Excellency. There's a riot in town.'
