of beauty, it would seem, and at the same time repulsive, as it were. People said his face resembled a mask; however, they said much else as well, about his great physical strength, among other things. He was almost a tall man. Varvara Petrovna looked at him with pride, but also with constant uneasiness. He spent about half a year with us—listless, quiet, rather morose; he appeared in society and observed all our provincial etiquette with unswerving attention. He was related to our governor through his father, and was received in his house as a close relative. But several months passed, and the beast suddenly showed its claws.
By the way, I will note parenthetically that dear, mild Ivan Osipovich, our former governor, had something of the woman about him, but was from a good and well-connected family—which explains how he could sit with us for so many years constantly brushing all business aside. With his openhandedness and hospitality he should have been a marshal of nobility of the good old days, and not a governor in such a worrisome time as ours. There was eternal talk in town that it was not he but Varvara Petrovna who ruled the province. It was caustically put, of course, but nonetheless decidedly a lie. And much wit was wasted among us on account of it. On the contrary, in recent years Varvara Petrovna had specifically and consciously withdrawn from any higher destiny, despite the extreme respect accorded her by the whole of society, and voluntarily confined herself within the strict limits she set for herself. Instead of a higher destiny, she suddenly turned to the management of her estate, and in two or three years brought its income up almost to the former level. Instead of the former poetic impulses (visits to Petersburg, plans for publishing a magazine, and so on), she started scrimping and saving. She even removed Stepan Trofimovich from herself, allowing him to rent an apartment in another house (which he himself, under various pretexts, had been pestering her to do for a long time). Stepan Trofimovich gradually began referring to her as a prosaic woman, or, even more jocularly, as his 'prosaic friend.' To be sure, he allowed himself such jokes not otherwise than in the most highly respectful form and after a long selection of the appropriate moment.
All of us who were close to them understood—and Stepan Trofimovich more sensitively than any of us—that her son appeared to her then as if in the guise of a new hope and even in the guise of some new dream. Her passion for her son dated from the time of his successes in Petersburg society, and had increased especially from the moment she received the news that he had been broken to the ranks. And yet she was obviously afraid of him and seemed like a slave before him. One could see that she was afraid of something indefinite, mysterious, which she herself would have been unable to explain, and oftentimes she studied Nicolas unobtrusively and attentively, pondering and puzzling over something... and then—the beast suddenly put out its claws.
II
Our prince suddenly, for no reason at all, committed two or three impossibly brazen acts upon various persons—that is, the main thing lay in their being so unheard-of, so utterly unlike anything else, so different from what is usually done, so paltry and adolescent, and devil knows why, with no pretext whatsoever. One of the most respectable senior members of our club, Pavel Pavlovich Gaganov, an elderly man and even a decorated one, had acquired the innocent habit of accompanying his every word with a passionately uttered: 'No, sir, they won't lead me by the nose!' And so what. But one day in the club, when he uttered this aphorism at some heated moment to a small group of club guests gathered around him (none of them inconsequential), Nikolai Vsevolodovich, who was standing apart by himself and whom no one was addressing, suddenly came up to Pavel Pavlovich, seized his nose unexpectedly but firmly with two fingers, and managed to pull him two or three steps across the room. He could not have felt any anger towards Mr. Gaganov. One might think it was merely a childish prank, a most unpardonable one, of course; yet it was recounted later that at the very moment of the operation he was almost in a reverie, 'just as if he had lost his mind'; but this was recalled and grasped long afterwards. At first, in the heat of the moment, everyone recalled only what happened next, by which time he certainly understood how things really were and not only did not become embarrassed but, on the contrary, smiled gaily and maliciously, 'without the least repentance.' There was a terrible uproar; he was surrounded. Nikolai Vsevolodovich kept turning and looking around, not answering anyone, gazing with curiosity at the exclaiming faces. At last he seemed suddenly to lapse into reverie again—so they said, at least—frowned, stepped firmly up to the insulted Pavel Pavlovich, and with obvious vexation muttered rapidly:
'Forgive me, of course ... I really don't know why I suddenly wanted... silly of me...'
The casualness of the apology amounted to a fresh insult. There was even more shouting. Nikolai Vsevolodovich shrugged and walked out.
All this was very silly, to say nothing of its ugliness—a calculated and deliberate ugliness, as it seemed at first sight, and therefore constituting a deliberate and in the highest degree impudent affront to our entire society. And that is how everyone understood it. First of all, Mr. Stavrogin was immediately and unanimously expelled from membership in the club; then it was decided on behalf of the whole club to appeal to the governor and ask him at once (without waiting for the affair to be taken formally to court) to restrain the pernicious ruffian, the big-city 'swashbuckler, through the administrative power entrusted to him, and thereby protect the peace of all decent circles in our town from pernicious encroachments.' It was added with malicious innocence that 'some law may perhaps be found even for Mr. Stavrogin.' This phrase was prepared for the governor precisely in order to sting him on account of Varvara Petrovna. They delighted in smearing it around. As if by design, the governor happened to be out of town then; he had gone somewhere nearby to baptize the baby of a certain interesting and recent widow who had been left in a certain condition by her husband; but it was known that he would soon return. Meanwhile they arranged a real ovation for the esteemed and offended Pavel Pavlovich: they embraced and kissed him; the whole town came to call on him. They even planned a subscription dinner in his honor, and abandoned the idea only at his urgent request—perhaps realizing finally that the man had after all been dragged by the nose, and therefore there was no reason to be quite so triumphant.
And yet how had it happened? How could it have happened? The remarkable thing was precisely that no one in the whole town ascribed this wild act to madness. Which meant that they were inclined to expect such acts from Nikolai Vsevolodovich even when sane. For my own part, to this day I do not know how to explain it, even despite the event that soon followed, which seemed to explain everything and, apparently, to pacify everyone. I will also add that, four years later, to my cautious question concerning this past event in the club, Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, frowning: 'Yes, I was not quite well then.' But there is no point in rushing ahead.
I also found curious the explosion of general hatred with which everyone here fell upon the 'ruffian and big-city swashbuckler.' They insisted on seeing an insolent deliberateness and calculated intention to insult our whole society at once. In truth, the man pleased no one and, on the contrary, got everyone up in arms—but how, one wonders? Until the last occasion, he had not once quarreled with anyone, or insulted anyone, and was as courteous as a gentleman in a fashion plate, if the latter were able to speak. I suppose he was hated for his pride. Even our ladies, who had begun with adoration, now cried against him still more loudly than the men.
Varvara Petrovna was terribly struck. She confessed later to Stepan Trofimovich that she had long been foreseeing it all, during that entire half year, every day, and even precisely 'of that very sort'—a remarkable confession on the part of one's own mother. 'It's begun!' she thought with a shudder. The next morning after the fatal evening in the club, she set out cautiously but resolutely to have a talk with her son, and yet the poor woman was all atremble despite her resolution. She had not slept all night and had even gone early in the morning to confer with Stepan Trofimovich and wept while she was there, which had never happened to her in public before. She wished that Nicolas would at least say something to her, at least deign to talk with her. Nicolas, always so courteous and respectful with his mother, listened to her for some time, scowling but very serious; suddenly he got up without a word of response, kissed her hand, and walked out. And that same day, in the evening, as if by design, there came another scandal which, though a bit more mild and ordinary than the first, nevertheless, owing to the general mood, considerably increased the town outcry.
Namely, our friend Liputin turned up. He called on Nikolai Vsevolodovich immediately after his talk with his
