Demons

'Yes, friend and reader, farewell!' he began at once from the manuscript and now without sitting down in his chair. 'Farewell, reader; I do not even much insist that we should part friends: why, indeed, trouble you? Abuse me even, oh, abuse me as much as you like, if it gives you any pleasure. But it will be best of all if we forget each other forever. And if all of you, readers, should suddenly be so good as to fall on your knees and entreat me with tears: 'Write, oh, write for us, Karmazinov—for the fatherland, for posterity, for the wreaths of laurel—even then I would answer you, having thanked you, of course, with all courtesy: 'Ah, no, we have had enough of bothering each other, my dear compatriots, merci ! It is time we parted ways! Merci, merci, merci. ‘“

Karmazinov bowed ceremoniously and, all red as though he had been boiled, made for backstage.

'Nobody's going down on his knees—a wild fancy.'

'What conceit!'

'It's just humor!' someone a bit more sensible corrected.

'No, spare us your humor!'

'This is impudence, anyhow, gentlemen.'

'He's finished now, at least.'

'What a heap of boredom!'

But all these ignorant exclamations from the back rows (though not only from the back rows) were drowned by the applause of the other part of the public. Karmazinov was called back. Several ladies, Yulia Mikhailovna and the marshal's wife at their head, crowded up to the platform. In Yulia Mikhailovna's hands there appeared a magnificent wreath of laurel, on a white velvet cushion, inside another wreath of live roses.

'Laurels!' Karmazinov said with a subtle and somewhat caustic grin. 'I am moved, of course, and accept this wreath, prepared beforehand but as yet unwithered, with lively emotion; but I assure you, mesdames, I have suddenly become so much of a realist that I consider laurels in our age rather more fitting in the hands of a skillful cook than in mine...'

'Except that cooks are more useful,' cried that same seminarian who had attended the 'meeting' at Virginsky's. The order was somewhat disrupted. People from many rows jumped up to see the ceremony with the laurel wreath.

'I'd add three more roubles for a cook,' another voice picked up loudly, even too loudly, insistently loudly.

'So would I.'

'So would I.'

'But do they really have no buffet here?'

'Gentlemen, it's sheer deception...'

However, it must be admitted that all these unbridled gentlemen were still very afraid of our dignitaries, and also of the police officer who was there in the hall. After about ten minutes everyone settled down again anyhow, but the former order was not restored. And it was into this burgeoning chaos that poor Stepan Trofimovich stepped...

IV

I ran to him backstage one last time, however, and managed to warn him, beside myself as I was, that in my opinion it had all blown up and he had better not come out at all, but go home at once, excusing himself with his cholerine if need be, and that I, too, would tear off my bow and come with him. At this moment he was already heading for the platform, suddenly stopped, haughtily looked me up and down, and solemnly pronounced:

'Why, my dear sir, do you consider me capable of such baseness?'

I stepped back. I was as sure as two times two that he would not get out of there without a catastrophe. As I was standing in utter dejection, there again flashed before me the figure of the visiting professor, whose turn it was to go out after Stepan Trofimovich, and who earlier kept raising his fist and bringing it down with all his might. He was still pacing back and forth in the same way, absorbed in himself and muttering something under his nose with a wily but triumphant smile. Somehow almost without intending to (what on earth possessed me?), I went up to him as well.

'You know,' I said, 'based on many examples, if a reader keeps the public longer than twenty minutes, they cease to listen. Even a celebrity can't hold out for half an hour...'

He suddenly stopped and even seemed to tremble all over at the offense. A boundless haughtiness showed in his face.

'Don't worry,' he muttered contemptuously, and walked by. At that moment came the sound of Stepan Trofimovich's voice in the hall.

'Eh, confound you all!' I thought, and ran to the hall.

Stepan Trofimovich sat down in the chair amid the still lingering disorder. He apparently met with ill-disposed looks from the front rows. (They had somehow stopped liking him in the club of late, and respected him much less than before.) However, it was good enough that they did not hiss. I had had this strange idea ever since yesterday: I kept thinking he would be hissed off at once, as soon as he appeared. Yet he was not even noticed right away, owing to the lingering disorder. And what could the man hope for, if even Karmazinov was treated in such a way? He was pale; it was ten years since he had appeared before the public. By his agitation and by all that I knew only too well in him, it was clear to me that he himself regarded his present appearance on the platform as the deciding of his fate, or something of the sort. That was what I was afraid of. So dear the man was to me. And what I felt when he opened his mouth and I heard his first phrase!

'Ladies and gentlemen!' he said suddenly, as if venturing all, and at the same time in an almost breaking voice. 'Ladies and gentlemen! Only this morning there lay before me one of those lawless papers recently distributed here, and for the hundredth time I was asking myself the question: 'What is its mystery?’“

The entire hall instantly became hushed, all eyes turned to him, some in fear. Yes, indeed, he knew how to get their interest from the first word. Heads were even stuck out from backstage; Liputin and Lyamshin listened greedily. Yulia Mikhailovna waved her hand to me again:

'Stop him, at any cost, stop him!' she whispered in alarm. I merely shrugged; how was it possible to stop a