Demons

'Madam, I am speaking, perhaps, in irritable language...'

'Don't worry, I know myself when you will need to be stopped.'

'May I pose one more question, madam?'

'Do pose one more question.'

'Can one die solely from the nobility of one's own soul?'

'I don't know, I've never asked myself such a question.'

'You don't know! Never asked yourself such a question!' he cried with pathetic irony. 'In that case, in that case—‘Be silent, hopeless heart!’”^[66] and he struck himself fiercely on the chest.

By now he was pacing the room again. A trait of such people—this total incapacity to keep their desires to themselves; this uncontrollable urge, on the contrary, to reveal them at once, even in all their untidiness, the moment they arise. When he steps into society not his own, such a gentleman usually begins timidly, but yield him just a hair and he will at once leap to impertinence. The captain was already excited; he paced, waved his arms, did not listen to questions, spoke of himself rapidly, so rapidly that his tongue sometimes tripped, and without finishing he would leap on to the next phrase. True, he could hardly have been completely sober; then, too, Lizaveta Nikolaevna was sitting there, and though he did not glance at her even once, her presence seemed to make him terribly giddy. However, that is only a surmise. There must therefore have been some reason why Varvara Petrovna, overcoming her loathing, decided to listen to such a man. Praskovya Ivanovna was simply quaking with fear, though, to tell the truth,I don't think she quite understood what was going on. Stepan Trofimovich was also trembling, but, on the contrary, because he was always inclined to understand everything to excess. Mavriky Nikolaevich stood in the attitude of universal protector. Poor Liza was pale and was staring fixedly, with wide-open eyes, at the wild captain. Shatov went on sitting in the same attitude; but, what was strangest of all, Marya Timofeevna not only stopped laughing, but became terribly sad. She leaned her right elbow on the table and gazed at her declaiming brother with a long, sad look. Darya Pavlovna alone seemed calm to me.

'These are all nonsensical allegories,' Varvara Petrovna finally became angry, 'you have not answered my question—'Why?' I am insistently awaiting an answer.'

'I didn't answer your 'why'? You're awaiting an answer to your 'why'?' the captain reiterated, winking. 'This little word 'why' has been poured all over the universe since the very first day of creation, madam, and every moment the whole of nature cries out 'Why?' to its creator, and for seven thousand years^[67] has received no answer. Is it for Captain Lebyadkin alone to answer, and would that be just, madam?'

'That's all nonsense, that's not the point!' Varvara Petrovna was growing wrathful and losing her patience. 'These are allegories, and, besides, you choose to speak too floridly, my dear sir, which I regard as impertinence.'

'Madam,' the captain was not listening to her, 'I might wish to be called Ernest, yet I am forced to bear the crude name of Ignat—why is that, do you think? I might wish to be called Prince de Monbars,^[68] yet I'm only Lebyadkin, from lebed, the swan—why is that? I am a poet, a poet in my soul, and could be getting a thousand roubles from a publisher, yet I'm forced to live in a tub— why, why? Madam! In my opinion Russia is a freak of nature, nothing else!'

'You decidedly cannot say anything more definite?'

'I can recite you a piece called 'The Cockroach,' madam!'

'Wha-a-at?'

'Madam, I am not crazy yet! I will be crazy, I will be, that's certain, but I am not crazy yet! Madam, a friend of mine—a most no-o-oble person—has written a Krylov's fable entitled 'The Cockroach'—may I recite it?'

'You want to recite some fable of Krylov's?'

'No, it's not Krylov's fable I want to recite, it's my own fable, mine, I wrote it! Believe me, madam—no offense to you—but I'm not uneducated and depraved to such an extent as not to realize that Russia possesses the great fable-writer Krylov, to whom the minister of education erected a monument in the Summer Garden for childhood playing.^[69] Now then, madam, you ask me, 'Why?' The answer is at the bottom of this fable, in flaming letters!'

'Recite your fable.'

“‘Tis of a cockroach I will tell, And a fine cockroach was he, But then into a glass he fell Full of fly-phagy ...'

'Lord, what is this?' Varvara Petrovna exclaimed.

'It's in the summertime,' the captain hurried, waving his arms terribly, with the irritated impatience of an author whose recitation is being hindered, 'in the summertime, when lots of flies get into a glass, then fly-phagy takes place, any fool can understand that, don't interrupt, don't interrupt, you'll see, you'll see...' (he kept waving his arms).

'The cockroach took up so much room

It made the flies murmur.

'A crowded glass, is this our doom?

They cried to Jupiter.

But as the flies did make their moan

Along came Nikifor, A kind, old, no-o-oble man ...

I haven't quite finished here, but anyway, in plain words!' the captain rattled on. 'Nikifor takes the glass and, in spite of their crying, dumps the whole comedy into the tub, both flies and cockroach, which should have been done long ago. But notice, madam, notice, the cockroach does not murmur! This is the answer to your question, 'Why?’“ he cried out triumphantly.”‘The cock-roach does not mur-mur!' As for Nikifor, he represents nature,' he added in a quick patter, and began pacing the room self-contentedly.

Varvara Petrovna became terribly angry.